Chapter 6

Alexander the Great – A midterm essay by Kenji Kelly

Before the days of drone strikes and computerized conference calls between the heads of state and the modern military, a lone man conquered one of the greatest empires of the known world with only his intelligence, his military genius, and a sword. His name was Alexander the Great, and his story is one of my favorite of all the historical figures that I've read about. Also, he was queer, and cool, and incredibly hot, with facial features like Shaun's and a build to match.

"What the fuck?"

I stopped typing on my laptop to gawk at what I had written. Gods all be damned, as Dad liked to say when he thought Mom was out of earshot. This was what happened when you did your schoolwork at hockey practice. Your mind got muddied with watching the Coyotes captain and his team out there on the ice. I had an hour reserved for after the hockey team. Ilya would be here soon, and I would need to put my laptop away to focus on skating. And weigh in. I erased the bit about Shaun in my AP Histories of the Ancient Worlds class paper. I had three AP history classes under my belt, and this would be my fourth. That was how much I loved history. Can you say college-credited courses? Yep, I had three already. My secret goal was to become a history professor and try to instill a love of all things old to other kids who all seemed to hate history class and came crawling to me to help them with papers.

I glanced up after the Shaun bit was gone, my attention drawn to Soren and Felix standing in the corner having an intimate conversation. They weren't making out, but you could tell just by the way they looked at each other that they had something strong. I liked Soren and Felix a lot. They were kind of like relationship goal material. They'd started off bad but had somehow turned things around. I kind of wished I could figure out how to do that with Shaun.

But anytime we talked, he had to bring things back to the past. A place I did not want to revisit. I wasn't the same confused kid anymore. I was seventeen now and had a grip on things. Mostly. I guess I had as much of a grip as any other kid my age.

The coach whistled the guys in for a talk at center ice. I felt Ilya before I saw him. He simply had this presence. Mom liked to say that he blew into a room like a Siberian cold front, and that fit pretty damn well. He was cold, firm, and rarely smiled. Even when a student would place well and pull good scores, he would scowl, then point out where we could improve.

"Morning, Coach," I said as he sat down beside me cradling a takeout cup of black coffee. He was a stern man, in his late sixties, with a shock of silver hair and a trim mustache. Tall, thin as a pencil, he nodded in reply. Niceties and Ilya Sidirov did not chill together.

"They are late," he pointed out, jerking his hawkish nose in the direction of the hockey team. I nodded. They were. They knew it. It was a constant thing. "I will speak to them. You will meet me in the locker room for weigh-in, then we will work."

"Okay." He threw me a look. "Yes, Coach," I amended, shoved my laptop into my backpack, and took off for the locker room we shared with the Coyotes. I had one little cubby hole the team had graciously allotted me. Knowing that Ilya would be rousting the hockey team, I raced to undress, the chill of the rink settling over me as I waited in my underwear for my coach to return. He did, muttering in Russian, then led me to the weight room. I hustled along, my skin pimpled, as he droned on about disrespectful American ways.

I bobbed my head, rubbed my bare arms, and wished I had long johns on instead of dark green briefs.

"You will be fine. The cold is bracing. You would not have survived one winter in my village with your delicate ways," Ilya stated as I darted to the scale, then stepped on. Would it be better to hold my breath or release it. Did air weigh anything at all? Today was my solo day with Ilya. Group would be tomorrow morning at eight as it was a weekend. He had three other students, all girls, and they were as skittish about upsetting him as I was, maybe more so as they were known to leave the ice in tears. Not that I hadn't a time or two myself, but not as often. Ilya studied the digital readout, then sighed. "You are two pounds over. You must stop eating junk food. How do you plan to out skate your competitors at States when you are fat and flabby?"

"Sorry," I whispered, covering my belly with my cold hands. "I don't know why I'm gaining. I'm following the diet that I always have."

