Carter Finally Gets It (5 page)

As I open the front door I see her sitting on the couch with a drill-teamer named Kathy. The whole room’s looking at me. I see my boys on the stairs and walk toward them, but then I bust a left and head toward Abby instead. She jumps up when she sees me turn. Kathy must not have been saying anything important.

EJ shoots me a look like, “That’s cold, dude.”

Abby gives me a hug and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” I lie.

“That was your bike, huh?” she asks, all close to my face.

“It was my Redline five. . . . Yeah, it was my bike, but it was gettin’ old,” I say as the tears start to well up. No, no, no crying! There’s kissing to be done.

“Oh, Carter, I’m sorry,” she says as she hugs me again.

“I’ve got to go, Abby,” I say.

“Okay, I’ll walk you out,” she says.

I hadn’t planned it, but I think I’m being pretty smooth here. I take her hand, and we walk to the door. I see that Andre and my boys notice, so I give them a nod (pimp). Amber Lee is also glaring in our direction, which is weird, but so is the gallon of sweat that’s dripping from my palm. I need soap and hot water, STAT!

We head toward a big tree off to the side of the yard, out of the high beams of any approaching parents’ headlights. The last thing I need is EJ’s mom seeing me make out with a girl. Dirt gets out faster from her telephone than the CNN news desk.

Both Abby and I know what we’re at this tree to do. There’s no doubt; I have a green light. But courage is slow to boil on my fourteen-year-old stove top, and I pester on with the small talk.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I ask, without an ounce of interest in the answer.

“I have a step class in the morning,” she replies.

“Oh yeah, my sister will probably be there, but then I’m not sure if she will or not, she didn’t tell me for sure. So she may be there or she may not. She and my mom shop a lot on Saturdays. . . .” I blather on and on. What the hell? Enough with the yapping and get to the lip smacking!

“Yeah, I hope she’s there, because she’s really good,” Abby says. “The class is better, I mean, when she’s there. Lynn, like, makes the class better or something. More . . . Oh God, Carter, I’m rambling.”

“Yeah, so am I, I don’t know why. I’m nervous, I think. I try to just play defense, but I think you have to play offense some of the time, if you want to get anywhere, ya know?” I ask. Of course she doesn’t know! I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about; how could she possibly be keeping up?

“Sure, I’m nervous too. My hands are really shaking,” she says.

“Oh, that’s you? I thought it was me. Awesome. Um, I’ve got to walk home, so I better get going,” I say as I start to shift backward.

Don’t chicken out, Carter; she’ll think you don’t like her!
I hear Lynn whisper/scream in my head.

I finally make my move. I slowly lean in and give her a kiss. Just a peck. I can’t tell anything by the first one, so I go in for peck number two.
Nobody likes a baby calf coming at ’em with a foot-long tongue!
echoes in my brain as I feel the craziest thing in my mouth. A wet piece of sponge or . . . tongue? A TONGUE has entered my mouth! Uuhhh—It’s super weird, but pretty damn cool. It’s all that I can do not to start laughing. She looks so beautiful here in the moonlight. . . . Why are your eyes open? Shut them, doofus, and don’t fall down! We go at it for about five minutes. I never want it to end. It’s awesome! I can feel her boobs pressed up against my chest, and I’m sure she can feel the tent I’m pitching in my Levi’s. I pop my eyes open just for a second to make sure everything is cool out here, and it all seems to be going great, so I shut them again and refocus on the kiss. We stop for some reason and I give her a goofy smile. My first real kiss went . . .

“Awesome,” I say like a tard. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

She giggles and says, “Yeah, well, I had fun tonight.”

I reply, “Yes, fun, I had too.” (Who are you—Yoda?) “It was nice to talk to you some more.” All the blood in my body is nowhere near my brain.

“I’m sorry your bike got stolen,” she says.

“Yeah, I’d forgotten about that, but thank you for reminding me,” I reply.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” She snort/laughs and turns beet red from embarrassment.

I give her a hug and say, “I’m kidding.” I managed a joke so funny it made a girl snort, and I think that calls for another round of kissing! We reassume the position and it’s all good. My tongue’s getting tired after a while, and it’s probably the only muscle that wasn’t sore before, so I’d better stop before I overdo it.

