Chapter #63Of Friendships and Fouls by: Seuzz   You chew on the inside of your cheek. Caleb's suggestion is pretty damn tempting. You're now steering one of the alpha assholes at Westside High, and there's got to be lots of juice you can squeeze from that fact—juice you could share with Caleb.
But maybe you should take it slow ... Look around ... Get a feel for what's possible, what you could do without pulling Seth too far out of character.
"Yeah?" Caleb's eyes light up when you tell him you're going to meet up with Jeremy instead. "Gonna figure out some way of fucking him up at the tryouts on Monday?"
You flinch as though slapped. "The fuck?"
"Sure. It's what's called 'condign punishment' in the literature, Will. Richards has been living by the jock code of assholery ever since we were freshmen." He jerks his shoulders. "You live by that code, you die by it. Am I right?"
You feel your stare harden as you study Caleb. It's like you're seeing him for the first time, which in a sense is what you're doing. You see him now as an arrogant, nervy little smartmouth who deserves squashing because ... well, because that's what arrogant, nervy little smartmouths deserve. Also, he's funny looking in a way that offends you—with that big nose and those sneering lips and that scruffy rug of hair that's just begging to be ripped off his skull like a strip of dirty old carpet—
He returns your glare with an even one of his own, and you have to concede that if he's arrogant it's because he's smart, and what you sneer at as "nervy" in him would probably be "gutsy" if you were talking about other people. Fuck, look at how brilliantly he's used these masks to mess up the lives of Gordon and Chelsea and Chen and Prescott and—
You slap down Javits's instincts—fuck, they sure did roar up inside you out of nowhere, didn't they?—and snap yourself back to the present. "I just wanna go see him for now," you gruffly announce. "See what he looks like when I look at him with—" You point to your own eyes. "As Seth, not as me."
"Don't you got an idea already what he looks like to Seth? You put the brain band on, didn't you?"
"Yes, I put the fucking—!" You catch yourself, or Seth, or whoever it was that was snapping at Caleb. "I wanna know first hand, not—" You knock yourself in the temple with the heel of your hand. "Not just remembering."
Caleb raises a skeptical eyebrow, but you dismiss him. "Take the Danester home. I'll catch up to you later."
Caleb studies you for a long minute as you pull on socks and jeans and shoes, before he turns with an elaborate shrug and trudges to the door.
You pause after he's gone with your shirt crumpled up in your hands. Then you toss it aside and pick up Seth's phone—which is your phone now. where? you ask Jeremy. when? While waiting for his reply, you swagger into the bathroom, put on the light, and turn to the mirror. Seth Javits, his brow dark with thought, stares back out at you from its depths.
His face and nose are very long and lean. Horsey wouldn't be a bad descriptor, and you even have long, horsey-like teeth to go with the mouth. Your eyes are slightly protuberant, though, so that when you goggle them and pucker your mouth you look less like a horse and more like a narrow-bodied fish. You goggle them now. Fuck you, Javits, you think. You funny-faced son of a bitch.
But you're a lot more impressive below the neck. Your trapezius muscles are hard and bulging; your pecs are like thick plates of meat; your eight-pack was voted "Best Abdominals in the Class" last year. You raise an arm and slowly flex and clasp a bicep.
You've the body of a trained athlete and of a fighter, so you shouldn't be especially bothered by the swollen eye and blackened cheekbone. What's galling, though, is that you should have got them from a little pissant like Prescott. Well, he surprised you, that's all. He came hopping into the gym on Wednesday after school to ask Patterson about showing up for the tryouts, and naturally you laughed when he asked. Next thing you knew, you were getting punched one, two, four, six times hard, all in the same spot, just below your eye. You manage to land two blows of your own before Patterson separated you, but it looks like the little fucker hurt you a lot more than he actually did. (No, your face doesn't hurt, but it is still a little tender to touch.) You've been telling people it was Patterson who did you most of the hurt as he tried breaking up the fight—but you can't shake the feeling that people are snickering at you behind your back.
