Nothing Special (21 page)

Yeah, I love the picture. I'll show it to you tomorrow.

As soon as we finished dessert, people in the restaurant started flowing out to the beach. Apparently sunset is a huge deal at the Mucky Duck.

The four of us walked out there and parked it on the edge of a sandbank overlooking the gulf. The color in the sky, all blue and orange and purple and pink, really was beautiful. All the color just sort of melted into the ocean. (The water and sky were like one thing.) The sun seemed to hang just inches over the horizon for minutes.

While we waited, while people on the beach started clapping for the sun, cheering for it to go down, Andrew leaned over to me and said, “I'm going to stay here, Felton.”

He caught me so off guard, Aleah, that I flinched like the squirrel I am.

“You're what?” I almost shouted.

“I want to stay in Fort Myers. This is where I'm supposed to be.”

“Jesus Christ, Andrew. No!” I said. “You can't. Jerri will…”

“I've talked to Jerri a lot about this,” he said.

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“She's okay? She's hasn't said a word to me about…”

“I asked her not to. I wanted to…I wanted to be the one who told…Yes. She's okay. She's very happy, now. Much better than ever, don't you think?”

I nodded. She and Ronald are really together now, aren't they, Aleah? They're making their own plans.

I shook my head to try to get what he was saying into my brain. People around us stood up and clapped for the sun as its bottom edge dipped.

My next inclination was to say,
What
about
me?
I wanted to say,
I
don't want to sit in the quiet house without you.

No, Aleah. I couldn't say that.

Andrew had pulled off his glasses. He stared hard at me, sort of chewing so his jaw muscles popped in and out. I did worry, though. I worried he was running, which is what I do.

“You're not trying to get away from me?” I asked quietly. “Or from kids in your class who want you to be me?”

“No. I've thought about that. I'm not running away,” Andrew said.

“Why, then? Why would you…”

“I enjoy the band very much. I like playing tennis with Stan, you know? And you're okay and Jerri's okay, but I'm not that okay. I don't think so. I'm sad a lot. I really don't think…I really think that Dad has messed me up. But I'm better here. And Stan and I have a lot in common and Tovi's leaving for school, and I know Stan's afraid of being alone, and he knows so much about music. There's a private high school nearby with a philosophy department and a chamber orchestra and Stan's our dad's dad, Felton. He's our grandpa. I think he can help me.”

“And you can help him.”

“Yes. That's true, I think.”

The sun slid down. The colors changed. I nodded. “Jesus, Andrew, I'm going to miss you so much. You're such a good kid. You're so damn awesome.”

“No, I'm not. Not at all,” Andrew said.

And then the sun slid behind the earth. A flash of green light shot up into the sky. People cheered and danced, and a couple beat on drums and everybody clapped for the sun doing what it's supposed to do. Andrew and I stood up too. Tovi stood next to me.

She leaned into me and said, “I love you, man. You're pretty awesome.”

“Nah,” I said. “I'm nothing special.” And I mean it. I'm just me, Aleah. Just a fast and jumpy dude. But you know I'm trying.

We all stayed at the White Shells that night. (Stan got his own room; we stayed in Andrew's, even though he'd only stayed there on Golden Rods gig nights since I left.) Tovi and Andrew wanted to walk out to the pier, but I was so wiped from the crazy days of travel that I showered, then fell asleep. I guess I had Greyhound bus lag.

In the morning, Tovi and I went into the gulf. Stingray season in Fort Myers lasts through October, but I wasn't afraid. I know how to deal. You just move slow, shuffle your feet when you walk in. The stingrays scatter then. We didn't say too much. Tovi goes back to Atlanta on Monday. I think she's kind of tired. I think she's ready to go home. I'm not sure I'd leave Fort Myers if I had a choice. I have responsibilities, though. I take them seriously.

Man, though, that water is really, really awesome. We floated around.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was already time to get me to the airport.

