I put my hands up. Too late. The pain in my face knocked the wind out of me. The football glanced against my left hand as it ricocheted off my nose, and I adjusted, thrusting my hands out away from my body.
There was the ball, against my fingertips. I juggled it until it was cradled in my hands, and then I closed them in, brought my arms into my chest, and began running.
“He only got him with one hand!” I heard Steve yell, and I sped up, scurrying toward the other team’s end zone. I knew once I got going, Robinson wasn’t going to catch me.
“Touchdown!” Steve yelled. I spiked the ball, like I’d seen football players do on TV and like I’d seen some of the other guys do. Then I did a little dance, because you gotta dance when you get into the end zone. Everyone knows that. I shrugged from side to side, lifting my shoulders rhythmically as I moved back and forth.
“Kid’s got moves!” said Steve, coming over to slap me on the back. I turned toward him to say something, and that’s when I felt the blood.
“Oh, shit!” Steve said, and the other guys on the team ran over.
“Looks bad,” Bryce said.
“I’m fine,” I said. It didn’t really feel fine, but I wasn’t in the mood to have my celebration cut short, even for a medical emergency.
Ben grabbed my shoulder. “We should get you to the infirmary. Could be broken.”
“Nah,” I said, pulling away. “This thing bleeds if you look at it funny. I’m cool.”
He looked me in the eye. His eyes were a translucent blue. He looked kind. I didn’t want to look away. I realized that not being the gay kid here allowed me more access. I wasn’t supposed to hold eye contact with jocks back in Boulder. It was understood: They accepted me, and I didn’t freak them out with eye contact. Here, no such contract had been made. Ben blinked at me, I blinked back, and when it began to feel a bit too close, I averted my eyes.
That turned out to be the winning touchdown. I played the final set of downs with blood dripping from my nose, and when the game was over, Bryce came over and handed me some paper towels.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No worries,” he said, with a lack of inflection, and he and Ben walked off, all holier-than-thou, leaving me with Steve and Zack.
We walked back to the dorms together, and they asked if I wanted to have dinner with them later. “Hell, yeah,” I said. And I went back up to the room with a bloodied nose and a euphoric feeling in my chest that was entirely new to me.
Wow, I thought, climbing two steps at a time up to my dorm room, keeping pressure on my nose with the paper towel. Here I was, two hours into my Natick adventure, and I was already in that entirely new skin I had fantasized about. Jock Rafe.
It felt freaking fantastic, to be honest.
Nothing could throw a wrench into this new plan, I thought, and then I cursed myself, because anyone who has ever watched a single Hollywood movie knows that thoughts like that lead to, well, big-ass wrenches.
Enter big-ass wrench number one.
The door to my room was open, and I peered in. Inside, a short, pudgy guy in a black T-shirt was unpacking the suitcases that had been in the middle of the room. Lying where they had been amidst the wreckage — cereal boxes, soda cans — was a skinny kid with spiky hair. He was facing away from me, and his hands were behind his head like he was doing sit-ups. I pressed the paper towel to my nose and then took a look at it. Still pretty bloody.
“So let me ask you,” the spiky-haired guy said. “Let’s say there was a gang of six-year-olds roaming the streets. And they attacked you. How many of them could you fight off?”
I stood in the doorway, as yet undetected. Aside from the disaster area that was the middle of the room, I was pleased to notice that at least things were being put away. A pile of what appeared to be nothing but black T-shirts on the short kid’s bed was getting pretty high. He opened a drawer on the dresser next to his bed and started stuffing it with shirts.
“Do they have weapons?” he asked.
“No, just fists,” Spiky Hair replied.
“Then probably four of them. Two of