Love Edy (25 page)

“Then you should,” she said.

He ruined it by heaving again, a violent
lurch that raised him from his knees and forced him to clutch the
toilet, though little more than spittle emerged. Edy’s hand drifted
lower, to his back, where her hand found bare skin under his shirt.
Eventually, Hassan’s ragged breaths eased, finding all the calmness
he could with her touching him there. Edy stood and ventured over
to a linen cupboard.

“You’ve got an extra toothbrush in the
medicine cabinet,” she said.

Hassan used the toilet to get to his feet
but rose only so far as the edge of the tub, where he took a seat.
Edy wet the towel and handed it to him. He washed his face and
handed it back.

“You okay?” she said.

Hassan looked up. “I can’t stop thinking of
all the ways I can lose the game.”

She hung out the rinsed towel, flushed the
toilet, and joined him. “That’s crazy. I know what’s going to
happen tonight. Don’t you?”

He shook his head. She was always so sure of
him. Even when he couldn’t figure out how to be.

Edy reached into his shirt for the dog tags
she’d given him. He wore them always, even in the shower.

“You and Leahy are going to face off,” she
said, running a thumb over the tags’ beaded necklace. “It’ll be the
toughest game you’ve ever had. You’ll have to push harder and run
faster and be smarter than you’ve ever before, because Leahy has
earned his name. But when you do, when you find what’s deep down in
here,” she traced a hand to his abdomen, “he’ll be smoke to your
fire, trailing you to the end zone.”

Edy kissed his forehead, tucked away the
tags, and stood. When she held out a hand, Hassan snatched it, not
to pull himself up, but to pull her in for the fiercest of
hugs.

He was ready.

