Waiting on the Sidelines Read online

  “Well, there was some debate. My dad started to go back to the list of girl names they kicked around months before. But my mom, well, she sort of started to get pissed off, yelling at my dad about how girls can do the same things boys can, and why isn’t their daughter good enough for a hall-of-famer’s name, blah blah blah. So when it came time to put it down for permanent record, they went for it. And voila – here I am!”

  We were finally at the classroom and Reed stopped to hold the door open for me, his stupid smile in full force now. As I walked through the rows of tables, I headed for the middle back, not turning to see which direction Reed had gone. I threw my backpack over one of the chairs and slid into the seat and was startled when I heard Reed’s backpack hit the floor next to me as he slid into the other seat at my table. I turned to face him, a bit puzzled by his action. He was shaking his head now and chuckling a bit to himself. My confusion must have been apparent on my face because he stopped abruptly and looked right into my eyes.

  “That is seriously the best name story I’ve ever heard. It’s actually kind of awesome. You’re name’s special…just… cool, you know what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” I said, completely taken aback. And before I could get myself into any embarrassing trouble, the teacher began to talk about his expectations for the school year.

  So much for the first day being a breeze. Our science class was starting off with a major project, and it would count for at least 20 percent of our grade. We were to work with a partner and build a model of a sustainable community along with a four-page paper explaining our design and how it would help our fake community survive. I was busy taking down notes on the project requirements when I heard my name called. I looked up quizzically, afraid I had missed a question from our teacher, when he finished his sentence with “…you’ll be working with Reed, ok?”

  I don’t know if I spoke or just stared wide-eyed. I felt Reed elbow the side of my arm and I looked over at him. He was just smiling and nodding. He almost looked excited to be my partner? I was good at these types of projects. Maybe he had heard about how smart I was and was looking for an easy pass. That was probably it. Great, I’ll be doing all of the work. Well, at least I know it will be done well and I’ll get a good grade, I thought.

  When the bell rang, I shoved my notebook back in my bag. Chewing on my pen, I threw my pack over my shoulder and was heading for the door when Reed caught me just before I left.

  “Hey, we need to swap numbers,” he said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. I began sweating immediately, knowing the awkward encounter about to come up. I didn’t have a cell phone. I was probably the only teenager left in Arizona not to have one, but, frankly, I didn’t really have a need… until now. And my dad was always ranting about the dangers of teens with cell phones and how they are a distraction.

  “What’s your number?” Reed asked. Swallowing, I rattled off our home phone number. Then he looked up at me, insinuating that he was ready to share his. “Want me to just call you now so you’ll have a record of my number and you can save it?” he said.

  Oh god.

  “Actually, I’m getting a new phone, so I don’t have one right now,” the words flew out of my mouth so quickly I hardly had time to register the lie I had just told, let alone come to grips with the massive persuasive argument I now needed to develop to talk my parents into buying a phone for me.

  “Oh, well…” Reed paused, rather unsure of what to say next. “Huh, well… how about this… I’ll call you at your house, that’s the number you gave, right? And then we can figure out when we want to start working on this thing and then just take it from there?”

  “Sounds good,” I said, both thankful that he seemed to not balk at my fib and sick at my further weakening from peer pressure.

  “OK, well, I’ll see you later,” he said as he headed to the quad for his next class.

  I just smiled as he walked away and then pretended to bend down to fix my shoelace. When I stood back up, he had blended in with the crowd and was surrounded by his friends.

  3. Project

  It was a Tuesday afternoon and I was heading to Reed’s for our first project session. School and volleyball practice flashed by in a blur. I vaguely recalled a quiz in algebra, which I suppose was a good sign for doing well. Rules of grammar in English, and science class was filled with a video on the relationship between plant life and oxygen. I am sure there was more depth to the video, but I spent 40 minutes pretending to intently watch and take notes, all too aware of my lab partner seated right next to me. From the corner of my eye I saw every doodle he made in the margin of his notebook. At one point, I thought he might have noticed my stealthy stare as he scribbled out a three-dimensional ‘HI’ that seemed to be daring me. But then he started to add wings and swirls and Nike Swooshes, so I was pretty sure it was just stream-of-conscious drawing.

