Carter Knows Something About Baseball
For the entire day, I was moping around school, daydreaming through my classes, and rudely dismissing my friends because my mind was too consumed with the thought of Carter. It was only when lunchtime began that I realized I shouldn't be letting this incident bring me down. As far as I was concerned, Carter didn't know that I knew, so there wasn't any reason to be sad about something I didn't know about. If Carter wanted help, he would've asked for it, so calm down, Kyle.
"Ay, Montgomery!" I heard one of my best friends, Jesse, holler from across the cafeteria. I had to divert from my routine walk to our usual table to meet up with him near the corner of the room. Before I could ask why we weren't sitting at our usual spot, he said, "Couple freshmen took our table."
"I don't know why you didn't just force them to leave," Evan, my other best friend inserted. He smacked Jesse at the back of his head, and rolled his eyes rather rudely.
"They're girls, Ev," Jesse stressed as though it should've been obvious. "You can't just be a dick to girls."
"Why? You do it all the time," Evan countered.
Jesse's nose crinkled in irritation just before he threw a solid punch at his friend's shoulder. That back-and-forth exchanges continued until Jesse realized that I wasn't joining in on the fun. His cure-all remedy was to nudge me hard enough to throw me off my chair. "Kyle, what's with the long face?"
"What?" I attempted a chuckle to get my friends off my back as I shot to my feet again. "What long face?"
"That one." He poked my cheek.
"Nothing. I'm just thinking about how we're gonna cream Stone Ridge tonight." It was a lie, a horrible one at that, but my friends had no reason to question me.
"Hell yeah!" Evan cheered in which Jesse went along to trash talk Stone Ridge's baseball team; meanwhile, I checked out of the conversation and scanned the cafeteria, instead. I didn't know what I was looking for, although it seemed to me that I might have been looking for Carter. My subconscious had the sudden urge to protect the boy from any further danger, but it was too late for that.
And fulfilling my wishes, my eyes landed on a table in the far corner of the room, away from everyone else, that was completely vacant aside from one boy dressed in a blue flannel. He was sitting by himself and reading of book of all things. I found myself wondering what he was reading and other things like what kind of books he was into, what music did he listen to, what did he like to do as a hobby? Then my mind ventured into the darker thoughts like, who was that man in the alley, why was he hurting him, why didn't Carter do anything about it—why didn't I do anything about it?
I was pulled out of my thoughts when Jesse waved a hand in front of my face. "Seriously, dude, what the hell are you looking at?" he asked in a slightly irritated voice.
I sighed. "That guy over there, Carter, he's new and he's sitting by himself."
Jesse didn't even bother to look at the boy I was referring to; he continued to stare at me with those intense green eyes of his. "So?"
"We should invite him to sit with us."
Jesse's eyes sparked with something I didn't recognize, and then he scoffed in utter disbelief. "Man, it must suck to be the most loved guy in school. You're too nice, Kyle. Sometimes, you need to grow some balls and accept that high school is about a social hierarchy. People like you and me are at the top of the pyramid, people like him are at the bottom. We don't interact."
I sent him a glare. "He's a new kid, Jesse. This is his first day. He needs a friend."
He narrowed his eyes to challenge me, but when he figured that I wasn't going to give up, he kicked his feet onto the table and sighed. "Whatever, do what you want. And while you at that, suck his dick, why don't you?"
Evan jeered from beside him. "He's Asian—I doubt there's much to suck."
And with those words, the two of them erupted into a fit of uncontrollable laughter while I just stared at them in disbelief, wondering how I could call them my friends. They weren't bad people, I came to realize, they just succumbed to the pressures of high school like most people did—like I did when I chose to sleep with that hot girl at that one party because it was somehow expected of me.
So instead of dwelling over their attitudes, I stood up from my seat and made my way to Carter's table. It took quite the courage to do this, knowing that I seemed to lack courage when it came to everything else, but I figured I should start making amends by giving Carter someone to talk to. Maybe then, I wouldn't feel so bad.
"Hi," I greeted him as soon as I arrived at his table.
He glanced up from his book, his dark eyes glistening with excitement once he recognized me. He put the book down and gave me a smile. "Hi."
"Of Mice and Men, huh?" I gestured to the book.
"Yeah, it's great."
I shoved my hands into my pockets and teetered back and forth on my heels. "You like to read?"
Carter tilted his head to the side. "Don't you?"
"Huh?"
"You're the president of the Book Club, here," he continued. I opened my mouth to ask how he would know that, but he eased my curiosity shortly after by saying, "I saw the plaques in the main hallway. You're in a lot of clubs, and sports..." He pointed at the gym bag hauled over my shoulder that held two colorful baseball bats.
"Oh, um, yeah ... I do a lot."
Carter nodded. "That's cool. I wish I had talent like you do. My brother used to play baseball, but that's all I ever really knew about sports, ha."
"Your brother?" I inquired. For some reason, I wanted to know more about the boy that I had abandoned, and maybe that was my first mistake. "Does he go here?"
"He died last month," was his dull reply. I was surprised, shocked even. Carter didn't look sad, at least not in the way you would think someone who had just lost their brother would. I was nothing but a stranger to him, yet he chose to disclose that information with so casually, so spontaneously.
And that was why I had decided to plant my feet into the floor and sit down beside him. As a Psychology major, I've learned that decisions tell a lot about a person. We all have some kind of moral compass and we all have different ideas of what is right and what is wrong. And in that moment, my decision to sit and talk with Carter was what I believed was the right thing to do. For a while, it was, but now that I don't have Carter to call my own anymore, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just me being stupid.
"I'm sorry," I said because it seemed like the automatic response to anything of that nature.
"Yeah," Carter said as he glanced at the slightly torn cover of his book.
"Are you enjoying your first day, so far?" I decided to change the subject to something less traumatizing.
He shrugged. "The teachers are nice, the students not so much."
"Do they pick on you?" I asked, though I really should've have. What right did I have to ask that when I didn't have the balls to save him from being picked on last night?
"No." He shook his head. "They're just not friendly, but I don't know, maybe that's just me. I don't make friends easily." There was a sad look on his face as soon as he spoke those words, which made me wonder how he could be so upset over something as simple as friends, but not over something as serious as his brother's death.
But regardless, I gave him a reassuring smile because I was trying not to be a jerk. "What are you talking about? We're friends."
He frowned. "We are?"
"Of course." I gave him a playful shove in his shoulder, which he didn't respond well to; he flinched at the contact and scooted away from me. Trying not to be discouraged, I pushed further. "So much so that you're gonna be at my baseball game tonight. Can you do that?"
Carter looked at me for some time. It was hard to tell what was going through his mind, and I sorta wished that he'd tell me what was wrong with him. Eventually, his smile reappeared and he nodded. "Yeah, I can do that."