Dairy Queen (16 page)

She was grinning the biggest grin I've ever seen. "Then I'm doing cheerleading."

"What!" Amber and I both gasped.

"Why not? If you've got the guts for football, I can at least do that. Volleyball sucks! I'll get to wear a little uniform, do all those dance steps—I used to do gymnastics, you know."

"But you—come on, Kari—" I couldn't even speak.

"Besides, you need someone to cheer you on."

I couldn't believe it. I mean, football is one thing. But cheerleading? I'd never have the guts to do that. Although Kari could really yell during basketball, and she liked people.

She grinned at me again. "Don't back out on me now."

"No way." I turned to Amber. "So what do you think? You in?"

Amber took a swig of beer. "I think it's stupid and pathetic."

We both laughed for a second until we realized she was serious.

"You're just playing football so you can be around all those guys."

"No, I'm not—" I said.

"It's disgusting. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard of." She drained her beer. "You seriously need to reexamine your priorities." And she stomped off, just like that.

Well. Kari and I sat there for a few minutes, feeling pretty squashed.

"What's up with her?" Kari asked.

I had no idea. "I hope she doesn't tell anyone."

"Who'd she tell? We're the only people she talks to." Kari had a point.

"Do you think it's disgusting?" I had to ask.

"I think it's totally cool, and I think you're going to kick their asses, and I think you're going to be twice as good as your brothers."

"No way," I said. But I didn't say it too loudly. I wanted those words to, you know, stay in the air a bit longer. Then Kyle came by, and Kari just kept going on and on about football and how Red Bend was missing a couple key players that the team could not live without, until eventually I had to give her a nudge but unfortunately I nudged her just as she was drinking so she ended up with beer down her shirt, which she didn't seem to mind but I felt bad. Anyway, it was about time for me to leave.

When I got to Mom's Caravan, there was Amber sitting on the hood, which is hard to do because it slopes so much. She looked like she'd been there awhile.

"Hey," I said. "You okay?"

She nodded, studying her beer cup.

"You sure?" I asked finally, just for something to say.

"You really like him, don't you?" she asked, more to the cup than to me.

I shrugged. "You're right. He'd never go out with me."

"Do you like him?" she asked again.

I nodded. It was too much to say out loud.

"Do you, you know, fool around with him?"

I shook my head. Even thinking about that made me hurt.

Amber studied her beer. "You don't get it, do you?"

"I told you, it would never happen—"

"You're with me."

"I'm—what?"

"You're with me. You're not with him. It's the two of us. Don't you see that?"

All of a sudden I could barely stand. And it wasn't the beer, I can assure you.

"Say something," she said.

I swallowed hard. "I don't know what to—I didn't know. I didn't know that."

"How could you not know?" Amber asked miserably.

"How ... how long have you known?"

"Years. I've known for years."

Remember when I said that I only saw Amber cry one time, when Hawley beat us in basketball? Well, I lied. Because I could see tears on her face now, in the moonlight.

"I'm sorry." That's all I could think of to say. It was so totally lame.

Amber slid off the Caravan and walked away. She didn't look back, and I didn't follow her.

So. That gave me a little something to think about driving home. Amber was ... one of those people. Jeez. I don't say "those people" like it's a bad thing. But those words—
lesbian, homosexual, gay
—they're like medical words. Like
cancer.
I didn't want to think of Amber having cancer. I know, you die from cancer and you don't die from being gay, not unless you have AIDS, which I've never heard of anyone in Wisconsin having. I know I sound like a stupid hick moron, but I bet it would be a shock to you too, if you found out your best friend was in love with you and thought of the two of you as some sort of couple without you even having a single clue. Which I guess really does make me a moron.

