I yelled “DAVIS!”
Ronni Davis was my first real best friend, long before I ever met Jamie. We met in sixth grade, when I finally made the Surf Club’s premier soccer team after spending two years stuck on the Triple-A team. Ronni had made the premier team from the start, way back in fourth grade, and when I moved up, she was the only girl who said hi to me on the first day of practice. Everyone else ignored me, laughing too loud at their dumb, private middle-school jokes, throwing me and my floppy boy’s bowl cut the occasional skeptical glare. After a week or two I was one of them, having proved I was good enough to be there, but at the time, it felt like earning their approval took years. If it hadn’t been for Ronni, I might have quit, or begged to be put back on my old team, where at least I was the very best player on the medium-good team. We were inseparable, until I met Jamie. Jamie eclipsed everyone and everything, for me.
Oh God, I thought. Keep it together, Ryan.
As I reached our lunch table, I dipped into a subservient bow before Ronni. “My liege.”
Ronni shook her head. “You are so corny.”
At the end of our junior year, Ronni had been elected captain of our high school team over me, and I was devastated. I’d expected her to be chosen as club captain, which she also was, but I’d hoped somehow that I could be captain at school. Being captain didn’t mean much of anything as far as college recruiters cared, but I wanted it anyway. I had never been the head of anything. I wanted the word captain printed below my name in the yearbook as a matter of public record: I meant something.
Now all my short-term hopes and dreams rested on being named the United Soccer Coaches National Player of the Year, or Gatorade Player of the Year, like Ashlyn Harris, UNC alum and butch style icon, who earned both when she was in high school.
In the end, of course, I wanted to be Megan Rapinoe: World Cup champion, Golden Boot and Golden Ball winner, the best and most beloved player in the world. I wanted my name on jerseys and my face on girls’ walls. There was still time.
In any case, I got over the lost election after a week or so. For one thing, it quickly became obvious that Ronni would be a better captain than I ever could have been. Unlike me, she wasn’t afraid of our coach, even though Coach was objectively terrifying. At our last few school-season games as juniors, when she was captain-elect if not yet captain in practice, she stood next to Coach on the sidelines on the rare occasion she wasn’t playing, and together they assessed the rest of us with their arms crossed. Ronni looked so grown-up and official, exactly in the right place. Besides, the captain couldn’t be everyone’s best friend, just like a boss could never be real friends with her employees. Free of the responsibility to critique my teammates when they messed up a play, I could instead be the one who cheered them up after.
I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite, hoping food would soothe the anxiety humming in my chest. Now that I was sitting down, I felt trapped—and paranoid. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cafeteria doors. Ronni smacked a hand on the table.
“I thought we agreed: no liverwurst!”
“It’s the first day of school!” I protested. “It’s a special occasion!”
Ronni made a face. “Fine, but I don’t want to smell that smell again before your birthday.”
“What about your birthday?” I countered, and it was at that moment that I saw Jamie out of the corner of my eye. She’d just walked in with Alexis. I swallowed fast, too fast, and tried to obscure my small coughing fit in the crook of my elbow.
“You okay?” said Jamie.
How dare you, I thought. Ronni clapped me on the back, which only made me cough more. So far, this was going extremely well.
“Do you need the Heimlich? I’m still certified