Ready for anything.

~~~

Below-freezing weather for the night of the
game, that was what they predicted. Hassan and his teammates were
quarantined that day, remaining at school for dinner on through
till it was time for the bus ride to West Roxbury. At the Phelps’
house, the excitement was palpable with everyone jostling about,
shouting for hats and gloves and scarves that might have been
there, next door, or in one of five cars.

With the fall of night, Edy bundled in a
sweater, jeans, and black goose down coat. She painted the palms
and backs of her black gloves, the fold of her black skullcap, and
the tips of her black scarf all with a white “twenty-seven”,
Hassan’s number. She then gave her cheeks the same treatment.

Edy told herself that she wasn’t nervous. On
the drive back to school with her parents, on the climb in the
bleachers to their seats and as a massive Robert Leahy, prodigy of
Boston’s mean streets, trotted out to the field, she told herself
that she was not nervous. She didn’t care how good Leahy was, or if
they said he was the best. This was Hassan’s night. It was
theirs.
She sensed it.

“You okay, kiddo?” Edy’s father placed a
hand on her knee and squeezed.

He placed a finger on her forehead where a
white “twenty-seven” sat, pressing with a smile that reflected her
own anxiety.

“This is the beginning,” he told her. “The
beginning.”

Certainly, she could feel as much. Though
the beginning of what, she couldn’t be sure.

Time for kickoff.

West Roxbury won the coin toss, and with it,
opted to receive instead of kick. The game began like a scuffle set
to mute, with neither team retreating nor advancing. Helmet to
helmet, pad to pad, cleats grinding into grass, offense and defense
clashed in a stubborn assault, from which neither gained an
advantage. And as the minutes of the first quarter ticked on, Edy
scowled at an unchanged scoreboard.

Things went wrong in the second. Six plays
set at a furious pace and West Roxbury found themselves within
kicking distance. Unwilling to take a chance on a failed touchdown,
they opted for the field goal and put points on the board for the
first time that night. Murmurs wafted from the crowd. Mutiny, Edy
thought. Already it sounded like betrayal.

Time dwindled on the first half. Eventually,
South End’s quarterback, Jason Mann, hurled a pass, only to have it
picked off by West Roxbury.

They ran it back for a touchdown.

Edy stood at the close of the first, gaze
scanning South End’s team for a glimpse of twenty-seven. Shoulders
after shoulders slumped, heads lowered, helmets pulled off with the
unmistakable look of the lost. And the crowd wasn’t much better.
Behind Edy, a fat man in a padded navy coat with a dollop of
mustard high on the breast, promised everyone within ten decibels
that Leahy would be the top player in the nation come senior year,
how he knew that a school like South End, with soft and pampered
kids, could never match up against a beast like West Roxbury. They
were tough and hungry, he went on, sloshing toppings from his hot
dog, and no rich kid could change that.

“Oh, shut up,” Edy snapped. “You haven’t
even figured out how to keep the food off your breasts.”

“Edy!” her father cried. But her mother
laughed.

“You little brat,” the man snarled. “Watch
your mouth or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Edy’s mother interjected.
“Threaten the daughter of the district attorney?”

Her mother’s gaze fell slow, taking in the
increasingly widening girth as if she could melt his fat like
butter under heat. When she looked up again, another lump of
toppings splattered onto his lap.

“Get a bib,” her mother said. “Or better
yet, keep your damned mouth closed.”

Her mother faced forward again, dignified as
ever, amidst the choking chuckles of Ali. She gave him only the
hint of a smile.

Never in her life had Edy’s mother spoken up
for her. But before she could point that out, a roar erupted from
the crowd.

Hassan had attempted a run, only to get
mowed down by Leahy.

A loss of three yards.

“No tears,” her father warned, even as Edy
felt them bubbling upward. “This is exactly what he needs.”

Fury made her forget the cold as she
contemplated how her father could say such a thing. He hadn’t seen
Hassan. He hadn’t seen the fear, the vomiting, the uncertainty. Edy
turned away from her dad and refused to look at him again. Lips
pursed, she stared at a distant point just past the marching band
but found she couldn’t ignore his words.

Mostly, football had come easily for Hassan.
After a slow start, he blossomed into long yards and big plays, his
right in the wake of talent and hard work. Last year he’d set
records; this year he’d do the same. Despite that, people thought
Leahy better. Why?

Because Hassan had never tasted the
abyss.

That
was what her father meant.

When the South End football team trotted out
for the second half, Edy leapt to her feet, electrified. “Get your
head out of your ass, Hassan, and kill him!”

“Edy!” Rani cried.

Dismay echoed all around.

She would deal with her punishment later.
But at that moment, Hassan needed her. She took to a battle cry,
something wild and incoherent, a frenzy of shrieks and stomps and
whistles that she could carry for as long as he needed it.
She
would be there for him, there in the abyss with two
quarters of game play and glory to be had.

The second half began like an omen as South
End’s kickoff returner stumbled out of bounds on catching the ball.
He hit the ground in a tangle of feet, and a collective groan
seeped from the crowd.

The end seemed near. South End was
unraveling from all edges. Quickly.

Hassan’s team lined up like the bow of an
arrow. Edy spied them and frowned. A glance at her father told her
he couldn’t read the play either. They were in ace formation, with
Hassan in the backfield and two receivers on the ground. They could
pass or could run, but neither seemed good given the setup.
Hassan’s blocker, Kyle, was absent from the play, with two
receivers on the ground in his place. The long pass seemed a
fifty-fifty shot with the setup, while Hassan’s sporadic
performance had probably zapped the coach’s willingness to rely on
him, so Edy bit down on her knuckle and waited.

The ball snapped, and two walls collided in
the night. Breath held, Edy’s heart beat out the tune of her
impassioned fear. Helmets smashed, thrashing followed, bodies
tangled into a monolith—a single horrible giant with arms and legs
of an endless variety. No one boy could get free from another, and
yet she needed them to. Desperately. Where was he? Where was he?
Where was he?

Hassan appeared, slipping from the monster
smoothly, like melted butter poured out. Two steps, no more and
Leahy crashed out, dead on him in wild pursuit. Arms tucked, feet
pounding, form perfect, Hassan split the field—fast, faster,
impossibly so, as if harnessing light and sound, fire and fury, the
very shrieks that decimated her throat. Leahy couldn’t keep up. No
human possibly could. She hollered it, knowing he could hear. And
in the end, Hassan toppled into the end zone, rolling back over
belly, unable to slow down even once on his feet.

He was back.

Mayhem ensued.

Seventeen

Victory. He had claimed it for his own. Not
from the jaws of death, as people liked to say, but from the lips
of naysayers, the throats of doubters. One touchdown alone couldn’t
do it, so Hassan grabbed two to seal the game.

Duffle bag over his shoulder, he crossed the
darkened parking lot as he headed for the bus that would take him
back to South End. Soreness beat at his shoulders, back, and limbs,
though it played distant second to a game with Leahy on the losing
end. In his ears, teammates jabbered about this play and that,
about the party at the Dysons’ in a few. They whooped and jostled,
piling atop each other with elation only winners could have. Later
would bring the pain of battered limbs, the agony of bruises and
contusions. But that night they would celebrate their victory.
Hassan’s gaze scanned the crowd.

“On your left,” Lawrence said.

Hassan spotted her, quick in her steps to
meet them. He gave Lawrence a once over and saw a conversation long
overdue and a friend willing to wait a little longer. Edy broke
into a run, and Hassan forgot all that, dropping his bag in his
eagerness to scoop her up.

How could he tell her? There was no way she
knew what she’d done for him.

Edy stood on tiptoe, arms wrapping his neck
before she whispered in his ear.

“I was with you,” she said. “I was with you
the whole time. You could feel it, right?”

He exhaled and let the parking lot melt
away. “Yeah, I could.”

She looked up at him, face lit by the moon,
brown eyes wide, hair billowing from a cap with his number painted
on. He touched the “twenty-seven” on her cheek and allowed the
thumb drift from it to the pulse behind her ear. He tilted her chin
upward and she leaned into his touch. This girl was all he’d ever
need.

“Sawn!” Lawrence snapped. “Pay
attention.”

Parents.

Eyes closed, he pressed lips to her
forehead, knowing that if his mother saw, he’d be answering for
that kiss in particular.

“Find me at the party,” Hassan said.

Edy pulled back. Not away, just back.

To his right, a procession of teammates
chanted, “Rocky! Rocky!” in a wide berth processional to him. She
looked from the team to Hassan.

“If you want me to choose,” he said, “you’ll
win.”

Edy sighed. “Dyson house?”

“Dyson house,” he said and chanced a thumb
against her cheek once more.

“Pradhan!” boomed the team coach.

Oh boy.

Hassan spotted him filling up the doorway of
the team bus with his body.

“Pradhan, you sonofa—! Get on this bus! I’ve
got a wife and two kids at home!”

Hassan looked around, blinking at the sudden
absence of friends.

“An hour,” he said. Hassan snatched his
duffle bag and trotted for the bus.

Inside, the doors swooshed closed behind him
and the darkness engulfed. Hassan took a step forward, only to stop
as Mason leapt to his feet.

“Ohhhhh, you dog!” he hollered. “Don’t you
take advantage of that girl tonight!”

The bus roared in approval.

