Chapter Text
Nick feels the exhaustion deep in his bones this morning. His obliques are sore from the hours of hacks he took in the backyard last night and the calluses on his lower palms remain stubbornly pink even at 8 a.m. His legs might be a little wobbly, too. Forearms are definitely barking.
He’d been in the zone, his teammates’ shared playlist blasting through his Powerbeats on loop, as he surrendered himself to the comforting rhythm of his swing in the Southern California twilight. All that had mattered was his bat whooshing through the air, over and over and over. As sweat collected in the waistband of his shorts and boxers, he had only found relief in watching the baseballs nestle into the netting a few dozen feet away from the adjustable tee. Not a sign of anything, really, just a needed reminder that he could make contact after spending days whiffing at beachballs.
But as he flexes his hands on the cool surface of the beige desk and tries not to fidget in his seat he wonders if spending the night before his first day of 11th grade releasing his frustration at his underperformance had been the wisest move. Mom had certainly thought him foolish when he slinked into the kitchen at 9 p.m., the whole front of his bright orange Dri-fit darkened with sweat.
It’s going to be a challenging enough year. He doesn’t need to make this mistake again.
“Nick Nelson?”
Nick jolts to attention. Mr. Lange, his world history teacher last year, is looking at him from the front of the classroom, eyebrow cocked. Beside his desk, a lanky boy with black curls and what seem from this distance to be dark eyes stands with his hands clasping a small black rectangular bag and a piece of paper in front of his waist. Nick’s never seen him around Truham. He feels like he’d remember a boy in flannel — he doesn’t often encounter that this far inland, and certainly not in August.
“Come here, please,” Mr. Lange beckons, impatiently waving his hand when Nick doesn’t immediately move to stand. He slowly makes his way down the aisle, and offers a sort of smile to the stranger when their eyes — his are a murky blue — briefly connect on approach. “This is Charlie Spring. He’s new to the school. I’d like you to show him around before first period.”
“Oh,” Nick exhales. He forgot he’d volunteered at the end of last semester to become a school ambassador. He’s expected to shepherd freshmen and newcomers around now.
“Your schedules align,” Mr. Lange continues. “You can show him around the different wings, help him map out his best routes, after we’ve taken attendance and gotten through first-day business. Sound good?”
“Of course, no problem.” Nick turns back to the boy — Charlie — and grins, winningly he thinks, at him this time. Charlie is shifting his weight between his feet and there’s a light blush at the tops of his sharp cheekbones. “I’m sitting back there.” Nick gestures at the last row in the center of the room. “You can sit next to me.”
The desks have mostly filled in the few moments Nick’s been up here, but the one beside his is still empty. He leads Charlie over and settles back down.
“Nicholas Nelson!”
Startled again, Nick whips his head to the front of the room. Harry Greene has blustered in, trailed by a few of their teammates on the Truham squad. How, Nick wonders to himself, has he managed to get a homeroom assignment with that guy again?
Nick gives Harry a polite wave, then turns his attention to Charlie before Harry gets any grand ideas about coming near him. Charlie is perched on the edge of the seat with his orange Jansport still on his back and his hands twined on the worktop above a printout of his schedule. He looks smaller now that he’s sitting, hunched so that he doesn’t look like the roughly 6-foot kid Nick clocked when he first saw him. The boy oozes discomfort, and Nick wishes he knew how best to relieve it.
Going for innocuous, he clears his throat and waits until Charlie’s looking at him to ask, “So where are you from, Charlie?”
Charlie’s voice is quiet when he says, “Um, San Francisco.”
“Oh, cool. I love it up there.”
Charlie nods but offers nothing else. Nick takes the sign for what it is and points at the paper on Charlie’s desk instead. “Can I look at that?”
Mr. Lange was right. He and Charlie have English at the same time, just different teachers given Charlie appears to be on the AP track, and they have the same pre-calculus class with Dr. Bowman. It seems they’ll be in the same wings at various intervals throughout the week, too. Showing him around should be easy enough.
“I came to the open house last week,” Charlie says, interrupting Nick’s mental mapping. “I got a good lay of the land then. So you really don’t have to do what Mr. Lange asked.”
Nick waves him off. “It’s no problem, really.” He returns the page to Charlie’s desk, then leans back in his chair. The hem of his new performance shorts rides up, and he tugs it back down. “I’d honestly rather show you around than sit for the next 30 minutes and open myself up to Harry talking to me.” He points to the far right corner of the room, where Harry’s already holding court. “I avoided him most of the summer. Not exactly excited to catch up.”
