Kid Owner (6 page)

When I got home that night, my mom listened as I excitedly told her about football practice and how well I did. I could tell something was on her mind, though, and when I finally finished, beaming at her, she said, “That's great, honey. Can I talk to you about something?”

“What?” I set my hamburger down without taking a bite. “Is something wrong?” The two of us sat at the kitchen table with Teresa at work quietly cleaning up.

“Don't worry, it's not that big a deal.” She tried to play it off, but that made me worry even more because I could tell it was a big deal. “It's just that I'm going to be telling the media that you're not available for comment.”

I stared at her, confused. “Wait, what media?”

“Well, after the article in the paper this morning, the phone's been ringing off the hook.” She took a small bite of a pickle.
“And didn't you notice the local news van parked down the street? I even heard from your principal, saying the school had gotten calls about you. So I talked to a PR firm and they said the best way to handle these things is to tell the reporters no interviews, let things settle down, and then have a press conference to defuse everything.”

“Press conference? What do you mean ‘defuse'?”

“That way they'll leave you alone. We can work through the team's PR department to set it up. Mr. Dietrich wants you to go out there anyway to meet everyone, but not for a bit.” She nodded and took a big sour crunching bite. “There's no hurry. The lawyers need another week to make the whole thing official anyway.”

I shrugged. “Okay, whatever you say.” I wasn't going to argue with my mom about it. As long as she wasn't trying to sink the whole kid owner thing, I didn't care too much about the media. Everybody in my world already knew about it.

We had a pretty regular night after that. After I finished my homework, my mom let me play Xbox for an hour before it was time to read and get some sleep. As I lay in bed, thoughts swirled in my head. It was weird—I was finally a real football player, hitting and making plays on the field. Part of me still wished my father could have seen me, could have known that I was that kind of a kid. It seemed fitting that he should have left the Dallas Cowboys to a kid who was a real football player. That was me now.

I fell asleep to visions of me playing on the Cowboys' field with Jackson and Izzy watching me from the sideline.

The next day, I was walking even more proud than the day before. I went to my classes in the morning, then strutted into the lunchroom and marched right past the popular table, pretending to ignore them completely.

The problem was that I didn't ignore them. I heard when Bryan Markham belched and told the rest of the table, “Minna Zinna thinks he's tough now. He's so tough he's got a
girl
at his table.”

The rest of them chuckled and when I glanced over my shoulder, they were waiting. Markham pointed right at me. Jason Simpkin howled with delight, and the rest of them burst into an uproar of laughter. My ears burned as I approached my table. Izzy and Jackson were both already there.

“What's so funny over there?” Jackson was as innocent as he was ignorant in his question.

I was so mad, I didn't even think about my answer. “They're just a bunch of little giggling girls.”

“Hey.” Izzy set down her sandwich. “I'm a girl.”

I looked at her and saw she was only kidding, but the laughter from the other table was hot in my ears and what Markham said did make sense to me. I mean, the popular boys didn't let the girls sit with them. They were too cool for that. But here I was, desperate for any kind of friend. This all hit me in a millisecond, and it also hit me that everything was getting ready to change for me and I didn't feel as grateful as I should have that Izzy was my friend.

So, my mouth ran away from my brain and spit out some words on its own. “Yeah, I know you're a girl, Izzy. Maybe you should find a girls' table to sit at. This table is for
football
players.”

Jackson's mouth dropped open in shock. Izzy's mouth became a thin flat line.

“You, Ryan Zinna, are a jerk.” With a curt nod, she packed her lunch back into her bag, got up, and left.

“Hey, little buddy.” Jackson frowned. “What'd you do that for? She's really nice.”

“We're
football players
, Jackson.” I glared at him, strong and confident. “Don't you think we should act like some?”

Jackson's face grew dark and he stared right back, unafraid of me. “I think we should act like football players on the football field, Ryan. Otherwise I think we shouldn't act like total jerks.”

Jackson and I stared each other down. I felt like I had to show him that I wasn't afraid, and I had no idea which one of us would blink first. But as we gave each other the evil eye, my bigger concern became losing the only real friend I had left.

I cast my eyes down at my hands and folded them on the table. “Sorry, Jackson. I'm going goofy. With everything that's happened, it's like I don't even know who I am. Does that make sense?”

