Short Stories - Chapter 10: Chapter 10

"Why is everyone flipping out over this new guy, anyways?" I thought aloud as I passed yet another pair of girls whispering about this Isaac kid. We were only two periods into the day, and I'd already heard his name at least six times without having seen him once.
"He's, like, super hot," Callie told me; her eyes turned dreamy just at the mention.
I scoffed. "Of course that's why." What other reason would swarms of hormonal teenage girls have? "He can't be that hot."
"Oh, hun," she shook her head. "The boy is, like, six foot four. His hair is literal perfection. Jawline could cut through steel—or my ovaries. And god would I love to see what's under that shirt of his. He's, like, the good kind of muscular. Plus, from what I hear he's really nice."
Raising an eyebrow, I asked, "Is there a bad kind of muscular?"
"There's a bad kind of everything."
I rolled my eyes, turning to open my locker. "Well I'm tall," I pointed out. "I have nice hair and good bone structure. And I work out. Why aren't girls perpetually talking about me?"
Callie leaned against the locker next to mine. "Because you're a peasant," she decided. I pondered this for a moment, then nodded.
"Fair enough."
As it turned out, I didn't have to wait long to see what all of the buzz was about. I was sat in third period when, just seconds before the bell rang, a new face appeared in the doorway.
He really did have awesome hair. Dark, short on the sides, longer and curly on the top. And all soft and shiny looking. It was kind of obnoxious, how good it looked.
Several heads turned toward him curiously, but it was my eyes that he met. I smiled, and he smiled back, and I guess the gesture told him that I was friendly enough, because he chose to take the seat next to mine out of several available spots.
He didn't say anything, and neither did I, and the class begin as unceremoniously as ever. Mrs. Pragsburg began talking in her lull-you-to-sleep voice about net export effect.
I noticed over the course of the class that Isaac kept tapping his foot against the floor and drumming his fingers on his desk.
"You nervous?" I asked him, keeping my voice low so Pragsburg wouldn't go bat-shit-hag on me.
He turned to look at me, shrugging his shoulders. "Tends to happen when you switch schools halfway through the year, yeah."
I couldn't tell if he was being snarky or not. "Well I don't think you need to be. Everyone—every girl—is talking about you, and not in a bad way."
"I feel like that's not much better," he admitted.
"Shy type?" I guessed.
He pursed his lips. "Not really. I just don't love heaps of attention. . . which is kind of the same thing, isn't it?" He said sheepishly.
"No," I shook my head; I knew what he meant. "There's a difference. I'm—"
"Quiet!" Mrs. Pragsburg snapped, fixing me with a heated glare. I shut my mouth and smiled awkwardly at her.
As soon as she went back to her lesson, I turned to Isaac again. "Notice she only looked at me," I whispered. "That lady's had it out for me all year for no reason. I mean, look at me. I'm a goddamn angel."
Isaac chuckled. "Somehow I find that hard to believe."
"Well believe it," I smirked.
"So what's your name, angel?" He asked, a small grin on his face.
"Ryan!" Mrs. Pragsburg hissed, her wrinkled face creasing even further in aggravation. "Either stop disrupting my class or leave!"
When she returned to scrawling violently across the whiteboard, I turned to Isaac with wide eyes. 'Wasn't even me,' I mouthed. He laughed softly, biting down on his lip, and I had to admit, I understood what Callie was talking about.
I half expected Isaac's whole I-don't-like-attention bit to turn to bullshit as soon as he was offered the possibility of popularity. He could have easily fit in with the kids at the top of the food chain—people like Luke Freeman, Alyssa Hartsone, and Calum Berkeley. And as the new kid, it would make sense that he'd want to.
By the time his term at Westview High had reached the end of its first week, however, he'd settled into a group that hung around the middle of the pack; he made friends with Lauren Mosk and Darren what's-his-last-name and the one Filipino kid from my Spanish class.
Guess I was wrong.
Monday marked the first day of basketball tryouts. I didn't even realize that Isaac was there until we'd all left the locker room and trickled into the gym. Coach Nars was reading out the names of people who had handed in their physicals, and I turned when he nudged my shoulder.
"Oh, hey," I greeted with a smile. "I didn't know you were trying out."
I wouldn't say Isaac and I were friends. We had two classes together, and he was that person I talked to because we sat next to each other, but we weren't at the say-hi-when-we-pass-in-the-halls level yet. I wouldn't mind if we were, though. He seemed like a pretty cool guy.