~~~

People cramped the Dyson home to fire-code
capacity that night. Football players, dancers, jocks, and wannabes
crushed in alongside Leahy and a dozen or so other West Roxbury
players, jovial despite the loss. Hassan respected his nemesis more
for the disposition; he didn’t think he had it in him to do the
same if he were the loser.

Steve and Tessa Dyson were away, the
agreement on condition of a South End win that night. As Hassan sat
on the living room couch, vaguely aware of thumping hip hop as he
sipped a beer, he imagined what it would have been like to have
American parents like his friends, ones that did things as normal
as let them throw parties and have girlfriends.

Next to Hassan was the Dysons’
twelve-year-old sister, Vanessa, a lump of a girl that rarely
abandoned the television. That night, she wore blue shadow on her
eyelids and a glob of red gloss on her lips, as she stared up at
him with eyes distressingly full of adoration.

“Tell me what you like to do, Hassan.
Besides football, I mean.”

Most of the time, Vanessa was a non-issue,
holed away in her bedroom or the theater or some other place Hassan
could avoid. But that night she was there, eager to celebrate his
victory. Celebrate with him, apparently.

Vanessa placed a hand on his knee. He
removed it with two fingers and dumped it on her lap. In a nearby
corner, Matt and Mason nudged each other and pointed, winded and
wheezing from laughter. No help would come. None ever did.

“I know you like football,” she said. “And
you should, because you’re so good.” She leaned forward, plump hand
once again on his knee. “Better than my brothers, even.”