Playing the Field (4 page)

Tony took a box of Ding Dongs from a cupboard
and threw me one. “I’ll call you after Jenna helps me with that
problem, but it might be late. She’s out with Adam the
Wonderful.”

I caught the Ding Dong and ripped off the
wrapper. “She’s actually pulling off that whole
being-a-baseball-fan thing?”

“I guess so, because she’s still drilling me
with baseball questions every night.”

I bit my Ding Dong in half and squeezed out
some of the cream filling. “Man, that Adam guy most be totally
clueless if he hasn’t figured out by now she’s just pretending to
know baseball.”

“Naw. Pretending is regular for dating. It’s
part of playing the game. Everyone does it.”

“Cool. I’m going to pretend to be Cal Ripkin
then.”

“No, I’m serious.” Tony picked up a magazine
off the table. The cover said Teen Spirit and showed a beautiful
teenage girl with long blond hair and a big smile. “This is one of
Jenna’s How-To-Pretend-To-Be-Someone-else manuals.” He opened to
the table of contents, and then put his half-eaten Ding Dong on the
countertop. Reading out loud, he said, “Three easy steps to getting
his attention . . . Be thinner by Thursday. . . Clothes that erase
flaws. And then of course there’s the makeup feature.” He flipped a
few pages to that section, then held up the before and after
pictures for me.

I tilted my head. “That’s what girls look
like without makeup?”

“Scary isn’t it. You should see Jenna when
she gets up in the morning.”

Tony looked over at the next page. “Hey, this
looks interesting. Does your boyfriend have the right stuff?”

I shoved the last piece of my Ding Dong into
my mouth. “What’s so interesting about that?”

A mischievous smile came across his face.
“It’s a cheat sheet for what girls are looking for in a guy.” He
pointed to the article. “Look, on this side we have the qualities
of Mr. Right, and over here we have qualities of Mr. Ought-to-be
Left-in-the-Dust.” He shook his head as he read over the last
column. “Apparently girls don’t like guys who are jealous or
cheap.”

I went to the fridge and poured milk for Tony
and myself while he scanned over the rest of the article. When I
was done, I handed him his glass. He set it down on the counter
instead of drinking it.

Finally he nodded confidently. “Okay. I think
I could pass for Mr. Right.” He cleared his throat as he looked at
the magazine. “Number one, I’m supposed to have a good sense of
humor.” He held the magazine down for a moment. “People are always
telling me I’m funny.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they’re talking
about your sense of humor.”

He ignored me. “Number two. I’m supposed to
be honest. I could fake that.”

“Uh, wouldn’t that be dishonest?”

He still ignored me. “Number three.
Attractive.” He held the magazine to the side for a moment and
swept one hand in front of himself. “Need I say more?”

I let out a grunt.

“Number four. Loyal. Totally me. After all, I
was a Boy Scout, and Boy Scouts are always loyal, brave, and
trustworthy.”

“Yeah, I bet girls will be really impressed
with your scouting background. You can tell them about the time you
cut up bugs to do your insect-study merit badge, Mr. Right.”

“And lastly, I’m supposed to be
understanding.” He laid the magazine on the countertop. “That’s the
only one I’ll have to work on.” He picked up the rest of his Ding
Dong and ate it while he contemplated this. “I think from now on,
when I’m talking to girls I’ll nod every once in a while and say,
‘I understand.’”

“That’ll make you irresistible.”

“I can hardly wait to try this out.” For a
moment Tony pretended he was talking to someone. “Really, Rachel? I
understand.” He nodded slowly. “I honestly understand.”

“You loyally, humorously, attractively
understand.”

Tony picked up his glass of milk and took a
drink. “Go ahead and laugh now. We’ll see who’s laughing after it
works.”

“It’ll never work.”

“I dare you to try it out on Serena.”

I folded my arms. “I don’t even talk to
Serena. How would I convince her I’m loyal?”

“That’s just the point, McKay. You’ve got to
talk to her.”

I knew he was right, but I didn’t like it. I
finished off my milk and glanced back at the kitchen table where
our assignments lay. “I suppose I can just say hi to her a few more
times and see what happens.” That somehow didn’t seem quite so
bad.

