I know perfectly well what's wrong with me.

Turned out Jake had only bruised his hand, not broken or sprained anything, but it was a nasty bruise. Whether he would be able to quarterback next Friday depended on how fast he healed.

Coach was pissed, but confined his anger to making sure Jake understood what was expected of him. "You gotta be religious, coming back from something like this. I mean, religious about following the doctor's instructions and doing your therapy."

He spared a glare or three for me since I had been alone with Jake in the bathroom when the injury happened. Jake's story was that he had been clowning around and had hit the towel machine harder than he intended. That might even be true, but he gave no part to me in the accident.

"Don't say a word," he ordered me in a whisper before the interrogations began. "I'll take all the blame. I was trying to get your attention, and I did something stupid."

Did I agree with that? I decided to shake my head. Jake was my best friend and the reason I was mostly going to be trying to continue playing football after what happened.

We finally filtered out of the hospital, making our way through a crowded waiting area. There were too many of us anyway, about half the team, and the staff pushed us toward the doors. "We need our Emergency Room back," they said.

Someone had thought to move the cars parked at the Pizza Barn by relay to the hospital parking lot. Jake, Megan and I met at his big red Ford pick-up. Megan and I were holding hands as Jake retrieved his keys from Lee Frick, who had organized the relocation of vehicles.

“Dude,” said Lee as he handed over the keys.

“Thanks, dude,” Jake responded. Megan giggled and I had to smile, squeezing her hand.

Jake's right hand was wrapped in bandages, then in a cold pack, and as an outer layer, a taped-on plastic bag to catch liquids. "Pete," he said. "You wanna drive?" I nodded, and he handed me the keys. He climbed in on the passenger's side, and Megan squeezed in next to him, between us.

“Dude,” she whispered to me as I slid in beside her.

The plan was to drop Megan at my house to pick up my car and follow along to Jake's. After that, I could take her home in my vehicle and finally end up back home myself. Complicated, but doable.

Jake nixed that idea. "Just take me home," he said. "You can keep my truck at your place. It'll keep me from trying to drive it. I'll call you to bring it to me when I think I can drive." He held his bandaged hand up and glared at it.

"If it's just a bruise," Megan commented, "it might be all right in two or three days." Her family included doctors and nurses, and maybe she was used to talking about injuries and healing.

Jake's voice was tight and strained. "I think I'm going to miss this Friday at least."

"You don't know," I offered. "No point in getting all worked up yet."

"Yeah," Jake said, but not like he meant it. He turned to me and his mouth twisted. "You going to play Friday?" he asked.

"I—yes," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. Jake and Megan both lived on the south side of town. Jake's family had moved almost four years ago. They had lived only a few doors down from my home during most of grade school. Megan lived in Star Valley, which was sort of a wart on the west end of Friendly. I headed for Jake's first.

No one said anything for a minute or two as I negotiated crossing the highway without a traffic light. It wasn't that busy on Saturday afternoon, not like Friday or Sunday night when the Phoenicians would swarm the place in their double-ended galleys on trailers pulled by heavy-duty pick-up trucks on their way to the lakes on the Colorado.

That's a joke 'cause people from Phoenix are called Phoenicians, too, just like the ancient guys from Phoenicia. Not a funny joke, maybe, but one I had heard and told often. I smiled in reflex, thinking about it.

"I guess you're happy?" Jake asked. He waved his bandaged hand. "But I still don't think you should play." His face looked painful, the way his lips twisted.

"I'm going to play," I said stubbornly. "The team will need me even more if you aren't there. The Bulldogs are a lot tougher team than the Buckaroos."

"You could get hurt," Jake said.

I shrugged.

Megan, sitting between us, kept quiet, barely moving her head and eyes as she followed our argument.

Jake appealed to her, "Help me out, Megan. Tell Pete he can't play, now."

Megan's eyebrows shot up. "You think I agree with you?" she scoffed. "I think Pete can do whatever she wants."

I winced at the pronoun.

Jake sulked. "Football is no place for a girl," he finally muttered.

I decided to ignore that. Partly because I kinda sorta agreed with it. But then, I still didn't think of myself as a girl. I was still a guy—a dude—just a dude with…one of those.

*

We dropped Jake at his house, still sulking, but he came around to the driver's side and offered me a left-handed fist bump. I grinned down at him from the lofty seat of his F-150 and returned it.

"Friendly Pride," he said.

"Rah," I agreed.

His face twisted up. "Win for me Friday, and we go all the way?"

"Damn straight."

"Don't get hurt," he added.

"I won't," I promised.

"Kick some Bulldog ass."

"As of now," I intoned, "they are officially punted."

He grinned, slapped the door of the truck, whispered something and turned away.

I'd heard what he said, and my face turned red. Megan leaned over and asked, "Did he just say he loved you?"

"Yeah, well," I tried to pass it off. "We met in daycare for My Sake." (Private joke, I'm Pete.) "He's the brother I never had."

Megan waited a three-beat. "Do you love him?"

I sniffed. Damn girly nose tears. "'Course I do. He's my b-brother. What do you mean, asking me that?"

"It's okay to love someone who's close to you."

"I-it's not romantic. I'm not gay, and neither is he."

She squeezed my arm.

We were still sitting there for a moment, watching Jake go up to his house. He'd just turned to wave at us when the door opened, and Joanna popped out and grabbed him. We probably should have noticed her car parked at the curb.

