Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,46
fingers grazed my palm. I used my thumb to trap his hand, and he curled his fingers around mine. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Everything was wrong.
I just didn’t know how to say it.
“I guess it’s just kind of weird. I wanted to intern here for forever. But I never thought it could be a job.”
“You work harder than anyone here. You deserve it.”
“Maybe.”
I was doing what I wanted to do.
So why wasn’t I happy?
EVIL BEAN CONGLOMERATE
Dad extended his stay through Monday so he could catch our soccer game against Willow Bluffs High School. It was an early game, so I hung out in the library until it was time to hop the bus to Willow Bluffs’ field. The coffee shop in the library had terrible tea—in fact, it came from Tea Haven, which had been bought out by some sort of Evil Bean Conglomerate in the months since I had left—but they had free hot water, and like I said, I kept a few sachets of Rose City tea with me for such emergencies.
Chip sat next to me, and I gave him a sachet of Ceylon too. We sipped our tea and compared notes on our American Lit reading: Catcher in the Rye, which was slightly more interesting than A Separate Peace, but disappointingly lacking in queer coding. Well, mostly Chip talked, and I listened, because I didn’t really get Catcher in the Rye. I wish we could have read fantasy or science fiction. Or at least something more recent.
“It’s not that bad,” Chip said. “At least he’s not shoving his friend out of a tree.”
“There is that.”
Chip’s arm lay on the table pressed against mine. I shifted over to give him more space.
“How’s your Algebra II coming?”
“What’s the square root of terrible?”
“Ouch. Come on, show me what you got.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to help.”
I studied my folded hands.
Chip put his left hand on top of them. Like that was a thing it was okay for guys to do.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Let me help. Please?”
“Okay.” I freed my hands and pulled out my laptop to show him our latest problem set.
* * *
With five minutes left in the second half of our game against the Willow Bluffs High School Trojans—seriously, their fight song was “Roll on, roll on, Trojans,” the sort of innuendo that constituted psychological warfare against teenaged guys—we had kept the score tied, 1–1.
The Willow Bluffs High School Trojans fought hard.
Coach Bentley pulled out Christian after he took a strike to the xiphoid process making this excellent save where he leaped across the width of the whole goal. He stopped the ball but he couldn’t catch his breath. She sent in Diego after that.
Diego was good, but he was no Christian. Not yet. And that meant Cooper and Bruno and I had to work twice as hard to fend off the Trojans’ number 7, who had the fastest feet I’d ever seen.
The Trojans kept pushing us deeper and deeper into our side. I snagged the ball and passed it up to Chip, who only got two steps before he had to pass it back to Jonny Without an H to keep it from being stolen.
From the stands, Dad kept shouting “Defense! Defense!” like we weren’t already doing that. But he cheered every time we got the ball moving forward again. He’d managed to bring Grandma and Oma with him too, though they were far more reserved: A few polite claps were the most enthusiastic response the Chapel Hill Chargers managed to elicit. I thought Oma might have whistled, once, when we scored our goal in the first half, but that was it.
Jonny Without an H managed to get the ball forward to Jaden, which took the pressure off us long enough for me to wipe my face with the collar of my jersey. I ran my hands through my hair and shook the sweat off in the grass. I’d gotten my haircut touched up over the weekend, and my fade was crisp and smooth again.
Across the field, Nick and Jaden exchanged the ball, zigzagging around the Trojans’ defenders. At the last second, Jaden passed up to Chip, who went for the goal.
He would have made it too, if their goalie hadn’t been like six foot seven, with ridiculous noodle arms that could catch things at the most impossible angles.
He lobbed the ball back toward us. Chip shook his head and changed direction, headed back toward midfield.
The Trojans passed back and forth, back and forth. They