Out of Nowhere (12 page)

For some reason he chose me as his running buddy for those three days. He’d throw his arm across my shoulders and pull me into his pack for lunch. We’d swim together at pool time. He’d invite me back to his dorm room for the afternoon break, when he’d dig into his duffel for obscene amounts of candy. His door was always open and there was always a steady flow of guys in and out. He was funny and easy to laugh with. He introduced me to everyone, and I imagined I saw a little jealousy in their eyes.

I decided I liked Alex Rhodes.

The low-to-the-ground guy turned out to be their principal. He held a Dunkin’ Donuts travel mug. Off to one side there was a small table set up, with a cardboard to-go pot of coffee and a couple big boxes of Munchkins. Maquoit was making a little breakfast party out of this. I glanced sideways at Mike. A bright flush had spread from his neck right up to his cheeks. Mike never gets in trouble. His whole life, and I’ve known him my whole life, the guy’s always walked the straight and narrow.

And that morning he got to be Donnie Plourde.

I walked right up to the principal and stuck out my hand.

“Good morning, sir. I’m Tom Bouchard.” He pumped my hand, then turned to Mike. Who smiled, shook, didn’t say a word.
Behind the principal and all around the rock, the Maquoit soccer team was a sea of red and black. Like a clone army in their regulation warm-up pants and jackets. Which actually looked warm. Not like our shitty plastic windbreakers with the peeling letters.

I had once asked Coach why we had such crummy crap. I mean, we were all public schools, right?

“They have some pretty active soccer boosters over there,” he’d said. “Every year they raise enough money through fund-raisers to outfit the entire varsity team with new warm-ups.”

As I watched Mike’s face transition from red to maroon, watched our guys shivering in the morning cold while the Maquoit guys popped Munchkins in their mouths, it just hit me how much I couldn’t stand those guys. I felt this overwhelming need to get out of there as fast as possible.

“I have a suggestion that could save us all a lot of time and trouble,” I said to the principal, who was about to speak. He looked at me a little skeptically but nodded. I cranked open the paint can and gave it a quick stir. Mike handed me a wide brush, and I quickly slapped black over the
S
and
U
of
suck
. The rock now read
You ck, Maquoit!

“How about when that dries in a couple minutes I add an
R
and an
O
?” I said to the principal. “Then it’ll read
You rock
.” He hesitated. Looked a little confused.

“Rock is a verb as well as a noun,” I explained. Someone from the Maquoit side laughed.

Alex.

At the end of that three-day camp, when some of the parents came to the final awards ceremony, Alex introduced me to his father. I remember wondering what the guy did for a living, because
this was, like, two o’clock on a weekday, and all the guys’ fathers I knew were working.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you, Tom,” Mr. Rhodes said to me. “Why haven’t we seen you at any United Maine tryouts?” He was a bigger, wider version of Alex. The same blond hair. Tall and jacked. Wore an adult-sized United Maine windbreaker. I wondered if parents got the gear, too, or if Alex’s dad coached.

“Um … I don’t know,” I said honestly. Playing with United Maine was not part of my worldview.

“You could totally make the team,” Alex said enthusiastically. “He’s way better than Hoover, Dad—”

Mr. Rhodes put up his hand. He gave Alex this reproving look.

“We don’t run down our teammates, son,” he said.

Alex stared at his father. His face had gone blank. Like he hadn’t heard the correction. Smooth, no emotion, except for his eyes. They started blinking, fast. As if Alex had something in his eye he was trying desperately to blink away.

“We haven’t posted the dates yet, but tryouts for the fall season are always in August,” Mr. Rhodes said to me. “Just go to the United Maine website. I hope we’ll see you out there.” He and Alex turned to go, but not before Alex threw an arm across my shoulders.

“It’s gonna be you and me on that front line!” No trace of the blink as he spoke then. Just the confident grin I had gotten so used to that week. As if there were no question about my trying out, making the team, and spending the next four years collecting trophies with him and his friends from Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth and as far away as Bridgton and Kittery.