I looked up and Jackson was back to himself in a heartbeat. He shrugged and sipped at his milk. “That's okay, but maybe you should say something to Izzy?”

I looked over at where Izzy had sat down next to Mya at the table of brainiacs, deeply regretting my words to her. “Yeah, I'll try. Let her cool off first, though.”

As impressive as Jackson was on the football field, he was an even better friend. He didn't hold a grudge and he didn't miss a beat. We were soon goofing around, eating and talking about how funny it would be if we walked over to the popular table, stuck our fingers down our throats, and threw up.

“We could, like, shower them with puke!” Jackson's eyes became nothing but slits, and his teeth were bare and white as he howled with laughter.

I couldn't help but think I'd really like to do that to Markham.

On the football field that afternoon, I was like a pinball, smacking people in every direction. I wasn't necessarily knocking them down like Jackson did, but I was stinging them so that pretty quickly I became an annoyance a lot of my other teammates were happy to avoid. Only Markham really delighted in colliding with me, and he got the best of me. When you're the size of Markham or Jackson, you win almost every one of those football battles against a smaller guy. But I shy away. I walked off the practice field that day with a golf-ball-size welt on my forearm, three bloody knuckles, a sore back, and an aching head.

“Nice effort out there, Zinna.” Coach Hubbard slapped my shoulder pads as we walked toward the locker room. “I wish you weren't such a peanut or you could play strong safety or something.”

I glared at my coach, but he never even saw me. He marched on, handing out compliments to my teammates like they were Halloween candy. All the joy I'd had running around during practice smashing into people suddenly melted away. I clenched my teeth and my hands and felt a steady burn in my head and chest.
A peanut?

Just like that—snap—I felt like a loser. Funny how an offhand remark by a grown-up can do that to a kid, but I think it
happens more than people know. I mean, he didn't even say it to be mean, but there it was, a crater in my soul.

I changed my clothes in silence, ignoring Jackson's cheery remarks about our opening game against Hutchinson Middle, an opponent everyone figured we could beat, and slammed my locker shut before heading for the exit.

“Hey, wait up.” Jackson fumbled with his book bag. “We're gonna go swimming at your house, right?”

“That's the plan,” I said.

Jackson grinned at me and when he did, his bag tipped. Books and papers slipped to the floor in a mess.

I had to catch myself from calling him a bumbling bear, control my short fuse, and not insult him the way people seemed to feel they could insult me.

I'd acted like a jerk once already to Izzy and I wasn't going to do it again. Instead, I waited silently, holding the locker room door for Jackson, which had the negative effect of clearing the way for Simpkin and Markham, who strutted past.

“Hey, Zinna, at least you're good for something,” Markham said. Simpkin smirked next to him as they bumped me on their way out the door.

“You're the jerks,” I said beneath my breath.

Markham spun around, his faced twisted up hatefully. “What'd you say?”

“I said, ‘I'm glad this works.'” I stared right back at him, the new me, unafraid. Sort of. “Me. Holding the door. I'm glad it works for you.”

Markham gave Simpkin a puzzled look before he turned and kept going. Jackson caught up, out of breath. “Thanks.”

“Might as well be good for something, right?” I grumbled.

“Hey, you're running around like a maniac out there. You're doing good.” Jackson slapped my back, too hard.

“You see how many reps I got at quarterback?” I asked. “Three. One during team period and two during our seven-on-seven drill.”

“That's three times more than one, right?” Jackson forced a smile and gave me a hearty nod.

“You see how many times we had to run that bootleg pass?” I asked. “I could've done that right the very first time. Simpkin can't read on the run. You gotta key on the free safety. If he's over the top, you throw to the tight end on the crossing pattern. If he jumps the crossing pattern, you throw deep. It's not that tough. Quarterback is about brains, not brawn.”

I looked around to make sure no one could hear me. “I swear, Coach Hubbard can be so thick sometimes.”

“I wondered why we kept running that play,” Jackson said.

“Because Simpkin can't get it right, and I'm a half . . .”

“Half what?” Jackson wrinkled his brow.

“Nothing.” I wasn't going to call myself a half-pint shrimp like some kids did. Instead, I looked at my feet and scuffed them as we went out through the back entrance of the school to where my mom would be picking us up.

