Fic: Stars Forever, Part 1
Stars Forever
The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo, Eduardo/Other, NC-17, 18000 words
All characters are in high school, so some underage here.
Written for the 2011 tsnsecretsanta exchange
WHAT IS THIS FIC EVEN. I decided to take two things I love (The Social Network and football) and mash them together. Liberties taken and much of this story is based on informed but less-than-expert knowledge of football, boarding school life, and Ivy League athletic recruiting. Suspending some disbelief might be in order.
ivynights, I know that this maybe isn't exactly what you asked for, but I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to altogetherisi for the read through, and many thanks to my darling riverlight for her writing support and beta.
“Eduardo,” Coach says. Eduardo didn’t even know that Coach Sorkin knew his first name. “You ready?”
He takes a deep breath. He can’t ignore how the ball felt in his hand, the way that everything looks and feels completely transformed with the laces between his fingers. “Yeah, I’m ready, Coach.”
On AO3
The Saverins pack up and leave São Paulo the summer after Eduardo finishes the second grade. He’s devastated to leave his family behind, his aunts and uncles and all of his cousins, and his school friends too. He cries when his father tells him, and his father simply says, “It’s not worth crying over, Eduardo.”
So, Eduardo goes, with his older sister and his parents, to Miami. He speaks some English, but the first few months and the start of school are so hard. He doesn’t understand half of what was going on around him, can’t follow the conversations of his classmates. He’s lucky to be able to mostly follow what was going on in class, with the help of the ESL teacher.
He’s frustrated, though, and driving his father crazy at home. Not that his father’s home much, but when he is, he’s scolding Eduardo for not sitting still, for running through the house, anything he can find to criticize. One day, Eduardo kicks a soccer ball into his father’s heavy cut crystal decanter set, sending the whole tray flying, luckily only chipping one of the tumblers in the process. His father screams at him, and Eduardo spends the rest of the week in his room, except for meals.
It’s his mom’s idea to sign him up for Pop Warner football. American football, which he knows absolutely nothing about. Eduardo has hazy, bright memories of playing soccer and baseball with his cousins in wide, green backyards in Brazil, but he has never even seen a football game before.
“Mãe,” Eduardo groans when his mother tells him, “I don’t even know how to play football.”
“Eduardo,” his mother says gently, pulling him close into a hug. It’s hard to be annoyed when she does that. “One of the other mothers in the neighborhood says her son plays. I think if you don’t get some of your energy out in a productive way, your father is going to kill you.”
So he goes.
And, surprisingly, he loves it.
He’s tall for his age, and strong, and he can run fast, so they have him playing as a mostly as a cornerback and a wide receiver, and some special teams. When he’s out on the field, he feels like everything slows down for him, just enough that he can see what the quarterback is doing, where he’s looking, see the players who are covering him, run the route he needs to run. The guys on the team are great, happy, smiling American boys, and after a while, he starts to feel like maybe Miami might become home to him someday too.
At first, they don’t tell his father - he never gets home until after Eduardo’s home from practice anyway, but once he decides to stick with it, Eduardo’s mom breaks the news.
His father is less than pleased.
Eduardo still doesn’t know what his mother said, but all he got from that point forward were disappointed looks from his father, and reminders that he needed to keep his grades up.
In his second year, his team makes it to the National Pop Warner Playoffs. It’s exhilarating, and Eduardo feels addicted to the feeling of making that perfect catch and running into the end zone.
By eighth grade, he’s a straight A student, playing for the freshman team at the local high school (and taking math there), and trying to convince his parents to send him to St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale for high school. They have the number nine ranked high school football program in the country and a strong college prep program, which will appease his father.
Like it had before, though, just as things are perfect, they go off the rails. In March of that year, Eduardo’s parents sit him down. He doesn’t know why his mother has such a sad look on his face. At first, he’s worried that maybe someone back in Brazil died or something, but that’s not it at all.
“Eduardo, I hope that you’ll understand that we’re only trying to do what’s best for you. We think that the discipline of the boarding school environment will be good for you before you go off to college.” His father pushes the brochure, with a picture on the front of rolling hills and fall foliage and stately brick buildings, across the dining room table. Kirkland Academy, a coeducational college preparatory school for boarding and day students since 1797, it says across the top. Eduardo rests his fingertips against the heavy paper and looks up.
It’s only been five years, but Miami is home to him now. São Paulo has faded into a sweet, sunsoaked memory. His team, his friends at school-everything he didn’t think he’d have when they first came here-they are all in Miami. He’d been to Boston once when his father went on business, but otherwise the landscape on the front of the brochure might as well be a foreign country.
Eduardo’s mom is silent, but she reaches over to fold back the pages of the brochure, to the page with Athletics emblazoned across the top. Eduardo glances down at the picture of a tall, blond football player carrying a ball across the goal line. He reads, “Kirkland Academy has one of the finest independent school athletic programs in the nation.”
In that moment, it’s completely clear to him-he know that he has a decision to make, probably the most important one he’s ever made. He could fight this; he could refuse to go and make them drag him kicking and screaming. Or he could take this opportunity, and trust his ability to make this work for him somehow, the same way he had five years ago.
“It sounds great, Pai,” he says, forcing some enthusiasm into his voice. His mom smiles, and his dad nods emphatically. It’s done.
Eduardo looks back down and flips back to the front page, taking in the bucolic campus, trying to picture himself among the ivy-covered brick.
*****
Eduardo is used to the heat - he’s never lived anywhere with real seasons, but something (maybe the teasing he’d gotten from his football buddies in Miami about going to boarding school up north) had made him believe that New England is cold all the time.
He couldn’t have been more wrong on that front.
Football tryouts start on a brutally hot and humid day in late August-not quite Florida hot and humid, but Massachusetts is giving it its best shot. Eduardo’s already sweating through his practice jersey and he hasn’t even started running yet.
“Excuse me, Coach Sorkin?” Eduardo says tentatively, approaching the only person out on the field not in uniform, but rather in a short-sleeved polo shirt in Kirkland purple, and khaki shorts.
At first, Coach Sorkin didn’t say anything, just looked Eduardo up and down. He tries not to squirm under the glare. “Yes, that’s me. And you are?”
Eduardo clears his throat and sticks out his hand. “Eduardo Saverin, sir. Freshman, from Miami.”
“Hmm,” Coach Sorkin says, taking Eduardo’s hand and shaking it firmly. “So tell me, Mr. Saverin, what position do you play?”
“I’ve played mostly cornerback and wide receiver, sir.”
Another pause, then, “Yes, that seems like the obvious choice. Well, join the rest of the guys out on the field, Saverin.” Then, out of nowhere, Coach Sorkin smiles.
Eduardo wouldn’t have said it was an evil smile, but an hour and a half later, sore in every place imaginable and dripping sweat, he feels like he may have been wrong. Still, it feels great - his club season back at home had wrapped up in the early spring, and he hadn’t realized how much he’s missed being out on the field, the physicality of those pre-season workouts before the real mental work began.
“Coming back tomorrow, then?” Coach Sorkin says as Eduardo jogs past, and Eduardo smiles at him as he wipes the sweat off his brow.
“Definitely, Coach.”
Over the course of the next week, he gets to know some of the other guys. Cameron Winklevoss, senior and three-year starter at quarterback, has a hell of an arm (so does his brother Tyler, for that matter) and seems to zero in on Eduardo on most of the time they’re on the field together. He can’t help the warmth that spreads through him when Cameron finds him on the sidelines after a 50-yard pass into the end zone and claps him on the back. “Nice work, Saverin,” he says, and Eduardo is feeling better about this move already.
By the end of the week, he doesn’t feel like the absence of his Miami friends-his team-aches as much as it once did. These guys are really solid; he eats with them in the dining hall and lives doors away from them in the dorms and Eduardo thinks that maybe, just maybe, this might work out for him after all.
He’s sure of it when tryouts are over at the end of the week, and he’s made the varsity team.
*****
School starts about a week after tryouts are over, and Eduardo gets swept up into the frenetic schedule of boarding school life. His roommate, Chris Hughes, is from North Carolina, crazy smart and quick to smile, and after hearing some of the horror stories from the guys on the football team (one of the sophomores has a roommate who leaves plates of food around for weeks on end, another has a roommate who sleepwalks), he’s pretty sure he won the lottery on that one.
His classes are hard-he never had to put much effort in before, but he relishes it. He’s never been one of those football guys who thinks that academics are a waste of time, or what you need to do to get to the next step in the sport. He’s never been around kids like the students at Kirkland, who all seem to want to learn and are excited about it. So, he works his ass off in class, and works his ass off on the field. He calls home every few days and tells his mother all about football and everything else, and then gives his father assurances when he reminds him of “what’s important, Eduardo, don’t you forget about it.”
The Kirkland team has been near the top of the Eastern Independent School Conference for the last few years, and this year is no exception. They go 5-3 through the end of October, and Eduardo slowly becomes the team’s leading receiver. He feels a connection with Cameron when they go out on the field, like everything narrows down to them and the space between them, and he racks up 950 yards receiving during those first eight games.
The Homecoming game is huge at Kirkland-their modest stadium filled with students and alumni in bright purple. They’re playing Dworkin School, and Kirkland goes up 10-0 in the first quarter.
Then, the unthinkable happens. First, Cameron is sacked with 13:54 left in the second quarter, and he doesn’t get up. And doesn’t get up. Finally, the trainers help him up, Cameron limping and wincing in pain, and off the field, and Tyler stops throwing on the sidelines and gets into the game.
And proceeds to throw four interceptions in the next ten minutes.
“Goddamnit, Winklevoss!” Coach Sorkin screams as Tyler comes off the field, head hanging. It’s clear to everyone with eyes that Tyler knows that things are going to shit. Eduardo has been open each time, running a route and cutting at the last minute to avoid the safety, but for some reason Tyler threw to the one receiver with tight coverage every time. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“I don’t know, Coach, I’m sorry -” Tyler dropped down onto the bench, grabbing a water bottle.
Coach Sorkin doesn’t back down, and crouches down in front of Tyler. “Saverin was wide open on all of those plays! Have you lost your mind?”
Tyler finally looks up, and Eduardo groans. He can tell that his teammates are seeing the same thing he’s seeing by the way everyone has gone as quiet as you can go on the sidelines during a homecoming game. “I don’t have it, Coach. I can’t see it.”
