A Stitch in Time Pt. 03

"I think you're doing fine," Liz laughed. "Although I think it's 'waste not, want not."

"That, too, Sammy Houghtaling," I said.

By now everyone was looking at Sammy.

He swallowed hard.

"Um, Jeanne," he asked, "would you like to go to the dance with me?"

"I'll think about it," Jeanne threw her head up in the air.

"You'll what?" I stared at her.

"Okay, I'll go," Jeanne said. She turned to me. "What, you want everyone to think I'm easy?"

As everyone laughed, I remembered my manners.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Torianni," I said. "This is my friend Tanya, my sister Jeanne, my friend Rabbit, my friend Cammie, and Jeanne's date, Sammy."

"Tanya, it's nice to meet you," Liz shook hands. "Jeanne I remember from gym last year, Rabbit I know from the team, and who are you again?"

"You're the bitch that coaches the volleyball team, aren't you?" Cammie said with a grin.

"Very funny, Rowe," Liz said. "That's gonna cost you two laps after practice today. Sammy, it's a pleasure. You're a lucky guy. I've got to run. Trick, I have no idea what happened today, but I'm very happy that it worked out for you."

She gave me a hug and left, and then I introduced Rachel to all my friends as well. Finally, Jeanne and I headed out to walk home together. Tanya lived in the other direction, and Sammy kindly offered to drop her off on his way home.

"Thanks for waiting," I said to Jeanne when we reached the sidewalk.

"Thanks for giving Sammy the push," Jeanne answered.

"Oh, he'd have gotten there," I said.

"Yeah, maybe the day before the dance," Jeanne said. "And I'd have had to scramble around to find something to wear."

"So Cammie plays volleyball?" I asked after a short pause.

Jeanne stopped short, forcing me to turn around to look back at her.

"Are you serious?" she asked. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you have no memory of that horrible, godawful dance you had to do with Cammie at the sports banquet last year, when you were both Athletes of the Year? Where you could have fit, like, two people in between you while you were dancing?"

We started walking again, in silence.

"I think I've been trying to kinda blank out all the really asshole things I did over the last couple of years," I finally said. "Part of starting over, I guess."

"Well, starting over is good," Jeanne said. "If anybody needed to start over, it's you."

Bobby Bunt joined me on the bus on Tuesday morning, returning the world to its usual orbit. Dad had promised to work on the car that evening — actually, to help Jeanne and I work on the car that evening — but we'd be riding the bus for at least another day.

"So I notice you hangin' out with that Tawny Skurchinko chick," Bobby said.

"Shur-chenk-o," I corrected him coldly. "Tanya Szerchenko."

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "You athletes get all the pussy."

"We're just friends."

"Yeah, Trickster," he said with a knowing look. "Just friends."

I looked down at my book.

"Friends with benefits, though, right?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?" I looked back up at him.

"Hey, no offense, man," he grinned at me. "Those are some pretty nice benefits, if ya know what I mean."

Actually, I had no idea what he meant. The expression "friends with benefits" hadn't been in wide circulation when I was a ninth-grader, back in 2003, at least not in my crowd.

"What exactly are you talking about?" I asked him.

"You know, benefits," Bobby looked at me like I was from Mars. "You know, bennie meaning good, fit meaning fit. You know, a nice tight fit."

He waggled his eyebrows and I was still none the wiser.

"Jeez, man," he looked at the blank expression on my face. "You know. Squeak, squeak, squeak."

He began to crudely thrust the forefinger of his right hand in and out of his left fist through his curled left forefinger.

That's when I realized what he was talking about.

And that's when I took a swing at him.

I missed — the little bastard was faster than I thought — which is why I didn't get suspended. I still found myself sitting in Pete's office with Coach Torianni during my sixth period study hall, though.

"Geez, Trick, thank God you didn't hit him," Pete said, trying to be my buddy again. "You could have been suspended."

"So you just missed him?" Coach asked.

"He's a fast little son of a bitch," I said. "I hit the frame of the window on the bus."

Coach sat up.

"You didn't hurt anything, did you?" he asked. "We got another tryout on Thursday."

"No, it was my right hand," I said as I flexed it. "'We'll' be fine."

Coach examined the hand, flexing it even more than I had. If Coach had been a doctor, he'd have had his license suspended.

"So this was that Bunt kid?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"And he's fast?" Coach asked.

