Free Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have by Allen Zadoff Page A

room.
    “Motion passes,” Eytan says. “Congratulations, Mr. Zansky. The defense of the Republic now rests squarely on your shoulders.”

the center of it all.
    Friday afternoon. My stomach grumbles like it’s filled with greasy Chinese food. I’ve been to the bathroom six times since this morning, and I haven’t eaten a thing. Mom calls them the nervous poops.
    Why am I nervous?
    The list is going up at 1:00 and it’s 12:59.
    I’m walking towards the gym when Nancy Yee intercepts me.
    “I heard a rumor that you were going out for football,” Nancy says.
    She’s wearing this crazy frock dress with old-lady shoes and socks that go up under her knees. I swear she’s from a different planet.
    “Don’t believe everything you hear,” I say.
    “Do you know what happened on the team last year?”
    “I know we won.”
    “We?” she says.
    “The team. Our team. School pride. You’ve heard of that, right?”
    We turn the corner and there’s a huge crowd standing around the bulletin boards outside the gym. I have to ditch Nancy so I can look at the list. I don’t want her to know anything about this. Plus April’s down there, and I’m afraid she’ll see us and get the wrong idea.
    “Oh, shoot,” I say, “I forgot something in my locker. I have to go all the way back up.”
    I’m hoping Nancy will go away, but she turns like she’s attached to me. I’ve grown a barnacle. Unbelievable.
    “Do you like her?” Nancy says.
    “Who?”
    “The new girl.”
    “Which new girl?”
    Nancy sighs. “The Korean girl,” she says.
    “She’s really smart.”
    “That’s not what I asked.”
    Nancy hooks her bangs with two fingers and pulls them tight behind her ears. Her acne glares at me angrily.
    “I have to go,” she says, and runs up the stairs. Barnacle removed.
    “What’s your problem?” I say, but it’s not like I go after her. Honestly, it’s a relief that she’s gone. Now I can go where the action is. Down the hall.
    There are two bulletin boards on the wall, each with a clump of students around them, jocks on one side and cheerleaderson the other. If I saw a group like this last year, I’d run in the other direction. Now I’m right in the middle of them. Welcome to the new world order.
    I stand behind the jocks, afraid to get too close to the piece of paper. What if my name is on it? What if it’s not? And why do jocks do this whole thing in public? Couldn’t they send the results to your house like the SAT? At least then you could fail in the privacy and comfort of your own bedroom.
    O. Douglas comes down the hall and casually walks to the front of the crowd. He glances at the paper, grins, then steps back.
    “How’d you do?” Cheesy says.
    “Made it,” O. says, and brushes his forehead like he’s wiping away sweat. Everyone laughs. The funny thing is that he actually sounds relieved, like it’s possible he might have been cut.
    “Get up there,” Rodriguez says to me. “Don’t you want to know?”
    “Not really,” I say.
    He pushes me towards the front of the crowd, and the guys split down the middle to let me through.
    I break into a sweat. An old prayer from Hebrew school pops into my head. I say it silently, and then I remember it’s the prayer for bread. Fabulous. I know one prayer, and it’s for challah .
    The list is in alphabetical order. I brace myself. Thirtyseconds of public shame, and then I can slink back into the obscurity of Estonian ephemera. I follow the names with my finger, all the way to the bottom where I see:
ZANSKY, ANDREW—CENTER
    Holy sweet mother. The bread prayer worked.
    “Center what?” I say.
    “Center position,” Rodriguez says.
    “What’s that mean?”
    “That means it’s you and me,” O. says. He mimes like I’m hiking the ball, and he’s grabbing and throwing.
    “No friggin’ way,” I say.
    The guys laugh. A bunch of them slap me on the back.
    “Welcome to the Offense, baby,” Bison says.
    “Now you’re part of the O-Line,”