I made some sort of noise, and Megan said, "Oops!"

"Oops?" I asked. It seemed an odd thing to say.

"Let's just go," she said.

I put the truck in gear and pulled out into the street, thinking about Megan's reaction. "It's something about Joanna, isn't it?"

She sighed. She was sitting in the middle of the big bench seat but now scooted away from me an inch or so, like she needed distance before she told me something. She sighed again, looking away. "No one tells Joanna what to do, y'know?"

I had a bad feeling about this. "Who did she tell?" I asked.

"The squad," Megan muttered, adding a few choice words of description. "The bitch couldn't wait."

"What?" I wanted to bark and howl, but I kept my voice mild. "The whole cheerleading squad?"

Megan shook her head. "Just the varsity."

So six more people knew my secret. I braked carefully at a four-way stop, following Purple Sage Road east and south where it crossed Jubilee Boulevard. Megan lived in the less affluent part of town. Still Friendly but maybe a little less cheerful. 

In most of the rest of the country, I knew she would be considered black (or African-American) for her Creole heritage. But here in this part of Arizona, she was just brown—like the half of the town is made up of Mexican-Americans, immigrant Mexicans, native Indians of several tribes, Filipinos and a miscellany of others, including a few more black families.

To me, she was just Megan. And she was a Varsity cheerleader, one of eight. Who now all knew about me.

"Fuck," I said.

Megan shrugged. "She told them, but she didn't try to convince them."

"Huh?"

She made a face. "Joanna told it like it was a joke. Like we, you and I, had been fucking so hard that we lost your dick in the bed covers. She called me at the hospital to tell me all about it."

"Oh, jeez." I didn't know what to think.

"It may be a good thing," Megan suggested. "Now it's out there, but in a form no one will believe."

I shook my head. I felt my skin crawl, thinking about the varsity cheerleaders having a laugh at the idea of me losing my junk. My face turned hot, and my stomach fluttered.

I finally settled on a muttered, "Damn it," and tried to let it go.

Megan moved close again and leaned against me. I appreciated that. We drove across town without saying much, stopping only to pick up some broasted chicken at Johnny's for Megan's family dinner since she hadn't been at home to do the cooking.

*

The D'Auguste family lived in one of the mobile home parks on the edge of town with sixty or eighty large coaches parked in among the pines and scrub oak. I dropped Megan off at her door to be met by her mother and younger siblings and an older brother I'd forgotten she had. Travis came out to the truck to say hi and help Megan carry chicken into the house, holding it up out of reach of greedy kids and dogs.

He laughed a big booming chuckle and called to the kids, "Chickie, chickie, chickie, I've got the chicken and maybe you can have some if you're sweet as pie, eh?" The kids protested, the dogs barked, and he laughed even louder. I remembered him being on the varsity when I started high school, but I had no idea where he had been since he graduated.

He looked generally a lot like Megan, with dark skin, hair and eyes, but he had a build like a wrestler with massive shoulders, a wide trunk and arms as big around as my thighs. I stared at him walking away, and Megan noticed.

"Here I am," she said brightly, as if I had been looking for her. She slid out of her seat to the driveway and pulled the rest of the dinner fixings toward her.

"You need help with that?" I asked her, but she shook her head.

"Chacha is distracting the little ones so that I can manage."

"Chacha?" I blinked.

"I couldn't say 'Travis' when I was small, so that's his family nickname. And from high school football for his running style after one of his coaches heard me call him that." She darkened a bit and grinned. "He doesn't know whether he loves it or hates it."

"That's as bad as Nubbin," I commented, smiling and watching him tease his younger sibs with the boxes of chicken. "Where's he been?"

"Playing baseball in the minors," she explained. "He starts college next week, down in Tucson." Then she added, "Petey," as she gathered the bags of salads and biscuits. "Chacha has a girlfriend already."

It took me two beats to get it as she turned away. "Megan!" I yelped.

She laughed, calling softly over her shoulder. "You were looking."

Was I looking? The way she meant that? I felt my face get hot.

Damn it! I was looking!

*

I got the heck out of there and headed for home. I still had Jake's big truck, which I could park at my house, and Jake could come get it when he figured out how to drive it with his right arm bandaged up.

I had a lot of stuff I didn't want to think about, so I tried to work on plans for Friday's game mentally. Without Jake at quarterback, did we really stand a chance against the Winslow Bulldogs? I thought so. Dave Garcia, a lanky junior, was our backup quarterback. I'd have to talk him into giving me the ball as much as possible. 

Dave had a good arm but didn't have the savvy and eye for the field that Jake had developed. He was tall and lean with a blond cowlick and big hands. Nowhere near as good-looking as Jake.

Uh…? Why was I thinking about his looks? My face was hot again….

I passed the turn for the airport and used the stupid roundabout to get on Beeline Highway headed south through the middle of town, a lot faster than the side streets, even though I'd have to head north again to get to my own neighborhood. I made the turns, trying to control my thoughts, but driving didn't take up that much of my brain.

Neither did football, or even imagining last night with Megan. She'd been naked. We had sex…. And I remembered it, but I couldn't quite picture it in my mind. What was wrong with me?

I pulled into the side yard, parking Jake's truck beside my stupid station wagon. Then I sat there, thinking about trying not to think about certain things.

I knew perfectly well what was wrong with me.