Down to the Bone (4 page)

 “Do you know anything about football?” Jarrett ventured. Liddy was smiling encouragingly, like she wanted him to go on.

“Whichever side gets to the goal line earns points,” she said, amused. “The team with the most points wins.”

“Well, yeah, but....” He hesitated, experiencing a very odd moment of role reversal. This girl was smarter than him and he hadn’t expected to know more about any subject than she did. It was suddenly important to him, however, to get across to Liddy the rush and power of the game. To prove to her that it took more than raw muscle to succeed.

How could he put it in terms she’d understand?

“When a creature evolves so that it can survive in some harsh environment,” he said, “you want to know how it did that, not just that it got to the goal line. Right?”

She leaned back in her chair, eyeing him in that way again, as if he were one of the skulls in her books and she was trying to figure out his species. “You mean, it’s how you play the game? All right. Go on.”

“Do you have a pen?” He reached for a napkin. Sketching with one hand while using the other to eat his second hoagie, Jarrett showed her what plays had worked and what hadn’t and why.

Her rapt attention was oddly satisfying.

OCTOBER

“So it’s over between you and Crissy?” Bobby asked. “Done, finito, kaput?”

Home turf this time, fourth quarter. Their team was winning and they had the ball. Jarrett warmed the benches with the rest of the defensive unit, sipping at Gatorade and working out the kinks in his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think she’s got her sights on Delarose.”

He and Crissy hadn’t broken up so much as mutually drifted apart. He couldn’t say he was happy about it, but it was hardly unexpected. Girls like Crissy moved on and moved up if they could. And though Carl Delarose was one of the new kids, it was pretty clear he was going to be moving up fast.

“You’re leaving out the best part, Jet,” said Eric, and whispered, conspiratorially, to Bobby. “He’s got himself a new girl. A geek!”

“A geek!” Toby was a large, black, brick wall of a man. He was standing behind them, a disapproving scowl on his face.

“Look,” Eric invited, and pointed.

Jarrett winced and bitterly regretted letting Eric in on the secret. The guys all turned to take a gander. Luckily, Liddy didn’t notice. He’d gotten her a seat close to the field. She appeared small and a little lost, bundled in a sweater and wool cap. She was watching the game with a frown, as if trying to remember the rules.

After that first lunch together, Jarrett had seen more and more of Liddy. He’d run into her crossing the campus, arms laden with books, and offered to carry them for her. They’d walked and talked about football all the way to the door of her apartment, a good twenty-minute stretch. Not long after that, she’d turned up at one of his practices and had even been waiting afterwards to walk with him to class. They’d discussed the rise and fall of dinosaurs. Right before they’d parted, he pulled out his cell phone and arranged for her to have a season pass. He’d urged her to come to the games, to see him in his native habitat.

As a quid pro quo, she’d invited him to study with her in the library. It was a new experience for him to hang with a girl who could help
him
with his homework; it had always been the other way around with the girls he’d dated. Terrifying at first, it was also liberating. There was rarely anything that he had to explain to her, not political or historical references, not words or terms, certainly not science. And she didn’t just quiz him on what he’d learned, she offered her own opinions—intelligent, even-handed opinions that always got him thinking.

It was, in Jarrett’s view, a decidedly strange relationship. They talked on the phone and e-mailed each other, met almost daily, yet they didn’t hold hands or kiss or go out dancing. He hadn’t even seen the inside of her apartment or gotten her up to his dorm room. Nevertheless, he found himself wanting to open doors for her, pay for coffee, and, when the rain came down, share his umbrella with her. He wanted to look good for her, win a touchdown in her honor. Years of beautiful girls throwing themselves at him, and it was the science geek that he wanted to impress. How fucked up was that?

“You gave up Crissy for
her
?” Toby sneered. “I mean,” he added quickly as Jarrett glared, “she’s not butt ugly or nothin’. But come on—”

Whatever else Toby was going to say was mercifully cut off by their quarterback throwing a stunning pass. It flew long and far, right into the waiting arms of the receiver who was immediately brought down. The crowd yelled and waved banners.

“Damn!” Eric breathed. “That was friggin’ beautiful! We could score.”

“All that matters is we keep the ball in our hands,” Toby muttered. “Anyway, as I was saying—”

“Don’t be getting on Jet’s case,” Bobby warned him. Bobby was known, unofficially, as the handsomest man on their team. He had walnut brown skin and a tigerish smile that melted girls in their tracks. “He’s being smart. Senior year of high school, I got myself a geek girlfriend. Best thing I ever did.”

“Is that right?” Toby skeptically crossed his arms. “How geeky we talkin’?”

“Brother, I am talking classic geek. Overweight, long brown hair, glasses and no sense of style.”

“Ouch,” Eric winced, and Jarrett found himself shifting uncomfortably. In high school, he and his friends had hung out at the track when the girls’ P.E. class ran laps. Mostly, they’d ogled and whistled at the sexy babes leading the pack, but now and then they’d hooted at the dumpy girls lagging behind, girls lanky haired and bespectacled; the same girls who had gazed longingly at them in the halls.

If Liddy had been at his high school, he’d probably have treated her the same, he thought with shame.

“Sh—shoot!” Bobby said. No one was allowed to curse on the field, and Bobby wasn’t the only one who had a hard time remembering that rule. “A penalty!”

Jarrett glanced up. He’d missed something. The referee was blowing his whistle, signing that their side was being penalized for unnecessary roughness.

