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“Stupid Girl”—Garbage
Friday night rolls around, the last football game of the year. Some of the girls scoot over and make room for me at the game, and Greg starts talking to me. I’m a regular fixture at games and practices, and I don’t feel out of place most of the time.
“You going to the party?” Greg asks during a timeout.
“I guess. I kind of have to, right?”
“Damn straight you have to,” he says, dropping his arm around my shoulders. “You’re the only person I want there.”
I try not to show how pleased that makes me. I really like Greg—besides Chase and Todd, he’s my favorite guy in their group. He’s funny and so easy to talk to that I actually feel like I can halfway be myself around him. Which is both a blessing and a curse, since my position in the group is a result of me not being myself. If they knew I was a nerdy little outcast, would they still like me?
Greg probably would, but I’m not so sure about the others. He’s always laughing, but when he laughs at me for making some dorky comment, I don’t feel self-conscious or terrified that he’s going to tell the others and get me booted from their circle. I just feel like he’s treating me the same as anyone else or even himself. He’s doesn’t take anything too seriously.
At the games, he’s one of the rabid fans who paint their faces and scream the whole game. It’s a little too cold for the bare chests now, but earlier in the year, he’d paint his whole torso navy and white with some other guys, spelling out FHS or GO CATS or FAULKNER, depending on how many guys he ropes into participating.
Now I huddle into his puffy jacket sleeve and shiver my way through the game. Arkansas is nowhere near as cold as Connecticut this time of year, of course, but I didn’t account for the humidity that makes it chillier than the temperature when I was getting ready for the last game of the year.
I watch the match, amazed once more at how incredible Chase looks, how incredible he plays, how incredible he is.
In some strange way, I feel proud of him, which is stupid. It’s not like I created him. It’s not like he’s playing for me. Looking around, though, I realize everyone feels like that about him, that in a way he doesn’t even belong to himself. He belongs to all of us, to the whole town.
Everyone from the students with painted faces to the fangirls who scream loudest for his name being announced in the lineup to the bearded guys in baseball caps with wives wrapped in blankets next to them and little kids dropping popcorn between the bleachers feels it. They all look at Chase with that mixture of pride and entitlement, as if to say, You owe us this.
You play for us.
If it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t be here.
Make us proud, son.
We’re counting on you.
You’re our hero.
Our quarterback.
Ours. Ours. Ours.
I shiver and look away from the crowd. I’m in a weird mood. If I were smart, I’d go home and binge Stranger Things with Meghan or Pretty Little Liars by myself. Instead, I stay and perform the charade my life has become, like a good little Stepford daughter.
I shake the dark thoughts away. I haven’t been feeling myself lately, whoever that is. It’s hard to know when you’ve never been anyone, and you find out the pieces that make up the person you thought you were aren’t worthy of the friends you gained by faking it.
Whoever I am, that girl doesn’t want to go to a party, but I don’t know what else to do. One slip, one mistake, and I could lose everything.
So I keep smiling like the cheerleaders on the sidelines performing for the crowd.
After the game, everyone goes mad with celebrating Faulkner’s stellar season. I’m caught up in the crowd, jostled and herded out into the parking lot. Boisterous yelling echoes all around. Families trickle away, harried mothers carrying tired, fussy toddlers while their husbands slap each other on the back and boom out proclamations about next season, as if they’re on the team instead of just spectators.
I envy them. What’s their secret, the secret to convincing yourself you belong, that you’re a part of something, even when you’re not?
Soon the families are gone, leaving only a mob of rowdy teenagers. The football team finally emerges to the cheers of a mob of adoring fans. I watch Chase calmly basking in his glory, as if he was born for this reason alone—to be adored.
After things die down a little, someone I vaguely know pushes me into a car where I’m sandwiched between people screaming and celebrating. I never feel exactly at home during this celebratory part of the evening, though of course I’m happy our team won.
We pull into a familiar, gated community and up a winding drive to arrive at Chase’s house, the locale of tonight’s festivities. I’m linked arm in arm with two girls I barely know and swept into the house. The raucous partying has already begun.