Chapter 4

Over the next two days I said hello to Serena
four times. I don’t even say hello that often to some of my
friends. Once when I ran into Serena on the way to math class, I
complimented her on the tidiness of her locker. Then while we
walked to the room, we had a two-minute conversation about horses
because I mentioned the pictures she hung on her locker door. She
told me they were her aunt’s horses, but she gets to ride them
whenever she visits her aunt’s ranch in Texas. One was a “paint,”
and one was something else. They both looked spotted brown to me,
but I nodded approvingly anyway.

“I understand,” I said.

She blinked at me. “You understand what?”

I could only think of one thing to
understand, so I said, “I, uh, understand why you like to ride
horses.”

“You like to ride too?”

Well, I didn’t dislike it, and I couldn’t
very well say no after I’d just told her I understood why she liked
to ride horses. “Yeah,” I said, “I really like horseback
riding.”

“Cool. Where do you usually go?”

Whatever I said next would undoubtedly
disqualify me as Mr. Right due to that honesty clause. “The
mountains,” I said.

She nodded. “That’s fun, but I like riding
out on flat land the best. That way your horse can run.”

“I understand,” I said again.

After I sat down at my desk in algebra class,
Tony passed me a note. It read, “I saw you walk in with Serena.
Anything happen?”

I’m not exactly sure what he meant by
“anything,” but judging by the smirk on his face he must have been
referring to the rockets of our love igniting. I wrote back, “I
found out her aunt has horses.”

Tony sent the note back with “Is she being
friendly to you?” scribbled on it.

I wrote, “I don’t know. I’ve noticed she and
Rachel giggle a lot when I walk by now,” then handed the note
across the aisle to him.

He made a big production of blowing kisses at
me and wrote, “She must like you. You must like her.” As I read the
note he whispered across the aisle, “Will you name your first son
after me since I suggested you get together?”

I wanted to lean over and punch him. Instead
I wrote, “I don’t like her. I just want her to help me with my
math.”

Tony wrote back, “You’re such a baby, McKay.
It’s okay to like girls. They don’t actually have cooties, you
know.”

I would have written something back to him,
something insulting to put him in his place, but Mrs. Swenson
walked down the aisle just then, so I shoved the paper into my math
folder instead.

I wasn’t a baby and I liked girls. I even
liked Serena a little. But I don’t know. I couldn’t explain it; not
to Tony and not even to myself. It was like the time when I was in
third grade and I had a part in our class play. I played a Spanish
explorer in early America. I was supposed to come onto the stage,
turn to the audience, and say, “There’s gold in America. We’ll
strike it rich in the new land!” I never had problems with my part
during the rehearsal. I knew every word of my lines. I drove my
parents crazy by saying them over and over again at home.

Then the day of the play came. All of our
parents crowded into the school auditorium carrying cameras. I
stood backstage wearing my tin foil conquistador's hat and was so
excited I was jumping up and down. When it was my turn, I walked
out onto the stage, turned to look at the audience—and when I saw
all of those faces looking up at me, watching me, waiting for me to
do something, I was struck with panic. I stared openmouthed at the
audience until my teacher whispered my lines to me from backstage.
Then in a shaky voice, I said, “There’s gold in America. We’ll rike
it stritch in the new land!”

Everyone laughed. My parents got the whole
thing on their camcorder. They still laugh when they watch it.

And that’s exactly how I feel when I’m around
girls. I might as well be in front of an audience, openmouthed,
messing up my lines.

I glanced over at Tony. He was leaning back
in his chair in a casual sort of way. I wondered if he’d invented a
cool way of sitting just like he’d invented a cool way of walking.
By the time we reached the end of the year, he’d probably have all
of the glitches worked out of his routines. By the time we reached
high school, he’d have reached such heights of coolness that girls
would trail him around the hallways just to experience the cool
breeze flowing from his body.

And I’d be in a corner somewhere saying
everything backward.

