Chapter 20
20
I talked to Umma earlier,” Will said, pinching his dirt-covered fingers together. “Seems like she’s this close to pulling one of her surprise visits, probably already has her bag packed.”
Will was on his hands and knees in front of his house, clad in gardening gear and pulling weeds while Franny sulked on the porch steps a few feet away.
“I literally talked to her the other day, Oppa.” Franny laughed.
She’d been making a concerted effort to call home more, especially after a particularly heartfelt conversation with her mother. They’d taken to talking about football, but the topic always gave way to other things. Earlier in the week, she’d learned that her umma had a brief dalliance with an Argentinian car salesman in her early twenties. Franny didn’t really know what to do with all the new things she was learning about her umma, but she’d briefly considered writing all the stories down.
“You know she needs a lot of attention.” Will grunted. “Kenny and Phillip don’t call nearly enough, and there’s only so much I can take. I need you to step up, Franny.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m trying to do better, I swear. I’ve just been caught up with… a bunch of other stuff. I’ll call her on the drive home and see how she’s doing.”
Her brother paused, leaning up on his knees to wipe a forearm across his sweaty forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. She looked away with a shrug.
She didn’t tend to talk about her romantic problems with her family. To be fair, they didn’t tend to share theirs with her either. Whenever she talked to her parents or her brothers about a woman she was dating, she kept things as matter-of-fact as possible. Part of her had always felt like they couldn’t possibly understand. The other part had just found it soul-achingly awkward.
“Something’s wrong,” Will said, clearly in the mood to argue. “You’ve been acting weird all summer. Tell me what’s up.”
She put a hand over her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked at her brother. He was pink-cheeked and sweaty, but she could see that he was also genuinely concerned.
“There’s a girl…” Franny trailed off. She leaned her elbows back on the concrete step behind her, hoping that the nonchalant pose would rub off on her tone.
“Of course.”
She rolled her eyes. “She’s nothing like Caroline.”
It was true. For all her faults, unsurety, and indecisiveness, Jade was the complete opposite of Caroline. She wasn’t flighty or wishy-washy, and even if they both did share an obvious fear of diving in, Franny knew that Jade’s came from someplace other than viewing people as inherently expendable.
“What’s she like, then?” Will asked.
Franny tilted her face up to the sun. Feeling the warmth on her skin somehow made it easier to talk about Jade accurately. “She’s incredibly fucking frustrating, for one.” She laughed. “Like, deeply stubborn and a little obstinate. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who knows her who has anything but a kind thing to say about her. She’s so good with the kids, and she loves football so much. She stuns me.”
Will made a low hmmm , but Franny didn’t even pause for effect—she was on a roll.
“I feel like all I do is sit around and think about what it is about her that makes me want her. I’m always trying to put it into words, but honestly, I can’t. I’ve never been good at that anyway, but with her, it’s like I never had enough words to begin with to describe it all.”
“So what’s the issue, then? She doesn’t like you back?”
“No, she does,” Franny said, her words full of conviction. “She definitely does.”
“Well”—Will waved an arm around in the air—“be together, then.”
“It’s not that easy, dude.”
“Sure it is.”
“It was that easy for you and Yao?”
The question sounded sarcastic, but there was more genuine interest behind it than even she realized at first. Will had told the family that he was seriously dating someone about a week before he’d brought Yao home to meet them. It wasn’t a month later that they were engaged, and then they officially married less than a year after that. To be sure, the speed and lack of formality of the whole thing had given both sets of parents a ton of strife, but everyone had gotten over it by the time Amelia was born.
Much the same way she’d never made Will privy to the inner workings of her romantic life, he’d never made her privy to his either.
“No, we had it worse,” he grunted as he yanked a particularly rough weed. “She wasn’t even single when we met.”
Franny’s eyes bulged as she forced herself back up into a seated position in response to the news. “What?”
The muscles in Will’s back and shoulders tensed up immediately. “She was selling one of the houses on the same street as my restaurant and came in for lunch with a client. That’s how we met. Then she told me that she’d been seeing this dude on and off for a few years. He was a fucking clown and she deserved better, and I told her so.”
“Did you guys have an affair?” Her metaphorical pearls were clutched.