  I had made the junior varsity volleyball team, so practice was fairly intense. I welcomed the two-hour distraction, and clearly put every ounce of myself into conditioning and drills. My dad originally wanted to just drop me off at Reed’s straight from practice, but I was thankfully able to talk him into taking me home to shower and change first. There was no way I was showing up at his house with a sweat-soaked MicNic Burger shirt and fuzzed out ponytail.

  I showered and changed in record time, threw on a pair of hip-hugging denim shorts, loose-fitting tank top and my trusty Converses and we were on our way. My dad was actually really excited to be dropping me off at the Johnson house. He said he always wanted to drive up the entire driveway. I remember him threatening to do it just for fun a few times last year, but my mom would always stop him. I didn’t think it was a big deal then, but I think I would just about die if he were to do it uninvited now.

  As we rounded the tall trees at the corner of the property and made our way through the main gates, I took the entire thing in. I didn’t know how big an acre was, but I knew Reed’s dad owned several. His house came into view, classic-style, two stories and a balcony at the front just above the main entrance. The garage to the right was open, showing off a gleaming classic Buick—a 1954 Skylark, according to my dad. I could tell he wanted to stop the car to get out and look at it, but thankfully he just let it idle and told me he’d be back by 6:30 to pick me up. I told him to call if we needed to leave earlier; he was surprisingly good about getting me a phone. I didn’t have a fancy plan and it was refurbished, but it would work.

  I waved my dad off as I stood in front of the door. For some reason I didn’t want the Oldsmobile behind me when Reed opened the door to let me in. But my dad wasn’t budging until he knew I was safely inside.

  I heard a dog barking after I rang the bell and I could roughly make out the form of someone coming to open the door through the frosted glass. My dad started to pull away and in my mind I thought maybe it was fast enough to not draw any attention to the rust marks on the bumper.

  Reed’s smile was greeting me instantly. “Welcome to Casa del Johnson!” he said, finding himself terribly clever. “Come on in. I made some space for us in the dining room so we can get started.”

  I followed him into the house, still not saying a word. He was wearing a well-worn grey t-shirt and loose-fitting jeans that were starting to tear at the feet. He slid across the wood floors in his socks, truly comfortable and not at all bothered by my presence. He pulled out a chair for me at the table and headed into the nearby kitchen, pulling a knit beanie from his head and tossing it on the counter. His hair, still a little wet from his after-practice shower I was guessing, curled a bit at the ends, flopping in random directions.

  He came back to the dining room with two Cokes and a bowl of chips. “Brain food,” he said.

  Finally able to get my mouth to work, I thought I should start by giving him my new phone number. I was able to win the phone debate with my parents to some extent, though I had to settle for a low-use, pay-as-you-go plan. “Hey, I got my new phone, if you want to take down the number,�
�� I said, trying to be as casual as possible. I was putting entirely too much thought into even the simplest of sentences. When we had to start seriously talking, I knew I was doomed.

  “Awesome. Just send me a text with it later tonight,” he said.

  “Can do,” I said, wincing at my squeaky clean, ‘you betcha’ response. Pull it together, Nolan. “So, I thought maybe we could just go through the project requirements and put together a plan that hit all of the requirements so we could sort of have a list of things to cross as we go. Sound good?”

  “Works for me,” Reed said, flipping open a notebook to write our list on. I was pleasantly surprised that he was taking such an active role in our project. I was sort of used to carrying the team when it came to group projects.

  “OK, first we need a model of our village. It has to include dwellings, food and water sources and be able to accommodate multiple families,” I read from the class worksheet. “We will also need a four-page paper describing our village and addressing our challenges and solutions to sustainability.”