As he stepped forward from the rock and spoke to the principal, Alex Rhodes resembled a bigger, wider version of the eighth grader I had met at soccer camp years ago. He had turned into a slightly blonder, not-yet-balding clone of his father.

“I think that’d work,” he said. “Especially if their team chants it while the paint dries.”

“We didn’t come here to sing, Rhodes,” I said immediately. He smirked, shrugged. I knew for damn sure he didn’t care what we did. He was just playing with us.

“I believe we can dispense with the chanting,” the principal said. “But if you’re fine with this suggestion, Alex, then we can go ahead with it.”

“Whatever,” he said.

As we waited for the black paint to dry, the principal filled the air with blather. No one was listening. Mike had his head ducked, half facing away from the Maquoit players, who, if they recognized him, didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, our guys were shifting their feet, silent. No one offered us donuts or coffee. I
so
wanted out of there.

Alex stepped in close to me.

“Why do I get the feeling none of this was your idea, Bouchard?” he said quietly.

The expression on his face and the tone of his voice were almost … friendly. From one captain to another. Old camp buddies, right?

The night after that camp ended, I’d pored over the United Maine website with my parents. I remember their gasps when they clicked on the fees button. My parents are both schoolteachers, so while we’re not rich, we’re not poor, either. Still, the cost of playing
for that team was a showstopper. End of conversation.
Sorry, son, but we’re not that family
.

Long after they’d gone to bed that night I continued scrolling through the photos on the website. I found pictures of Alex and his teammates playing in Virginia that spring. They’d won the eastern under-15s and were posed in front of the goal, their noses sunburned, hair plastered with dried sweat, and this big honkin’ trophy in front. I found John Hoover in the picture, the striker who Alex said wasn’t nearly as good as me.

I’d stayed up pretty late going over those pictures. When I shut the computer off, I’d promised myself to never visit the United Maine website again. And I never did.

Standing with him beside the rock that morning, paint slowly drying, I wondered if we would have ended up right where we were at that moment if we’d been United Maine teammates. Would I have messed with their stupid rock if we were practicing in the dome together the next day?

He looked at me curiously when I didn’t answer him.

“I don’t get you, Bouchard,” he continued. “You’re not an asshole. And this was a completely asshole thing to do.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think, Alex,” I said pleasantly. I went over to the paint and laid one finger gently on top. Came away black. I suppressed the urge to blow on the rock. “Mind if I have a donut?” I walked over to the Munchkins box and surveyed the flavors. Picked out a chocolate glazed and popped it in my mouth.

“Thanks,” I told him.

He shook his head in wonder.

“You just gotta hope this doesn’t screw you out of a tip for
college,” he said. “I heard your coach was pretty mad.” I shrugged. I would have loved to know where Alex got his insider information about how mad Coach Gerardi might or might not have been.

I would have loved to know whether some college was recruiting
him
.

Of course, he volunteered the information.

“It’s lookin’ like Amherst for me,” he said softly. So his teammates couldn’t hear. “My dad spoke to the coach yesterday. Said I’m on his list.” I nodded.

It figured. Alex Rhodes would be the sort of guy who’d have an admissions deal with a college before the rest of the world had even sent in their applications.

“Congratulations,” I told him. “I can see you in purple. Remind me … what’s their mascot? The Little Lord Fauntleroys?” Alex colored. The Amherst College mascot is Lord Jeff, named after the college’s founder, Lord Jeffrey Amherst. Who had made a name for himself handing out smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians back in colonial days.

Damn. I had definitely been spending too much time reading college guidebooks. But still: the Jeffs? We both knew it was freakin’ ridiculous.

And way more than I had up my sleeve in the college department.

“I think this paint is dry.” Mike Turcotte. Who was even more eager than I was to get the hell out of there.

“Go for it, man,” I told him, and Mike pried the lid off the red.

The two teams were strangely silent as Mike painted the letters
R
and
O
in front of the
CK
. The black was still a little gummy, but the red didn’t run.

Principal What’s-His-Name was making final blathering sounds, and we were pressing the lids back on the paint cans when Alex delivered his parting comments. He stepped in close and spoke quietly, for my ears only.