I say, “Good night,” and tell her, “I’ll call ya,” all smooth, but I’m not looking forward to that. I tried to call a girl once before, and it sucked. The chick wasn’t home and I tried to mumble, “Yeah, uh, tell her Will Carter called,” all cool, and her grandma goes, “Okay, Ricardo,” and then hung up on me. The girl had no idea I called, so I vowed never to do it again. But I positively want to do more of this kissing, so I might have to give it another shot.

High school may have started off with a bang. I may have ridden up on a Harley the first day, driven across the front lawn and into the cafeteria declaring, “I have arrived, BITCHES!” Or my dad may have dropped Lynn and me off in the Accord and three days have already flown by. It’s not half as big a deal as I thought it would be, but I may have a C- in algebra already. I have no idea how that happened.

I know my drama class is super fun, and football has definitely started because the bruises on my arms make it hard to write assignments on them. I finally got to show off my kicking skills a few days ago. I shanked the first one so bad it almost hit my coach, but then I hit four extra points in a row, so I’m officially . . . THE KICKER! (And second string right guard.) Just on the freshman squad, and if I miss any kicks in the games I’ll get fired, but so far I think I’m kicking ass and I love high school.

I’ve even called Abby a few times, and that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, either. I just ask her a few questions and then hang up. Cake!

Freedom abounds in high school. We’re allowed to go out to lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays, and all the best restaurants are super close. Only a short, seven-minute, all-out run down to Taco Bell, Pizza Barn, McDonald’s, KFC, or Subway.

We’ve taken fast food to new heights. It’s not great on the digestion to sprint for, like, a mile after eating your lunch in four minutes, but what are we supposed to do, eat in the cafeteria?

I enrolled in the drama class in case my football career doesn’t work out. (Being a famous actor isn’t a bad backup plan.) My boys make fun of me for it, but I look forward to going down to the drama wing all day long. For most high school activities, you have to be pretty serious, but Ms. McDougle (my semi-hot drama teacher) wants us to be silly and get rid of our inhibitions. I’ve always hated my inhibitions.

The big difference between junior high and high school is the kids. Because some of them aren’t kids. There’s a wide gap between a fourteen-year-old boy and an eighteen-year-old man. They can vote, drive, and buy cigarettes and porn. I just got pubic hair in March (finally!), but these dudes can grow beards. In junior high, if a kid wanted to start static, you just pushed each other a few times, threw up your hands, and yelled, “What’s up?! WHAT’S UP?!” and hoped your friends or a teacher would jump in and stop the fight. But I hear these guys will just kill you: punch you in the face, slam your head into a locker, and leave you for dead. I think my friends would be hard-pressed to jump in if I got into a scrape with a six-foot-five senior. I’ve really got to learn karate.

And the girls . . . scratch that—WOMEN! Lady boobs everywhere. These girls have power and they know it! They wear jewelry and perfume. I’ve seen pierced belly buttons and tattoos! Belly button exposure was taboo in junior high, because weak-willed minds like mine wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else. And while I do feel a bit more mature and a little more sophisticated . . . hot-smelling, tattooed, pierced belly buttons underneath lady boobs might just do me in.

Everybody who’s anybody has a nickname. They started up toward the end of sixth grade. Some nicknames stick, others do not. Thank God. C-C-C-Carter was almost my nickname after a bad stuttering episode last year. Most of the names come from some sort of bastardization of your given name, like Dolla Bill (Bill Dews). Otherwise, it’s if you do something of note. Like Cory Day was called May Day after he gave a kid the Heimlich maneuver in the cafeteria. More often it’s when you do something stupid—those are the ones that stick. My friend Bag (Matt Sparks) went up to a girl at the movies last year, and I don’t know what he said to her, but she yelled out, “You’re a scumbag!” We took the liberty of shortening the name to Bag. Now it’s part of his permanent record; he’ll never shake it. One kid with the misfortune of being nicknamed Sloth in eighth grade moved to a town, like, four hours away and foolishly thought he’d escaped it. Someone in our class had a cousin in that town, and he was called Sloth before the teacher could even get his name out on the first day. The names just happen, and you sure can’t make one up for yourself.

The guy who unofficially gives out most of the nicknames is J-Low (Josh Loos). He just says them a few times, and other kids start to follow along. J-Low can’t do it all on his own, but if three guys get to calling you something like Levi (Gene Arioli), that’s your name. Nutt’s (Todd O’Connell) full nickname is Peanut, from an unfortunate locker room incident in junior high, but he’s just Nutt now. Doc (Billy Kasson) isn’t smart or anything; J-Low just referred to him as “the love doctor” once at a football game. He wasn’t even that good with the ladies before then, but now all the girls think he’s “all that,” and he gets chicks. A great nickname is very important.