"Faster than me," I shrugged. "Why?"

"He was the last kid I cut last year," he answered. "If he's fast, he could end up battin' leadoff this year. You need to make sure you get along with all your teammates, Trick. You're gonna need all the runs you can get this year."

I ended up giving Bobby a kind of half-hearted "sorry." My guess was that he had been forewarned by the coach, because he returned a full and complete apology for disrespecting any friend of mine, promising that he'd never do it again, ever.

By Wednesday, word had gotten around that I'd been a knockdown drag-out fight with Bobby Bunt because of something he'd said to my girlfriend. Tanya, of course, asked me about it at lunch.

"No, I just, you know, swung at him," I said. "That was it." "Over something he said about your girlfriend?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, sort of."

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend," she said calmly, taking a sip from her soda as she looked up at me through those eyelashes.

I stared back down at her.

"I, uh, don't," I said. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"So who were you defending?" she asked.

"Uh, that was, uh, you," I squeaked.

"Me?" she asked, cocking her head slightly. "Did he say something bad about me?"

"Could we just talk about something else?" I asked.

"No," she sat back and laughed, tossing one of her french fries at me. "We can talk about this. I can't believe you won't tell me. Was it worse than Jew girl?"

"No," I swallowed.

"Then what was it?" she asked me.

Oh, Christ. This might have been the gentlest, slowest Inquisition in the world, but it was an Inquisition nonetheless. I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said. "He asked if you were my girlfriend. I told him no, we were just friends. He asked if we were friends with benefits."

Tanya stopped in mid-bite of her burger, as if she'd clearly expected the story to go on a lot longer.

"And?" she managed to say around a mouthful of hamburger and bun.

"And I swung at him?" I suggested.

She finished eating and took another sip of soda before resuming the conversation.

"Because?"

"Because he was a jerk."

"Because you're not my friend?"

"I am your friend," I said confidently.

"And you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

This was one of those Matrix moments, where everything around you slows down, to the point that you can just duck out of the way of the bullets when they start flying at you. Yeah, I wish.

Everyone else in the cafeteria was frozen in place. I could feel the cold soda on my tongue from the sip I was in the middle of taking. I could identify every scent in the air of the cafeteria, from greasy hamburgers and tuna melt to mashed potatoes and gravy. I could hear the dime — no the quarter — that somebody had just dropped on the floor. I could feel the plastic straw collapsed between my clamped teeth, and I looked down it at Tanya Szerchenko, this beautiful, blonde girl I'd met just three weeks ago, who perhaps, maybe, possibly, had just asked me if I wanted to fuck her. On the one hand, she had said it so obliquely, and so matter-of-factly, that I thought, no, that couldn't be it. And on the other hand, there was Bobby, who'd pretty clearly implied — or I'd at least inferred — that that was the meaning of "friends with benefits." And Tanya Szerchenko had said — I was desperately trying to remember exactly what she'd said — "and you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

Was yes the right answer? Did that mean yes, I do, or yes, I don't. Wait, maybe it should be no. No, I do. Or was that no, I don't. Damn it. Why was this so complicated?

I could feel the soda about to slide down the wrong way. Coughing brought me right back to regular time. I was out of the Matrix.

Tanya had a grin on her face.

"Geez, Trick, you'd think I just asked you to kill somebody," she whispered.

"Patrick," I said.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"My mom called me Patrick," I told her. "Or sometimes Pat."

She smiled as if I'd just presented her with a gift.

"Okay, Patrick. Why the hesitation?"

"Well, I was getting these vibes that said, you know, that you didn't want to be my girlfriend," I started, "so..."

"I don't," she sighed. "It's, um, complicated."

"Exactly!" I gestured toward her, as if she'd just answered her own question.

She smiled at me and took a strand of her hair between her fingers, rolling it around as she tried to find the explanation.

"When we moved here in September," she finally began, "I kind of promised my mom..."

"That you wouldn't date me?" I preempted her. Was I some sort of world-renowned asshole?

"Not you," she said. "Guys like you."

"Jocks?" I asked. "Tall guys?"

"Gentiles," she said softly.

"Non-Jews," she added, seeing my puzzled look.

"Wait a minute," I held up my hand.