"Hanging out with your friends in the noodle shops, then eating potato chips at night. Lazy, slovenly habits that I feared you would acquire in this school." He waved a hand in the air. "I will note this down in my tablet. Tomorrow, I want to see improvement. Now, get dressed for the ice. We have much work to do on your routine before you are close to ready for the Eastern High School Regionals in March. Much work."

"Sorry, I'm sorry." I stepped off the scale just as the sound of twenty or so guys in skates passed by the open door. They all glanced in as they passed. Every. Single. One. Despite the cold, I was hot with embarrassment. Then Shaun walked by, sweaty and smiling, until he spied me standing there in my briefs, the scale behind me, Ilya at my side. The corners of his mouth fell from up to down in a microsecond. He took a step toward us. His coach appeared then, gave me and Ilya a look that was hard to discern, and led Shaun away by the elbow.

"Go, change. I will be on the ice." I nodded at Ilya, then scampered away, my feet chilled through my socks, into the locker room where everyone ignored me. What they were thinking I couldn't say, nor did I care. I was so ashamed of being seen in my underwear that I wanted to throw up. I swallowed down some bile as I dressed, pulling on some older black over-the-boot leggings and a sweater, and that was it.

I peeked up through my hair when skates appeared beside mine. My fingers stalled on the laces I was tying as I glanced up to find Shaun and his coach beside me. Coach Sennett was smiling down at me, Shaun's expression was neutral. My gaze darted around the locker room. To Felix, to Soren, to Tyler with his pink hair, and then, back to the two towering over me.

"Sorry we ran over," Coach Sennett said to me, his face a kind one. "Please tell Ilya that we'll be more attentive to the clock."

"I will," I replied, then worked up a wobbly smile of my own. "He can be a little…"

"Yes, he can be, but I understand," Coach said. "So, do you weigh-in every day for Ilya?"

"We do, yes." I got to my feet, grabbed my backpack, then shot Shaun a dark look because I just knew he was behind pulling his coach into my personal affairs. "There's nothing wrong with an athlete monitoring his weight and BMI, is there?"

"Nope, not at all. I just have to wonder if it's necessary to weigh in daily," Coach Sennett replied, his gaze filled with worry. Great. Now Shaun had his coach thinking stupid shit about my regimen. As if either of them knew what it took to be competitive in figure skating.

"Ilya thinks so, and since he won an Olympic medal?—"

"Back when Khrushchev was the head of the Soviet Union," Shaun piped up, unable to keep his trap shut for five minutes. At least, he knew who Nikita Khrushchev was, fellow history nerd that he was. "No one does that anymore because it can lead to?—"

"I have to get on the ice. My skate time is limited because the hockey team ran over."

With that, I stalked to the ice, leaving both of them—probably the entire Coyotes team—staring at my fat ass. UGH. Why was everyone so damned concerned with other people's business? I didn't tell them how to play hockey. I hit the ice with anger. It fueled me through a horrible session where I was on my ass more than I was on my skates.

"Enough!" Ilya shouted as I picked myself up after hosing up a simple salchow. "Where is your head today?! You are jumping into the ice instead of spinning off the ice. This is a jump I teach to six-year-olds. Get up. Go again. And if you do not land this, we are done for today."

"I'm not feeling well," I lied as I brushed ice off my sore backside. "I think I'm coming down with something." He eyed me with something akin to utter disappointment. "I feel sick."

That was no lie. My stomach was on fire, acid churning up into my throat.

"Go then. Go home to your mama and let her coddle you as if you were tiny baby. When you are ready to return to the ice as a man who can skate through a belly upset, then we maybe will continue. Perhaps by the time you are back from the diapers, I will have found a new skater who wishes to go to Michigan to be judged by the famed Petrova Kulikov."

"No, I… I'm okay. I just need to focus. It's easing up. The ice is choppy from the hockey team," I lied, swallowing hard as I shook off the failed salchow. "I want to go to Michigan, I do. I'll do better," I vowed to the man who stood at center ice, arms crossed, steely gaze pinned to me. "I'll do better."