“That fuc...dumbass,” Eric said, even as their coach met up with the ref to argue.

“You were saying?” Toby urged Bobby.

“I was saying that a geek girlfriend is a good thing,” Bobby insisted. “First, they’re obscenely grateful for the attention. A popular girl knows there are other guys after her, and if you don’t treat her right, she’ll get someone else. But the geek girl, she understands how lucky she is, and she will put up with any shit—excuse me, crap, you throw at her.”

Jarrett frowned. That didn’t sound like the best reason to be with a girl.

“Second,” Bobby formed a victory sign with his two fingers, “Geek girls are kinky. Take it from me. They read all this shit—um, stuff on the internet and they want to try it all. None of that don’t-you-dare-come-in-my-mouth bull. They’ll suck you dry and do it underwater. Third,” another finger, “they’ll do your homework.”

The other guys gawked and Bobby smiled knowingly.

“Yeah,” he said smugly, “I didn’t have to write a single paper my senior year. I’m tellin’ ya, Jet here’s got the right idea. Girls like that one,” he nodded up toward Liddy, “oughta be on every jock’s list of must-have school supplies.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Toby conceded. He and Eric were eyeing Jarrett with respect now, as if he’d done something very clever. He felt he ought to object, tell them he didn’t regard Liddy that way, but the game came to an end right about then. Their team didn’t get another goal, but they’d kept hold of the ball and won.

The coach gave them all thumbs up as jubilant friends and fans flooded the area. Jarrett saw his father and brother jogging over. Though he stank of sweat and was stained with mud and grass, his father embraced him.

“They don’t give you enough to do,” Dad groused.

“They give me plenty to do,” was all Jarrett bothered to say. “Hey, Frankie.”

His brother, shoulders hunched, nodded. Frankie looked very small and intimidated by all the hulking players.

“Jarrett! Hey, Jarrett—” It was Liddy. She came running up, cheeks flushed in the crisp night air, and Jarrett felt an odd mixture of elation and panic. Had she liked the game? Had she liked what he’d done during the game?

“Liddy, hi. This is my dad, and my brother.”

That caught her up short. “Oh, hey, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no. I’m glad you came down. Dad, Frankie, this is Liddy. She’s studying to be a biological anthropologist.”

“Anthropologist?” his father echoed as he pressed her hand. He glanced at Jarrett with confusion and disappointment.

“She studies human evolution and osteology,” Jarrett added proudly.

“Bones,” Frankie murmured before his father could even ask and his gaze flickered over to Jarrett with interest, almost wonder. “It’s the study of bones. That’s cool.” He smiled at Liddy.

“Only prehistoric bones,” she demurred.

“You mean like ape-man stuff?” Jarrett’s father was not impressed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t suppose there’s much money to be made doing that,” he muttered, and Jarrett felt his stomach drop. Maybe introductions hadn’t been such a good idea.

Liddy could fairly smell the disapproval when Mr. Evans said, “Don’t suppose there’s much money to be made doing that.” It was an all-too-familiar criticism, one she’d learned to take in stride. Most people didn’t see any point in digging up the past and understanding it. Usually, she just shrugged her shoulders when someone pointed that out, but she could see that Jarrett was mortified by his father’s rudeness.

“No, sir,” she said to indicate that she wasn’t offended. “I’m pretty much aiming for a job at some museum of natural history. I’ll work in obscurity and probably scrape by. But I count it a blessing that I’m good at what I like doing. I think that’s better than not liking what I’m good at, or not being good at what I’d really like to do.”

Jarrett’s father twitched and his face darkened. Oh dear. She’d hit a nerve. In more ways than one it seemed, as brother Frankie was gawking at her. She didn’t know if it was because she’d dared to speak to his dad that way, or if she’d said something profound. Time to beat a hasty retreat.

“I’ll see you later, Jarrett.” She offered him a quick smile before hurrying off. Inside, her stomach flipped. She knew she had the socializing problem common to geeks: a tendency to blurt out inappropriate things at inappropriate moments. Had she just done that? She hoped Jarrett wasn’t angry with her.

That, she found herself reflecting, was yet another new development in a month of new developments; back when she’d first met Jarrett, she hadn’t cared if she made him angry. Now she did because, well, his opinion mattered to her. A lot.

True, their relationship was still uneven with her doing most of the talking when it came to prehistoric topics, but he was an incredibly quick study and catching up fast. Besides, he’d more than balanced out the scales with his fun lessons on football, also with his thoughtfulness. He insisted on buying her coffee or lunch whenever they ran into each other at the commissary and always carried her books for her. And she no longer spent her nights alone, watching television or working on papers. Instead, she had long, warm talks with Jarrett on the phone, or went out to his games to cheer him on.

There was now more to her life than ancient bones, and that was all thanks to Jarrett—Jarrett who had become far, far more to her than just a desirable male of her species.

Their friendship, Liddy mused as she headed across campus on that windy, October evening, had evolved, was still evolving, changing her life and changing her. And she couldn’t wait to see what developed next.

LATE OCTOBER

Let her be here!
Jarrett wished, his rubber soled shoes squeaking across the polished stone floors of the library. He hurried up the short stairs into the airy, vaulted catalogue area with its periodicals, computers and old desks. Past the librarian’s station decorated with carved pumpkins. Past the arched Victorian windows, windblown tree branches banging against the panes, shedding the last of their red and brown leaves.