Coach called Calum Berkeley's name, and I rolled my eyes. "I hate that guy," I grumbled. Isaac looked like he hadn't been expecting that, and I glanced at him in question. "Why do you look so surprised?"
He shrugged. "I kinda thought you'd be friends with him," he admitted. I scoffed.
"What sort of bad orange juice made you think that?" I asked, and he chuckled.
"I don't know, you kind of look the part."
"You telling me I look like a douchebag?" I said, pretending to be offended.
"No," he laughed. "But you do kind of have the whole jock aesthetic going on, and usually guys that look like you and Calum go together."
"So," I mused, smirking playfully. "You're saying I seem like I'd be friends with him because I'm . . . hot."
Isaac snorted. "If that's how you wanna interpret it."
It most certainly was, but I wouldn't say that out loud. "Well what about you?" I asked instead. "You have the jock aesthetic too. Shouldn't you and Calum be friends?"
He scrunched up his nose. "God, no," he said.
"Why not?"
"You said it yourself," he grinned. "That guy's a dick. And that's coming from someone who's been at this school for six days."
Then his name was called, and he left to join the growing group of boys that wouldn't end up with ten extra laps to run.
The first day of tryouts always involved lots of indoor conditioning—running, exercising, more running, more exercising. I was used to it, having been on the team for three years. So were guys like Calum. But a lot of boys didn't know what would hit them, and those who fell behind were sent right back to the locker room. Their high school basketball careers were over, at least for this year.
Isaac wasn't one of those unfortunate boys. As a matter of fact, he handled the strenuous work really well. He didn't seem to get tired.
He ran alongside me during the laps, and he talked to me as if it was nothing at all. He wasn't even wearing shorts—instead he wore joggers, and I could only imagine how hot he must feel. If it wasn't for the slight pant I could hear in his voice, I'd have to seriously consider the possibility of him being a Martian.
I noticed, though, that he was a loud runner. His feet pounded heavily against the gym floor. Maybe that was a sign that this wasn't as easy for him as he made it seem. Or maybe he was secretly a robot.
That would actually make so much sense.
Day two, we played actual basketball, and Isaac showed again that he knew what he was doing.
"Great job out there, man," I panted, pressing my water bottle to my lips, as we walked together toward the locker rooms. He smiled gratefully.
"Right back at you," he said. "And thanks. I've gotta admit, though, I'm pretty nervous."
"About getting cut?" I asked, and he nodded. "Don't be. You're on the team."
His face lit up. "How do you know?"
"Because I know Coach." I said. "Believe me—you're golden. Calum better watch out, because you just might replace him as our starting small forward."
He blushed. "You think so? I wasn't sure, because usually I play center—"
"Because you're tall?"
"Because I'm tall," he nodded. "I thought I would crash and burn when Nars told me to play small forward."
"Well, you didn't," I promised.
Day three was always the second phase of endurance tryouts, and each year it took place outside in a setting very different from the gym.
"You're going to want to trade in the joggers for a day," I said to Isaac as I washed my hands in the bathroom—he'd just come from a stall, and this was the second time that I noticed he chose to change in here instead of with everyone else by the lockers themselves.
He faltered. "Um, that's okay," he said, scratching the back of his neck.
"No, seriously," I insisted, because I knew he would regret it if he didn't listen. "I know how day three goes. We're about to spend half of tryouts knee-, maybe hip-deep in a muddy lake. A wash won't ease the damage, and nothing Adidas comes cheap."
"Oh," he said softly, glancing down at his legs.
"You got some kind of separation anxiety?" I teased to lighten the mood. He chuckled, but I could hear that the sound was forced. "You'll have to lose them sooner or later, bud. This is basketball. I suggest sooner rather than later. If you don't have shorts, I can lend you a pair from my locker—"
"No," he shook his head. "I have some See you on the court."
He turned and disappeared back into the stall before I could say anything else.
I went back to my own gym bag—I hadn't even started changing yet—and pulled my shirt off over my head. By the time I was dressed and ready, the locker rooms had begun to clear out, and Isaac was still in the bathroom.
I decided to sit on a bench and wait for him so he wouldn't have to walk to the gym by himself like a loser. Minutes passed, however, and soon enough, I was alone. Isaac was either taking a shit, stuck inside of his shirt, or dead.
I ventured nearer to the bathroom and called out his name.