When I looked up, I saw Izzy's shiny golden ponytail. She'd come out of the girls' locker room and was still dressed in her soccer uniform with grass stains on her shorts and the backs of her long, pale legs. I didn't even warn Jackson, and I didn't care who else saw me, I just bolted right for her, grabbed her arm as gently as I could, and darted directly in front of her with a half
spin sort of dance move that left us face-to-face.

“Hey, Izzy. I'm sorry.” I spoke the way a woodpecker attacks a tree. “Like, really, really sorry. I know you said I'm a jerk, but I'm not. I
acted
like a jerk, but I'm
not
a jerk. Markham and Simpkin and all of them were making fun of us for sitting with a girl and then I called them girls because I was so mad and . . . stupid. Please. Sit with us at lunch tomorrow, Izzy. Let me have another chance.”

She looked down at me in total surprise—more surprise than when I'd insulted her out of nowhere—but then she recovered and her face turned dark.

“Please.” I spoke in a sad and urgent whisper and closed my eyes, waiting and hoping.

“You're really sorry?” she asked.

I opened my eyes, wanting to read her face. Her voice didn't sound too forgiving. “Yes. I am.”

“What would you do for me?” Her blue eyes were cold and hard and squinty.

“Uh, anything?” My mind whirred. “I guess.”

“Read a book?”

“A . . . sure. That's easy,” I said, relieved and confused at the same time.

She fished into her book bag and pulled out the book I'd seen her reading before English class. “I finished this in the locker room before practice. Here. Read it, then we'll talk.”

I took the baby-blue book from her and she marched right on by. I stood and stared. “Talk in lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure.” She hollered without turning around. “Can you read that fast?”

“Sure!” I shouted, grinning at Jackson, who caught up to me just as Izzy disappeared into the passenger seat of her mom's dark-blue Range Rover.

“Dude, she's kinda pretty.” Jackson stared at the Range Rover as it pulled away.

“Better than that,” I said. “I think she's really nice.”

“That's what
I
said,” Jackson pointed out.

“Great minds think alike.” I studied the cover of the book, which was called
Wonder
, and saw that the childlike drawing of the face on the cover had just one eye and it was out of place. “Weird.”

“Now I'm weird?” Jackson growled.

“No, not you.” I stuffed the book in my own bag. “If anyone's weird, it's me. Come on. There's my mom.”

Jackson was seriously disappointed with me when we got to my house. He splashed and dove and flopped around the pool, hooting joyfully and making all kinds of noise. The neighbors probably thought we were having a party. But nothing could get me out of my chair in the shade of the cabana. I sat glued to that book, ate dinner with Jackson and my mom, and jumped right back into it, barely saying good-bye to Jackson when his own mom came later to get him. It's true when I say that I didn't read the whole thing that night just because of Izzy. I could have easily faked it, right?

But this book
got
me.

I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about it either. It's the story of a kid who is seriously deformed. People see this kid and literally
run or scream or both. He's just like me or you, but he's trapped inside this really bad face. Fortunately, he's got these awesome people around him who don't
care
what he looks like, and by the end of the book, everyone
loves
this kid. Not because he got some life-altering surgery, but just because people started seeing him for
him. Who
he was, instead of what he
looked
like.

It's pretty extreme, and the reason I didn't know what to think was because I wasn't so sure who
I
was supposed to be in that story. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we've all got something, some disfiguration—inside or out—that sets us apart from others. I mean, who's “normal”? Anyone? Is never knowing who your dad was “normal”? Don't think so, even though a lot of kids
don't
know their fathers. And, trust me, even suddenly inheriting the Dallas Cowboys doesn't make up for that hot mess.

Izzy wasn't trying to say we were necessarily freaks, me and Jackson, but that we were different. I think she was saying that it was okay to have a friend who was different and to sit at their lunch table instead of the popular kids'. Well, that's what I thought about when I closed that book and sat propped up on my pillows, all alone, the lights now off, and me staring out the window at some tattered ghosts of clouds as they drifted past half a moon peeking down from the trees.

It was hard to get to sleep . . . again. This was becoming a habit. But tonight, my heart thumped steadily up against my ribs, and I kept thinking about the lunchroom tomorrow, and the things I planned on saying to Izzy about the book.