Coach Sorkin is quiet, calm and still, and no one says anything at all. They watch as the clock ticks down on the first half, the defense busting their asses to keep them in it. Then, Coach nods, stands up and claps Tyler on the shoulder. “Okay.”
Eduardo can feel his own eyes widen as Coach Sorkin strides right up to him, purposefully. “Um,” he says, because it’s like they’re in the Twilight Zone-nothing is making any sense at all.
“How’s your arm, Saverin?” he says quietly, and Eduardo is confused. He’s not really sure what he’s asking.
“It’s fine, Coach.”
Coach Sorkin rolls his eyes. “Your throwing arm. How’s your throw?”
Eduardo swallows hard. “I-I don’t know-I’ve never played quarterback.”
“Well, you can’t be worse than what we’ve got, and we all know that at least you know what the hell is going on on the field.” Coach turns to Eduardo’s gathered teammates. “Olsen! Get over here and take some throws from Eduardo. We may need a miracle in the second half.”
Billy jogs over, a shocked look on his face, too, and tosses the ball to Eduardo, who catches it firmly. His heart is pounding, threatening to jackhammer its way right out of his chest. He almost hopes that he can’t throw for shit, because he’s not sure he could go out on the field and not puke. They walk over to an empty area next to the field, and Eduardo fits his fingers into the seams of the ball, spaced evenly, feeling the stretch of his hand.
He takes a deep breath, looking at Billy and thinking about the trajectory of the ball, how far away Billy is, the angle and the force. Then he lets it go.
The ball spirals cleanly through the air, and Billy doesn’t have to take a step in any direction to catch it in his hands.
“Again?” Billy calls across the space between them, and Eduardo tries his best not to look at the huge smile on Billy’s face, not to feel the curious, anticipatory eyes from the sidelines of the field on them. He nods and Billy tosses it back.
They do it five more times, Billy moving back and forth, until Eduardo makes a perfect throw almost seventy yards. Then, he feels Coach Sorkin’s hand on his shoulder. It’s halftime; the teams have already headed back to the locker rooms, and the fans are flooding out to the concession stand.
“Eduardo,” Coach says. Eduardo didn’t even know that Coach Sorkin knew his first name. “You ready?”
He takes a deep breath. He can’t ignore how the ball felt in his hand, the way that everything looks and feels completely transformed with the laces between his fingers. “Yeah, I’m ready, Coach.”
Eduardo goes in at halftime, calls plays and makes four drives into the end zone, rushing one in himself. The final score is 28-10, and Eduardo has never felt this way after a football game in his entire life. Everything around him looks different, and his arm is tired, yes, but he can’t wait to do it again.
Coach Sorkin makes him the starting quarterback at the beginning of his sophomore year, after the Winklevosses have graduated and gone off to Harvard.
Everything about football changes for him, in that moment. He starts to see this as more than a hobby, but something that maybe, just maybe, he’s good at. More than good, even. Gifted, he overhears Coach Sorkin say to one of the assistant coaches about him. He knows his father wants him to follow in his footsteps, become a businessman and do everything that’s expected of him, but suddenly, this whole new world his open to him. The idea of playing college football becomes not just a nice idea, a pipe dream, but a reality.
Sophomore year, Kirkland runs up a 9-2 record before getting booted in the second round of the EISC playoffs. Eduardo passes for 3900 yards over those 11 games, and is named an All-Conference player. He has many conversations with Coach Sorkin about how to navigate the recruiting process, about D2 and D3 programs that have strong academics and excellent reputations, and makes a plan for attending a camp the summer after junior year to increase his chances of being recruited. Then, he passes for more than 400 and rushes for more than a 100 each of five consecutive games his junior season. That gets him his first D1 coach visiting him after a game. From Harvard.
There’s a part of him that doesn’t really believe that he can make this happen-that he can do what his father expects and have football too, but now the Ivy League is recruiting him. Over the next few weeks, he has informal meetings with Penn, Dartmouth, and Brown. Stanford even sends him a letter, although Eduardo is pretty sure he can’t hang in the Pac-12.
It’s crazy, and maybe even a little stupid, but maybe, maybe he can have all of it.
*****
He spends two weeks of July at a football camp at Yale, and it’s a welcome respite from what had become an awful summer at home. He fights with his father every single day, about how football is distracting him, about how it’s time to get serious, to grow up. To stop playing games. He’s convinced that his dad isn’t even going to let him go to the camp, and he comes up with a lie, to tell his dad that he’s going to take a class, anything. But his father lets up just before he’s scheduled to leave. Eduardo can’t get out of there fast enough.
It doesn’t seem to matter that his report card was flawless-every night in and out of season spent up way past when he long since should have turned out his desk light, Chris groaning at him to “go to bed already, Jesus, Eduardo”-and he’s signed up for every AP class Kirkland will let him take for his senior year. His advisor and Coach Sorkin had actually met with him before he left for the summer, to discuss whether or not he really wanted to take on the six AP load he’d registered for. He assured them that he absolutely did.
He loves school and he loves his courses at Kirkland, the rigor and the culture of debate and discussion in the classroom. He wouldn’t be happy dropping down a level or taking four academic courses like some of the other guys on the team, just getting by. Eduardo doesn’t want to sail through-furthermore, he can’t. Harvard has always been his dream-the only time what he wanted and what his father wanted seemed to be the same thing. And he has to make sure he gets there, even if football can’t take him.
Football is just the icing on the cake-really tasty, amazing icing, but icing nonetheless.
He’s also decided that he’s going to enjoy this year-while his academic schedule is brutal, he feels like he needs to get everything out of Kirkland that he can, academically and socially, before he leaves.
He’s dated some over the past three years. It’s not all that hard to find people who are interested, honestly. He had a girlfriend, a senior named Amy from California, for most of sophomore year, who was smart as hell and now at Stanford, but it had fizzled out before she graduated. Amy had wanted more attention than Eduardo had left over to give.
Divya happens during the fall of junior year, which catches Eduardo somewhat by surprise. Divya is the team’s senior feature running back, and Eduardo had always liked him-the way he was quick to poke fun, to laugh, to anger. After practice one day, Eduardo finds himself alone in the locker room with Divya, who appears to be showered and dressed and ready to go, but still hangs back.
“Hey, Narendra, can I help you with something?” Eduardo says, laughing.
Divya’s loitering around the end of the long, wooden bench where Eduardo is seated, his hands stuffed in his pockets. When he looks up at Eduardo, he’s not smiling.
“Um, is everything okay?” Eduardo says, concerned, because this isn’t an expression he’s ever seen on Divya’s face. He’s usually laughing at something or someone, or yelling. This is altogether different.
Then, Divya’s pulling his hands out of his pockets and moving toward Eduardo, moving his head side to side like he’s scanning the room. “Tell me if you don’t want this, okay?” he says, voice lower than Eduardo’s ever heard it.
“Don’t want what?” Eduardo says, completely confused, but before he can get an answer out, he gets Divya leaning over him, and Divya’s warm lips pressed to his.
Oh. Oh.
It’s like something he didn’t even know was there lights up inside of him, a light bulb, a flame that he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to put out, because he honestly had no idea at all. No idea that this was something he ever wanted-something that could feel like this. It’s so completely different from the way it felt to press Amy into the mattress of his dorm bed those few times they could sneak some time alone.
So he does the only thing that makes sense, and uses the lapels of Divya’s jacket to haul himself up off of the bench, pressing their bodies together. He pushes his tongue against Divya’s lips, wanting more, now, and feels the heat pool at the base of his spine at Divya’s groan and push back, the close heat of his body.
When they finally separate, both out of breath, Divya smiles. “I guess that’s a yes then, huh?”
Eduardo laughs, hauls Divya a little closer so that their lips are almost touching. “Hell, yes.”
Neither of them is particularly interested in coming out to anyone else, so they keep it quiet. Chris knows (after catching them together in Eduardo’s bed-Eduardo had thought Chris would be out late with his boyfriend), but Eduardo trusts him, and bears the brunt of Chris’ eye rolls and under-his-breath comments about closeted jocks for the rest of the semester.
When Divya gets into Dartmouth, an unseasonably warm late March afternoon, they meet under the bleachers, sharing lingering kisses and pressing each other into the cold metal until Divya finally pushes him away, gently. “This has been a great year,” he starts, and Eduardo isn’t stupid. He’s very far from stupid, and he knows exactly where this is going.
“But?” he says, slinging his arm around Divya’s waist, tugging him in closer.
“I want things to be different in college, Eduardo. I want to be myself, and I don’t think I can do that if I’m still hanging on to this. To Kirkland.”
Eduardo nods, because he’s not ashamed of himself. He has grown to both accept himself, and to accept the way it needs to be if he’s going to ride this football thing to the next level. And if he’s going to keep his father on his side as long as he can. He can’t expect Divya to stay in the closet for him.
He cares about Divya. He likes him, but he’s not stupid enough to think that they are some great romance. It’s been fun, and he’ll miss him.
“Hey, no worries, okay? I had a great time this year.”
Divya smiles. “Me too.”
*****
When he arrives on campus for pre-season his senior year, he’s dating Christy Lee, president of the Student Government Association and captain of the varsity women’s lacrosse team. The truth is, she sort of ambushed him at an off-campus party in April, crowding him up against the wall and saying, “Eduardo. You and me, what do you think?”
He’d had three beers in twenty minutes, and he wasn’t capable of thinking much at all. So he’d just nodded, drunkenly mesmerized by the curve of her mouth, and that had been that.
To be honest, he’s still technically with her because he hasn’t had the time to break up with her, with two-a-days and college applications and talking to coaches taking up nearly every minute. She called him forty times and texted sixty three the week before Eduardo came back to school-so much that he had to turn off his phone because his father was giving him dirty looks about how much it was ringing.
He really needs to make time for it though. He’s pretty sure Christy might actually be insane, if the phone calls and borderline stalking are any indication.
He’s taking AP Calc BC, AP Econ, AP Spanish, AP Lit, AP Chem, and AP Comp Sci. As each syllabus piles up in his bag, he’s starting to regret that decision somewhat, but if there’s anything he knows about himself, it’s that he can work through almost anything.
Two weeks into the semester, though, he gets back his first comp sci exam, and the 24 on the top doesn’t even really register for a minute. There has to be some mistake. Maybe it’s not out of 100?