"I'm coming!"
But he didn't come—or maybe that was just my impatience getting to me—so I figured it was time to drag him out of there if I had to. I stepped into the doorway of the bathroom right as he was making to leave.
It took me approximately half a second to realize why he'd been so adamant about wearing his joggers.
The top half of his body was as expected. Nothing had changed there. But from the waist down, he wasn't quite as typical as he came across.
On his left side, his leg was as you'd imagine it to be—long, tanned, muscular, etcetera. But on his right side, his leg was, well . . .
Missing.
Beginning on his thigh, somewhere underneath his shorts, was a prosthetic—really cool-looking—leg.
I realized that I was staring and mentally smacked myself, because surely the entire reason he'd been covering up was to avoid stares.
"You hid that pretty well," I said with a grin, hoping my casual demeanor would convey that it didn't make a difference to me that he had an epic robot leg.
He returned my smile, and I think I got it. "You learn a lot in ten years."
So he'd been missing his leg since he was what, eight?
"Well I hate to break it to ya," I said. "But we're about to get reamed by Coach if we don't hurry up, and I am totally willing to throw you under the bus to save my ass, so . . ."
"That's ironic," he said, stepping past me with a dry laugh, "Because I lost it in a bus accident."
I froze. Of course I would manage to say something insensitive when I was trying to be sensitive. Of-fucking-course.
He turned back to me, his eyes twinkling in amusement when he saw the guilt written all over my expression. "I'm just messing around," he said, and I felt waves stress leave my shoulders, replaced by relief.
"So it wasn't a bus crash?"
"Oh, it was," he said, and I stared after him, dumbfounded, as he continued on his way out, only remembering to hurry after him when he'd pushed open the door and turned to me expectantly. "You coming?"
"Uh, uh-huh," was my eloquent response.
Unfortunately, not everyone got the don't-make-a-big-deal memo. When Isaac and I joined everyone else in the gym, eyes turned wide and a murmur arose among the boys. The only person who wasn't surprised was Coach Nars.
Isaac pretended not to notice and stepped to the back of group. I followed him, knowing exactly what he was doing—hiding.
But then Calum Berkeley turned around. "So, cyborg, you're fake inside and out, huh?"
I half expected Isaac to make some clever comeback and make Calum look like an idiot—he seemed like the type. But he just stared ahead without saying a word.
That was the start of something awful.
On the last day of tryouts on Thursday, then again on the first day of practice on Monday, Calum made a routine out of teasing Isaac ceaselessly about his leg. His friend Luke joined in, too, and so did some other boys on the team. True, most of the guys liked Isaac and were nice to him, but those who spoke the loudest were always the easiest to hear.
And they were loud, alright. Loud and mean. Isaac took the verbal blows with a shield of stoicism, but I had a feeling he was hurt, even if he didn't want to show it.
I, for one, grew more impressed with Isaac each time I saw him on the court. He managed to do all that with one real leg. I'd seen athletes with prosthetics before, on TV and in magazines and such. They had a certain type of leg—one that made a sort of crescent-moon shape at the foot. Isaac didn't even have that kind.
He was an above-the-knee amputee with a leg that wasn't really made for running. And he still made half the team look like beginners.
How people could see him as less for something that only highlighted how strong he was, I couldn't begin to understand.
"You should stand up to those guys," I told him as we walked together to the parking lot on Wednesday.
Isaac shrugged. "What's the point? It's not like they'll listen."
"Maybe talk to Coach about it," I suggested, but he just scoffed.
"She's seen it," he said. "If she had any intention of doing something about it, she would've already."
I wished I could argue, but he was right. Nars was more likely to laugh and tell him to suck it up than to reach out a helping hand.
"You can't just let them pick on you," I insisted. "It's straight-up bullying."
"I've been going to schools like this all my life," he said as we reached his old car. He leaned against the door. "There's a strict no-whining-about-bullying policy."
Again, he was right. We went to a shit school in a shit town at the middle of a shit district. The adults here didn't give two fucks about what happened to the students, and the students didn't give half a fuck about what happened to their fellows. One campus, two thousand bystanders.
"Besides," he sighed, "those pricks will be working for me some day. I mean, Robot-Boy? Cyborg? They're hardly creative. Believe me, I've heard worse."
He opened the door and sat down in the driver's seat. "Thank you for caring," he said. "But you don't have to."