I’ve been Carter for a few years now. My real name is Will Paul Carter, but even my mom calls me Carter now. It’s just a lazy nickname, though. My last name? Big whoop! I’ve been trying to get a new one started for myself, but it’s tricky. My plan was to run everywhere for a couple of weeks and then subtly drop the name Race Car into a conversation. I laid the groundwork with the running, but nobody noticed, and I never found the right moment to work Race Car into any conversations.

The opportunity presents itself one day between first and second hour. I’m hanging out in front of my locker when Bag walks up, gives me five, and says, “What up, Slappy?”

He said it right in front of J-Low, whose ears kind of perk up. Dang it! SLAPPY, from the diving board incident! This will not be my nickname. But I’m smart enough to know that the surest way to stick a nickname is to protest the damn thing. I’ve got to be cool. I calmly ignore Bag and turn my attention to J-Low. I need to feel out how close he is to calling me Slappy.

“D-d-did you go to your dad’s this summer?” I ask him quickly.

“Yeah, it sucked. The guy’s a friggin’ hippie. He doesn’t have a TV,” he replies.

“It’s summer, dude, just hit the pool every day,” I say, looking away in disgust with myself.
The one subject you need to avoid!

“Yeah, I heard about your gainer, dog,” J-Low says with a smile.

Congratulations, your new name is . . . Slappy!
I’m not going down without a fight, though. Drastic measures are all that can save me from Slappy for the rest of my life, so I push it and say, “Yeah, I just ran track most of the summer, myself.”

EJ and Bag look at me funny, but they don’t know all of my activities! I could have been a member of a late-night track team.

“You ran track, Slap?” EJ barks out.

That’s two people. Dang it! If another guy uses that name in reference to me, I’m done for. And with J-Low right here, it’s almost a done deal.

“Yeah, I ran . . . and ran,” I say defiantly.

“Really, what events did you run?” Bag pesters on.

“Uh, like, the four hundred and the eight hundred, and I was on a relay team?” I ramble. Thank God I watched the Olympics sixteen hours a day this summer. Only three minutes to the second bell and Slappy is hanging over my head like an anvil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“Yeah, called me the R-R-Race-Race Car, t-t-the team did,” I say as they think it over. “Get it?” I press on. “Carter? Ya know, my name and then Race, like Race Carter?”

“That’s what they called you: Race Carter?” Doc asked from behind me.

“W-w-well, just Race Car. Not the full, Race Car-ter, b-b-but, like Race Car, yeah. Because I’m so fast or something,” I stammer.

I think that about does it. I’ve said it like, ten times already. It should be stuck, right? I better quit stuttering, though, or they’re going to break out C-C-C-Carter again.

EJ chimes in. I was hoping he wouldn’t. He knows I wasn’t on any track team. He knows I spent every day with him at the movies, the pool, on my bike, or at Bag’s house. But he probably knows that I don’t want to be called Slappy for the rest of my days, either.

“They called you Race Car, huh? On this track team?” EJ asks.

“Yeah,” I reply with a straight face. He just said it too. It’s a tie. Two for Slappy and two for Race Car! It’s anybody’s name now.

“I think I’ve got a friend on that track team. You probably know him. His name is Ricky. Do you know Ricky?” he asks.

EJ pulls through for you sometimes when you least expect it. “Yeah, sure, I know Ricky. Ricky’s my boy! He’s on that relay team with me,” I say in shock.

“Yeah, Ricky is, like, the best kid on the team, right?” EJ adds.

“Yeah, he’s almost as fast as me, the Race Car!” I say with a laugh.

“Yeah, I read all about him in the paper. He’s, like, the fastest kid in all of the Special Olympics, right?” EJ says all sly.

Dang it! I walked right into it.

“It’s not the Special Olympics, dude!” I try to say over the laughter.

“You and Ricky are special friends?” Bag adds.

The guys all laugh until the bell rings. As we break our group, slap fives, and punch each other good-bye, J-Low shakes his head and says, “You kill me, Carter,” officially crushing the Race Car, drowning out Slappy, and restoring my nickname to its old, lame self.