“Yeah, no, that wasn’t it,” I say. “I liked that you were a stranger.”
When I say this, he frowns. “So you would have talked to anyone?”
“Maybe at first,” I admit. “But then it seemed like you really wanted to know me.”
Sometimes people will ask you about yourself and all they really want to know is who you are on the surface. In high school, it’s so often where you fit in the big picture: jock, nerd, valedictorian, president, teacher’s pet. But with Marcus, I got the sense that he knew that stuff didn’t matter; he didn’t just care about the surface-level stuff. He wanted the deep, the significant, the random, the weird. The things that mean you really know a person. That’s whyhe asked so many questions. That’s why This or That never went away.
And even though it’s been so long since then, everything I told him the July before last never got out. Neither has the Jason thing or the Princeton thing. Marcus is trustworthy.
He’s getting the inside look at all my memories, so he better be.
“Of course I wanted to know you,” he says softly.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask. “Why didn’t you want me to come to the game?”
“Next question. What else do you have?”
“No, seriously,” I say.
He sighs. “Because there was no way we were going to win. And people are used to Jason winning. It wasn’t just you I told to stay away.”
I don’t know if that feels better or worse, hearing that I was among a group of people he didn’t want there.
“You were worried about losing?”
“I wasn’t worried about losing,” he says. “It was about how we were going to lose. Badly. Brutally.”
“But you won.”
“The universe is a strange place.”
“Or,” I say, “or you’re kind of good at soccer.”
“Thanks, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Jason owns that team, and they carried us to the win.”
“What if you had lost?” I ask now.
“Well, that would have been on me.”
I frown. “So it’s the team if you win and you if you lose.”
Marcus shrugs.
“Wow, that is some egomaniac type of stuff,” I say.
A dull thumping has just started in my head. I ignore it and keep speaking.
“Seriously though,” I continue, “it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you guys had lost. I mean, it would have been sad but I’m not going to, like, think less of you if you lose a soccer match.”
“That’s what you say, but think about if it’s really true.” I try to do just that—and I don’t think it does matter, but maybe there were times I let it seem like the Silvers winning, Jason winning, was the most important thing in the world. Especially when to him it was. “My whole identity in people’s eyes is about how inferior my soccer skills are compared to Jason’s.”
“Because you’re Plan B.”
I’m only repeating what people call him, but it seems to be the absolute wrong thing to say.
Marcus’s body stiffens, his eyes instantly losing their light, and for the first time today I feel like I’m talking to a stranger. But there’s a false joviality in his voice. “Or Backup Marcus. Pick your poison.”
“You don’t have to laugh about it, if you don’t think it’s funny.”
