Page 9 of Lovely War
The other one snorts. “Dude, what the fuck?” I don’t remember their names, after a day full of introductions. So far, they’re White Polo and Blue Monogrammed Vest.
A third person moves into the frame. It’s Ben. “Hey, guys, how’s it going? Who’s setting up for practice tomorrow?”
White Polo raises his hand.
“Who’s the new girl?” Blue Monogrammed Vest asks. “With this thing?” He gestures at the camera, oblivious to the fact that it’s recording.
White Polo has the answer. “New digital media producer.”
I should probably stop playing the video. The lighting and sound are fine. But instead I plug in my headphones and rest my chin on my fist, face too close to the screen.
“I saw her talking to Donna like they knew each other.”
“I heard her dad was Bauer’s high school coach.”
“Holy shit, bro, her dad was Ken Radford? No wonder she got this job.”
Ben says nothing. What the fuck? He has a cornucopia of facts to choose from to correct this ridiculousness. Yes, Dad was the winningest high school basketball coach in New Jersey state history. And yes, he was Eric’s coach. But these kids know nothing about Dad or me.
They don’t know about Dad’s dry sense of humor, or his patience, or the way he made his own snack mix when we watched games on TV, mixing up a separate batch for me because I like a higher proportion of pretzels to popcorn. And they don’t know that I invented this job. If these beer-me dipshits are longtime Ardwyn fans, they probably got hyped up on my videos when they were guzzling Go-Gurts in middle school.
“Someone said she used to work here. You know her?”
Finally Ben speaks. “She worked here a long time ago for a little while.”
“That’s a ringing endorsement. How cringeworthy is it going to be? Do I need to unfollow our Instagram account?”
I’d kill to see Ben’s face, but his back is to the camera. “That’s not the issue. But she doesn’t deserve to be here.” He pauses. “All I’m going to say is: Get used to it. We’re the best we’ve been in years. Everyone is trying to elbow their way in because of the hype. Hopping on the bandwagon.”
The weight of his words drags my jaw down until I’m gaping at the screen. I want to laugh but can’t find my breath. I rub my face with my hands and leave them there for a minute, pressing down from my eyebrows to my chin.
“I wish some of that hype translated into a spot in the preseason Top 25,” White Polo says.
“That’s meaningless,” Ben replies. “We’ll be ranked when it matters.”
“I’ve literally never heard you talk shit about anyone,” Blue Monogrammed Vest says. “She must be a total nightmare.”
I rewatch it three times. The first two times to make sure I understand Ben correctly. The third time serves no purpose other than to make my insides feel like they’ve been jammed into a pot of boiling water with the lid on.
Sitting still and stewing in these feelings seems unhealthy, so I busy myself with the bulletin board, unpinning yellowed game tickets, old rosters, and printouts of news articles about big wins. It doesn’t clear my head, but at least it gives me something to do with my hands.
This is worse than I thought this morning. What am I missing? I haven’t seen Ben since the fall of senior year, which is an absolute blur. I spent a significant portion of those months in a state of heavy intoxication. I wasn’t much better sober, trapped in a haze of preoccupation with the way my love life and job were falling to shreds around me. It’s possible I did something grudge-worthy, but nothing stands out in my memory.
My thoughts are interrupted by a giant man with a ginger-brown beard charging through the doorway and squealing, and I instantly feel lighter.
“Annie,” Eric sings, pulling me in for a hug. “That shit is so red. You look like the person a senator calls when they need help covering up a felony.”
I squeeze him back. It’s the latest iteration of a joke he’s been telling for over a decade, since we became friends in high school. Eric talking about clothes is like putting a sentence into a translation app, turning it into Hungarian, and then turning it back into English. You can kind of track,technically, where the sentiment came from, but overall it makes no sense.
After detaching myself from him, I smooth the lapel of my blazer. “Thanks, I think.”
He’s beaming and nearly bouncing around the room, roaming from wall to chair to window. “I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve been counting down the days. Honestly, I was afraid you were going to back out.”
“Nope. I’m in it to win it,” I say, with an anemic fist pump.
“I’m so happy. And you started on the wildest day. Did you hear what happened? Donna realized our director of operations, Kyle, used last year’s schedule to book all our travel for the first half of the season.”
I hadn’t heard, but it doesn’t surprise me that the guy who was unembarrassed to be caught hiding in a closet watching prank videos on his phone would screw up that badly. “That guy is the director of operations? Why? How? He doesn’t even seem capable of directing someone to the bathroom.”
