AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Here it is, the perfect opening to share what happened the other day. The obvious opportunity to tell Natalie I met him. To share our electrifying, combative encounter; admit I’m probably on Adler Beck’s shit list.
But something stops me.
I’m not sure what.
Normally, I revel in sharing stories. When Trey Johnson shifted his attention from Hannah Mason to me, he was so confident I’d be interested, he stripped in the girls’ locker room when he knew I came in for extra practice. Athletes tend to be a cocky bunch, but he was significantly less sure of himself when I left with his clothes, forcing him to walk-of-shame through the athletic complex with nothing but a small towel covering the goods. That anecdote was heard so many times on campus it practically earned triple-platinum status.
Trey Johnson peaked during his years as Lancaster’s quarterback, fading to irrelevance as soon as he crossed the stage.
Adler Beck’s in an entirely different league. Natalie’s new friends—even London—might be looking at me with admiration right now. The revelation that I met Beck would do more than earn me deity status. It would prompt questions—lots of questions I don’t feel like answering.
So, I just shrug in response to Natalie’s comment. “Let’s go to a beer garden,” I suggest. “I’ll text Ellie and see if she has any recommendations.”
“Ellie?” London questions.
“Ellie Anderson. She’s the other American at Scholenberg with me.”
“Oh, right. Her uncle’s a trainer for Kluvberg, right?”
“Right,” I confirm. I’ve uttered the same statement before, but having met Ellie, I feel a bit bad for concluding nepotism is the reason she received a spot in the program. Probably has something to do with the fact that she’s the only person who hasn’t acted like my presence is an insult. “And she’s visited here before, so she’ll probably know a good place.”
Ellie recommends a beer garden on the opposite side of the city, resulting in my first encounter with public transportation. The tiny town in Georgia where I grew up didn’t have any, and I have a car at Lancaster. From what I’ve heard from friends who grew up in larger cities, I wasn’t missing much.
Thankfully, there’s no sign of any of the horrors I’ve heard described when we find the correct entrance and head underground. No graffiti, no urine scent, no garbage. We buy our tickets from a machine that helpfully has an English selection and then hop on the first train that arrives; one that is hopefully heading to our destination.
The inside of the subway is just as clean as the station was, with spotless plastic chairs we settle in and a map of blinking dots that display where we are. With a soft whoosh, the doors close, and we speed off into darkness.
Two stops later, we emerge from the cool underground, back into the warm sunshine. This area of the city looks very similar to the section we came from, except it’s much busier. Less residential and more commercial. Restaurants, gift shops, bookstores, coffee shops, and bars line the street, interspersed by tourist traps that boast windows filled with flouncy clothing and T-shirts bedazzled with snappy slogans.
Natalie drags us all into the third gift store we pass. It’s small and narrow, but what it lacks in width, it more than makes up for in height. Soaring shelves cover each inch of available wall space, packed with every souvenir imaginable. There are cuckoo clocks, Hummel figurines, leather-bound books of Grimms’ fairy tales, outfits with full skirts and suspenders, ornaments, bits of rubble claiming to be pieces of the Berlin Wall, beer steins, fedoras, mustard, and more gummy bears than I’ve ever seen in my life. The towering display is an explosion of culture and color.
We fan out to browse the store with the other shoppers looking around. I’m flipping through the postcard selection to find ones to send to Emma, Cressida, and Anne when Natalie bounces over to me holding up two T-shirts. “Which one for the Theta kegger?” she asks me.
I glance between the white option that reads I’m Just Here for the Beer and the pink Life is Brewtiful one.
“Pink,” I decide.
“That’s what I thought, too,” Natalie replies. “But I think Gamma’s colors are pink and white, and I don’t want people thinking I’m part of that shitshow. Or is it Kappa that’s pink?”
“I associate pink with Alpha Sigma I-don’t-give-a-shit,” I respond, grabbing three postcards. “Just get whatever shirt you like better.”
Natalie deliberates for a minute. “I’ll get both.”
She heads for the cashier, and I walk deeper into the store. The back wall is entirely dedicated to clothing. I spot both the shirts Natalie found, along with a variety displaying the German flag; faded, as a heart, as a soccer ball. The last iteration is located next to the top displayed front and center.
An Adler Beck jersey.
I stare at it for longer than I should.
Thanks to his breakout performance on the world stage as soon as he was eligible to play, Beck was living the life of a professional athlete back when I was a freshman in high school, despite being just eighteen months older than me.
Ever since then, I’ve admired his athleticism—along with the rest of the world. He’s a legend, larger than a person. Our interaction both exceeded my expectations and fell short. I want to relive it and also pretend it never happened.
“Are you going to get one?” London asks, appearing next to me. I startle. She nods to the jersey I’m staring at. Busted. “You could wear it to practice in Kluvberg’s stadium.”
The suggestion makes me cringe. My impression is Scholenberg does everything it can to separate its female attendees from FC Kluvberg players because: hello, distractions. It’s part of the reason Kluvberg supposedly spends the summer months training elsewhere. Although, I have to say, my experience so far has suggested that’s some pretty spectacular false advertising. Professional athletes don’t really have an offseason, as evidenced by Beck’s presence at the field just the other day. Once you reach the top, you have to fight to stay there.
The thought of Adler Beck seeing me wearing his jersey is repellent. I’ve always been the type to push back just to show I can. Falling in line as an Adler Beck fangirl feels like capitulating, lessening my small victory against him.