Tovi drove the Beemer. Stan rode in the passenger seat. Andrew and I rode in back. Stan kept telling Tovi where to turn, and Tovi kept saying, “I know, Papa. I know. Stop. I know.”

“Oh, you know everything, is that right?” Stan asked.

In the back, Andrew said, “Felton. There's something…Something else I wanted to say.”

“Oh…Okay?” Made me nervous.

“When you first got to Florida, I was very mean and I changed rooms and threw your shoes in the ocean, you know?”

“Yes.”

“That was bad behavior. Very reactionary and…I'm really sorry, okay? I didn't give you credit for your humanity.”

“I was a narcissist. That's not human.”

“No. You're pretty nice. You've always been basically nice, you know? Just sort of…”

“Squirrely?”

“Frantic. But you seem much calmer now.”

“Yeah. I'm learning to think. I'm trying to be under control. I'm trying not to be such an idiot.”

Then Stan turned around in his seat. He stared at me for a second, stared through his own plastic nerd glasses (old-man glasses that slid down his nose). “Tovi, pull over this car,” he said.

“What?”

“Pull over the car, please.”

“Okay?” Tovi pulled over on the side of the big road, next to a sign that seemed to indicate cougars or cheetahs or some other kind of large cat crossed the road there.

“Felton, get out of the car, please,” Stan said.

“What?” I thought he was throwing me out. “I don't want to.”

Stan opened his door. “Please. I need to talk to you.” He climbed out.

I looked at Tovi in the rearview mirror. She shrugged. I looked at Andrew. He said, “Stan is weird.” Then I climbed out.

Stan said, “Let's walk a moment.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

He reached up and put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me forward. We only walked ten steps before he stopped. The hot sun beat down on my head.

Stan turned and squinted at me. He said, “Your father had what would be called clinical depression. Real depression. That's a mental illness, you know?”

The air left my lungs. I nodded.

“He wouldn't treat it. He didn't believe that it existed. I didn't either, not until it was too late.”

“Oh,” I breathed.

“The first time I realized something was changing in him—now I know for the worse—he started calling himself an idiot. He would win a tennis match his senior year and come home and describe all of the things he'd done wrong. ‘Idiot move,' he'd say. ‘Stupid. Wasn't thinking.' And he took no pleasure in playing. All he did was remember how he'd failed. And because I wanted him to be the best, I took this to be a positive change. I encouraged him to be self-critical.”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Many things happened.” Stan nodded. “Many things went wrong with your father and with me too. These things I can only begin to understand and forgive, especially my part in this…”

“Uh-huh.” I was shaking, Aleah.

“But I am telling you something right now. I'm telling you right now. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to love being on that field. Just love it, Felton. Play that game like it's the greatest thing you could be doing, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Because it is, right? To play as well as you do is such a wonderful privilege. To be a great player is such a gift. Love that gift. Love that gift, Felton. You try hard and you love your gift. Can you do that?”

“I don't know.”

“Remember. Think about it. Think how good it is to be able to run.”

“Yes.”

“I'll come see a game this fall. And when I do, I want to see you in love out there. Winning, losing, making mistakes. None of it matters. Be in love. Do you understand what I mean?”

And then I thought about how I'd wanted to make out with that Nashville ponytail girl who played Ultimate Frisbee (the one who was so fast and could chase down the Frisbee anywhere on that field) and how I really didn't want to make out with her at all, I just felt so damn happy being able to play and run that I felt love, Aleah. Really. So I said, “Okay, Stan. Okay. I know. I can do that.”

Jesus, Aleah. I've never seen an old man smile so hard. He got big old-man tears in his eyes. He said, “That's good, kid. That'll help you. That's how Andrew tells me to play tennis.”

We were both sort of bawling when we got back in the car.

“More Reinstein crazy,” Tovi said.

Andrew just put his head on my shoulder.

Then I blinked (that's what it felt like) and I was on a plane high above the Gulf of Mexico, looking down at that big blue and the Dangling Sack dangling into it. And I thought:
This
is
good. Andrew's right. Andrew's right.
The only thing similar between this trip and the last? I wore my dad's Stan Smith tennis shoes. Otherwise, it was all different. I felt no regret. I didn't feel fear. I felt excited for Andrew.

