Page 17 of Going the Distance
“I don’t know. But someone just posted a photo on Facebook, and I wanted you to know before you thought I was lying to you. For the record, I never lied.”
He gave me a steady look.
“Oh, come on! This is so not the same thing.”
“I’m just saying. I didn’t lie. I just let you think it.”
I chewed on my lip for a moment. “No, it’s…it’s fine, Lee. It’s no big deal. Initiation. I get it.”
“It sounds so stupid now that I’m saying it, but it seemed really important last night. Being part of the team, you know? And they were pretty intimidating about it. Like, they took this shitreallyseriously.”
“Yeah. I get it. Hey, stop looking so worried.” I patted his cheek, smiling. Although, keeping secrets from me—and overfootball,no less—was very un-Lee-like behavior. “So, can you tell me what the initiation involved or, if you tell me, does that mean you’ll have to kill me?”
Relaxing, Lee laughed, and after swearing me to secrecy, he told me how they’d all snuck into the school, and the new guys on the team had had to get through this kind of obstacle course to the locker room, and the first guy to make it there won….
“Well, they never said what the prize was, but I get the feeling it’s just winning the respect of the rest of the team.”
“Obstacle course?” I wanted to know.
“Oh yeah. Not like, hurdles and shit, though. So, the rest of the team hid on the way to the lockers with pies and Nerf guns and stuff, and they set up trip wires, and they’d put butter in one of the hallways, so we were all sliding everywhere.” He laughed. “That’s one of the photos they put up—a bunch of us on our asses, sliding down a buttery hallway.”
“Oh my God.” I snorted, reaching for my phone. “I cannot wait to see this. You’re in it, right?”
“Only a little, and not on my ass.”
“Did you win?”
“Of course. C’mon, Shelly, it’s like you don’t even know me. Yeah, I won.”
I found the photo, on Jon Fletcher’s profile, and giggled so loudly a few people looked over. “Oh my God. I hope this makes the yearbook. The janitor is going to lose his shit on Monday when he sees this.”
“Oh, no, they cleaned up after. The rest of the newbies on the team, they had to clean up because they didn’t win.” He paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you last night.”
“No, Lee, don’t—you can stop apologizing. I totally get it. I mean, I don’t have to like it so much, but I’m not mad at you or anything. I swear.”
“Pinky promise?”
“Always.”
Before we left the mall, Lee insisted on going into the video game store to find something. “I need to win your brother back somehow. I can’t risk losing both of you to Levi from Detroit.”