  “Got it,” Reed said, scribbling the last bit of our list. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Well, I guess we should maybe draw a blueprint of our model and then next time we meet we can build it?”

  “I have the perfect thing,” he hopped up from the table and ran upstairs in an instant. I heard his feet pound upstairs as they crossed above me. A few minutes later, I heard them cross back and he appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a huge foam cardboard piece in his hand. It was an old Buick credit check sign on one side, but he flipped it over on the table and the back was completely white.

  “We can use this as our base,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Perfect,” I said, leaning over the table with a pencil in my hand. Realizing I hadn’t seen his father, Buck, yet. “Hey, where’s your dad anyhow?”

  “Oh, he’s never home this early. It’s just us,” he smirked, almost sorry for disappointing me, as if I had been hoping to meet his dad.

  I just smiled and shrugged turning back to my drawing, just in time to shield his view of my giant swallow. We were completely alone. My best friends dreamt of this situation. Both Sienna and Sarah had pretty steady boyfriends in junior high, and they had done their fair share of sneaking out to be with their boyfriends. But to be in Reed Johnson’s home, completely alone, just the two of us? Even if I still had my reservations about his character, my heart was still racing.

  I was so deep in my own imagination that I hadn’t noticed Reed answer his phone. I was jolted back to reality when he started laughing with whoever was on the other side. “Sorry, it’s Sean. I’ll just be a minute,” he whispered, walking to his living room. I heard parts of the conversation over the next few minutes as he was explaining what he was doing and who was at his house. “No, dude. It’s nothing like that – we’re lab partners, that’s all. … She’s cool, man. I swear. You two would actually get along.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was happy to hear him defend my coolness or offended by his categorization of me in the lab partner box. He was back in the dining room soon after. He sat back on one of the chairs, tilting it backwards some, chewing on the cap of a pen and watching me work while I pretended to be oblivious to his studying of my hands. I could tell he wanted to say something, but for some reason was quiet. Finally, I had to break the awkward silence.

  “Hey, is this what you were envisioning? Sorry, I just sort of started mapping the entire thing out,” I said, looking up and settling my gaze right at the pen cap bobbing up and down on his lip as he chewed.

  “Oh, no, this is great! Sorry… I was just trying not to stop your flow,” he stopped, and it seemed like he wanted to say more. Chewing a bit longer, he finally pulled the pen from his mouth and continued. “Sean and a few friends are going to stop by for a bit. They’ll just be hanging out in the living room, watching ESPN. We can keep working, they won’t interrupt.”

  “Sure, sounds good,” I said, closing my lips tightly and putting on the best ‘I’m fine with it’ smile I could. I wasn’t fine with it at all. The last time I was in the presence of the two of them, they were high-fiving over their description of how unattractive I was. Being trapped with them again was not high on my to do list. I decided to focus my energy on the project. Maybe, just maybe, I could completely finish the drawing and start actually building the model so I could avoid having to socialize with his friends.

  Reed was standing at the head of the table, watching me plot out urban farming squares when the doorbell rang. Without a word, he jogged over and opened it. I heard Sean first, the familiar ‘Boom’ that I knew was followed by a knuckle bump with Reed. Vomit was creeping up on me and I knew I was frowning. I heard a few more voices as the footsteps came around the corner and saw Reed whispering something in Sean’s ear, presumably reminding him that I was here.

  “Noles, what’s up man!” Sean said, holding a hand up for me to slap. Completely succumbing to the pressure of the situation, I did. As if I had always done that with him, and we had some sort of relationship. Truth be told, I had known Sean since seventh grade, but we never really talked. “Hey,” I said, smiling on the outside.

  Pretending, that’s what I was doing. I was disgusted at myself for it, but here I was doing it anyhow. Noles? Since when am I Noles?

  “This is Devin and Cole. They’re on varsity with me… juniors. They took the little freshman under their wing,” Reed said, laughing it off like he was embarrassed. As absurd as it was, Reed was the one taking the upper classmen under his wing. Though he was not quite 15, he came to Coolidge with such confidence. I know a lot of it came from his name and his father and his brother, but there was also a certain amount that was just his. He owned it, and he was a leader the instant he stepped foot on our campus.