Right again, I thought as he pulled out of his spot. I hardly knew the guy enough to be telling him how to handle his problems. But I couldn't stand watching him get mistreated for something that I was sure had caused him enough pain throughout his life on its own. I hated being the only person willing to tell Calum and his goons to back off or grow up.
Thursday was different.
It was the first scrimmage of the season. Three teams, five players each; two teams played at a time, and the third was rotated in every twenty minutes or so. The team captains: Calum, Luke, and me.
"You're my SF," I said to Isaac with a grin, and he smiled back excitedly.
Ten minutes in, I knew Coach had made a smart choice in having him play small forward during tryouts. He was a natural, and he gave Calum—the small forward for his team—a run for his money.
Of course, I'd known Calum wouldn't be pleased about that. He didn't take well to competition.
I just didn't think he'd go as far as to swipe his foot harshly underneath Isaac's prosthetic leg when they got close enough, sending him crashing painfully to the floor. Then he continued on, the ball now in his possession, stepping on Isaac's hand in the process.
"Are you kidding?" I exclaimed incredulously at Coach. I started moving to help, but Isaac was already pushing himself to his feet, wincing as he put pressure on the hand that had been stepped on. "That was literally the most obvious foul in the history of basketball."
She shrugged. "It's just the nature of the sport, Matthews," she said.
"Dude," one of my teammates said, glaring at me. "Focus, would you?"
I glanced around me to see Calum's team high-fiving him as the ball fell right through the net. Meanwhile, Isaac was wiping at his mouth, and the back of his hand came up smeared with red.
"Hey Coach, can I go to the locker room really quick?" He asked. "I think I busted my lip."
She nodded dismissively, and he jogged off. I was tempted to go after him, but I knew she wouldn't let me, and even if she would, I was pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate it.
Calum laughed as Isaac disappeared. "C-3PO couldn't handle one little fall, huh?"
That wasn't the end of it. Calum made it a point to be extra rough with Isaac for the rest of practice when our teams went head-to-head, and Luke did the same when it was his turn. I was sure Isaac would have a series of bruises to show for it.
They took their problems off the court, too. When we got into the locker room, Calum pushed him so hard into a locker, the sound was loud enough to hurt my ears.
"Okay," I said seriously as he pulled his shirt off—he'd stopped changing in the bathroom since his little secret was revealed. "You've gotta talk to Coach."
"Coach doesn't care."
"We can make her care," I said. "I know I can get her to listen."
He smiled tightly and pulled a hoodie over his head. "I know you want to help. That's really cool of you. But I've been around the block with guys like Luke and Calum. There's a reason I wanted to keep my leg under wraps at least until tryouts were over. I wanted everyone to know I made the team for being good, not for having a problem. I've got to try twice as hard to prove that I deserve to be here as everyone else. And if you treat me like I'm defenseless, they will, too. They'll eat it up."
Which made me feel pretty guilty, so I gave up, though a stubborn part of me wanted to argue that he wasn't doing much to defend himself. "So what's the game plan?" I asked him instead.
"Grin and bear it," he said, smiling sadly.
I couldn't say I was a fan of his game-plan. "And if it gets worse?"
"Grin harder."
"Hey," I leaned over in macroeconomics, getting Isaac's attention. "Come to the chorus room after school today." Fridays were the one day a week we didn't have practice.
He nodded. "Okay. Why?"
"There's this music club type thing," I explained. The art funding at our school was absolute shit. Well, everything at our school that wasn't related to athletics was shit, but the music programs were especially shit. The only class we had that was even related to music was our ass-stain of a chorus. No orchestra, no band, no guitar, no keyboard. So there was a nameless club devoted to music that met every Friday in the chorus room.
Fridays after school were my favorite part of the week. Because the music club wasn't just any other club, or a team like basketball—where everyone worked together because they had to. It was a community, thirty students strong, and in that chorus room, everybody knew everybody. It was a place of creative license, where a kid could socialize or show off or observe others doing what they loved.
"It's pretty much just an hour-long jam session, if you're interested. I can lend you my guitar, and you can show me what you can do."
Isaac cocked his head, his lips quirking up in a small smile. "How'd you know I play guitar?"
Smirking, I said, "I didn't. But now I do, so you have to come."
"Mr. Matthews!" Mrs. Pragsburg hissed, and I shut up. Isaac pressed his knuckles against his lips to muffle a laugh, then turned to me and mouthed the words, I'll be there.
