Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [46]
“Zero tolerance. Just another way to keep a brotha down.”
Pepe knows where I’m coming from. He was tired of rolling around on a mat with another sweaty, half-naked guy and wanted to try something new. So unlike everyone else who gets categorized early in our high-school careers and just sticks with the status quo, he actually did something about it. He quit to try something new. And it turned out that he was an even better actor than he was a wrestler. The big difference is that he had something new to quit for. I don’t.
I’ve been doing a fairly good job at avoiding Coach Kiley in the halls. I think he was avoiding me, too, thinking that if he didn’t put any pressure on me to come back to the team, I’d come back on my own. But as the time wound down before the team’s next meet, he cornered me.
“You’ve only missed a few practices,” he said, clamping his huge hand on my shoulder, having snuck up on me from behind. “It’s not too late to come back.”
There is no chance of me rejoining the team.
Need I mention that my dad is less consolable than Kiley about all this. I suspect that the only reason Dad hasn’t shut the garage door and turned on the car’s engine is that he got a promotion at work that sucks up a lot of the hours he would’ve spent obsessing about me. He’s hardly home anymore, but when he is, he always manages to finds time to guilt the hell out of me, invariably in the form of one of the following short but bitter exchanges:
Exchange #1: You’re Not Tough Enough
Dad: How can you quit? Other runners come back from injuries worse than yours.
Me: I’m not other runners, Dad.
Exchange #2: You’re Passing Up a Golden Opportunity
Dad: How can you quit? You could have gotten an athletic scholarship.
Me: I can still get an academic scholarship, Dad.
Exchange #3: You’re Going to Regret This When You’re Old and Gray
Dad: How can you quit? Doesn’t leadership and teamwork mean anything to you?
Me: Uh, not really, Dad.
Exchange #4: You Can’t Let the Terrorists Win
Dad: How can you quit? If you leave the team, the terrorists have won .
Me: Uh, it has nothing to do with terrorism.
One of these days, in the middle of one of these exchanges, his chrome dome is going to crack open like the San Andreas fault. But it won’t be my fault when it does.
As proof that my departure was meant to be, the Monday after I quit the team, Taryn Baker (aka stepsister of peaceful anarchist and gay man of my dreams) approached me about tutoring her after school.
I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned to see Taryn, who, like always, wasn’t looking at me, but at an invisible person behind me.
“Hey, Taryn. What’s up?”
“Geometry.”
Taryn is a true minimalist when it comes to conversation. With that barely audible whisper, I knew exactly what she needed from me.
“So you need me to tutor you after school?”
She nodded. As usual her T-shirt and cargo pants were at least three times too large, as though she doesn’t want any body part to be distinguishable beneath the fabric. Dressed in all brown, Taryn never strays from a palette of earth tones—all the better for blending in. And she was wearing a striped wool cap, even though it was unseasonably warm. For Taryn, it’s 365 days of winter. I couldn’t believe that she and Paul Parlipiano were quasisiblings.
“Well, it just so happens that I just quit the cross-country team and . . .”
I babbled for a few minutes about my defection. That’s the thing with Taryn. She’s such a nonentity that you end up talking way more than you normally would because you feel compelled to hold up her end of the conversation, too.
Once it was agreed that we would meet at 2:15 P.M. in the library, Taryn noiselessly drifted away, like a phantasm. That girl is strange. Whatever. Her academic loss is my monetary gain. Ten bucks an hour, for a minimum of five hours a week. Sweet! And if she starts failing Chemistry, I just might be able to buy myself a VW Beetle.
So I have no regrets about quitting the team. The sleeplessness thing isn’t even a big deal anymore because I’m so accustomed to it by now.