WIN

The girls pout as they cheer from the stands. They are covered head to toe in their school colors—forest green and dazzling silver—yet they suffer from a lack of spirit. Because when the boys win, they do not need the girls, and the girls like it best when they are needed.

The boys are jubilant. They slap their chests and howl. "You completely fucked that guy," they yell. They are in love with each other. On the bus back to the high school, they listen to songs about how they will live forever and never die. And songs about the glory of dying young and in a blaze. They experience embarrassing, momentary erections. They recount triumphs of the field as they shake synthetic dirt from their matted hair: the turnover in the third quarter; the winning field goal in the fourth—how the ball kissed the inside of the goal post as if carried on a string by God. They slap ass cheeks with mildewed towels in the locker room. They gather at one boy's backyard pool house, tiptoeing past the living room where his parents sit in front of a blue TV. A boy brings a mostly full 24-pack of his father's Lone Star. Another has stolen the navy sock filled with his older brother's weed. A third has his alcoholic grandmother's strawberry Smirnoff—like candy, like gasoline, like throw up, like victory. They share the only bong and say "no homo" when they bring it to their lips. They stay out past curfew and race their trucks down dead-end streets. The boys want to be close to death. The boys are winners. They ignore the girls. 



LOSS

The boys are silent. They pull loose threads from their dirty pants and think about their mistakes, their fumbles, all their missed opportunities. They think about the ways in which they could have been better boys.

The girls are frantic with anticipation. They have roles to fill. They will be vessels. They will pet the damp, flowery heads of their defeated boys, fresh as babies from the locker room showers. Then the girls will lie back and push the crotches of their panties aside for fingers jammed and bruised.

In the dark bus, the girls prepare. They rub glitter from their eyelids. It feels like sandpaper and falls to the vinyl floor in clumps. They smudge their black eyeliner to look like sex. They remove their flesh-colored tights in contorted positions. They spray the gusset of their underwear with cotton candy perfume. In the back row, one girl quietly plays a song about getting whatever you like. The girls like this song because this is what is happening to them. They are getting whatever they like. They are getting the boys.

The boys drift out of their locker room like mourners from a casket. The girls look at them like their mothers did when their dogs died. They take the boys to secret spots around the town, where they say things like, "It's ok," and "I'm here." Then the boys flex their fingers and squish the girls beneath their uneven weight. The squished girls coo. They feel like funny little puppets with the boys' hands inside of them.

In the prickly grass of a humid backyard, a girl wiggles free of her blue underpants while a boy licks his fingers.

In the backseat of a Honda with subwoofers in the trunk, a girl's neck bounces against the plastic interior of the door. The bass thrums and her head vibrates.

In the unlit gazebo near the baseball fields, a boy reaches his hand beneath the hem of a girl's shorts and feels her wetness and says, "You are perfect." The waistband leaves red indentations in the lingering baby fat on the girl's waist.

On the roof of a girl's parked SUV, a boy bends toward her and says, "Can we just lay here a while?" And he cries, and he is soft, and the girl thinks of how she will tell this story differently in school.

At practice on Monday, the boys pull sleds that are three times their weight. They vomit in the high heat of afternoon and keep running. They brag about who vomited the most. Naked in their locker room, one boy holds up three fingers to indicate how many. The boys laugh and sneak looks. What they want most of all is to know what kind of boys they are.

The girls linger in their own locker room. They roll the bands of their shorts until they are satisfied. Two girls tighten one another's bra straps, comparing the weight of their new breasts. One girl winces when she pees; the space between her legs still feels like a bruise. The girls practice their high kicks in a single line and press their acrylic fingernails into each other's bony shoulders. They love each other but it is conditional and temporary and not enough to make up for a lack of love from the boys. On Friday, the girls sit on the locker room floor to paint fresh glitter onto each other's eyelids and breathe warm air into each other's open mouths. They cheer in the stands yet pray for another loss.

After the girls have moved far away from their town, they will forget the last names of the boys. They will forget about the disappointment of a win. They will revel in the way their husbands and toddling sons reach their dimpled hands toward them in need. They will love and chase this feeling, and they will not know why.


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