Page 52 of Playworld

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

She considered this. “Something,” she said.

I stared at the river.

She said, “I’ll wait.”

We waited, I did not look at her, and then I said, “It’s hard to explain.”

“Maybe just talk then,” she said.

I told her about everything I’d ignored. How over Christmas, with every second helping of every meal, I’d heard a voice that said,Don’t.How I did thatall the time.All those hours I could have spent reading and catching up over break and I didn’t. The scale I never stepped on before or after New Year’s. The milk I drank, straight from a cow, and the cream chipped beef.

“I don’t understand,” Naomi said.

My words came like a torrent that I didn’t exactly understand either. I told her I was always behind, I was always late. I told her that I didn’t say what I saw when I saw it. When I saw it and knew what it was, I ignored it. That I didn’t listen to myself when I spoke.

“So speak,” she said.

I said, “Coach Kepplemen—”

She said, “The one who slaps you.”

I said, “He slaps everyone.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

I told her how the moment I stepped on the scale yesterday and was overweight, the leverage he’d wanted was his, he was applying it, and he would not let up until I’d done his bidding or failed.

“Done what?” Naomi asked.

“Made weight,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Failed at what, then?”

“Making weight.”

She shook her head. “Like this person’s controlling you?”

I told her how sometimes in the school hallways, Coach might ask what our schedules were, what periods we had free to practice, thoughIknew he already knew, having once seen on his basement office desk, in his open binder, on his own schedule’s master grid, Monday through Friday, our initials penciled in—GH, TP, CB, SP—so he would know where we were at all times.

“I know he knows, but I just pretend I don’t.”

Naomi placed her hands over mine, threaded her fingers through my fingers. She pinched this skin gently and then pulled at it, as if it were a glove I wore. It stretched but did not retract. It held its form, remaining bunched, as if it were a cheap costume, and she stared at this deformity, shocked.

“It happens whenever I’m dehydrated,” I said.

Naomi took me in her arms. Until it was time to go, she rubbed my back, to warm me through my coat.

“You’re not making this easy,” she said.

Later that night, she called our apartment.

When I answered the phone, her voice had the same formality it did when we saw each other in restaurants or at parties: an act, as if we hadn’t just seen each other. “Hey, Griffin, how you doing? May I talk with your mother, please?”

I waited for a moment, then opened my study’s door; it let in a bit of cooler air. “Mom,” I said, “Naomi Shah is on the phone.”