After class, Eduardo hangs back, approaching Mr. Fincher’s desk tentatively.
“So, I’m assuming you’re here to drop my class, Mr. Saverin?” Mr. Fincher says, hands clasped in front of him on the wooden desk.
“What? No! I don’t want to drop the class.” Eduardo tries not to be offended. He knows that Fincher has no reason to know that Eduardo isn’t really the type to give up, but it will take more than one 24. He knows that no one at Kirkland expects Eduardo to work all that hard-they just assume that the star quarterback will always take the easy way out, and there are plenty of faculty who are willing to help him do that.
“Okay...then what can I help you with?”
“Well,” Eduardo says, scuffing the toes of his black dress shoes against the floor, “I was hoping I might be able to get some extra help.”
Mr. Fincher looks at him skeptically, then sighs. “Help, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know Mark Zuckerberg?”
“Yes, he, uh, he lives in my dorm.”
“Well, Mr. Zuckerberg owes me a favor, so I’ll call it in for you. I’ll ask him to meet you at study hall in Carlson tomorrow night.”
Eduardo nods. “Thank you so much, Mr. Fincher. I promise my next test will be much better.”
Mr. Fincher rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Get out of my classroom, Mr. Saverin.” Then, “And make sure you beat Cabot on Friday night.”
*****
Eduardo can remember the exact moment when he first laid eyes on Mark Zuckerberg. Mark had transferred to Kirkland at the beginning of their junior year, and Eduardo was sitting in Mr. Saunders’ AP U.S. History class when a curly-headed guy in a navy blue hoodie, jeans, and flip flops shuffled into classroom and sat down in the empty seat behind Eduardo.
“Hey, man,” Eduardo said, turning around and sticking out his hand, “you’re new, right?”
“That’s quite the observation,” the guy said, tone flat, but cutting.
Eduardo laughed-he wasn’t sure what else to do. He pulled his hand back when he realized that his gesture wasn’t going to be reciprocated. “Thanks, I do my best. My name’s Eduardo.”
The guy didn’t say anything, but finally, he sighed and said, “Mark Zuckerberg.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mark Zuckerberg. Welcome to Kirkland.”
And although they’ve taken virtually every class together from that point forward, they’ve barely spoken more than those few words to each other. Mark slouches his way through Kirkland, sitting in the backs of classrooms, chewing on his hoodie strings and sometimes deigning the class with his (brilliant) answers to questions, which are always delivered covered in a healthy layer of sarcasm.
Eduardo, on the other hand, sits in the front of each class, taking notes, raising his hand, and trying to soak in everything.
Mark is a computer genius-rumor is that what got him into Kirkland in the first place as a junior. Rumor also has it that Mark got shipped off to boarding school after nearly hacking into a Department of Defense mainframe and getting the FBI on his doorstep. Mark started The Facebook, which most Kirkland students use religiously-an online sort of whiteboard for your dorm room door. It had expanded onto other prep school campuses too.
Eduardo is popular, which sometimes still surprises him, a football player, and chair of the Kirkland investment club.
They live in completely different worlds, even on a small campus, and yet, Eduardo has never really been able to stop himself from searching out where Mark is when he walks into any room. He’s been intrigued by him-by the way he held himself back from Eduardo like no one else ever did-since that first day. Mark’s mocking comments to teachers and snide remarks to classmates make him laugh.
And now, he’s waiting for Mark to meet him in the Carlson lounge, where they both live, to try to figure out how to understand computer science, if that’s even possible.
Mr. Fincher had told Eduardo to meet Mark at seven. It’s seven fifteen, and Eduardo’s about to start working on his English homework when Mark drops into the chair opposite Eduardo.
“You’re late,” Eduardo says, closing his copy of The Great Gatsby (he’s already read this one before, so he doesn’t bother to mark the page).
“Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”
“Not as far as I know. How about you?” Eduardo grins, and can’t help but be satisfied by the pinched look on Mark’s face. Like he wasn’t expecting that comeback at all.
“Are you ready or what?” Mark says sharply, tapping on the surface of the table with a pen he pulled out of his pocket. He doesn’t even have any books with him or anything; Eduardo’s not feeling particularly encouraged.
But then, Mark pulls Eduardo’s textbook between them and starts to talk a mile a minute. Eduardo blinks and struggles to keep up, but when he finally adjusts to Mark’s pace, he realizes that what Mark is saying actually makes sense.
“Wait, wait,” Eduardo sputters, pulling out his notebook and not missing Mark’s over-exaggerated eye roll. “Just let me-”
“Am I going too fast for the star quarterback?” Mark asks.
Eduardo returns the eye roll, because he’s so tired of that stupid stereotype. Anyone who knows anything about the game knows that you have to be smart to play football, especially if you play the quarterback position. Eduardo memorizes a huge play book every August before the season starts, and he’s responsible for seeing everything on the field and calling the plays. Even the guys on defense, or the offensive line, have to know exactly where to go and what to do at all times. The idea that football players aren’t smart is just, well-stupid. While some of the guys on the field aren’t much more than football smart, Eduardo is. He’s at Kirkland because he rocked his SSATs, and he’s never gotten anything lower than an A in his life.
Well, until now, that is.
“That’s a new one,” Eduardo grumbles, scribbling away on his paper, trying to get down everything Mark’s saying.
Mark lets out a noise that almost sounds like a huff. “I’m not the one who failed their first AP Comp Sci exam.”
Eduardo puts his pen down, and looks up at Mark’s blank face. “Listen, what you’re saying makes sense-I haven’t understood a word that Fincher has said yet, so if you could please just keep going, I would really appreciate it.”
Mark is still, long enough that Eduardo’s convinced that this is a terrible idea, yet again, but then he breaks. “Okay, just try to keep up.”
The hour goes quickly, and they agree to meet again the following week. Mark doesn’t actually seem that annoyed about it. Eduardo turns in the problem set that Mark helps him with, and he gets a 96.
After a couple more sessions, even what Fincher says in class starts to come together for him, and he feels like he’s well on his way to erasing the damage that 24 has done.
About three weeks into their tutoring sessions, Mark asks Eduardo meet him after dinner, in an empty classroom in the science building. Eduardo isn’t sure why Mark wants to meet there but he goes anyway. When he arrives, Mark’s got his laptop hooked up to the A/V system in the classroom, and an open window with a blinking cursor open on the large screen at the front of the room.
“What’s this?” Eduardo says, approaching Mark at the front of the room.
The corner of Mark’s mouth is turned up and his teeth are pressed against his lower lip, like he’s fighting a smile. Eduardo’s eyes are drawn to the curve of his lips, then drift up to the cut of his cheekbones. His face feels hot, all of a sudden.
Well, shit. He hadn’t really seen that one coming.
“It’s a test. Well, more a test of my teaching skills than of your programming ability, but I want you to build a program, and I want to watch. I figured this way I could at least be comfortable and not leaning over you while you do it.”
“I’m not sure, Mark-” He’s been getting As in the class, but that’s not this-programming from scratch, in front of Mark.
“You know, for someone who’s such a football hotshot, you don’t have a lot of confidence.” Mark folds his arms across his chest and stares Eduardo down.
It’s not how he means to react, but Eduardo’s laughing before he can stop himself. “Okay, first, I have plenty of confidence. Second, think about how you would feel if you had to play football in front of me, and third, did you just say hotshot?”
“Shut up,” Mark says, “and get started, hotshot.”
Mark sits in the front row and sprawls his legs out underneath the desk, telling Eduardo what he wants him to do. Eduardo puts his fingers on the keys, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then starts.
He doesn’t know exactly how much time passes-everything reduces down to Mark’s cool, calm voice giving him instructions, to the sound of Eduardo’s fingers on the keyboard, the way he knows this despite his own reservations.
And when Mark is finally quiet and Eduardo finishes typing the last line, he looks up. Mark isn’t even trying not to smile anymore. He’s actually grinning at Eduardo, no longer lounging in the seat, but sitting straight up and leaning forward, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him. Eduardo flexes his fingers and looks down at his watch. They’ve been here for more than an hour. Wow.
“Come on, don’t chicken out on me now,” Mark calls out to him.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to see what you just did? It was pretty great, if I do say so myself.”
Eduardo moves his finger over the mouse pad and pauses over the button that will turn the lines of code he just typed into something real and tangible, splayed across the screen for Mark to see. “Come on, you saw the code, what does it matter?”
Then, Mark’s pushing himself out of his chair and walking over to press himself close to Eduardo (who feels a little lightheaded-he can’t tell if it’s from the non-stop coding or the proximity). He knows exactly where the feeling is coming from when Mark’s hand curls around his on the mouse. “Because,” Mark says, his breath hot against Eduardo’s ear, and it takes everything he’s got not to shiver, “coding isn’t about the code. It’s about creating something, it’s about how you can turn what seems like nothing into something. You did this, and now you should see what you made.”
Mark’s finger is pressing down on Eduardo’s, but in the end, Eduardo’s the one who clicks it. He stands there, watching what he made-what they made-and soaks in the heat of Mark’s body, pressed against him.
*****
While it seems that Mark has always been at Kirkland, they’ve been in different orbits for the last year, but now, they’ve taken to seeking each other out.
It happens the first time when Mark takes the open seat next to Eduardo’s in AP Lit, pulling out his textbooks and sighing. Eduardo knows that this is the course Mark has the least use for, if his biting remarks to Ms. Delpy are any indication.
“Hey,” Eduardo says softly, leaning over to tug on Mark’s sleeve. “You sure it won’t hurt your rep to sit next to me?”
Mark glances over. “Sometimes, it’s amazing that you can function with all of that stupidity.”
“Whatever, you know you love me.”
“Ugh, you wish.”
Eduardo would believe it’s just a fluke, but then it happens in Econ, and in Spanish, until Eduardo’s spending most of his courses trying not to laugh out loud as Mark keeps up a written commentary about the teachers and their classmates, leaning across to scrawl, in his terrible handwriting, on the margins of Eduardo’s meticulous notes.
So, he takes a chance one day at lunch (which has absolutely nothing to do with how much he enjoys looking at Mark’s mouth lately) and plops his tray down next to Mark in the dining hall.
“You know, I’m not technically required to be tutoring you all day.” Mark stares at him, carefully taking a bite of his turkey sandwich before he sits it back down on his plate.