Charlie laughs at that and the sound of it appears to catch him off guard. He quickly purses his lips and tries to tamp down his smile. Curiously, warmth pools in Nick’s gut.
There aren’t many announcements from Mr. Lange. With only juniors in the room, he underscores the importance of SAT and ACT prep and reminds that they can’t attend prom in the spring without achieving a 2.5 GPA. Everything else of note is on the Truham portal.
Mr. Lange nods at Nick with 20 minutes left in homeroom. Nick turns to Charlie, jerks his head to the door with a smile, then leads him out to the hallway, ignoring the burn in his thighs and the gentle pull in his arms as he hooks his hands into the straps of his backpack. He’s glad he got in early enough to drop his gym bag in the locker room. The extra few pounds on his shoulders wouldn’t be welcome right now.
“So,” Nick starts, yanking down the left hem of his swishy shorts again, “You’re basically going to be in the same halls as me throughout the week. I can show you each path I’d take and point out your classrooms, if you want?”
Charlie hesitates but nods, his curls bouncing on his forehead. They look soft to the touch, like he doesn’t use much product, if at all. “Yeah, I guess that’d be okay.” He scuffs the toe of one of his beaten white hightop Converse into the teal tile underfoot. “I don’t really have a plan for getting around yet, just a general idea of where I need to go and when.”
“Well,” Nick pauses for effect, smiles, “I’m happy to steer you in the right direction.”
Nick is sorer a few hours later. There’s a new weight training instructor he tried to impress before lunch, and he probably should have thought that through before he tried drop sets on his squats. It hasn’t even been a week since his last tournament. He knows better, really he does. The people-pleasing streak in him is overpowering, though. Coach Singh is probably going to chew him out for it when he botches fungo work tomorrow.
After housing the two turkey BLTs he bought in the cafeteria, Nick is recovered enough to not-quite-wobble into Dr. Bowman’s classroom. The rotund, gray-haired man is standing at the whiteboard with his back to the desks, already jotting down what Nick assumes will be a torturous warm-up exercise. He’d heard from Jack, the senior pitcher committed to Tennessee just like him, that Bowman was a hard-ass. Jack had him for pre-calc last year, and he showed Nick once the acronym he wrote beside one of his homework problem sets: “DNDRBW.” Translation: “Does not deserve the respectability of being wrong.” Nick would really like to avoid that this year, but he’s not the most confident in his mathematical abilities.
Nick is heading toward the back row in the middle of the classroom when he spots a head of curls on the far side, near the windows. Charlie is pulling out a notebook. Nick redirects himself, choosing to set his bag down next to the desk to Charlie’s right.
He greets, “Hey,” as he slumps down into the seat. Charlie stills his hands to glance over at Nick. The ghost of recognition crosses his features before he offers a tentative smile.
“Oh, hey.”
“How’s your first day going?”
Charlie shrugs. “It’s just school. Not too bad, not too good.” He finishes shuffling his papers, then wryly adds, “I’m Goldilocks, I guess.”
A laugh puffs out of Nick’s lips and he pulls out his own notebook. “That’s good enough. Did you find anyone to sit with at lunch?”
“I went to the media center.” Charlie tucks his hands into the cuffs of his shirt. “I prefer the quiet. Cafeterias can be a little overstimulating.”
Nick can’t even remember the last time he went into the school library outside of a class assignment. “I didn’t know you could eat in there.”
Charlie chuckles. “I think it’s frowned upon. But I think I’m a good charmer when I wanna be.”
Nick hasn’t known this boy for long but for some reason he doesn’t doubt that. It’s the curls, probably. The blue eyes might also help.
In contrast, all Nick has going for himself are his freckles.
“Well, if you ever want company, you can find me in the lunchroom. I don’t really mind ditching the baseball team. We spend enough time together.”
The easy offer surprises Nick. Yeah, the rift between him and his teammates started growing last season, but he hadn’t yet acted on it. Not beyond dodging Harry as much as possible, anyway. That had been easy enough after Harry changed travel teams. This suggestion, though, is concrete. A representation of the frustration that started building inside him when he first caught some of the guys — including a few of the older ones who usually ride the bench — heckling kids who dared carry themselves differently than them at school. Nick’s never even liked the idea of booing during sporting events. He might be two years away from starting college but the juvenile antics grate on his nerves.
