“No, I’m fine,” I said. “We’re playing Brighton on Friday, and they like to double-team me. I need the practice.”
Kyle just shook his head. “You’re such a stubborn ass**le.”
I laughed. “Yeah. But I’m the best motherfucking wide receiver in the state. There’s something to be said for Dad’s ‘training program.’” I made air quotes with my fingers as I said the last part.
“What was that word Mr. Lang used yesterday? Talking about the Spartans and how they trained their warriors?” Kyle dug a Powerbar out of his bag and opened it, handing me half.
“Agoge,” I answered.
“That’s it,” Kyle said, chewing noisily. “Just pretend you’re a Spartan, training in an agoge.”
“It wasn’t a building, I don’t think,” I said, eating my half. “It was more of a lifestyle, a program. And yeah, that’s basically it. Mike Dorsey, Spartan agoge trainer.”
“Am I gonna have to drag you off the field again?” Kyle asked, only half joking.
“Probably,” I answered.
“We’ll hit up the hideout after practice, then.” Kyle took off for his fifth-period science class on the other end of the school, hustling so he wouldn’t be late.
“Sounds good,” I said, calling after him.
The hideout was a spot out in the woods behind my house. There was an old lightning-struck oak tree with huge spreading branches bending low over the ground, forming a cave-like canopy. Over the years Kyle and I had turned the spot into a clubhouse of kinds, weaving branches together and old boards and pieces of tin from the junkyard around the thick trunk so that we had an enclosed area. We’d dragged old chairs, some crates, even a ratty old couch in there. It was our secret, and even now, when we were old enough that we should be embarrassed about having a secret clubhouse, we still kept it secret. My cousin Doug had once somehow looted several cases of cheap beer from a liquor store, and he’d given me a couple of them, so Kyle and I often went to the hideout to drink together.
For me, though, the hideout was just that, somewhere I could go to get away from my dad. I’d spent the night there on several occasions, to the point that I kept an old wool blanket in one of the crates.
My conversation with Malcolm and then Kyle had taken most of the seven minutes before fifth period, so I was surprised when Nell still hadn’t shown up for class. I thought I’d shit myself if I got myself all psyched up to ask her out and then she didn’t show up for class.
Then she appeared, hair loose around her shoulders, smiling and laughing. Becca was on one side of her, Jill on the other. Those three girls were, in my opinion, the three hottest girls in the entire school, and I could never decide how to rank them in terms of who was the hottest. It depended on my mood, most days. I knew Nell the best, since I’d spent most of my life daydreaming about her like a little puppy, but Becca was just as hot in a different way. She was shorter and curvier than Nell, and Becca had long curly black hair, so tightly curled that it was a thick mass of springy ringlets, whereas Nell’s hair was a perfect shade of strawberry blonde. Becca’s skin was the color of dark caramel, where Nell’s was like ivory, white and pale. Nell was outgoing and cheerful, whereas Becca was quiet and painfully shy, but brilliantly smart.
Jill was almost lost in the shuffle when she was with Becca and Nell. She just couldn’t compete, if you ask me. If you looked at her when she was on her own or with other people, Jill was hot for sure, but she just wasn’t in the same league as Nell and Becca. Jill was a Barbie doll, like, for real. Tall, impossibly proportioned, naturally shock-blonde hair and blue eyes. She was the sweetest girl you’d ever meet, and yeah, I know, guys shouldn’t use the term “sweet,” but it just fit. Jill was sweet as a spoonful of sugar. She was also a stereotypical bubbly blonde in that she was almost unbelievably air-headed and kind of shallow. She was loyal as hell to her friends, though, and I liked that about her.
It was a High School Musical moment: the three hottest girls in school, striding side by side down the middle of the sun-bathed hallway, Nell in the middle, everyone watching her, admiring her, talking about her. And then she stopped right in front of me, smiling at me, saying hi to me, and I was frozen, gaping, stunned.
Someone bumped me from behind, hard, knocking me out of my reverie. Malcolm stumbled past me, coughing. “My bad, bro. I didn’t see you there.” He nodded at Nell and the others. “Hey, whassup girls? Lookin’ fine today, I see. Lookin’ real fine, don’t you agree, Jason?” Malcolm liked to “play up his blackness,” as he put it, especially when he was trying to be funny, which was most of the time.
I glared at him, then turned my attention to Nell. “Hey, Nell. What’s up?” Lame. Lame. So lame.
She grinned at me. “Hi, Jason.”
Becca and Jill had kept walking, stopping at their lockers a few feet away. This spot, the humanities hallway on the first floor near the lunchroom and the adjacent outdoor courtyard, was the prime focal point of our high school’s social world. It was where everything happened. You asked girls out there, you challenged guys to fights there, you broke up there. If you were popular, it was where you hung out and got seen, where the leaders of the various cliques held court. So, of course, being one of the stars of the football team, I had to ask her out there. Nell was popular, but she was the kind of girl who didn’t have a clique. She was cool with everyone, popular because she was beautiful, smart, and the daughter of the second most influential man in our town, second only to Kyle’s dad, and she was Kyle’s best friend. Kyle, of course, was the god of the high school. He was the star quarterback, All-State at sixteen, the son of a senator, and so good-looking it was stupid. He had the perfect life. Best friends with the hottest girl in school, rich, good-looking, popular, athletic, awesome parents. He even had a badass car, a classic Camaro SS his older brother had rebuilt and then left behind when he ran off at seventeen. The only reason I didn’t hate Kyle was that he was my best friend and I’d known him since kindergarten, and I could tell everyone the story of when he peed his pants in third grade and I’d covered for him.
Everyone was watching me. They knew something was going down. Malcolm and Frankie had probably told everyone they knew, which was everyone, that I was asking Nell out, so the whole crowd of “cool kids” was standing in the hallway, not even pretending not to watch.