  “Mind if we hit the fridge?” Devin, the biggest of the bunch, said. He was clearly a lineman or some type of defensive player. He was built like a college player. I heard the clanking of glass in the kitchen as the fridge door shut. Then I heard the distinct sound of bottle caps snapping. Curious, I rounded the table, pretending to need to work on the other side just to catch a view of what I suspected. All four boys were holding Heineken beers, leaning against the counter, one of them sitting on top of the kitchen island. It was clearly a regular activity, they seemed so comfortable and at home. I was far from 15, several months shy to be exact, and had yet to really kiss a boy, let alone drink a beer. My palms were sweating, I was so nervous at the situation. Work, busy yourself, Noles! I thought to myself, smirking at my silently said nickname.

  I heard the TV turn on and then the regular banter about the NFL and “great catches” ensued. I continued to circle the table, working, but also putting my ears at their best advantage. Just then, I heard my name. It was Sean speaking up, not quite a whisper but clearly low enough so I couldn’t hear, or so he thought.

  “Dude, what happened? She’s sort of cute now, huh? Weird, right?” he said.

  I was dizzy.

  “Hmm, you think so?” I heard Reed say.

  “Uh, yeah. I do,” Sean defended. I had been careful to wear my hair down during school, and I had even toyed with a little make up here and there just to feel a little more grown up.

  I heard footsteps coming my direction, so I quickly leaned on my elbows, staring intently on the drawing and the line of my ruler. They were all coming to sit in here with us. Each of them taking a chair and leaning around the table. Their conversation continuing while I busied myself drawing, looking up to react every so often, smiling, just so I didn’t appear to be rude or aloof. I heard Cole’s phone conversation with Tatum. My mind took in snippets of everything. Something about a party in the desert, Reed getting a ride with them. It was as if I was washing the windows on the outside of an exclusive club. I was getting a glimpse inside, but not fully participating.

  The time flew by, and I was startled when my phone rang. My home phone number popped up. My dad was coming to pick me up.
Pulling together our notes, the list and the colored pencils I had brought, I threw everything in my backpack and zipped it up.

  “Hey, Noles, we could totally take you home if you want to tell your pops,” said Cole. He was the quieter one of the group, a bit skinny, but tall enough to make his appearance fool you into believing he was an athlete. Noles, somehow that nickname was sticking.

  “No, that’s ok, I have some family things to do. But thanks!” I said, deep down knowing we didn’t have any family plans but that I didn’t really want this group pulling up to my gravel driveway after leaving the Johnson palace.

  Reed walked me to the door when we heard my dad pulling up, carrying my backpack for me in a sort of traditional gentleman’s way. “Hey, sorry I wasn’t much help today. It looks great though. How about we pick back up on Thursday?”

  “That should work. I’ll come by after practice again, OK?” I said, still reeling from the last two hours where I was alone with the it boy of my next four years, spent the afternoon listening to tales of underage drinking, all the while in the presence of underage drinking, and earning a nickname that, while I didn’t really like, I secretly was honored to be given.

  My dad asked mostly about the Johnson garage, curious if I got the full tour. I told him we pretty much just worked on the project the entire time, leaving out the part about Reed’s friends and their beer. I sat back in the seat, pulling my legs up from the hot edges of the seat. For once, not really embarrassed by my car or the home we were driving to, but rather impressed with the path my high school self seemed to be on.

  Thursday was pretty much a rerun of our first afternoon together at Reed’s house. Once again, Reed’s father wasn’t home. And once again, his friends came over and sat around the table while I worked on building miniature casitas, gardens and filtration stations out of modeling clay. I was more involved in the conversation now, adding in my opinion about the Cardinals chances this year (I knew a few things, but was mostly quoting bits I had read on USAToday.com and some of the sports blogs my brother always read).