But really, when you think about it, it explained a lot. Like why Amber never had a boyfriend. Or why she was so happy to drive me around and buy my movie tickets. And drink beer with me in her mom's car. And skip the prom so we could get drunk together and sleep over. And give me back rubs whenever I needed them ... The more I thought about it, the more weirded out I got until I wanted to stop somewhere and wash my hands or something. But as mad as I was at myself for never seeing it, never seeing how she always made jokes about people being gay because of course she was gay herself, I was just as mad that she'd never told me. Because if nothing else, I'd have told her that even though it didn't look like it, I really like guys. Which is why I guess she never told me, because she's not dumb.

Lying in bed that night, I had to laugh out loud. Here I was stupid in love with a boy who'd never even look twice in my direction while my best friend was stupid in love with me. If I didn't laugh, I would have started crying.

There's another thing too, which is probably none of my business and I probably sound really stupid even saying it, but it's something I've been trying to figure out ever since Mom had to explain what those words meant and why there were some people who acted that way and all. But you know how on TV shows the guys who are really into guys go into fashion or hairdressing or dancing or something like that? It seems to me that if you're a guy who really likes guys, you should do something like, well, like football. Because football is as much about guys as anything I could think of. Not counting me, anyway. And the opposite too, that whole thing about tough women being into guy things? Sometimes Amber and I get called names when we play basketball, which I guess is right on the money for one of us at least. But don't you think girls who really liked girls would go for fashion and hairdressing instead? Not basketball. Because I look at the cute girls in our school, the ones with makeup and pink clothes and blow dryers, and I can really see why guys like that. Not that I want to go out with those girls or anything, but I get it. Get it enough to see how I don't measure up. Amber's been my best friend for six years, and I'm sorry but I've never once thought she was hot. Which I guess is part of our whole miscommunication thing.

So anyway, I just wanted to give that huge long speech to explain the look I give people when they say mean stuff about me being on the team. I don't say anything back, of course. But I think to myself that if I was a lesbian I wouldn't be playing football. I'd be working checkout at the Super Saver.

I woke up Sunday morning totally fried. I think my poor little brain had blown a couple fuses trying to figure out me and Amber, not to mention me and Brian, and me and Curtis, and me and Dad. And me and Mom ... looking back, I'm surprised smoke wasn't coming out of my ears or something from all that thinking.

What was I going to do about Amber? I didn't even want to think about her. It was too much. I didn't want to think about Brian either, but even though I hated it I couldn't get him off my mind. It hurt to think about him. It physically hurt. You know those eight million songs they play on the radio about how great it is to be in love and how it feels like walking on clouds or something? Let me tell you: those songs are wrong.

And it hurt too—especially because Amber pointed it out—that now I was one of those girls who hang around football players like flies on flypaper. Like they did around Win, calling even though he wasn't interested much and even on dates he'd only talk about football, but the girls hung on every word he said, like he was some sort of genius. Even the smart girls, the girls who got good grades and were going to college. I hate it whenever anyone makes a crack about stupid girls, and I gave Justin Hunsberger a black eye, a really good one, in fourth grade when he called me that once. But when I saw those girls hanging all over Win, I really had to wonder. Especially because Win's skin was sort of bad and he wasn't so handsome anyway, not like Bill, who always had girlfriends and who Dad once caught in the barn with a girl doing what I think you can imagine.

So thinking about all this stuff was the extent of my thrilling weekend, and Monday Brian came back. Which should have made me really happy, but I felt so jangled up, what with all those blown brain fuses, that seeing him, having him so close, made it that much worse.

"Hey there," he said, starting right away on the weights.

"Hey," I said, shoveling cow poop. Then every single possible other thing I could have said just went right out my mind, like I was a TV that someone turned off.

"How was your weekend?" he asked.

"Great." And then, because this was the biggest lie ever told in the history of the world, and because I could never tell Brian one bit of the truth, I had to laugh.

"Yours too, huh?" he asked, grinning.

And you know? That made me feel a million times better, and the hurt of seeing him, and the brain fuse pain, all of that sort of faded away for a while.

"What, did your house burn down or something?" I asked.