“I’m just here to eat my lunch, Mark,” Eduardo says, grinning and picking up his own turkey sandwich, because prickly Mark is never less than entertaining. “Do you want me to move?”
Mark rolls his eyes. “No, I just wouldn’t want any of your football buddies to see you sitting with me.”
“Mark,” Eduardo drops his own sandwich carelessly onto his plate, “I couldn’t care less about what anyone thinks about me or who I choose to be friends with. Have I ever given you the impression that I do?”
At that, Mark takes a moment, seems like he’s really thinking, instead of just firing off the first thing that comes into his mind. “No, you haven’t.”
“So. Relax. I know that it would be shocking to anyone who has ever met you, but I actually enjoy your company.”
Mark doesn’t seem to know what to say. Eduardo smiles down at the uneaten half of his sandwich. This is the first time he’s ever caught Mark completely off-guard and shut him up, and it feels good.
“Well, I-” Mark starts, then clears his throat. “You’re not so bad either, most of the time.”
And Eduardo knows that the grin on his face is just ridiculous, but it’s getting harder and harder to control himself around Mark, and harder and harder to care about that control.
Mark smiles, just a little bit at the corner of his mouth, before turning his attention back to his lunch.
The lunchtime thing becomes a pattern, and after a while, it becomes a foursome-Dustin, Mark’s old roommate, and Chris join them most days. Eduardo hadn’t really realized, so focused on football and coursework for the last three years, that he’s never really had friends like this.
*****
Eduardo’s been able to start to figure himself out since he arrived at Kirkland. Getting away from Miami and his father has given him the space he needed to grow into the person he is, to start to figure out what makes him happy and how he can balance that with the expectations of his family. Sometimes, he tries to imagine what his life would have been like had he stayed in Miami, and he finds that it’s hard to imagine at all. Kirkland wasn’t what he wanted, but it ended up being exactly what he needed.
And ever since his relationship with Divya, Eduardo has been comfortable with his sexuality. Sure, it’s not like he’s joined the GSA on campus or told really anyone at all, but he’s not ashamed of it. In part, he wants to see this football thing through, because the closer college gets, the more the idea that football isn’t just a hobby, but that it could be his life, takes hold. He knows that no NFL team has ever drafted an openly gay player before. He doesn’t want to cut himself off from the dream before he even has a chance to realize it, so he’ll wait if he has to.
It isn’t like he doesn’t find girls attractive, or that he doesn’t like Christy, per se, but he knows that it’s not something he wants to take any further than they’ve gone. They haven’t had sex (Eduardo lost his virginity to Divya in a New Hampshire hotel room after an away game-it was a bit awkward and amazing and all in all a positive experience), but they’ve fooled around when they could find the opportunity. The problem is, Eduardo’s not sure he even likes Christy that much. Sure, she’s smart as hell and beautiful and fierce, all qualities that he finds attractive.
It may be the fact that Christy is crazy. Not just kooky, but full-on, probably clinically insane. She’s clingy (hell, stalker might be a better term) and overwhelming and she kind of scares him sometimes.
Eduardo needs to break up with her.
So, even though he knows it’s going to be ugly, and that he may be on the receiving end of the crazy for a while longer, he calls her and asks to meet her, on a Saturday afternoon after another win (this time, not even really a contest-54-7). He hopes the adrenaline will help him push through the conversation.
After all, he’s a pretty self-aware guy, and he knows that his attention is already elsewhere.
*****
The Kirkland Pioneers are undefeated going into the last game of the season, against rivals Eliot School. Eliot is the only other undefeated team in the EISC, and Eduardo knows that it’s going to be their toughest game of the season by far. Eliot always gives them a good game.
He also knows that the Harvard coach is planning to be there (as well as some other coaches, but they hardly matter anymore, honestly) and he knows that he has to perform. At the end of October, he submitted his test scores, transcript, and extracurriculars to the coach for review, and he’s hoping that his likely letter might come after this game.
Eduardo doesn’t get nervous before games-nerves are only for those who aren’t prepared-but he finds himself a little bit more on edge than usually in the days leading up to the game, poring over film of Eliot’s previous wins and running play after play in practice until he’s so exhausted he wants to drop. Except he can’t, because there’s still the pile of homework every time he gets back to his room.
So much for the fun he was hoping to have during his senior year.
On Tuesday night, he meets with Mark, their tutoring sessions having evolved (or devolved, one might say) into talking, sometimes out loud (but quietly, so as to not incur the wrath of the faculty monitor), sometimes in frantically scribbled (in Mark’s case) or carefully written (in Eduardo’s) notes across Eduardo’s blank notebook pages.
Mark’s not a big talker, but Eduardo learns, over those few weeks, about Mark’s family, about the real story behind why he transferred to Kirkland-the rumored version was mostly accurate)-and his plans for The Facebook, for expansion.
Eduardo tells Mark about Brazil, his dad, about football, about his big dreams of the NFL and how scared he is that it will happen. Pretty much the only thing he doesn’t tell him about is Divya (or about how he can’t stop looking at the way Mark chews on his pen in class, or the way his eyelashes shadow his cheeks).
That Tuesday, Mark goes over Eduardo’s Comp Sci homework, finding a few mistakes for Eduardo to fix. Eduardo’s palms are sweaty, and he’s not really sure why. He knows that he’s been enjoying this time with Mark in more than a purely friendly way for a while, but he’s managed to keep himself as cool as possible. Still, what he’s about to ask feels like a big deal, somehow. He doesn’t know why it’s so important to him that Mark be there, but he’s pretty sure this might be the biggest game of his life.
“So,” Eduardo says softly, after the homework is done and stashed in Eduardo’s bag. Mark doesn’t really look up, but Eduardo has learned to look for the signs of Mark’s attention, which he almost always gives to Eduardo. “Are you planning to come to the Eliot game on Friday?”
Then, he’s sure he has Mark’s attention, because Mark has drops his pen onto the page he’s doodling on and is looking up at Eduardo, eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, not the last time I checked.”
“Of course I’m not planning to go. Why would I do that?” Mark turns back around to his paper, resuming his drawing.
Eduardo playfully cuffs Mark on the back of the head, and Mark lets out a quiet squeak. “Because I asked you to, dumbass.”
“Well, thanks for the invite, but I’ll pass.”
“Mark,” Eduardo says, dropping his voice even lower and leaning close, close enough to feel how tense Mark is. “This is a huge game for me. It would mean a lot to me if you would grace us with your presence.”
Mark doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything for long enough that Eduardo is sure that he’s made a huge misstep, said something that tears apart this fragile friendship they’ve been building. But then Mark turns back, and they’re probably too close now, but Eduardo does not even care, especially when Mark says, groaning, “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll hate it, but I’ll go.”
Eduardo claps Mark on the shoulder, letting his fingers, briefly, massage the hard line of muscle there. He smiles and wishes he could take a picture of Mark’s helpless smile back.
*****
12:31 left in the second quarter, and Eduardo already knows he’s not going to be able to walk the next day. They’d watched film to prepare and been told all about the Eliot defense, their ability to rush the passer, but their sheer size is still a shock when Eduardo walks up to the line of scrimmage the first time.
It doesn’t get any better the third or fourth or fifth time. They come out blitzing and pass rushing like mad, and Eduardo can barely stay on his feet-sacked three times, he can’t remember the last time that happened-for the first quarter. He’s hurried at the tail end of the quarter, then tackled as soon as he throws an incomplete pass to Danny. He feels the pain (a twisted ankle, maybe? The angle had been weird on the way down) shoot up his leg as he limps off the field.
Eduardo spends the next two minutes screaming at the offensive line, which has done virtually nothing to protect him for the last fifteen minutes, even though he knows that the match-ups are just a disaster. He needs them to believe that they can do it, or he’s not sure that his back up, a shy freshman named Aaron, won’t be in the game by the end of the first half.
Luckily, the pep talk works, and from then on, the o-line does a much better job of at least allowing Eduardo to stay on his feet, shake off the earlier hits, even though he gets forced out of the pocket way too many times for his liking. Nothing seems to be right-the wide receivers and tight ends aren’t running the routes Eduardo calls for, and the defense is barely hanging on, the Eliot offense racking up an insane amount of yardage.
The crowd, clothed almost exclusively in Kirkland purple, is almost eerily quiet as the team makes its way off the field for half-time. It’s 14-3 Eliot, and Eduardo has to hope that they can somehow pull off a miracle.
When he gets to the locker room, he pushes his hand through his sweat drenched hair, getting it out of his face, planting his feet against the floor and swallowing past the pain in his ankle. Coach Sorkin looks calm, but Eduardo has had three and a half seasons to figure out what’s coming.
“Gentleman, let me be clear. Eliot is a good team-very good. But we are better, and we should be embarrassed about the way that we played the first half of this game. I will not settle for anything less than everyone’s best.” He pauses, and there isn’t a sound in the locker room. “If that’s your best, then we should just pack up and go home now.”
Silence.
“Is that your best?” Coach Sorkin shouts.
Eduardo takes a deep breath, pushing away the aches in his joints, the way his head is throbbing. “No, sir!” he shouts in unison with his teammates.
“Are we going to go out and win this goddamn game?”
“Yes, sir!” they shout, and Eduardo smiles. He can feel the energy building in the room.
Coach Sorkin smiles too, and yells, “Well, let’s get out there and do it, ladies!”
Kirkland receives the kickoff for the second half, and Eduardo marches the team down the field, feeling truly himself for the first time in the game. Feeling the inherent trust you have to have in the guys in front of you, to keep you safe, the faith in the guys behind you to be where you need them to be when the time comes. He gets them all the way down to the 7 yard line, and when, after the snap, he sees the wide open center of Eliot’s defensive line, he makes a run for it and scores Kirkland’s first touchdown of the night himself. Eduardo doesn’t do what he does for the admiration of others, but he does allow himself a moment to let the sound of the home crowd wash over him as he makes his way off the field, his teammates surrounding him.
The defense comes out next, and looks like they’ve been taking some of whatever the Eliot defense was hopped up on at the beginning of the game. The Eliot quarterback looks confused and hesitant, a deadly combination on the field. In the end, it doesn’t even end up being that close. The score is 38-21, and Kirkland goes 5-0 to start the season.