“Of course not. You can’t start a relationship built on lies. I knew what I wanted with her almost immediately, so I just had to wait it out until she came to her senses and realized it too.”
“How long did that take?”
“The longest three weeks of my life.”
Franny groaned. “Three weeks is nothing compared to this.”
“It’s all the same torture when you can’t be with them.”
“I just don’t know what to do to get her head out of her ass.”
Will went about tying the big garbage bag of weeds closed. “Have you told her how you feel? What you want? Have you been clear about it?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s nothing else for you to do,” he said. “Not until she comes back ready to tell you what she wants, what she needs too.”
She wrung her hands together in her lap, suddenly feeling even more defeated. The sun wasn’t so warm anymore, and a slight chill ran through her despite the considerable heat index in Columbia. “So I’m just supposed to wait around?”
“I didn’t say that. If you want to run around like a headless chicken in the meantime, nobody’s going to stop you. But the way I see it, it can be worth the wait. That three weeks could have turned into three months, and it still would have been worth it.”
“What if it isn’t worth it in the end, though? What if I do all that waiting just to get left behind again, Oppa?”
Will reached out and pulled Franny up by her shoulders and into his arms. One of his large, warm hands cradled the back of her head, and she breathed in the scent of soil and sweat on his T-shirt. Her brother was warm and familiar, deeply comforting and grounding. They didn’t hug very often either, but when they did, Franny was instantly transported back to light-filled memories of them in the back of their father’s car, the two convincing him to play the hip radio stations instead of listening to his books on tape. She thought about footraces down their cul-de-sac and covering for him when he snuck out in exchange for unlimited rides wherever she wanted to go. She wrapped her arms around his middle and squeezed him tightly.
When he finally spoke again, she felt the vibrations on her cheek. “No one would blame you for not wanting to risk it right now, Fran. Caroline treated you like shit. She sold you a dream and cashed out the first chance she got. But that didn’t have anything to do with you. You say this new girl is nothing like her, and if you truly believe that, then maybe it’s worth taking a second and being patient for it. And if it turns out that it wasn’t, well, I’ll be right here for you, just like I was the last time and will be all the times in the future.”
Franny snorted and pinched him on the shoulder. “If this doesn’t work out, there aren’t going to be any future fucking times. I’ll officially give up on love and put all my effort into becoming one of those beekeeping lesbians.”
“You hate bees.”
“I’ll learn not to.”
He laughed. “Well, why don’t we see how this pans out first before we start investing in a bunch of those space suit things they wear.”
“Bee suits, you absolute fool. They’re literally just called bee suits .”
Freshman orientation at Greenbelt Senior High was quite the event by school standards. A few weeks before the start of the new school year, the incoming freshmen and their parents were invited in to meet with teachers and staff, get important information about the upcoming year, and learn the lay of the land. Never mind that almost every kid in the incoming class had at least one parent who’d attended the school at some point; Principal Coleman was big on first and lasting impressions.
Thankfully, teachers didn’t have to put on much of a show. All the admins and department heads were expected to attend the formal orientation in the auditorium with the families, and the rest of the freshman teaching staff waited in their rooms, doors open, for when the students did their first official classroom visit.
Franny had used much of her buzzing, anxious energy to get her classroom together before the event. The art room was big, with big black-top tables and paint-speckled floors. She’d covered the walls in the artworks of previous and current students and placed a bunch of printouts of her curriculum plan at the door for anyone to grab.
Wax melter plugged in, she sat back in her chair with her feet up on her desk and waited until she heard footsteps coming down the hall toward her room to square her shoulders and stand up.
Relief and annoyance flooded through her when she realized the steps belonged to one of her kids. It was Alonzo Holton, who was only fifteen but taller than she was by more than a few inches. The O-line left tackle was truly never without a smile. He was also, by Franny’s estimation, one of the best student artists she’d ever encountered.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, peeking around him only to find the space empty.
“Well, hello to you too, Coach,” he said sarcastically.
“I’m not a—”
“I know, I know, you’re not a coach. You’re just Ms. Lim,” Alonzo said. “But the way I see it, if you’re on the field telling me what to do, you’re either my coach or my mama, and I definitely know you aren’t my mama.”
“And does your mama know you’re running around the school?”
“My sister is a freshman this year, and she made me come,” he said. “They’re teaching them how to use the combination locks right now, and I told her I was going to come down and see you.”