Maybe Tony was right. Maybe it was time to
invent a cool McKay. I leaned back in my chair like Tony and tried
to look like I was unconcerned about math class. I thought cool
thoughts. Holding my pencil loosely in my hands, I tapped it
against my notebook like I was playing the drums. I glanced over at
Serena to see if she’d noticed the new me. She was staring straight
ahead. I wondered how long it would take girls to notice me once I
became cool.

Mrs. Swenson handed out a worksheet for us to
do, and I put it on top of my notebook and continued to play the
drums with it. What did cool people do when they didn’t know how to
do a worksheet? I thought about this for a moment, then thought
about playing the drums. Were there any professional ballplayers
who also played in a band? That would be the ultimate cool thing to
do.

I was thinking about this, and not about
where I was tapping my pencil, when I missed my notebook and hit
the metal edging on my desk. There was a loud twang, and half the
classroom looked over at me to see what I was doing. I slumped down
in my chair.

Mrs. Swenson got that dour expression on her
face. “McKay, are you finished with your worksheet already? Because
if you are, perhaps you’d like to work some of the equations on the
board for the rest of the class to see.”

“Uh, no.” I gulped. “I’m not done yet. I was
just figuring them out.” I slumped even lower in my chair.

I don’t know why I looked over at Serena
right then. Something just made me. I glanced over at her, and sure
enough, she was looking back at me. Watching. Waiting for me to do
something.

I bent over the worksheet and under my
breath, said, “We’ll rike it stritch in the new land.”

* * *

At home I continued to be a model son in
order to persuade my parents that I needed a room of my own. That
night after dinner while I cleared off the table and Mom put things
in the dishwasher, I asked her, “Did you and Dad talk about moving
Kirk out of my room?”

“Well, we talked about moving you into the
office.”

“Me?” I dropped the last of the silverware
into the sink. “Why do I have to be the one to move?”

“Because you’re the one who wants his own
room.”

“But Kirk’s the one that’s impossible to live
with.”

Mom handed me a dish cloth and pointed at the
table. It was my job to wash it off, but Mom always had to remind
me to do it. “Kirk has been in that room since he was a baby. It’s
the only room he’s ever known. It will be easier on him to be alone
if he’s still in familiar surroundings.”

“But all the stuff in that room is mine. It’s
decorated with posters of my favorite baseball players.”

“They’re Kirk’s favorite players too,” Mom
said. But she knew as well as I did the only reason Kirk liked
baseball was because I’d taught him about it. He probably didn’t
care about the players at all. If I had told him all about
congressmen, he’d be just as happy with posters of U.S. senators
hanging on the walls.

“I know it’s not exactly fair,” Mom said,
“but neither is me lugging my entire office into my bedroom. If you
want your own room, you’ll have to make some concessions.”

I knew the kind of concessions she was
talking about were not the kind that sold hot dogs at baseball
games. She meant I had to let Kirk have his own way before he even
asked for it. It seemed like Kirk always got his own way.

“Kirk should decorate his room with stuff he
likes,” I said. “Something with cowboys or astronauts or
trains.”

Mom poured the dish soap into its tray and
snapped the lid shut. “Kirk does like trains,” she said. “Maybe
he’d like that even better than staying in your room with the
baseball players.” She straightened up, then surveyed the table to
make sure I’d done a good enough job. It must have passed her
review, because she took the dishcloth instead of handing it back
to me. As she wiped off the counters, she called, “Kirk!” A few
moments later he trotted in.

Mom put on the overly happy face she always
uses to try and get Kirk excited about something. “Hey sweetheart,
I was just thinking about how much you like trains, and I thought
maybe you’d like to spend more time with some trains.”

“Are we going someplace?” Kirk asked
hopefully.

“Well, no. I was just thinking maybe we could
decorate the office with train things. Would you like that?”

“Yeah,” Kirk said slowly, as though he knew
there was a catch but wasn’t sure where.

“Maybe you could even pretend it was your own
private train compartment.”

“Yeah,” Kirk said with more enthusiasm. “And
I could take suitcases.”

“And wouldn’t it be fun to move your bed in
with all of the train things?”

“No!” His face scrunched up, and he put his
hands on his hips. “I’m not moving to the office. I want to sleep
in my baseball room.” He stomped off, hands still on his hips.