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tryouts for the junior-high team, there was no point in dragging him along. There wouldn’t be much to watch anyway. For the first round, all we’d had to do was bring our signed permission slips, turn our heads and cough, and then run some sprints and drills. The slowest runners met the assistant coach, the fastest ones were introduced to the head coach, and everybody in between kind of wandered up behind their friends in one group or the other. Then they lobbed some balls at us to see who could catch and who would get hit in the face. That was it. Today would be a little different because we were going to do more or less the same thing in helmets and shoulder pads. No, it wasn’t the most rigorous process, but if you couldn’t make the junior-high football team inthis town, then the rest of your life wouldn’t be too promising anyway.
    The equipment was laid out on the side of the field when I got there: one pile of helmets, one of shoulder pads, and another of red mesh jerseys. A lot of the guys were scrambling to get their stuff because there weren’t enough helmets to go around, so some would have to share, and those who did would have to sit out for part of try-outs. Nobody wanted that because this was our chance to impress, and you couldn’t impress if you were standing on the sidelines with no helmet on, digging the wedgie out of your ass. But I took my time. I knew there’d be only one set of equipment sized extra small and I’d be the only one who could use it. That’s the way it’d been last year in peewee league, so I couldn’t see how things would be any different now.
    I got my stuff, no problems, and went off to the side to suit up. I fitted the jersey over the shoulder pads before I put them on, like draping a shirt on a hanger, because if you did it the other way, you couldn’t get the jersey over the shoulder pads without asking someone to help you, and I already knew that no one was gonna help me, because the other guys didn’t want me there. Yeah, I was on my own and I knew it, but all it really meant was that I had to plan ahead. I could handle that. I laced up the cleats that were in my backpack, slid the shoulder pads on, made sure they were tight across the front, and fixed the straps under my arms. I wedged the helmet down on my head, started adjusting the chin strap, and was looking around to see if Orlando was there when I heard Coach Rose calling me.
    “Smalls! Front and center, on the double!”
    Coach Rose, the head coach, was the sort of guy who was born to be in the military but somehow wasn’t bright enough to find his way to the recruitment office. Not that missing out on his destiny had ever stopped him from wearing a crew cut and a whistle, barking orders, telling time the army way, and making everybody call him sir.
    “Smalls,” he grunted as I hustled over to him, “are you squared away on the parameters of today’s exercises?”
    I could see the beads of sweat on his upper lip, and warped versions of myself reflected in the lenses of his mirrored sunglasses.
    “Smalls! You have a problem, son? Don’t you know to sound off when I ask you something?”
    I didn’t know which question he wanted me to answer—if I had a problem or knew to sound off—so I didn’t say anything.
    “All right, Smalls, let’s take this slow,” he said through clenched teeth. “Are you … squared a-way … on the pa-ra-meters—”
    “Yeah,” I cut him off. I hated it when people treated me like I was suffering from imbecility instead of rage.
    “Yeah what?”
    “Yeah, I know there’s no contact, so I can’t run around laying into people.”
    “Can’t run around laying into people what?”
    “You know, like hitting them and tackling them and stuff.”
    He shook his head in disgust. “Smalls, what do I look like to you?”
    The word
penis
came to mind.
    “Do I look like some kind of pansy school counselor or one of your imaginary friends?”
    “No,” I said.
    “No, he