Part 2
The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo, Eduardo/Other, NC-17, 18000 words
All characters are in high school, so some underage here.
Written for the 2011 tsnsecretsanta exchange
WHAT IS THIS FIC EVEN. I decided to take two things I love (The Social Network and football) and mash them together. Liberties taken and much of this story is based on informed but less-than-expert knowledge of football, boarding school life, and Ivy League athletic recruiting. Suspending some disbelief might be in order.
ivynights, I know that this maybe isn't exactly what you asked for, but I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to altogetherisi for the read through, and many thanks to my darling riverlight for her writing support and beta.
“Eduardo,” Coach says. Eduardo didn’t even know that Coach Sorkin knew his first name. “You ready?”
He takes a deep breath. He can’t ignore how the ball felt in his hand, the way that everything looks and feels completely transformed with the laces between his fingers. “Yeah, I’m ready, Coach.”
On AO3
The Saverins pack up and leave São Paulo the summer after Eduardo finishes the second grade. He’s devastated to leave his family behind, his aunts and uncles and all of his cousins, and his school friends too. He cries when his father tells him, and his father simply says, “It’s not worth crying over, Eduardo.”
So, Eduardo goes, with his older sister and his parents, to Miami. He speaks some English, but the first few months and the start of school are so hard. He doesn’t understand half of what was going on around him, can’t follow the conversations of his classmates. He’s lucky to be able to mostly follow what was going on in class, with the help of the ESL teacher.
He’s frustrated, though, and driving his father crazy at home. Not that his father’s home much, but when he is, he’s scolding Eduardo for not sitting still, for running through the house, anything he can find to criticize. One day, Eduardo kicks a soccer ball into his father’s heavy cut crystal decanter set, sending the whole tray flying, luckily only chipping one of the tumblers in the process. His father screams at him, and Eduardo spends the rest of the week in his room, except for meals.
It’s his mom’s idea to sign him up for Pop Warner football. American football, which he knows absolutely nothing about. Eduardo has hazy, bright memories of playing soccer and baseball with his cousins in wide, green backyards in Brazil, but he has never even seen a football game before.
“Mãe,” Eduardo groans when his mother tells him, “I don’t even know how to play football.”
“Eduardo,” his mother says gently, pulling him close into a hug. It’s hard to be annoyed when she does that. “One of the other mothers in the neighborhood says her son plays. I think if you don’t get some of your energy out in a productive way, your father is going to kill you.”
So he goes.
And, surprisingly, he loves it.
He’s tall for his age, and strong, and he can run fast, so they have him playing as a mostly as a cornerback and a wide receiver, and some special teams. When he’s out on the field, he feels like everything slows down for him, just enough that he can see what the quarterback is doing, where he’s looking, see the players who are covering him, run the route he needs to run. The guys on the team are great, happy, smiling American boys, and after a while, he starts to feel like maybe Miami might become home to him someday too.
At first, they don’t tell his father - he never gets home until after Eduardo’s home from practice anyway, but once he decides to stick with it, Eduardo’s mom breaks the news.
His father is less than pleased.
Eduardo still doesn’t know what his mother said, but all he got from that point forward were disappointed looks from his father, and reminders that he needed to keep his grades up.
In his second year, his team makes it to the National Pop Warner Playoffs. It’s exhilarating, and Eduardo feels addicted to the feeling of making that perfect catch and running into the end zone.
By eighth grade, he’s a straight A student, playing for the freshman team at the local high school (and taking math there), and trying to convince his parents to send him to St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale for high school. They have the number nine ranked high school football program in the country and a strong college prep program, which will appease his father.
Like it had before, though, just as things are perfect, they go off the rails. In March of that year, Eduardo’s parents sit him down. He doesn’t know why his mother has such a sad look on his face. At first, he’s worried that maybe someone back in Brazil died or something, but that’s not it at all.
“Eduardo, I hope that you’ll understand that we’re only trying to do what’s best for you. We think that the discipline of the boarding school environment will be good for you before you go off to college.” His father pushes the brochure, with a picture on the front of rolling hills and fall foliage and stately brick buildings, across the dining room table. Kirkland Academy, a coeducational college preparatory school for boarding and day students since 1797, it says across the top. Eduardo rests his fingertips against the heavy paper and looks up.
It’s only been five years, but Miami is home to him now. São Paulo has faded into a sweet, sunsoaked memory. His team, his friends at school-everything he didn’t think he’d have when they first came here-they are all in Miami. He’d been to Boston once when his father went on business, but otherwise the landscape on the front of the brochure might as well be a foreign country.
Eduardo’s mom is silent, but she reaches over to fold back the pages of the brochure, to the page with Athletics emblazoned across the top. Eduardo glances down at the picture of a tall, blond football player carrying a ball across the goal line. He reads, “Kirkland Academy has one of the finest independent school athletic programs in the nation.”
In that moment, it’s completely clear to him-he know that he has a decision to make, probably the most important one he’s ever made. He could fight this; he could refuse to go and make them drag him kicking and screaming. Or he could take this opportunity, and trust his ability to make this work for him somehow, the same way he had five years ago.
“It sounds great, Pai,” he says, forcing some enthusiasm into his voice. His mom smiles, and his dad nods emphatically. It’s done.
Eduardo looks back down and flips back to the front page, taking in the bucolic campus, trying to picture himself among the ivy-covered brick.
*****
Eduardo is used to the heat - he’s never lived anywhere with real seasons, but something (maybe the teasing he’d gotten from his football buddies in Miami about going to boarding school up north) had made him believe that New England is cold all the time.
He couldn’t have been more wrong on that front.
Football tryouts start on a brutally hot and humid day in late August-not quite Florida hot and humid, but Massachusetts is giving it its best shot. Eduardo’s already sweating through his practice jersey and he hasn’t even started running yet.
“Excuse me, Coach Sorkin?” Eduardo says tentatively, approaching the only person out on the field not in uniform, but rather in a short-sleeved polo shirt in Kirkland purple, and khaki shorts.
At first, Coach Sorkin didn’t say anything, just looked Eduardo up and down. He tries not to squirm under the glare. “Yes, that’s me. And you are?”
Eduardo clears his throat and sticks out his hand. “Eduardo Saverin, sir. Freshman, from Miami.”
“Hmm,” Coach Sorkin says, taking Eduardo’s hand and shaking it firmly. “So tell me, Mr. Saverin, what position do you play?”
“I’ve played mostly cornerback and wide receiver, sir.”
Another pause, then, “Yes, that seems like the obvious choice. Well, join the rest of the guys out on the field, Saverin.” Then, out of nowhere, Coach Sorkin smiles.
Eduardo wouldn’t have said it was an evil smile, but an hour and a half later, sore in every place imaginable and dripping sweat, he feels like he may have been wrong. Still, it feels great - his club season back at home had wrapped up in the early spring, and he hadn’t realized how much he’s missed being out on the field, the physicality of those pre-season workouts before the real mental work began.
“Coming back tomorrow, then?” Coach Sorkin says as Eduardo jogs past, and Eduardo smiles at him as he wipes the sweat off his brow.
“Definitely, Coach.”
Over the course of the next week, he gets to know some of the other guys. Cameron Winklevoss, senior and three-year starter at quarterback, has a hell of an arm (so does his brother Tyler, for that matter) and seems to zero in on Eduardo on most of the time they’re on the field together. He can’t help the warmth that spreads through him when Cameron finds him on the sidelines after a 50-yard pass into the end zone and claps him on the back. “Nice work, Saverin,” he says, and Eduardo is feeling better about this move already.
By the end of the week, he doesn’t feel like the absence of his Miami friends-his team-aches as much as it once did. These guys are really solid; he eats with them in the dining hall and lives doors away from them in the dorms and Eduardo thinks that maybe, just maybe, this might work out for him after all.
He’s sure of it when tryouts are over at the end of the week, and he’s made the varsity team.
*****
School starts about a week after tryouts are over, and Eduardo gets swept up into the frenetic schedule of boarding school life. His roommate, Chris Hughes, is from North Carolina, crazy smart and quick to smile, and after hearing some of the horror stories from the guys on the football team (one of the sophomores has a roommate who leaves plates of food around for weeks on end, another has a roommate who sleepwalks), he’s pretty sure he won the lottery on that one.
His classes are hard-he never had to put much effort in before, but he relishes it. He’s never been one of those football guys who thinks that academics are a waste of time, or what you need to do to get to the next step in the sport. He’s never been around kids like the students at Kirkland, who all seem to want to learn and are excited about it. So, he works his ass off in class, and works his ass off on the field. He calls home every few days and tells his mother all about football and everything else, and then gives his father assurances when he reminds him of “what’s important, Eduardo, don’t you forget about it.”
The Kirkland team has been near the top of the Eastern Independent School Conference for the last few years, and this year is no exception. They go 5-3 through the end of October, and Eduardo slowly becomes the team’s leading receiver. He feels a connection with Cameron when they go out on the field, like everything narrows down to them and the space between them, and he racks up 950 yards receiving during those first eight games.
The Homecoming game is huge at Kirkland-their modest stadium filled with students and alumni in bright purple. They’re playing Dworkin School, and Kirkland goes up 10-0 in the first quarter.
Then, the unthinkable happens. First, Cameron is sacked with 13:54 left in the second quarter, and he doesn’t get up. And doesn’t get up. Finally, the trainers help him up, Cameron limping and wincing in pain, and off the field, and Tyler stops throwing on the sidelines and gets into the game.
And proceeds to throw four interceptions in the next ten minutes.
“Goddamnit, Winklevoss!” Coach Sorkin screams as Tyler comes off the field, head hanging. It’s clear to everyone with eyes that Tyler knows that things are going to shit. Eduardo has been open each time, running a route and cutting at the last minute to avoid the safety, but for some reason Tyler threw to the one receiver with tight coverage every time. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“I don’t know, Coach, I’m sorry -” Tyler dropped down onto the bench, grabbing a water bottle.
Coach Sorkin doesn’t back down, and crouches down in front of Tyler. “Saverin was wide open on all of those plays! Have you lost your mind?”
Tyler finally looks up, and Eduardo groans. He can tell that his teammates are seeing the same thing he’s seeing by the way everyone has gone as quiet as you can go on the sidelines during a homecoming game. “I don’t have it, Coach. I can’t see it.”
