“I know.” I sighed. “Tommy Yang was on the tennis courts.”
And so I told everyone what had really happened, leaving out the part about my having a half-staff the entire time thanks to Cassidy’s and my, uh, fortress play. Toby laughed so hard that he snorted, which I hadn’t heard him do since we were kids.
“I hate to say it”—Austin shrugged helplessly—“but it’s pretty genius, using cooking spray like that.”
“The sort of genius that falls into the exclusive realm of pedophiles and psychopaths,” Phoebe noted.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get your ass handed to you,” Sam said.
“Well, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m limping,” I deadpanned.
Toby laughed.
“I would have shit my pants,” he told me. “If I was sitting in the park and those goons showed up drunk and spray happy, I’m not even kidding, I would’ve had a bodily misfunction.”
“It’s just Connor MacLeary,” I said. “He’s like a big drunk puppy. Honestly.”
“Maybe to you,” Toby said. “But he made my life hell in middle school. Who do you think dared Tug Mason to piss in my Gatorade?”
Actually, now that Toby mentioned it, the mystery of Tug Mason’s sports-drink-pissing proclivity resolved itself. I mean, people don’t just do that sort of thing without prompting.
“Toby’s right,” Phoebe said. “Football’s a bunch of drunk rednecks. They haven’t won a game in how long?”
“Well, they tied with Beth Shalom once last season,” I offered. “Although that doesn’t really count, since half of the other team was missing due to Rosh Hashanah.”
“I’m so glad Faulkner’s here to give us last year’s football statistics,” Luke grumbled.
“Screw you,” I said.
“Screw your girlfriend,” he retorted. “If you can get your crippled dick to work.”
Our table went quiet, and the white noise of the quad seemed to drop away until it was just me and Luke Sheppard, with his slacker glasses and nasty smirk and unforgivable insult.
I always thought it wouldn’t get to me, someone calling me crippled like I should be ashamed of myself. I suppose I’d only pictured it broadly, the word by itself, like when Charlotte called the debate team nerds, or the orchestra losers. But what Luke said wasn’t some generalized insult. It was genuinely offensive, and he wasn’t getting away with it.
“You are such an ass**le,” Phoebe said, slapping Luke across the face. The slap echoed—or maybe the word is reverberated—and in its aftermath, the whole world roared back into place.
Phoebe got up, taking her backpack with her. The poltergeist of her unfinished lunch sat on the table, half of a chocolate cookie and a peanut butter sandwich missing two neat bites.
“I’m going to see if she’s all right,” Cassidy said.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll go.”
I found Phoebe sitting on the metal bench outside of the swim complex, at the very edge of the parking lot. There weren’t any lunch tables over there, so it was a decent place to sulk, if you didn’t mind the tang of chlorine.
Her eyes were red, and she cradled her right hand as though it still stung. She scooted down on the bench to make room for me, and I sat, and we said nothing.
“He’s such a jerk,” Phoebe mumbled after a while, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater.
“I know.” I reached into my backpack for a packet of tissues.
“You have tissues.” She shook her head as though I’d just offered her an embroidered handkerchief.
“My mom buys them in bulk. I’ve got hand sanitizer, too, if you want to cleanse Luke’s face from your fist.”
“You don’t have to be so nice to me,” she muttered.
“Well, you sort of defended my honor back there.”
“I slapped Luke Sheppard.”
She said his name as though it meant something. As though she didn’t even have the right to expect him to say hello to her in the hallways, and he really was as big a deal as he made himself out to be. It killed me, Phoebe sitting there in her ponytail and glasses, a year younger than me and so tiny that her toes barely touched the concrete, appalled at herself for being the only one of us brave enough to call Luke out on his bullshit.
“He was being a backpfeifen—whatever. His was the face that launched a thousand fists,” I said. “So don’t worry about it. You didn’t give him anything he didn’t deserve.”
“Now I sort of wish I’d slapped him harder,” Phoebe said thoughtfully.
I snorted.
“God, I can’t believe he said that.” Phoebe winced, like she was replaying it in her head. “No one thinks of you like that. With pity, or whatever. Luke always used to compare himself to you, how you both ran things. He’d complain about it constantly, how you were this smug, brainless jock who did nothing but took all the credit. And now you’re on the same side, and you’re actually pretty cool, and it’s killing him. I mean, if there’s anyone who doesn’t belong at our lunch table, it’s me.”
It had never struck me that Phoebe was insecure about sitting with us. Maybe it was because I’d always seen our table as co-ed, rather than a group of boys with their girlfriends, or maybe it was because Phoebe got along so well with everyone. But I couldn’t stand to see her awash in self-doubt like that.