"Nah." He shrugged. "It's nothing. Me and my girlfriend broke up is all."

"Oh." That was interesting.
Really
interesting. "I'm sorry," I managed to get out finally.

"It's no big deal."

I couldn't help wondering if maybe it had something to do with me, like our water fight and all. But then I realized that I was totally stupid and there's no way it could
ever
be about me, not in a million years, not if I was the only girl on the entire planet. Then after a long time I thought that maybe I should say something Oprah-like, ask him if he wanted to talk about it. But by that point I'd wasted so much time that I couldn't. It would just sound stupid. And it hit me that this was just like The Fight during Christmas, where there was this opportunity when someone could have said something but didn't and now it was too late forever.

So I finished with the poop and we fed the calves and cleaned up the milking equipment and painted the barn, waiting for Dad and Curtis to take off. Finally they did and we headed out to the heifer field. We had a good workout and it felt great to pound on my body, forget all those brain issues for a while. Although I was really careful not to get too close to Brian, because whenever I did I started hurting again, and if nothing else it's hard to play football when all you can think about is how much you hurt. But sometimes we'd bump into each other by accident and, well, it was hard for me to figure out which was stronger—the pain or, for that one second our shoulders touched, how good I felt.

It just got worse from there. For example, Tuesday morning Brian was doing sit-ups on this cruddy old blanket he uses, and I was feeding the calves and didn't have anything else to do, so without even thinking about it I came over and locked my ankles with his and started doing sit-ups with him. Which if you've ever done a sport you know that you do every day of practice. Anyway, it got to be a contest between us and even though we both knew Brian would win, I was really working at it and so was he, until my gut hurt so bad and I was panting and blowing, trying to keep up, and he was panting and blowing, trying to keep ahead of me, and right then Dad stomped up. We hadn't even heard him come in, I guess because we were making so much noise.

"What the hell is going on!" he snarled, looking as mad as I'd ever seen him.

Brian and I looked at each other and in one second figured out what Dad must have been thinking as he heard us puffing away, and—you know how if you turn two magnets backwards you can't stick them together again? That's how Brian and I reacted. We leapt right up off the floor.

"Sit-ups," Brian managed to get out. "Sir."

And frankly, we were. I mean, it's really hard for two people to fool around if only their ankles are touching. People I know, anyway.

"Sit-ups!" Dad glared at us.

"You know." I gulped. "Training."

Dad snorted. He eyed Brian. "You up to speed on milking yet?"

Oh. I'd forgotten all about it—and I bet you did too—but remember back when Mom asked me to drive Curtis to Madison for the Little League awards banquet? Well, if you recall I had not been the happiest person about it. But just because I stomped out and didn't come back and had to eat mailbox tomatoes, that didn't stop them for one second from assuming that I would still do it and Brian and Dad would milk Thursday night and Friday morning.

"Pretty much," I lied.

"You make sure he knows what he's doing," Dad said, looking us both over. The fact that the calves were kicking the empty milk buckets everywhere didn't help the situation.

So he hung around watching us clean up, which would have been bad enough in any situation, but that whole business of him thinking that we'd been fooling around made it ten times worse. Also, Brian really didn't know much about cleaning up after milking because of course he spent most of the cleanup time on his training. So I had to explain everything to him with Dad watching us and me having trouble because Brian was so close I could smell his shampoo and his mom's detergent in his clothes, and it wasn't that they smelled bad at all, but they just got in the way of my breathing for a while.

That afternoon when we were running, I kept my shirt on.

"Jeez," Brian said, "I thought your dad was just about going to kill me."

"Kill both of us."

We could laugh about it, now that it was over and everything.

I grinned. "He caught Bill in the barn once."

"No way! Who with?"

"Christine Petrosky."

"Who's she?"

"She was a senior. It was Bill's freshman year, and he was—"

"Your brother was messing around with a senior?" Brian was impressed.