Coach Sorkin is quiet, calm and still, and no one says anything at all. They watch as the clock ticks down on the first half, the defense busting their asses to keep them in it. Then, Coach nods, stands up and claps Tyler on the shoulder. “Okay.”
Eduardo can feel his own eyes widen as Coach Sorkin strides right up to him, purposefully. “Um,” he says, because it’s like they’re in the Twilight Zone-nothing is making any sense at all.
“How’s your arm, Saverin?” he says quietly, and Eduardo is confused. He’s not really sure what he’s asking.
“It’s fine, Coach.”
Coach Sorkin rolls his eyes. “Your throwing arm. How’s your throw?”
Eduardo swallows hard. “I-I don’t know-I’ve never played quarterback.”
“Well, you can’t be worse than what we’ve got, and we all know that at least you know what the hell is going on on the field.” Coach turns to Eduardo’s gathered teammates. “Olsen! Get over here and take some throws from Eduardo. We may need a miracle in the second half.”
Billy jogs over, a shocked look on his face, too, and tosses the ball to Eduardo, who catches it firmly. His heart is pounding, threatening to jackhammer its way right out of his chest. He almost hopes that he can’t throw for shit, because he’s not sure he could go out on the field and not puke. They walk over to an empty area next to the field, and Eduardo fits his fingers into the seams of the ball, spaced evenly, feeling the stretch of his hand.
He takes a deep breath, looking at Billy and thinking about the trajectory of the ball, how far away Billy is, the angle and the force. Then he lets it go.
The ball spirals cleanly through the air, and Billy doesn’t have to take a step in any direction to catch it in his hands.
“Again?” Billy calls across the space between them, and Eduardo tries his best not to look at the huge smile on Billy’s face, not to feel the curious, anticipatory eyes from the sidelines of the field on them. He nods and Billy tosses it back.
They do it five more times, Billy moving back and forth, until Eduardo makes a perfect throw almost seventy yards. Then, he feels Coach Sorkin’s hand on his shoulder. It’s halftime; the teams have already headed back to the locker rooms, and the fans are flooding out to the concession stand.
“Eduardo,” Coach says. Eduardo didn’t even know that Coach Sorkin knew his first name. “You ready?”
He takes a deep breath. He can’t ignore how the ball felt in his hand, the way that everything looks and feels completely transformed with the laces between his fingers. “Yeah, I’m ready, Coach.”
Eduardo goes in at halftime, calls plays and makes four drives into the end zone, rushing one in himself. The final score is 28-10, and Eduardo has never felt this way after a football game in his entire life. Everything around him looks different, and his arm is tired, yes, but he can’t wait to do it again.
Coach Sorkin makes him the starting quarterback at the beginning of his sophomore year, after the Winklevosses have graduated and gone off to Harvard.
Everything about football changes for him, in that moment. He starts to see this as more than a hobby, but something that maybe, just maybe, he’s good at. More than good, even. Gifted, he overhears Coach Sorkin say to one of the assistant coaches about him. He knows his father wants him to follow in his footsteps, become a businessman and do everything that’s expected of him, but suddenly, this whole new world his open to him. The idea of playing college football becomes not just a nice idea, a pipe dream, but a reality.
Sophomore year, Kirkland runs up a 9-2 record before getting booted in the second round of the EISC playoffs. Eduardo passes for 3900 yards over those 11 games, and is named an All-Conference player. He has many conversations with Coach Sorkin about how to navigate the recruiting process, about D2 and D3 programs that have strong academics and excellent reputations, and makes a plan for attending a camp the summer after junior year to increase his chances of being recruited. Then, he passes for more than 400 and rushes for more than a 100 each of five consecutive games his junior season. That gets him his first D1 coach visiting him after a game. From Harvard.
There’s a part of him that doesn’t really believe that he can make this happen-that he can do what his father expects and have football too, but now the Ivy League is recruiting him. Over the next few weeks, he has informal meetings with Penn, Dartmouth, and Brown. Stanford even sends him a letter, although Eduardo is pretty sure he can’t hang in the Pac-12.
It’s crazy, and maybe even a little stupid, but maybe, maybe he can have all of it.
*****
He spends two weeks of July at a football camp at Yale, and it’s a welcome respite from what had become an awful summer at home. He fights with his father every single day, about how football is distracting him, about how it’s time to get serious, to grow up. To stop playing games. He’s convinced that his dad isn’t even going to let him go to the camp, and he comes up with a lie, to tell his dad that he’s going to take a class, anything. But his father lets up just before he’s scheduled to leave. Eduardo can’t get out of there fast enough.
It doesn’t seem to matter that his report card was flawless-every night in and out of season spent up way past when he long since should have turned out his desk light, Chris groaning at him to “go to bed already, Jesus, Eduardo”-and he’s signed up for every AP class Kirkland will let him take for his senior year. His advisor and Coach Sorkin had actually met with him before he left for the summer, to discuss whether or not he really wanted to take on the six AP load he’d registered for. He assured them that he absolutely did.
He loves school and he loves his courses at Kirkland, the rigor and the culture of debate and discussion in the classroom. He wouldn’t be happy dropping down a level or taking four academic courses like some of the other guys on the team, just getting by. Eduardo doesn’t want to sail through-furthermore, he can’t. Harvard has always been his dream-the only time what he wanted and what his father wanted seemed to be the same thing. And he has to make sure he gets there, even if football can’t take him.
Football is just the icing on the cake-really tasty, amazing icing, but icing nonetheless.
He’s also decided that he’s going to enjoy this year-while his academic schedule is brutal, he feels like he needs to get everything out of Kirkland that he can, academically and socially, before he leaves.
He’s dated some over the past three years. It’s not all that hard to find people who are interested, honestly. He had a girlfriend, a senior named Amy from California, for most of sophomore year, who was smart as hell and now at Stanford, but it had fizzled out before she graduated. Amy had wanted more attention than Eduardo had left over to give.
Divya happens during the fall of junior year, which catches Eduardo somewhat by surprise. Divya is the team’s senior feature running back, and Eduardo had always liked him-the way he was quick to poke fun, to laugh, to anger. After practice one day, Eduardo finds himself alone in the locker room with Divya, who appears to be showered and dressed and ready to go, but still hangs back.
“Hey, Narendra, can I help you with something?” Eduardo says, laughing.
Divya’s loitering around the end of the long, wooden bench where Eduardo is seated, his hands stuffed in his pockets. When he looks up at Eduardo, he’s not smiling.
“Um, is everything okay?” Eduardo says, concerned, because this isn’t an expression he’s ever seen on Divya’s face. He’s usually laughing at something or someone, or yelling. This is altogether different.
Then, Divya’s pulling his hands out of his pockets and moving toward Eduardo, moving his head side to side like he’s scanning the room. “Tell me if you don’t want this, okay?” he says, voice lower than Eduardo’s ever heard it.
“Don’t want what?” Eduardo says, completely confused, but before he can get an answer out, he gets Divya leaning over him, and Divya’s warm lips pressed to his.
Oh. Oh.
It’s like something he didn’t even know was there lights up inside of him, a light bulb, a flame that he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to put out, because he honestly had no idea at all. No idea that this was something he ever wanted-something that could feel like this. It’s so completely different from the way it felt to press Amy into the mattress of his dorm bed those few times they could sneak some time alone.
So he does the only thing that makes sense, and uses the lapels of Divya’s jacket to haul himself up off of the bench, pressing their bodies together. He pushes his tongue against Divya’s lips, wanting more, now, and feels the heat pool at the base of his spine at Divya’s groan and push back, the close heat of his body.
When they finally separate, both out of breath, Divya smiles. “I guess that’s a yes then, huh?”
Eduardo laughs, hauls Divya a little closer so that their lips are almost touching. “Hell, yes.”
Neither of them is particularly interested in coming out to anyone else, so they keep it quiet. Chris knows (after catching them together in Eduardo’s bed-Eduardo had thought Chris would be out late with his boyfriend), but Eduardo trusts him, and bears the brunt of Chris’ eye rolls and under-his-breath comments about closeted jocks for the rest of the semester.
When Divya gets into Dartmouth, an unseasonably warm late March afternoon, they meet under the bleachers, sharing lingering kisses and pressing each other into the cold metal until Divya finally pushes him away, gently. “This has been a great year,” he starts, and Eduardo isn’t stupid. He’s very far from stupid, and he knows exactly where this is going.
“But?” he says, slinging his arm around Divya’s waist, tugging him in closer.
“I want things to be different in college, Eduardo. I want to be myself, and I don’t think I can do that if I’m still hanging on to this. To Kirkland.”
Eduardo nods, because he’s not ashamed of himself. He has grown to both accept himself, and to accept the way it needs to be if he’s going to ride this football thing to the next level. And if he’s going to keep his father on his side as long as he can. He can’t expect Divya to stay in the closet for him.
He cares about Divya. He likes him, but he’s not stupid enough to think that they are some great romance. It’s been fun, and he’ll miss him.
“Hey, no worries, okay? I had a great time this year.”
Divya smiles. “Me too.”
*****
When he arrives on campus for pre-season his senior year, he’s dating Christy Lee, president of the Student Government Association and captain of the varsity women’s lacrosse team. The truth is, she sort of ambushed him at an off-campus party in April, crowding him up against the wall and saying, “Eduardo. You and me, what do you think?”
He’d had three beers in twenty minutes, and he wasn’t capable of thinking much at all. So he’d just nodded, drunkenly mesmerized by the curve of her mouth, and that had been that.
To be honest, he’s still technically with her because he hasn’t had the time to break up with her, with two-a-days and college applications and talking to coaches taking up nearly every minute. She called him forty times and texted sixty three the week before Eduardo came back to school-so much that he had to turn off his phone because his father was giving him dirty looks about how much it was ringing.
He really needs to make time for it though. He’s pretty sure Christy might actually be insane, if the phone calls and borderline stalking are any indication.
He’s taking AP Calc BC, AP Econ, AP Spanish, AP Lit, AP Chem, and AP Comp Sci. As each syllabus piles up in his bag, he’s starting to regret that decision somewhat, but if there’s anything he knows about himself, it’s that he can work through almost anything.
Two weeks into the semester, though, he gets back his first comp sci exam, and the 24 on the top doesn’t even really register for a minute. There has to be some mistake. Maybe it’s not out of 100?
