Iron Gut, Golden Lung Pt. 9

30

“Why is all your enemies women?”

Wednesday morning. Practice day. Getting dressed, Jeremiah answered the question Jaelin would have asked were she there.

“A man’ll come at you from jump. I got male rivals. I beat ‘em on the field. Females always try some ninja shit on a nigga. Why that bitch post so much on the ‘Gram?”

“Nigga, I know you,” Jaelin spoke with laughter. “And you know as well as I know you ain’t sweating the girl like you do ‘cause she post selfies.”

“Fine, Nancy Drew. You want the truth? She could be a man and it’d be the same deal—she in my way.”

He dressed in jeans and his favorite hoodie, the black one with glow-in-the-dark tiger stripes. Full of nervous adrenaline, he opened his bottom desk drawer and there, underneath his scholarship application and NCAA contract lay a pound of dead tree in a manila folder he called the Trainwreck Dossier. He counted every piece of evidence as he’d done many times.

“On the other hand,” he told Jaelin, “the white bitch . . . She gotta go. This,” he tapped the evidence with satisfaction, “this be God’s plan.”

His phone made a musical ping. Damarius was outside. Postponing the conversation until later, he wedged the folder behind the textbooks in his backpack.

Outside, he found the Waver snoozing on a bench, still in plaid pajama pants and a St. Lucy’s School of the Sacred Wolf T-shirt. Sensing Jeremiah, Damarius jumped to his feet, steadied himself, and attempted to walk side-by-side with him though he tottered like a wimpy kid getting pushed in a circle of bullies. Crossing the lawn, Jeremiah inhaled morning air charged with dew and potential. He asked Damarius, “You hear the SGSB doing a hearing about menstruation?”

“Huh?” Damarius was confused.

“It’s going all the way to Naples.”

While the Brits took credit for Bio, its regulatory body headquartered in Italy. Since 1900 La Società Generale degli Sportivi Biologici had held hegemony over all official contests, from the four major tournaments to the collegiate level. Even the mighty NCAA followed SGSB rules.

The notoriously conservative organization had lately acquired a progressive streak that led them to hear arguments in favor of menstruation as an event. Jeremiah found the political shift fascinating not because he cared about girls’ periods, but because this could herald more changes down the line. Perhaps an enterprising Respirater might add specialities and compete as a Waver.

For all that Damarius comprehended the world at seven a.m., he may as well have heard the school’s aging Siberian tiger mascot was holding the hearing from his habitat by the football stadium, as evidenced by him mumbling, “What’s Naples?”

Jeremiah explained the situation again. Damarius spent a long moment gathering his thoughts.

“Stupid,” he concluded. “One: it’s sexist because men can’t play. Two: not everything should be a sport. Three: fucking gross. If they let the girls compete with their periods, they might as well have us on the track fucking. If everything can be a sport.”

“If sex was a sport,” said Jeremiah, “I’d win.”

Then he saw Katie Bourque coming up the sidewalk.