"I know, I know," she said. "You just went through three weeks of hell because I was Jewish, and now I'm not dating you because you're not. Look, last year, I went to a nice, mostly Jewish high school in a nice, mostly Jewish suburb. And I dated nice Jewish boys."

"Not nice, mostly Jewish boys?" I tried for the laugh.

"No such thing," she shook her head seriously. "You either are, or you aren't. Anyway, my mom is really concerned about me marrying outside of the religion, because she wants to be a nice Jewish grandmother for some nice Jewish babies, so I kind of promised her that I'd only date an M.O.T."

"A mot?" I asked.

"Member of the tribe," she explained. "A Jew."

"Okay."

"So we can't date," she concluded, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my boyfriend."

"It's okay," I patted her on the arm.

"But what you did was the most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me," she said fiercely. "And I'm gonna be proud to bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my friend, and we're just gonna hang out together sometimes."

I smiled.

She smiled back.

"And if you just happen to get a few benefits along the way," she added, nonchalantly returning to her meal, "who's the wiser?"

I couldn't help but laugh.

"All right, Tanya Szerchenko," I said. "We're friends, with benefits."

"Really good benefits, too," she said.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"I've got a really good benefits package to show you," she said, her voice dropping down an octave. "Real soon."

I swallowed hard and nodded.

"I wish it could be this weekend, in fact," she said. "But we're going to a wedding. We have to leave Friday at noon to get there before the Sabbath begins, and the wedding's on Sunday. We won't be back until late."

"You're gonna miss the Super Bowl," I pointed out.

"I'll try to make do," she smiled. "You're gonna miss your benefits. Are you gonna try to make do?"

I choked one more time on the last gulp of soda I'd been sipping, and lunch ended with us smiling at each other.

I sat with Cammie again in Astronomy lab that afternoon, because Aaron was still out, with mononucleosis if the rumor was true. We worked together in silence until about halfway through the period.

"Uh, thanks for coming on Monday, Cammie," I said quietly.

She looked over at me through her lab goggles.

"You're still an asshole," she said.

"True," I agreed.

"But Rabbit says you're a good guy," she said after a long pause.

"He's a good guy, too," I nodded.

"Yeah," she said wistfully. "What did you get for the calculation in number three?"

After that it was purely a scientific conversation, just between us scientists.

We were back to our usual routine at dinner time as well, with Tiff gushing about how big her boobs were getting, with Jeanne and Jill rolling their eyes, and with Dave and me hanging on every word. Dad and Jeanne and I then installed the new alternator that Dad had picked up on the way home from work. I wasn't sure that this was exactly what the Mormons had in mind with all those radio commercials about the importance of "family," but it was nice to be back to normal in the Sterling house.

On Thursday, I had a tryout for the Mariners, and on Friday, another one for the Cardinals. That was the one that they'd cancelled the week before. Coach claimed that they were eager to make it up. Fuck them. I wasn't about to play for the Cardinals. Assholes.

On Thursday night, I finished my paper for Mr. Anson. I thought it was pretty good; I'd found some books over at the library, after Lynn and I had enjoyed our lunch together, that offered some surprising insight into Jacksonian democracy. So I was pretty confident when I turned it in on Friday morning.

And then Friday night brought a new treat. Jeanne knocked on my door about seven o'clock.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked.

"Feeling sorry for myself," I grinned. "Tanya's gone all weekend."

"I like her," Jeanne said. "But isn't she the one who isn't your girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh?"

"In your life?" Jeanne shook her head. "Not even close. You want to go to the game?"

"Sure," I said. "What game?"

"Volleyball," she said. "Last home game of the year. 'Til the playoffs start, anyway."

I grabbed my coat and followed Jeanne out to the car. The gym was fairly crowded, and Jeanne scanned the bleachers until she picked out Rabbit and Sammy and a couple other kids who played in the band. We were about to climb up to join them when she grabbed my arm.

"Oh, shit," she said. "Trick, I'm so sorry. I forgot all about this being senior night."

"And?" I asked.

"Cammie's dad's looking over at you like he wants to kill you," she hissed. "Come on, let's keep going."

We made our way up to our seats and I looked around. Jill was sitting in the stands on the other side, the only girl in a group of about four or five guys. They were all fairly big, fairly stupid-looking guys, more grown-up versions of the yahoos who'd been picking on me two months ago, when I was still a ninth grader. She was hanging all over one of them. He wasn't the biggest, nor the stupidest-looking, but he wasn't the kind of guy I really wanted to see my sister with. At some point, I was really going to have to try to talk to Jill.