Everything is different, Aleah.

And there were no delays! No cancellations!

Less than twenty-four hours after Tovi picked me up at that Shell gas station in Port Charlotte, I was back in Madison, standing outside the airport, getting picked up by Jerri.

The first thing Jerri said when we got in the car was, “Pretty strange, huh?”

We drove around Madison's east side to catch 151 home.

“I'm so sorry, Jerri,” I said. I didn't know what Jerri thought about all of this, but I wanted to be nice to her.

“Why?” Jerri asked. “Andrew's on his adventure.”

“Really. That's what you think?” I asked.

“He was made to do this. That's what I think.”

“Yeah?”

“He's been trying to put things back together for years.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Fourteen years old.” She shook her head. “How did a weirdo like me make a kid like that?”

“You're okay, Jerri.”

“I'm not exactly a traditional mom,” Jerri said.

That made me laugh for some reason.

“What?” Jerri asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

We drove the rest of the way to Bluffton talking about nothing much, the windows down, that awesome Wisconsin August air blowing in the Hyundai.

Oh my God, I have never been so happy to be at football practice as I was on Thursday afternoon. All the weird thought—all the worry I had about the future and recruiters and who I'm supposed to be—was gone. I ran. And the whole team just clicked. All I wanted to do was run with my friends. That's all my friends want from me, really. Nothing else matters.

This is what I'm beginning to figure out: if you act out of love (for the game, for friends, for your family), whatever you do is both perfect and right. It doesn't matter if you're a deep thinker or a squirrel nut if you act out of love. Crap starts getting seriously screwed if something else gets in the way, something like fear or revenge or even victory or being famous or some other dumb thing, I think. I think it's true. The only thing we need to do is figure out what we really love.

“Good trip, huh?” Coach Johnson asked after practice.

“Yeah. Yeah,” was all I could say.

This afternoon, when you leapt out of Ronald's car on the driveway and ran up to me and hugged me and cried, I knew I loved you. When Tovi texted me when I was getting up to the high school to dress for the game, to tell me she was dying to be here and couldn't wait to hear what happened…I knew love. When Roy Ngelale came out on the field, those Bluffton stadium lights firing the green field, and said, “You're getting nothing tonight, nothing, man,” I felt huge love for him because I knew something. I knew it. He's great. I'm great. I am a football player.

It was my third touchdown, a trap play I just totally dig, that made it clear.

We were on our own twenty-six-yard line. Kirk Johnson went into motion. Lakeside's linebackers called, “Watch end around, watch end around!” Cody took the snap and faked to Kirk as he passed by. Then he put the ball in my hands. Reese pulled from left tackle and crossed in front of me. Our center and right guard blocked down. I slowed to let the collision take place. Big-ass Reese cracked the crap out of the d-tackle, and I smiled and exploded. In a broken second I was past the linebackers, who flowed with the fake.

In a second it was only Lakeside's safety, Roy Ngelale, and me. He broke down to hit me. I dipped right then squirrel nut jumped to the left. He totally missed and had to turn to run with me. And we were off. The two fastest guys in the state. Oh, no…oh, no…There was nothing slow. I could hear the crowd screaming, roaring, sort of exploding…so good. And there was a great, buzzing fast forward. The green field dropped out. The stands turned to a rush of gray. I think I made Daffy Duck sounds. Ngelale roared, trying to catch me. I angled toward the sideline, then flew up the field. Ngelale's footsteps faded away behind me.

In the end zone, Roy grabbed me. He said, “You're too good, man. You're too good. This is your game.”

I hugged him back. I said, “I love you, man. This is awesome. We're okay at this, huh, man?”

He'd already scored two long runs of his own. Ngelale laughed. “Yeah, man. Yeah. Let's play for the same team next year.”

And we trotted back up the field to where my teammates jumped me.