By being cool. By fitting in. By … becoming friends with Fonzie. Fuck if I know.
I gave Foster a weary “Hello” and then wandered over under a basketball hoop, trying to inconspicuously distance myself from him. I wanted to maintain my senior mystique, but it’s pretty hard to seem grown up and sophisticated when you’re wearing cotton briefs in a locker room full of girls with BITE ME butts.
Foster bounced along after me. “Hey, Dev, have you met everyone? Do you know everyone yet?”
I realized he was referring to the other freshmen.
“Uh … no.”
“You don’t talk to the girls in the locker room?”
“No.”
“Not even Gracie Holtzer? You haven’t met Gracie Holtzer?”
He gestured to what must’ve been the queen prostitot, a girl whose hair was so painstakingly flat-ironed that not one single twist of frizz dared leap off her chestnut mane. She tossed that silken hair back over her shoulder and smiled coyly at a band of freshboys standing nearby.
“Not even Gracie Holtzer,” I said, glancing now at Foster. He wasn’t looking at Gracie Holtzer the way the other boys were. They were all just shy of lighting themselves on fire to get her attention. Foster, however, was eyeing her like he eyed the wasp nest in the eaves of our back shed. It was a look of mingled curiosity and fear.
“Let’s circle up!” Mr. Sellers emerged from his office, clapping his hands and heading to the center of the floor. The other students made their way over and formed a large, lopsided circle around him, which I dutifully joined, Foster in tow.
The girls whispered loudly to each other while Mr. Sellers started talking to us about fall sports. I tried to pay attention for the sake of not having to rehash the latest Cosmo tips, but my attention was broken, ironically enough, when the whispers all at once ceased. I looked around the circle and realized that all eyes were on the door.
A very familiar frame stood there. Any student at Temple Sterling probably could’ve picked it out of a lineup, even without a bright red 25 emblazoned across the chest.
I thought back to the bathroom stalls—there under CELEBRATE TEMPLE STERLING’S OWN ALL-AMERICAN, under AN EXCITING AND UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITY, was the black-and-white image of this face.
I had never really seen Ezra Lynley close up. We had never had any classes together. It was always me in the bleachers and him on the field.
He wasn’t thick-necked and red-faced like some of the football guys, but he wasn’t scrawny, either. Strong enough to take a tackle, but light enough to run in that way he was famous for. And he had nice bones, as my mom would say. His jaw curved nicely, and his nose had this great line to it, but all in all, as the gym class and I stood shamelessly appraising him, I felt like his face left something to be desired. The right features had been assembled, but there was no shine to his eyes, and the spot on Cas’s mouth where a smile always seemed to lurk lay particularly slack on him.
After an awkward moment’s pause, Mr. Sellers sprung to life. “Ezra! Coach said you’d be joining us! Hurry up and get changed. We’re just getting started.”
Ezra gave Mr. Sellers a look that said he wasn’t about to hurry up for anyone. Twenty-five pairs of eyes watched him saunter off to the locker rooms. When I looked back at Mr. Sellers, he didn’t look aggravated by Ezra’s attitude in the least. In fact, as he caught my gaze, he gave me a sheepish, “Boys will be boys!” sort of smile.
I rolled my eyes.
Today’s activities, Mr. Sellers informed us, would begin with some warm-up exercises. Our first unit was football. So after learning the proper way to grip a football (a few of the guys exchanged knowing looks), we were supposed to get a partner and practice passing.
There was a mad dash for partners. Most of the girls grabbed their nearest friend, but a few of the PTs broke the boy-girl divide and giggled on over to chat up some freshboys.