Page 49 of Exchanged

He shakes his head. “You told me those were arrangements of other people’s music. I want to hear yours.”

“Soon,” I say noncommittally.

We’ve reached the end of the stretch of beach. A cliff looms before us, solid and immobile against the crashing waves. In summer, people try to swim out to the caves dotting that wall of rock. Some of them die. I decide not to share this with Garrett.

We turn and begin walking back the way we came. “What about you?” I ask. “Are you still thinking of doing pre-law at Ellison?”

“Definitely,” he says. “You were wrong about that, by the way, when you said I don’t want to be a lawyer. I really do. Maybe not a corporate one like my dad, but I love the idea of thinking hard and preparing cases and arguing them in court. I like reading and writing and talking, and getting people to believe me.”

“You’ll be good at it,” I say. “You’re smart. Persuasive.”

“Thanks,” he says. “And if everything goes according to plan, I should be playing football when I’m not hitting the books. Ellison is a D2 school, and one of their scouts was checking me out last year. My brothers both got football scholarships. So did my dad back in the day. It’s pretty much part of the family DNA.”

“Do you like it?” I ask. “Playing football?”

He pauses and looks at me. “No one has ever asked me that before. Why wouldn’t I?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“I like it.”

It takes me a second to figure out why I don’t believe him, and I realize it’s because I’ve seen his face light up when he’s photographing something or playing a board game; I’ve heard his voice grow excited when he talks about sci-fi novels or his pre-law plans. This three-word answer doesn’t seem like the response of someone describing something they’re passionate about.

“How did you get into football?”

“When I was in fifth grade,” he says as we continue moving down the beach, “my parents enrolled me in my first tackle league. My dad was our coach, and he took his job seriously. It was just this youth league, but he wanted our team to be the best. We’d have these crazy-long practices, and he would force us to do laps and push-ups until we couldn’t anymore. He’d use me as an example. He’d have me show off a play or demonstrate the right form for passing, and I would feel so proud.”

It feels like there is more to the story, so I don’t say anything.

Eventually, he continues, eyes trained on the wet stones in front of us. “I remember being really confident going into our first game. The other team was coached by some guy from church, some guy that Dad had beef with, and I could tell Dad wanted to win. My brothers—Charlie was in high school at the time, and Justin was in college—even showed up to watch. I scored the first touchdown, and they cheered from the sidelines, and I remember the way Dad looked at me.” He was quiet for a moment, looking out over the water.

“In the fourth quarter, it was a close game, and every point mattered. I remember catching the ball, and then this huge kid from the other team rushed at me, plowing into me so hard I flew off my feet and landed flat on my back. I thought that my helmet must have cracked or something because my head hurt more than I thought it could. I wanted to puke right there on the field, but there wasn’t any air left in me, and before I knew it, I was crying. Everything was so painful and I was dizzy, and I just wanted to be done.

“My dad ran to me across the field. For a second, I thought he was going to help me up, that he was going to hug me and tell me that everything was okay, that I had done my best and could sit out for the rest of the game. But when he got to me, he glanced over his shoulder at the bleachers, and I saw it: He was embarrassed. He was embarrassed by me. He reached down and pulled me up but only because that’s what he was supposed to do.

“He leaned in close and told me, ‘I didn’t raise a pussy. Wipe those tears away. Get your ass back out there.’

“I did, and we won. I scored the winning touchdown, and he was proud of me again. Afterward, when the whole team was getting pizza, Dad didn’t bring up what he said on the field. My brothers were proud. My mom was proud. But I knew they had all seen me cry, had seen how hurt I was, and none of them wanted to talk about it.

“That’s when I started working to get really good at football. I signed up for every camp. I started lifting. I went for long runs. I never cried in front of my family again. I decided to kick ass on the field, and that’s what I did. Now I’m good enough that I might get money for college. So yeah, I like it.”

I can’t think of anything to say. Imagining a ten-year-old Garrett lying on his back crying and his father calling him a pussy makes me feel a protective surge for the seventeen-year-old version next to me.

He stops walking and turns to face me, his hair feathering in the wind. “Sorry for dumping all that on you. I’m not even sure why I thought of that stupid story.”

“You thought about it because it’s important,” I say. I look out at Superior. We’ve reached the breakwater, a quarter-mile-long structure of stone and concrete jutting out into the lake. Waves crash along one side, sending violent sprays of water fifteen feet into the air; the other side—the protected harbor that contains the ore dock and marina—remains relatively calm. I return my focus to Garrett. “You don’t always have to kick ass, you know?” I say. “You can just be you. That’s enough.”

“Is it, though?” he asks, and for a fraction of a second he is uncertain and vulnerable in front of me. But before I can answer, he closes himself off with a cocky grin and a joke. “It’s all good, bro. Kicking ass just comes naturally to me.”

I don’t laugh. His smile fades, and we stand there looking at each other. Garrett is impossibly beautiful in every way, and I am the idiot who’ll tell him about catastrophic global warming but doesn’t know what to say in response to his story of childhood pain. I am the idiot who almost kissed him while he was too drunk to know any better.

“Now you’re the one who looks cold,” he tells me. “You could borrow my jacket.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “If the wind isn’t bad enough to give you a brain freeze, then it doesn’t count as chilly.”

He shifts to the left, trying to block the wind with his body. The dimple comes out. “Now I know you’re messing with me.”

I’m actually not. Cold-weather brain freezes really suck, but I’m self-aware enough to stop telling him about the climate. Then, before I can change my mind, I ask, “Are we going to talk about what happened the other night?”