After class, Eduardo hangs back, approaching Mr. Fincher’s desk tentatively.
“So, I’m assuming you’re here to drop my class, Mr. Saverin?” Mr. Fincher says, hands clasped in front of him on the wooden desk.
“What? No! I don’t want to drop the class.” Eduardo tries not to be offended. He knows that Fincher has no reason to know that Eduardo isn’t really the type to give up, but it will take more than one 24. He knows that no one at Kirkland expects Eduardo to work all that hard-they just assume that the star quarterback will always take the easy way out, and there are plenty of faculty who are willing to help him do that.
“Okay...then what can I help you with?”
“Well,” Eduardo says, scuffing the toes of his black dress shoes against the floor, “I was hoping I might be able to get some extra help.”
Mr. Fincher looks at him skeptically, then sighs. “Help, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know Mark Zuckerberg?”
“Yes, he, uh, he lives in my dorm.”
“Well, Mr. Zuckerberg owes me a favor, so I’ll call it in for you. I’ll ask him to meet you at study hall in Carlson tomorrow night.”
Eduardo nods. “Thank you so much, Mr. Fincher. I promise my next test will be much better.”
Mr. Fincher rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Get out of my classroom, Mr. Saverin.” Then, “And make sure you beat Cabot on Friday night.”
*****
Eduardo can remember the exact moment when he first laid eyes on Mark Zuckerberg. Mark had transferred to Kirkland at the beginning of their junior year, and Eduardo was sitting in Mr. Saunders’ AP U.S. History class when a curly-headed guy in a navy blue hoodie, jeans, and flip flops shuffled into classroom and sat down in the empty seat behind Eduardo.
“Hey, man,” Eduardo said, turning around and sticking out his hand, “you’re new, right?”
“That’s quite the observation,” the guy said, tone flat, but cutting.
Eduardo laughed-he wasn’t sure what else to do. He pulled his hand back when he realized that his gesture wasn’t going to be reciprocated. “Thanks, I do my best. My name’s Eduardo.”
The guy didn’t say anything, but finally, he sighed and said, “Mark Zuckerberg.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mark Zuckerberg. Welcome to Kirkland.”
And although they’ve taken virtually every class together from that point forward, they’ve barely spoken more than those few words to each other. Mark slouches his way through Kirkland, sitting in the backs of classrooms, chewing on his hoodie strings and sometimes deigning the class with his (brilliant) answers to questions, which are always delivered covered in a healthy layer of sarcasm.
Eduardo, on the other hand, sits in the front of each class, taking notes, raising his hand, and trying to soak in everything.
Mark is a computer genius-rumor is that what got him into Kirkland in the first place as a junior. Rumor also has it that Mark got shipped off to boarding school after nearly hacking into a Department of Defense mainframe and getting the FBI on his doorstep. Mark started The Facebook, which most Kirkland students use religiously-an online sort of whiteboard for your dorm room door. It had expanded onto other prep school campuses too.
Eduardo is popular, which sometimes still surprises him, a football player, and chair of the Kirkland investment club.
They live in completely different worlds, even on a small campus, and yet, Eduardo has never really been able to stop himself from searching out where Mark is when he walks into any room. He’s been intrigued by him-by the way he held himself back from Eduardo like no one else ever did-since that first day. Mark’s mocking comments to teachers and snide remarks to classmates make him laugh.
And now, he’s waiting for Mark to meet him in the Carlson lounge, where they both live, to try to figure out how to understand computer science, if that’s even possible.
Mr. Fincher had told Eduardo to meet Mark at seven. It’s seven fifteen, and Eduardo’s about to start working on his English homework when Mark drops into the chair opposite Eduardo.
“You’re late,” Eduardo says, closing his copy of The Great Gatsby (he’s already read this one before, so he doesn’t bother to mark the page).
“Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”
“Not as far as I know. How about you?” Eduardo grins, and can’t help but be satisfied by the pinched look on Mark’s face. Like he wasn’t expecting that comeback at all.
“Are you ready or what?” Mark says sharply, tapping on the surface of the table with a pen he pulled out of his pocket. He doesn’t even have any books with him or anything; Eduardo’s not feeling particularly encouraged.
But then, Mark pulls Eduardo’s textbook between them and starts to talk a mile a minute. Eduardo blinks and struggles to keep up, but when he finally adjusts to Mark’s pace, he realizes that what Mark is saying actually makes sense.
“Wait, wait,” Eduardo sputters, pulling out his notebook and not missing Mark’s over-exaggerated eye roll. “Just let me-”
“Am I going too fast for the star quarterback?” Mark asks.
Eduardo returns the eye roll, because he’s so tired of that stupid stereotype. Anyone who knows anything about the game knows that you have to be smart to play football, especially if you play the quarterback position. Eduardo memorizes a huge play book every August before the season starts, and he’s responsible for seeing everything on the field and calling the plays. Even the guys on defense, or the offensive line, have to know exactly where to go and what to do at all times. The idea that football players aren’t smart is just, well-stupid. While some of the guys on the field aren’t much more than football smart, Eduardo is. He’s at Kirkland because he rocked his SSATs, and he’s never gotten anything lower than an A in his life.
Well, until now, that is.
“That’s a new one,” Eduardo grumbles, scribbling away on his paper, trying to get down everything Mark’s saying.
Mark lets out a noise that almost sounds like a huff. “I’m not the one who failed their first AP Comp Sci exam.”
Eduardo puts his pen down, and looks up at Mark’s blank face. “Listen, what you’re saying makes sense-I haven’t understood a word that Fincher has said yet, so if you could please just keep going, I would really appreciate it.”
Mark is still, long enough that Eduardo’s convinced that this is a terrible idea, yet again, but then he breaks. “Okay, just try to keep up.”
The hour goes quickly, and they agree to meet again the following week. Mark doesn’t actually seem that annoyed about it. Eduardo turns in the problem set that Mark helps him with, and he gets a 96.
After a couple more sessions, even what Fincher says in class starts to come together for him, and he feels like he’s well on his way to erasing the damage that 24 has done.
About three weeks into their tutoring sessions, Mark asks Eduardo meet him after dinner, in an empty classroom in the science building. Eduardo isn’t sure why Mark wants to meet there but he goes anyway. When he arrives, Mark’s got his laptop hooked up to the A/V system in the classroom, and an open window with a blinking cursor open on the large screen at the front of the room.
“What’s this?” Eduardo says, approaching Mark at the front of the room.
The corner of Mark’s mouth is turned up and his teeth are pressed against his lower lip, like he’s fighting a smile. Eduardo’s eyes are drawn to the curve of his lips, then drift up to the cut of his cheekbones. His face feels hot, all of a sudden.
Well, shit. He hadn’t really seen that one coming.
“It’s a test. Well, more a test of my teaching skills than of your programming ability, but I want you to build a program, and I want to watch. I figured this way I could at least be comfortable and not leaning over you while you do it.”
“I’m not sure, Mark-” He’s been getting As in the class, but that’s not this-programming from scratch, in front of Mark.
“You know, for someone who’s such a football hotshot, you don’t have a lot of confidence.” Mark folds his arms across his chest and stares Eduardo down.
It’s not how he means to react, but Eduardo’s laughing before he can stop himself. “Okay, first, I have plenty of confidence. Second, think about how you would feel if you had to play football in front of me, and third, did you just say hotshot?”
“Shut up,” Mark says, “and get started, hotshot.”
Mark sits in the front row and sprawls his legs out underneath the desk, telling Eduardo what he wants him to do. Eduardo puts his fingers on the keys, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then starts.
He doesn’t know exactly how much time passes-everything reduces down to Mark’s cool, calm voice giving him instructions, to the sound of Eduardo’s fingers on the keyboard, the way he knows this despite his own reservations.
And when Mark is finally quiet and Eduardo finishes typing the last line, he looks up. Mark isn’t even trying not to smile anymore. He’s actually grinning at Eduardo, no longer lounging in the seat, but sitting straight up and leaning forward, clasping his hands on the desk in front of him. Eduardo flexes his fingers and looks down at his watch. They’ve been here for more than an hour. Wow.
“Come on, don’t chicken out on me now,” Mark calls out to him.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to see what you just did? It was pretty great, if I do say so myself.”
Eduardo moves his finger over the mouse pad and pauses over the button that will turn the lines of code he just typed into something real and tangible, splayed across the screen for Mark to see. “Come on, you saw the code, what does it matter?”
Then, Mark’s pushing himself out of his chair and walking over to press himself close to Eduardo (who feels a little lightheaded-he can’t tell if it’s from the non-stop coding or the proximity). He knows exactly where the feeling is coming from when Mark’s hand curls around his on the mouse. “Because,” Mark says, his breath hot against Eduardo’s ear, and it takes everything he’s got not to shiver, “coding isn’t about the code. It’s about creating something, it’s about how you can turn what seems like nothing into something. You did this, and now you should see what you made.”
Mark’s finger is pressing down on Eduardo’s, but in the end, Eduardo’s the one who clicks it. He stands there, watching what he made-what they made-and soaks in the heat of Mark’s body, pressed against him.
*****
While it seems that Mark has always been at Kirkland, they’ve been in different orbits for the last year, but now, they’ve taken to seeking each other out.
It happens the first time when Mark takes the open seat next to Eduardo’s in AP Lit, pulling out his textbooks and sighing. Eduardo knows that this is the course Mark has the least use for, if his biting remarks to Ms. Delpy are any indication.
“Hey,” Eduardo says softly, leaning over to tug on Mark’s sleeve. “You sure it won’t hurt your rep to sit next to me?”
Mark glances over. “Sometimes, it’s amazing that you can function with all of that stupidity.”
“Whatever, you know you love me.”
“Ugh, you wish.”
Eduardo would believe it’s just a fluke, but then it happens in Econ, and in Spanish, until Eduardo’s spending most of his courses trying not to laugh out loud as Mark keeps up a written commentary about the teachers and their classmates, leaning across to scrawl, in his terrible handwriting, on the margins of Eduardo’s meticulous notes.
So, he takes a chance one day at lunch (which has absolutely nothing to do with how much he enjoys looking at Mark’s mouth lately) and plops his tray down next to Mark in the dining hall.
“You know, I’m not technically required to be tutoring you all day.” Mark stares at him, carefully taking a bite of his turkey sandwich before he sits it back down on his plate.
