Player 2
A Blended Notes short story
Somewhere in the middle of seventh grade, Grady notices girls noticing him.
His voice has gotten deeper recently, his shoulders broadening. He’s grown taller than most boys his age, but not all of them. Normal tall, not freakishly tall. At home, Grady scrutinizes his face in the bathroom mirror, rubs his fingertips across barely-there wisps of blond facial hair. Memaw says he’s very handsome, but of course she has to say that. Still, she may be on to something.
At the parties he suddenly finds himself invited to, Grady ends up in closets and kitchen pantries and far off dark corners with girls who look right past him at school. He lives in a trailer park and gets in trouble all the time and wears clothes from Goodwill, so he’ll always only ever be a social outcast. Yet making out with him has become some sort of teenage girl rebellion merit badge. Getting drunk and fooling around with Grady Dawson at a party: check. He doesn’t mind, only he does actually.
It’s not just girls who notice his looks now, as it turns out. Kyle Maloney lives in his neighborhood, has a Playstation, a dad that isn’t around, and a mom that works two jobs. Sometimes they’ll steal cheap beer from the gas station down the street before they hang out at Kyle’s house, but today they only managed to lift a cigarette from his mom’s purse before she left for her night job. They play Crash Bandicoot and pass the Virginia Slim between them until Grady announces, “This is game is stupid.”
“You just think that ‘cuz you suck,” Kyle responds without any heat, cigarette dangling from his lips. He switches it out for a racing game then asks, “You hooked up with Maddie H?”
Grady takes his time selecting a car, switching through all the options three times before replying with feigned ignorance, “She the one with red hair?” Like he doesn’t know who Maddie H is, like she isn’t one of the most popular girls in school.
“No, brown,” Kyle says. “Pick somethin’ Grady, damn.”
Grady selects a car. “Oh yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“Nice,” Kyle says. He works his jaw like he’s about to say something else but can’t bring himself to, like Grady does when he gets called on in class and sort of wants to answer but doesn’t want to get called on again for knowing the answers even more.
They race through several tracks and finish the cigarette and Grady is getting restless and annoyed, itching to do something stupid. His Memaw will come looking for him soon and he can’t stand being in that trailer with Grandaddy as sick as he is, like they’re both just waiting around for him to die. Maybe Kyle will let him stay the night again.
“Would you ever like—“ Kyle blurts suddenly. “Do that stuff with a guy? Like, just to mess around.”
For a second, Grady is sure that Kyle knows. He knows somehow that Grady likes boys in the same way he likes girls and he knows all the stuff that Grady thinks about alone in his bed and all the stuff he’s looked up on the computer. But it’s Kyle who looks panicked; avoiding eye contact with his cheeks bright red. His hands are tightly gripping the game controllers and shaking so much that he keeps running his car off the track and into the sidewalls.
Grady licks his lips. What if it’s a trap? What if Kyle just wants to humiliate him? Grady scoots closer and waits to see if Kyle scoots away. When he doesn’t Grady asks, “Can I sleep over?”
“Wha— I guess—“ Kyle fumbles. Grady takes a chance and presses his knee against Kyle’s knee, then puts his hand there, too. Kyle swallows, turns to face Grady and whispers, “Okay, yeah.”
He pauses the game.
You can purchase Blended Notes and the rest of the Spotlight Series here
This short story originally appeared on Joyfully Jay.