And of course I easily identified Mr. Rowe. He was the guy who looked like he wanted to kill me. Fortunately for Cammie, he put his anger aside while they introduced the seniors on the team. Liz presented all three girls with bouquets of flowers and then posed for photographs with them and their parents.

After that, I was entranced with the game. Girls' volleyball is a fast-paced sport, and Cammie was particularly good on defense. She was constantly diving to the floor, "digging" the ball out and putting it back into play. She was an excellent setter, too. Since they only got three hits per side, it was usually one dig, one set, and one spike. Five times out of ten, Cammie was the one doing the digging as she roamed the back line. The other five times, she was the setter. It turned out to be an easy win for Marshall. According to Jeanne, that meant that we'd clinched the second seed in the upcoming league playoffs.

"So you want to go get a burger?" Jeanne asked. None of the others in our little group had made any move to leave with the rest of the crowd filing out.

"Sure," I said.

"Good," she smiled. "We usually just wait here for Cammie."

I spent the next half hour listening to Sammy Houghtaling and Margie Jackson arguing about the war in Iraq. It was fascinating to be a part of an intellectual discussion, even if my part consisted of looking like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Finally, Cammie emerged from the hallway, her hair still wet from the shower. She had a somber look on her face as she mounted the steps, not at all what I would have expected from a playoff-bound athlete.

"Mom and Dad want to take me out," she said slowly. "And you guys, too, except, um,..."

"I'll just head home," I said as I stood up. "Can you drop Jeanne off?"

Cammie just nodded, unwilling to look at me.

"Hey," I said. "I don't blame 'em. Like you said on Wednesday, I'm still an asshole. See you guys."

I took the car and drove home, feeling even sorrier for myself than I had before I came to the game. The rest of the weekend was a sort of blur. Church on Sunday morning, Super Bowl pre-game on Sunday afternoon with Dad and Dave, and the Super Bowl itself on Sunday night with Dad, Dave, and, oddly enough, Jill. We didn't get to talk about her personal life, but we did talk some football.

And, as usual, I fell asleep before the end of the game.

Chapter 10

Looking back, it probably should have occurred to me some time during, say, the entire month of January, to wonder how Jill got to school. She certainly didn't ride the bus, and I'd never seen her leave the house before Jeanne and I did, even on the days we were driving. I knew she went to school, of course; I'd seen her there. She didn't have lunch at the same time Jeanne and I did — sophomores shared a fifth period lunch with freshmen, while juniors and seniors had sixth period lunch — but I'd seen her in the halls now and then. Up until today, though, it had never occurred to me to wonder how she got there.

My newfound curiosity may have been prompted by my actually having spent a good bit of time with her the previous evening watching the Super Bowl. She had asked a lot of questions, and when Dave's answers proved as technical and convoluted as Dad's, she plonked herself down next to me on the couch. Until I'd fallen asleep, confident that there was no way the Bears could possibly come back, we'd actually been connecting on some superficial level.

Or it may have been simply that, for the first time in a month, I was actually looking forward to a week of school, and had enough time while I was driving there — Jeanne and I had agreed to take turns — to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

"So, um, how does Jill get to school?" I asked nonchalantly.

Jeanne looked over at me like she was about to question my sanity, yet again.

"Humor me," I said.

"Her asshole boyfriend picks her up, like, five minutes before school starts. I don't think she's made it to her homeroom on time yet, but Mr. Adams has a hard-on for her, so she never gets called on it."

"And her current asshole boyfriend is?" I asked.

"Andy," she said, once again with the look.

"Andy...?" I tried to prompt her.

"Andy Lebo? The quarterback? Of the football team? You really have just lost it, haven't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I kinda have."

She shook her head but she kept talking.

"She's been dating Andy since like last spring, when it became clear that he was going to be the starter."

"Wait a minute," I said. "That's not the guy she was with last week at the game. Andy Lebo's a string bean."

"Yeah, in tenth grade, maybe," Jeanne laughed. "So were you. Rumor is his Dad gets him steroids."

"What about all those other guys that picked Jill up over Christmas?"

"The college guys?" Jeanne asked. "Mostly old boyfriends, from last year, when they were seniors."