Man, whatever Rand’s beef was with the Poins frat president, Jax, it was one hell of a grudge. He hated that guy.
Tray wailed, “So what do we do? The dean is forcing us to put the Poins in our games. We can’t sideline them. And we could do better with an actual hedgehog!”
I grimaced even though I didn’t mean to.
Tray barked, “What’s the face for?”
I shrugged. “Come on, Tray. Sean wasn’t that bad.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
DeWan looked at me. “Hey, man, I was there. Every time one of us moved, we ran into that guy. It was like he was some kind of fuck-up octopus in eight places at once. Bam. Bam. Bam. And yeah, he caught the ball and ran—but to the opposing team’s yard line. If I’d thought about videoing it, I could have put it on YouTube and gotten a million hits for pure stupid.”
I stared at my hands. “It was my fault. He was all confused because we were all wearing blue flags plus he doesn’t know any of us, so I told him he was on my team.” I looked up at Tray. “But Sean caught your pass. He probably never caught a ball in his life, and a lot of guys like him would have covered their faces and melted down. But he caught it, and if it wasn’t for me, he would have carried it the right way. That’s something, right?”
Tray crossed his arms. “He was probably trying to cover his face and missed.”
I muttered, “Fine. Maybe you can get the Poins to give us somebody better?”
“No.” Jesse, the star running back for Badgers football, was the one who answered, and he almost never said anything, so everybody listened. “The guy who’s the head of Quiz Bowl for the Poins, Dobbs, says Hedgehog volunteered to play flag football. Nobody knows why since he’s some kind of super brain, but none of the rest of them wanted to do it.” Jesse should know. He’d been “volunteered” by Tray and Rand into joining the Poindexter’s Quiz Bowl team as a part of Dean Robbert’s ultimatum.
Everybody got quiet. Then Rand looked up with a gleam in his eyes. “I’ve got an idea.” He was so freaking handsome, like a poster of a movie star or something, that I wanted to just appreciate looking at him. One problem. He was looking at me. “Bubba, you’re a phys ed major, right?”
“Uh yeah.”
“And I heard you want to be a personal trainer?”
“Uh, someday, yeah.”
Tray seemed to have caught Rand’s drift. He’d sat in the chair again and now was leaning forward on his knees and staring at me with a grin that I’d seen in a lot of midnight movies on Halloween.
Rand went on. “Cool. Plus, you don’t seem to mind being around him. So, how about we make you responsible for this Hedgehog guy? You can train him and get him ready to play flag.”
PJ Roark, one of the snarkiest guys in the fraternity, had wandered in from the kitchen and piped in. “He can be your guinea hedgehog.”
Rand said with all kinds of enthusiasm in his voice, “It’ll be a win-win. You get a practice client, and we get a better flag-football player.”
“I want more than better, man.” Tray crossed his big arms again. “You say the Poin isn’t that bad.” He spoke those last words in a prissy high voice. “Prove it. I want this guy to be a real asset to the team. If you manage it, I’ll stop calling you Wrong-Way Merkofsky, deal?”
PJ, who was always eating, spoke around a mouthful. “Yeah, and right after you do it, you can spin straw into gold.”
I glanced around at the faces of my fraternity brothers, all intently fixed on me. I had the feeling I was being set up, but I couldn’t figure out how. I really did want to be a personal trainer and having someone to practice on sounded kinda cool. The Poin sure as hell needed training. I blinked. It would be nice to have some of Tray’s respect back—but then if I fucked it up, and God knew I was good at that, it would just prove to everybody how dumb I really was.
I flashed on that Poin kid, Sean, flailing around the field like a lost puppy, trying hard to get in there and play, and then running off with his tail between his legs, covered in mud. Could anybody actually train that guy to play flag football? Then a picture of his big brown eyes behind those giant glasses looking all excited for a minute after he caught that ball drifted across my mind. He’d wanted to win, to succeed, and that was half the battle.
I grinned. Besides the guy was freaking adorable. And really funny too. “Um. Sure? I can do that.”
For a minute, I got to feel how cool it was to have the ALAs cheer for me, but then they all went back to what they were doing before, and I got to figure out how to turn the ultimate wimp into a flag-football beast in a matter of weeks.
Fifteen minutes later, I was doing something totally scary I’d never even thought of before. I was walking up the path of the Poin Palace, the Sigma Mu Tau fraternity house. Yes, it was right across the street from where I lived, but I’d never so much as been on their lawn. Well, except for one or two rat fucks, but those didn’t count. The SMTs were not only our bitterest rivals and favorite target of every prank we could think up, which had led to Dean Robberts eventual fedupness, but they were also as different from the ALAs as a group of guys could get. Famous for their freaking brains, the Poins held some of the top GPAs on campus, as well as some of the top pairs of khakis. I snorted. They also boasted a championship Quiz Bowl team, whatever that was. All I knew was Jesse got roped into it by the same fraternity brothers as had put me in charge of Sean—no thank you very much, Rand and Tray.
The ALAs, of course, were the big men on campus, literally and by rep. Our house had the top athletes in most sports and were the favorites of the ladies. Yup, my fraternity brothers got the looks and the sighs. Well, not me so much. I mean I’m on the Badgers’ football team, but second string. Not many people knew about me—no posters or news stories like Jesse and DeWan, and the ladies—well, they seemed to like to fuck me, but when it came to wanting to stick around, they always picked smarter guys than me. Whatever. I didn’t have time for a girlfriend anyway.
Biting my lip, I took a breath and knocked on the door.
Some little skinny biker dude in boots and a black leather jacket opened the door and snapped, “Yeah, whaddya want?” while staring at his phone.
This guy was so wimpy I could have stepped on him and not noticed, but he still made me jump.
It seemed like he hadn’t really looked to see who was there because he turned his head and gazed for a second at my chest, then looked up and up to my six foot five, and his eyes widened just before a crease popped between his eyebrows. “Who the hell are you?”
I kind of wanted to pick him up and toss him in the bush beside the porch—just my natural reaction to Poins—but I figured he might not help me then. So I said, all nice, “I wanna see Sean. I mean Hedgehog. I mean Sean.”
“Why?”
Jeez, people must be wrong about the Poins because this dude had way more balls than brains. “I need to talk to him about flag football.”
He stared at me like I was in a zoo. “Oh right, he volunteered for that trial by stupidity, didn’t he?” He looked me up and down again. “Wait here.”
I would not mention it was freaking February, and I was standing on his freaking porch. As he closed the door, I pulled my letter jacket tighter.