The adult in her wanted to scold him for walking around the school without a hall pass, which was not allowed for students at any time—school in session or not. But damn if it didn’t feel nice that one of her students was at least halfway fond of her. Especially when that student was also on her team. They weren’t supposed to have favorites, but the students who had an actual interest in art—whether they came to her that way or she coaxed it out of them—always had a soft spot in her heart.
Alonzo shoved himself in one of the chairs at the black table closest to her desk. For a moment, they looked at each other like that dueling Spider-Man meme, waiting for the other to speak. He was the one to fold first.
“Is Coach Landry leaving the team?”
Franny damn near swallowed her tongue. The question hit her out of the blue, but it wasn’t surprising. Not really. She didn’t know what was inside adults that made them believe kids were completely oblivious to what was going on around them, but she wondered when she herself had internalized it. Of course word had gotten around about Landry’s retirement. Of course the players had sensed or heard that something was amiss.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked in lieu of an actual answer.
Alonzo made a zipping motion across his lips before tossing the imaginary key into the little trash can at the end of the table.
Franny laughed. “At least you’re loyal.”
“Is he?”
“Lonzo, you know I can’t say anything either way. If Coach Landry wants you to know something, he’ll tell you.”
He narrowed his eyes and twisted his mouth up, clearly skeptical of her deeply political answer.
“If he leaves, who’s going to be our new coach?”
Franny peeked at her watch, wishing like hell that Principal Coleman would suddenly release the masses and flood her classroom with enough families that she could efficiently avoid this intense interrogation at the hands of a teenager with a curly taper-fade and Nike slides. The seconds ticked by with no relief.
“I’d say,” she started carefully, “that if you’re worried about the team not having a leader, you shouldn’t be. Everybody is going to make sure y’all are taken care of.”
“It’s not that, really. It’s just that… well, you know my daddy is still recovering from being in the hospital, and we don’t really have money like that right now. I wasn’t going to be able to stay on the team, because we couldn’t afford all the fees and our bills at the same time, but Coach Landry helped us out and made it so I still got to play even though we couldn’t pay.”
Alonzo kept his eyes on the desk the entire time he spoke, hands fidgeting in his lap. The shame was evident in his tone, and it made Franny’s heart ache. It was moments like these that reminded her how much further she had to go before she felt secure as a leader—if security was something real leaders even felt. She didn’t know if she should give him a hug and tell him that everything would be all right, because no matter what she did, she didn’t have the power to change his circumstances.
“You’re scared that if Landry leaves, you won’t be able to play anymore.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m not even trying to play college ball. I just love playing and being on the team. It makes me… it makes me feel like everything isn’t bad all the time,” he said quietly.
She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, tears springing up at the corners of her eyes, which she forced herself to quickly blink away.
“How about this,” she began, after clearing her throat. “You have my word that you’ll always have a place on that team. Don’t think about Landry; don’t think about the money. Just know it’ll all be handled as long as you’re doing everything you need to do. You can take my word on that.”
Alonzo finally looked up from the table, his round brown eyes hopeful but cautious. “How can you give me your word when you keep saying you’re not a coach?”
“I happen to have an in,” she said. “Don’t worry about that either.”
He seemed to accept that and sat back in the chair, finally getting comfortable by crossing his ankles and arms. Franny sighed, taking her seat. It was clear he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“You know what, Ms. Lim? I think you should be a coach.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hmm. I mean, if Coach Carr can do it, you definitely can. He barely wants to talk to us half the time.”
Alonzo wasn’t wrong, to be fair. Coach Carr was close to retirement age himself and had lost a lot of his luster for coaching. He always seemed more than happy to let Franny take the reins—regardless of title—at practices.
“Be careful what you wish for. I’d work you way harder than Carr does.”
The boy groaned and threw his head back. “You already almost killed us with all those bear drills last week. How much harder can we work?”
“Blocking drills until you drop,” she said. “Agility training like you’ve never seen before. The list goes on, dude.”
Alonzo groaned again, this time more dramatically. “You know what? I changed my mind. Maybe you should just stick to teaching us about chiaroscuro instead. You might be too evil to coach football.”
“I’d say I’m just evil enough to coach football, thank you very much.”