“I’m just here to eat my lunch, Mark,” Eduardo says, grinning and picking up his own turkey sandwich, because prickly Mark is never less than entertaining. “Do you want me to move?”
Mark rolls his eyes. “No, I just wouldn’t want any of your football buddies to see you sitting with me.”
“Mark,” Eduardo drops his own sandwich carelessly onto his plate, “I couldn’t care less about what anyone thinks about me or who I choose to be friends with. Have I ever given you the impression that I do?”
At that, Mark takes a moment, seems like he’s really thinking, instead of just firing off the first thing that comes into his mind. “No, you haven’t.”
“So. Relax. I know that it would be shocking to anyone who has ever met you, but I actually enjoy your company.”
Mark doesn’t seem to know what to say. Eduardo smiles down at the uneaten half of his sandwich. This is the first time he’s ever caught Mark completely off-guard and shut him up, and it feels good.
“Well, I-” Mark starts, then clears his throat. “You’re not so bad either, most of the time.”
And Eduardo knows that the grin on his face is just ridiculous, but it’s getting harder and harder to control himself around Mark, and harder and harder to care about that control.
Mark smiles, just a little bit at the corner of his mouth, before turning his attention back to his lunch.
The lunchtime thing becomes a pattern, and after a while, it becomes a foursome-Dustin, Mark’s old roommate, and Chris join them most days. Eduardo hadn’t really realized, so focused on football and coursework for the last three years, that he’s never really had friends like this.
*****
Eduardo’s been able to start to figure himself out since he arrived at Kirkland. Getting away from Miami and his father has given him the space he needed to grow into the person he is, to start to figure out what makes him happy and how he can balance that with the expectations of his family. Sometimes, he tries to imagine what his life would have been like had he stayed in Miami, and he finds that it’s hard to imagine at all. Kirkland wasn’t what he wanted, but it ended up being exactly what he needed.
And ever since his relationship with Divya, Eduardo has been comfortable with his sexuality. Sure, it’s not like he’s joined the GSA on campus or told really anyone at all, but he’s not ashamed of it. In part, he wants to see this football thing through, because the closer college gets, the more the idea that football isn’t just a hobby, but that it could be his life, takes hold. He knows that no NFL team has ever drafted an openly gay player before. He doesn’t want to cut himself off from the dream before he even has a chance to realize it, so he’ll wait if he has to.
It isn’t like he doesn’t find girls attractive, or that he doesn’t like Christy, per se, but he knows that it’s not something he wants to take any further than they’ve gone. They haven’t had sex (Eduardo lost his virginity to Divya in a New Hampshire hotel room after an away game-it was a bit awkward and amazing and all in all a positive experience), but they’ve fooled around when they could find the opportunity. The problem is, Eduardo’s not sure he even likes Christy that much. Sure, she’s smart as hell and beautiful and fierce, all qualities that he finds attractive.
It may be the fact that Christy is crazy. Not just kooky, but full-on, probably clinically insane. She’s clingy (hell, stalker might be a better term) and overwhelming and she kind of scares him sometimes.
Eduardo needs to break up with her.
So, even though he knows it’s going to be ugly, and that he may be on the receiving end of the crazy for a while longer, he calls her and asks to meet her, on a Saturday afternoon after another win (this time, not even really a contest-54-7). He hopes the adrenaline will help him push through the conversation.
After all, he’s a pretty self-aware guy, and he knows that his attention is already elsewhere.
*****
The Kirkland Pioneers are undefeated going into the last game of the season, against rivals Eliot School. Eliot is the only other undefeated team in the EISC, and Eduardo knows that it’s going to be their toughest game of the season by far. Eliot always gives them a good game.
He also knows that the Harvard coach is planning to be there (as well as some other coaches, but they hardly matter anymore, honestly) and he knows that he has to perform. At the end of October, he submitted his test scores, transcript, and extracurriculars to the coach for review, and he’s hoping that his likely letter might come after this game.
Eduardo doesn’t get nervous before games-nerves are only for those who aren’t prepared-but he finds himself a little bit more on edge than usually in the days leading up to the game, poring over film of Eliot’s previous wins and running play after play in practice until he’s so exhausted he wants to drop. Except he can’t, because there’s still the pile of homework every time he gets back to his room.
So much for the fun he was hoping to have during his senior year.
On Tuesday night, he meets with Mark, their tutoring sessions having evolved (or devolved, one might say) into talking, sometimes out loud (but quietly, so as to not incur the wrath of the faculty monitor), sometimes in frantically scribbled (in Mark’s case) or carefully written (in Eduardo’s) notes across Eduardo’s blank notebook pages.
Mark’s not a big talker, but Eduardo learns, over those few weeks, about Mark’s family, about the real story behind why he transferred to Kirkland-the rumored version was mostly accurate)-and his plans for The Facebook, for expansion.
Eduardo tells Mark about Brazil, his dad, about football, about his big dreams of the NFL and how scared he is that it will happen. Pretty much the only thing he doesn’t tell him about is Divya (or about how he can’t stop looking at the way Mark chews on his pen in class, or the way his eyelashes shadow his cheeks).
That Tuesday, Mark goes over Eduardo’s Comp Sci homework, finding a few mistakes for Eduardo to fix. Eduardo’s palms are sweaty, and he’s not really sure why. He knows that he’s been enjoying this time with Mark in more than a purely friendly way for a while, but he’s managed to keep himself as cool as possible. Still, what he’s about to ask feels like a big deal, somehow. He doesn’t know why it’s so important to him that Mark be there, but he’s pretty sure this might be the biggest game of his life.
“So,” Eduardo says softly, after the homework is done and stashed in Eduardo’s bag. Mark doesn’t really look up, but Eduardo has learned to look for the signs of Mark’s attention, which he almost always gives to Eduardo. “Are you planning to come to the Eliot game on Friday?”
Then, he’s sure he has Mark’s attention, because Mark has drops his pen onto the page he’s doodling on and is looking up at Eduardo, eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, not the last time I checked.”
“Of course I’m not planning to go. Why would I do that?” Mark turns back around to his paper, resuming his drawing.
Eduardo playfully cuffs Mark on the back of the head, and Mark lets out a quiet squeak. “Because I asked you to, dumbass.”
“Well, thanks for the invite, but I’ll pass.”
“Mark,” Eduardo says, dropping his voice even lower and leaning close, close enough to feel how tense Mark is. “This is a huge game for me. It would mean a lot to me if you would grace us with your presence.”
Mark doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything for long enough that Eduardo is sure that he’s made a huge misstep, said something that tears apart this fragile friendship they’ve been building. But then Mark turns back, and they’re probably too close now, but Eduardo does not even care, especially when Mark says, groaning, “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll hate it, but I’ll go.”
Eduardo claps Mark on the shoulder, letting his fingers, briefly, massage the hard line of muscle there. He smiles and wishes he could take a picture of Mark’s helpless smile back.
*****
12:31 left in the second quarter, and Eduardo already knows he’s not going to be able to walk the next day. They’d watched film to prepare and been told all about the Eliot defense, their ability to rush the passer, but their sheer size is still a shock when Eduardo walks up to the line of scrimmage the first time.
It doesn’t get any better the third or fourth or fifth time. They come out blitzing and pass rushing like mad, and Eduardo can barely stay on his feet-sacked three times, he can’t remember the last time that happened-for the first quarter. He’s hurried at the tail end of the quarter, then tackled as soon as he throws an incomplete pass to Danny. He feels the pain (a twisted ankle, maybe? The angle had been weird on the way down) shoot up his leg as he limps off the field.
Eduardo spends the next two minutes screaming at the offensive line, which has done virtually nothing to protect him for the last fifteen minutes, even though he knows that the match-ups are just a disaster. He needs them to believe that they can do it, or he’s not sure that his back up, a shy freshman named Aaron, won’t be in the game by the end of the first half.
Luckily, the pep talk works, and from then on, the o-line does a much better job of at least allowing Eduardo to stay on his feet, shake off the earlier hits, even though he gets forced out of the pocket way too many times for his liking. Nothing seems to be right-the wide receivers and tight ends aren’t running the routes Eduardo calls for, and the defense is barely hanging on, the Eliot offense racking up an insane amount of yardage.
The crowd, clothed almost exclusively in Kirkland purple, is almost eerily quiet as the team makes its way off the field for half-time. It’s 14-3 Eliot, and Eduardo has to hope that they can somehow pull off a miracle.
When he gets to the locker room, he pushes his hand through his sweat drenched hair, getting it out of his face, planting his feet against the floor and swallowing past the pain in his ankle. Coach Sorkin looks calm, but Eduardo has had three and a half seasons to figure out what’s coming.
“Gentleman, let me be clear. Eliot is a good team-very good. But we are better, and we should be embarrassed about the way that we played the first half of this game. I will not settle for anything less than everyone’s best.” He pauses, and there isn’t a sound in the locker room. “If that’s your best, then we should just pack up and go home now.”
Silence.
“Is that your best?” Coach Sorkin shouts.
Eduardo takes a deep breath, pushing away the aches in his joints, the way his head is throbbing. “No, sir!” he shouts in unison with his teammates.
“Are we going to go out and win this goddamn game?”
“Yes, sir!” they shout, and Eduardo smiles. He can feel the energy building in the room.
Coach Sorkin smiles too, and yells, “Well, let’s get out there and do it, ladies!”
Kirkland receives the kickoff for the second half, and Eduardo marches the team down the field, feeling truly himself for the first time in the game. Feeling the inherent trust you have to have in the guys in front of you, to keep you safe, the faith in the guys behind you to be where you need them to be when the time comes. He gets them all the way down to the 7 yard line, and when, after the snap, he sees the wide open center of Eliot’s defensive line, he makes a run for it and scores Kirkland’s first touchdown of the night himself. Eduardo doesn’t do what he does for the admiration of others, but he does allow himself a moment to let the sound of the home crowd wash over him as he makes his way off the field, his teammates surrounding him.
The defense comes out next, and looks like they’ve been taking some of whatever the Eliot defense was hopped up on at the beginning of the game. The Eliot quarterback looks confused and hesitant, a deadly combination on the field. In the end, it doesn’t even end up being that close. The score is 38-21, and Kirkland goes 5-0 to start the season.
Part 2