You're pulled from these faux-autobiographical musings by another chirp from the phone. Jeremy wants to meet in front of Schuyler Middle School. You reply that you'll see him in twenty minutes. On a whim you snap a selfie of your new self, pull on the vintage football jersey (rescued from a second-hand clothing shop) and swagger out the door.
~ ~ ~
"I'm no good at basketball!" Jeremy whines as you drag him by the arm into the Westside gym. Your nostrils flare. It's a new gym to you—today is your first day, as a freshman, at Westside High—but the air is thick with the fun, familiar stench of oiled wood, old sweat, dirty shoes, and testosterone.
"I'm no good either!" you retort. "This is how we get good!"
"But I've never been on a team before," Jeremy grumbles. "You have, and don't bullshit me about you not being good. An' I suck at PE."
"And this is how you unsuck." Across the floor, Coach Brooks does a double-take at you. You flash him a nervous grin back. "No one starts off good, man. I didn't. That's what being on a team is for. Getting good."
"But you've had practice!"
"That's what I'm saying! Jesus, man, do the math! And you'll do fine, you've got ladders instead of legs." Though you're a month older than Richards, he's got most of a head on you in height. "All you need is practice and confidence. Hey!" you greet Coach Brooks, whose sun-baked pate is as round and smooth as an egg; all his hair seems to have migrated to his bushy eyebrows and into his ears. "My friend and I wanna try out for the basketball team."
The coach smiles at you, but he gives Jeremy—who is hanging back behind you—a skeptical look. "I don't think he likes me," Jeremy grumbles after you've put your name on a clipboard and are returning to the library.
"That's 'cos you look like you don't want to be there. I told you, you just need confidence, man. This'll get the loser stink off you."
"What loser stink?" Jeremy stops dead in the middle of the hall.
"The loser stink that's got your head all turned around wrong." You punch him in the arm. "Hang out with a better class of people, get your head on right. You'll get that if you're on a good team."
~ ~ ~
That's one of the memories that you play over in your mind on the drive out to meet Richards.
But you've got several others, too.
Jeremy, in front of the movie theater, abruptly telling you he's changed his mind about seeing the show with you when Caleb points at a couple of football players swaggering over in your direction.
Jeremy, at lunch, turning away from you and Caleb and Keith with a cold, supercilious glare, and shambling over like a Frankenstein monster to squat with Javits and some other guys from the basketball team.
Martin Gardinhire telling you that he's heard Jeremy snarking on you and Caleb behind your backs.
"'Sup, man?" you ask Jeremy as you climb out of your truck in front of Schuyler Middle School. He's in shorts and a tank top, holding a basketball. You point at it. "We supposed to do something with that?"
"I thought we could," he says. His face is very pale under his dark, shaggy hair, and his whiskers bristle like a Koosh ball that's been glued onto his chin.
"You didn't say anything about that in your text, man. I ain't dressed out for it."
"Well—" He licks his lips, and takes a deep breath. "It was mostly for me."
You grin at him. "Lookin' for a workout?" You gesture him for him to give you the ball, which he does. You drill it on the sidewalk a couple of times, to get the feel of it. It does feel natural, but your pulse flutters as you wonder if you've got Seth's court skills in addition to his memories. You turn toward the school blacktop, which is on the other side of a chain link fence, and loft the ball at the basket. It would be like making a three-point shot from under the opposing basket, and you don't expect to make it. And you don't, but it messes up the net as it falls, so it's a more than respectable shot.
"Come on." You slap him in the stomach and loft yourself at the fence, clambering over its rattling links and dropping to the other side. Jeremy, though, uses the gate. "Wuss," you holler at him as he lopes over to retrieve the ball.
It wouldn't take much to destroy his confidence. But even as you imagine betraying and breaking him, you feel Seth Javits's own personality digging in its heels. This is my friend, he objects. And Jeremy was once your friend, too.
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