“I’ve heard that,” I said, opening the tailgate.
“It didn’t exist when I was a kid. I think they created it in a lab.”
I laughed. “You should come over our house. My mom makes a no-calorie, no-carb, soylent green casserole.” It was a reference to a science fiction movie I’d watched at his house once, where the food supply was all this weird green compound.
“Soylent green is people!” Tim said, throwing everything into the back. “Seriously, whatever you’re eating, it’s working.”
“Practice Tuesday?” I said.
“Same as usual.”
On Tuesday, Amanda showed up to help too.
She didn’t really pay attention to me. Tim explained that she was helping because one of the other coaches couldn’t come. Then he divided the kids up, and Amanda worked with the better kids while I helped the ones who were struggling. But she didn’t elaborately not pay attention to me either.
When she showed up Thursday, we had an actual conversation about which one of us should make the kids run sprints and whether certain kids were shirking their cleanup responsibilities, but still, I considered the dim possibility that she might, sometime in the not-too-distant future, unblock my phone. But I didn’t ask. Too soon.
And Saturday, when the Bluejays pulled off a surprise victory against the much stronger Cardinals, she actually high-fived me.
But then, she also high-fived Tim and Craig, the coach who hadn’t shown up all week.
So, whatever that meant.
“Hey, what happened to your little girlfriend?” Matt asked me one day.
I hadn’t seen much of Matt lately. He’d started college locally, but he’d joined a frat. So he pretty much only showed up at home to sleep, eat, and tell me how easy I had it.
I pretended not to hear him.
He paused the football game I was watching on TV. “Yeah, your friend, whatserface. The girl who whipped your ass in baseball. I haven’t seen her in, like, a month.”
It had been closer to five months. I tried to get the remote back from him. “I don’t know who whatserface is.”
“Sure you do. Whatserface. The annoying one. Amanda!” He held the remote up away from me, and since I was too lazy to get up, that worked. “What, did you have a fight with her?”
“Something like that. Can I watch the game now?”
“Spoiler alert: The Gators lose.” He still held up the remote. “Really? I was right? You had a fight with her?”
“Yeah, why do you care?”
“I dunno. I just got used to seeing her around here, I guess. What, did she get jealous of Sydnieeee?” He made his voice high-pitched and annoying when he said Sydnie’s name.
I stood and walked around, looking for the other remote. “Why would she be jealous of Sydnie?”
He looked at me like I was brain-damaged. “I don’t know. Because she’s totally in love with you.”
“She is not.”
“Yeah, she is. I always thought it was weird that she’d be into a toady-looking kid like you, but she was.”
“Right.”
“Yeah. She was always sticking up for you, telling me how much better you were than me.”
“That’s just her having eyes.” I found the remote, but now I didn’t use it.
“Yeah, but one time, after Dad left, she actually called me.”
“She called you?”
“Right? I didn’t even know any ninth graders had my phone number, but she got it, and she called, like with her voice. She sounded really nervous, but she said she hoped I’d be a little kinder to you. That was the word she used, kinder—because you were going through such a rough time.”
I put down the remote. That was so weird.
“I don’t have any friends I’d do that for,” Matt said. “I was so freaked out by it that I actually did try to be nicer—for about a week.”
“I do vaguely remember a week when you didn’t throw my clothes into the shower.”
“I’m the best.” He gave me a thumbs-up. “Anyway, that’s when I knew she was in love with you.”
“Okay, so if she’s so in love with me, why’d she rip me a new asshole when I kissed her?” I unpaused the TV. The Gators’ quarterback was in the process of getting sacked. I fast-forwarded through it.
Matt said, “You kissed her? Like out of the blue with no warning?”
“Yeah.” Hearing him say it like that, I could see why it was a bad idea.
“Dude, that only works in TV shows Mom likes, and not even always then.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
“If there’s anything I’ve learned in my long and storied history with girls, it’s that they want to think you really care, like you put some thought into making a move on them.”
“Okay.”
“Like when I asked Brittney to prom, I knew she was going to go with me, but you can’t act like you know. So I bought a couple bunches of roses from one of those old guys who sells flowers on the street. I pulled all the petals off one and made a trail going to her car. Then I left the other bouquet on her car with a note that said, ‘Will you go to prom with me?’ It’s what they call a romantic gesture.”