Charlie breaks through Nick’s thoughts. “Thanks. Maybe if I ever get ahead of all the material for English I will take you up on that.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re in AP,” Nick laughs. Sucker. “Homework already, what a shame.”
Charlie screws up his mouth. “We can’t all be dumb jocks, can we?”
If Nick couldn’t read the amusement in Charlie’s eyes, he’d feel wounded. But Charlie’s words lack bite. It’s all bluster. Still, Nick lets himself gape at his new classmate. “Wow. That one hurts.”
Charlie titters and turns to the front of the classroom, where Dr. Bowman seems to be watching the clock as it counts down to the bell.
When it chimes, Nick leans over to whisper, “I’m more than a dumb jock.” Charlie shoots him an eye-roll and pokes Nick’s arm with the pencil he’s been twirling between his long fingers. Nick sits back, but only after Charlie flashes him another smile.
“What’s your next class?” Nick’s having trouble shoving his notebook and new textbook into his backpack. He hasn’t had the chance to drop stuff at his locker today, and soon he’ll be hobbling down the hall for reasons other than ill-advised showing off in the gym.
Charlie is already standing when he replies, “Spanish.”
“Oh, I’m heading that way.” Nick grunts as he manages to pull the zipper closed. “We can walk together.”
They’re in the hallway moments later, jostling for space as other students filter through the math wing. It takes effort to walk side-by-side during class change, but Charlie deserves a good student ambassador, and Nick is nothing if not a perfectionist.
“So are you fluent in Spanish?” Nick asks when they’re finally out of the worst of the bottlenecks and nearly at their destination. Charlie’s only a step behind him, so Nick doesn’t need to pitch his voice over the din in the building. It’s nice not having to shout to be heard.
Charlie shakes his head. “Not as much as my dad would like me to be.”
“Why’s that?” Then what Charlie said during their tour this morning dawns on Nick. “Is that what he teaches?”
“No, he’s actually — wait, teaches?” Charlie’s eyebrows furrow, almost meeting in the middle of his forehead.
“You mentioned before that he’s a professor.” Nick sidesteps a group of kids circled together staring at their cellphones. “And that you moved here for his job.”
“Oh. Right.”
Charlie doesn’t volunteer anything else for a few seconds, and when Nick glances over at him, he still seems a little bewildered. “So…” Nick ventures. “Is that why he wishes you were fluent in Spanish?”
Charlie’s expression finally clears and he nods, hooking his hands around his backpack straps. “He’s in the English department, actually. He just gets frustrated that I’m not great at communicating with my extended family. He’s Mexican and a little sensitive about us losing touch with his heritage.”
“Oh, well, that seems fair.” Nick’s grandparents are French expats who settled in Southern California in the sixties before they had his dad. They speak perfect English, but Nick had always wanted to impress them when he was younger, so he begged for formal French lessons. He’s not sure his fluency will ever come in handy.
“Yeah.” Charlies looks briefly down at his shoes as they both cross into the language wing. “I’m trying. I think I’ve been getting better. This is year three.” He turns to Nick with a smile then. “So I’m bound to be an expert soon enough.”
Nick grins back. “Maybe you can teach me sometime. French is pretty useless in baseball.”
“Is that what you play?” Nick almost answers, then he notices a glimmer in Charlie’s eyes. It’s devious, he’s sure of it. “I don’t think you’d told me yet.”
Giggling, “Shut up,” Nick bumps Charlie’s shoulder and is thrilled when Charlie falters a step. He deserves it. “I haven’t talked about it that much.”
“Just enough for me to put together you were a baseball jock, like, three minutes into you showing me around.” There’s that teasing tone again. Delight swoops Nick’s stomach.
Before a suitable retort occurs to Nick, Charlie halts in front of a doorway. A poster informs Nick they’ve arrived at Señor Melendez’s room already. His own class is at the other end of the hall. He won’t have to sprint to make it, at least.
Charlie lets a hand drop from his backpack strap to gesture at the opening. “This is me. Thanks for the tour.”
“It’s no sweat,” Nick responds and takes one step back into the oncoming flow of student traffic. “See you tomorrow, Charlie.”
Charlie ducks into the classroom before Nick can wave goodbye. Suddenly aware again of the tenderness in his muscles, Nick lopes off to greet Madame Lambert for the first time since May.