"How do I look?" I asked. Callie gave me a scrupulous best friend inspection, reaching up to adjust my beanie.
"Blonde and beautiful as usual," she said, pushing herself up next to me on the black grand piano. It was one of two nice instruments the school had—the other being our drum set—and I had unspoken reign over it. "Why?"
I wasn't really listening, though, because Isaac had just stepped into the room. She followed my gaze, a smirk spreading over her lips. "Never mind," she giggled. "I think I know why."
I rolled my eyes. "That is not why," I said. "I just want to look nice, you witch."
"Hey, Matthews," Isaac grinned, coming to stand in front of me. Now that I—along with the majority of the student body, thanks to high school's typical instant gossip network—knew about his leg, I could spot slight differences between how his jeans fit from the thigh-down on his right and left sides. It wasn't something anyone would ever notice if they weren't looking for it, though. "So, how does this work?" he asked me.
"Like this," I said, lifting my guitar from my lap and handing it to him. Then I hopped off of the piano and stood on its bench so that I could look down at everyone around me. Cupping my hands around my mouth unnecessarily, I called out, "Gather, children!" earning the attention of the majority of the kids around us.
"Today, I would like to inaugurate the newest maybe-member of whatever the hell this weekly-shit-show is. Most of you probably know him, because nobody can shut the fuck up about him even though it's been three goddamn weeks." By now, everyone in the room was listening, and most had inched closer, laughing and smiling welcomingly at Isaac.
The display wasn't over, though. If three and a half years of crappy theater classes had taught me anything, it was how to be a dramatic little bitch and put on a show. "Please, give your attention to Mister . . ."
The pause had initially been for dramatic effect, but I quickly realized that I didn't actually know Isaac's last name. He could clearly tell and seemed amused, because he was chuckling as he leaned over and whispered the name Bernstein in my ear.
"Are you Jewish?" I whispered back, because Isaac Bernstein was the most Jewish name I'd ever heard.
"Yup."
"Cool." Then I raised my voice again. "Mister Isaac Bernstein!" I exclaimed. Students cheered welcomingly, and I caught Isaac blushing just a bit. I sat down on the bench and turned to him. "Now, pick a song. If I know it, we play it."
He slung the guitar strap over his shoulder, looking startled and intimidated like a deer in headlights. "Like, now?"
"It's club tradition," Callie told him. "New members gotta show off."
He glanced around at his peers. I almost felt bad for putting him on the spot, but then his gaze steeled over in that quiet confidence he always seemed to have. "Do you know the song Lucky, by Jason Mraz?"
Callie pressed her hands against her heart and leaned back with a dreamy sigh. "So sweet."
"Sure do," I grinned. "Nice choice. Do you sing?"
His demeanor faltered. "I, uh, no, er—"
"You're gonna sing this with me," I decided, because only people who could sing got flustered when asked if they could sing. I could see nervousness in his eyes at the idea. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll probably fuck up before you do. And we'll sing a short version—just up to the first chorus."
Before he could argue, I pressed my fingers to the keys and began playing. Everyone around us got quiet; it was showtime. Anything he wanted to say would have to wait.
"Do you hear me?" I sang softly. "I'm talking to you. Across the water; across the deep blue ocean; under the open sky, oh my, baby I'm trying."
Isaac played along gently on my guitar. "Boy I hear you," he sang when I turned my gaze to him expectantly. "In my dreams. I feel your whisper across the sea. Keep you with me in my heart. You make it easier when life gets hard."
Of course he had a beautiful fucking voice. 'I, uh, no, er,' my ass.
"I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend," we harmonized for the chorus, and Callie made a dramatic display of swooning. "Lucky to have been where I have been. Lucky to be coming home again."
I closed my mouth and let Isaac hum the end alone. The last guitar chord tapered out, and he looked down at me with a smile as the rest of the club clapped around us.
"Wig," Callie breathed, "Snatched."
Isaac was still looking at me, and I was stilling looking right back at him. For the first time, it caught my attention that his eyes were light gray in color, darker around the rims. Which was really cool, because gray eyes were something I'd always read about but never seen.
I smiled, too. And yeah, I might've felt a little something. But then Harper Davis stood from where she'd been sat on the floor, ukulele in hand, and announced that she had been working on something she wanted to show us. Isaac turned his attention to her, and the moment—if you could call it that—was over.
That was the start of something awesome.