More giggles. A few other gymnasts now ran over, while the blusher was turning red enough to make me wonder if they had a defibrillator.
“Okay, girls, clear the way, please,” I heard a voice say, and then the assembled ogling crowd was parting to let a woman with short, spiky blonde hair, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, come through. She had a whistle around her neck, but even without it you would have known she was in charge. She pushed open the door from the gym and began to walk toward us, a couple of the girls spilling out behind her. “Well, if it isn’t our favorite pizza guy, triggering the usual hormone rush.”
Mac, clearly uncomfortable, put the last pizza on the counter. “Big order today.”
“Scrimmage meet with Beam Dreams,” the woman told him, stopping in front of us. She put her hands on her hips, her posture perfect. I stood up straighter. “And who’s this?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” one of the girls called out. More giggles.
“Employee in training, actually,” I said to the coach. “Just started.”
“About time he had some help,” she replied. “Let me get some money for you guys.”
As she disappeared into a back office, the girls were still at the window, clearly discussing us. I turned my back, then said, “It’s always like this?”
“No,” he said, so curtly that I immediately knew it was.
The coach returned, giving Mac a tip and a thank-you, and we headed for the exit. As he pushed open the door for me, a chorus of voices rose up behind us
“Good-BYE, Mac!” This time, the giggles were thunderous.
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh as we walked to the truck. I could so remember that feeling as a tween, when just being in proximity to a good-looking older boy could make you feel like you might explode. If all you knew was going crazy over someone famous on TV, like Logan Oxford, meeting the real-life equivalent was almost too much to take.
Mac started the truck and we backed out, still not talking. Finally he said, “It’s the only time I wish we actually did have another driver. When I see an order come in from here.”
“You’re pretty popular,” I agreed. From his expression, this was not the adjective he would have chosen. “What? Some people would be flattered to be so admired.”
“Would you?”
I thought about it for a second. “Probably not, actually.”
He nodded, as if this was what he’d thought I would say.
“But I’m kind of used to being invisible,” I continued. “So any kind of attention makes me nervous.”
This was something I thought a lot but had never said aloud. It was the first time, but far from the last, that I understood being with Mac had this particular effect on me. Before I could regroup, he spoke.
“You? Invisible?” He glanced at me, then turned on his blinker. “Seriously?”
“What?” I asked.
“I just . . . I never would have thought of you that way, is all.”
As he said this, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror and wondered how, exactly, I did appear to him. “Well,” I said, “you don’t know my brother.”
We were at a light now, slowing to a stop. “Big personality, huh?”
I looked out the window, this time making a point not to see my own face. “He just . . . When he’s around, he fills the view. You can’t look anywhere else. I feel that way about him, too.”
“Sometimes it’s preferable to not be seen, though,” he said. “Before I lost the weight, people either stared or made a concentrated effort not to look at me. I preferred the second option. Still do.”
I thought of all those girls at the gym window watching him. How strange it must be to go from looking one way to such a vastly different other. For the attention to change and still not feel better. Maybe the invisible place wasn’t all bad, all the time.
“I think,” I said, “that the best would be somewhere in between. You know, to be acknowledged without feeling targeted.”
“Yeah,” he said as the light changed. “I’d take that.”
A car pulled suddenly in front of us, and Mac hit the horn. The lady behind the wheel shot us the finger. Nice.
“I still can’t believe that was you in the pictures I saw,” I said. “Did you really just lose the weight with diet and exercise?”
“A strict diet,” he said. “You tried those Kwackers. They were my dessert. And lots of exercise.”
“Like wandering in the woods.”
He shot me a look, then smiled, stretching his fingers over the wheel. “It was a free workout and right outside the back door. No excuses. Whenever I had time, I just went into the woods. I brought my GPS and tracked the route, so I knew how far I’d gone.”
I thought of the map I’d seen on his bedroom wall, the pencil marks. Tracing his way, out and back. “And you found the carousel.”
“That was a good day. I just rounded a corner, and there it was. For a long time I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even Layla. But eventually, it was too good a secret to keep.”