“I feel sorry for you, Bouchard. You could’ve been good, but instead you’re stuck in a crap program. Playin’ with Osama over there.” My glance automatically shifted to where Saeed stood, a little off to the side of our group. I didn’t think he’d heard Alex.

My anger was quick, deep, and familiar.

“You know what, Rhodes?” I said, loud enough so that a few of the guys standing right near us could hear. “Eat shit.”

A satisfied grin spread across Alex’s face.

“What was that, Tommy?” he said. “What did you just say?”

“I said, how about a little friendly
bet
?”

This I said clearly as I looked at the principal.

“How about,” I continued, “if we beat you guys next time around, you all have to paint your own rock. I’m thinkin’ … instead of ‘Maquoit’ you paint in ‘Chamberlain.’ So it’ll read
You rock, Chamberlain!
” The suggestion drew some energetic clapping from my guys.

“Yeah, but what do we get out of it when we win?” Alex declared above the clapping. Big cheers from Maquoit. This was feeling more and more like a dueling pep rally. The principal looked uncomfortable.

When the noise died down, I spoke.

“If we lose, which we won’t, by the way, I’ll come back. Alone. And I’ll paint whatever the hell you want on your rock.”

Even the guys on my side liked that one, especially because
they sure didn’t want to come back. If Maquoit beat us, I was gonna be on my own.

Everyone started to leave. I gave the principal the unused brushes and what was left of the paint. The Maquoit guys knocked off the last of the Munchkins; Alex and I made a point of shaking hands over this latest deal. Mike was already in the car.

As we pulled out, he looked at me skeptically.

“I feel sorry for you, Tom,” he said. Which was strange, that he would repeat what Alex had just said. What was it about me that generated all the pity?

“Why?” I asked.

“Because our next game against Maquoit is scheduled for the second week of October. Right smack in the middle of Ramadan.”

This sick, cold feeling settled in my stomach. Trust Mike to know that. Trust me to … not. To not know that precisely when we had to take on our biggest, toughest opponent in the conference, our best strikers would be running … no, staggering … up and down the length of a soccer field after fasting all day.

At that moment I felt sorry for me, too.

When I was little, I went through a stage when I pestered my folks for a sibling.

We knew a lot of big families. Kids-spilling-out-of-the-house families where there always seemed to be a new baby and there were a lot of toys. The televisions were always on in the houses of big families, tuned to Nickelodeon and Disney and, if there were older kids, MTV: all stations my vigilant parents refused to purchase on their cable contract. There was always a pan of something freshly baked and just lying out for the taking in big families, and lots of sugary drinks in the fridge. In the backyard, older brothers were always organizing the games, or spying on the girls, or building something with a rusty whatever-they-found-in-the-garage, which often resulted in a bloody gash, a trip to the emergency room for stitches, and a tetanus shot, which, if you weren’t on the receiving end of all that treatment, was pretty exciting.

Our home, by comparison, was dull. Healthy snacks stocked in the cupboard, sweets served only after dinner for dessert, books outnumbering toys, and PBS the channel of choice. It never
occurred to me that these were conscious child-rearing decisions my parents made: I figured we just didn’t have enough kids, and as a result, the “fun factor” was way too low in our house.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Mom said when I told her I wanted an older brother. “You can only get younger brothers at this point.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’d like … two.”

“And of course,” she continued, “you might wind up with sisters. Little sisters.”

That option had never occurred to me. I’d seen plenty of little sisters in the homes of the big families, and as far as I was concerned, they were a complete drag. True, a few could swing a bat and sink a basket as good as anyone, but for the most part little sisters were whiny tattlers, convinced the boys were forever up to no good.

When I didn’t respond, Mom played her trump card.

“And you know, Tommy, you really almost already have a brother.”

“Who?” I asked her, bewildered.

“Donnie,” she said. “He’s your best buddy, and an only child, too. You’re more like brothers than friends.”

And that’s how it rolled. I think my parents would have been happy with more kids, but that’s not how things worked out for them. Meanwhile, I stopped bugging them and focused instead on the brother I did have.