"Go again," he ordered. I went again. And again. And again. When I got home after school, I took a hot bath, cried into the bubbles, and had a bowl of Sobo's Mentsuyu soup. No noodles, just the stock. Then, I went to bed, curled into a ball, and fell asleep in time to hear the beep-beep-beep and buzz-buzz-buzz as a new day dawned.

Friday night wasnoodle night for the hockey team.

I knew this, as did the three girls who skated in group with me, which was the reason we were now at the Hot Pot Noodle Shop instead. I had no complaints about being the only dude at a table with three gorgeous girls. Anita, Evelyn, and Harper were tiny little things, like me, but even tinier. Thin as a whisper with big eyes and soft pink lips. They were juniors, as well, and quite popular. I sort of liked them sometimes, but they could be catty as hell. Like now, for example. They were gossiping about Tyler and Jonah behind their hands as if making fun of someone who wasn't rich was acceptable. Jonah came from a working-class family like I did, no shade from me about that at all. Sometimes, I wondered if the problem wasn't that Jonah wasn't wealthy, but that he was biracial. Like me. Saying they disliked him because of his skin tone wasn't acceptable, so they picked other reasons they felt were okay to run him down about.

When they started tearing apart his clothes, I got to my feet, my chair scraping over the floor of the eatery, pulling every eye in the place to me.

"You know clothes aren't really all that important," I snapped at the girls gaping at me as if I had gone over the edge.

"That's what we heard about you. Flashing your dick at the hockey team the other day," Anita the head harpy giggled. "We heard it wasn't much of a show."

The malice oozed off them. I was done with this shit. Stupid, petty high school bullshit. Like there weren't bigger issues in this world to worry about than someone's shoes. Honestly, sometimes going to a private academy was the shits.

I grabbed my coat and left, their titters following me out into the chilly late February night. I so needed to get into a club in school that had decent people. Maybe the history club. My AP history teacher, Mr. Amiti, led it, and he was cool. Fuck Ilya and his ban on anything other than skating after school. I needed more.

"Hey, Kenji.". I heard and rolled my eyes.

Shaun. I kept walking, my skates thudding into my back, my eyes on the prize—my VW parked a few hundred feet from the noodle shop. The wind was biting, making my eyes water as I surged forward. Shaun caught up with ease. His legs were much longer than mine. "Those skater friends of yours are hyenas."

That brought me to a halt, surprising him so bad he fumbled and fell off the curb into the side of a Buick. Thankfully, the alarm wasn't set.

"What the hell does that even mean?" I asked, wishing like hell he would leave me in peace. Why did he care so much? Why was he being so nice? I'd ghosted him years ago.

"It means they prowl around in a pack, cackling and snapping at everything and everyone," he answered, the cold wind playing with his hair. It looked soft.

I wanted to argue, but… yeah, that was a pretty good description of those three. "Okay, so they're hyenas, and you're a water buffalo."

His nose wrinkled in confusion. It was an expression I'd always found adorable.

"A water buffalo. How so, man?"

"Because you have a big head and like to run into people."

He barked out a laugh. I'd not heard him laugh in forever. "Shit, that is so stupid, yet amazingly precise. What are you, then?"

"I don't know. Something small that fucks up all the time. A dung beetle."

"Dude, dung beetles roll the tightest poop balls."

I snorted. "Tight poop balls. That'll be my claim to fame." I made an arc in the air with my hand. "Here lies Kenji Kelly, roller of immaculate shit balls."

"Epic epitaph."

"You're stupid." He chuckled, then nodded. "I'm sorry about those three. They're decent skaters, but they're so fucking snobby. I like Jonah, and Tyler, and all the guys on the team."

"Then why don't you come back inside and have some ramen with us?"

I stared back at the shop. My stomach snarled. I'd not eaten anything since lunch, and that was only half a turkey sandwich—no bread just the meat—and a pickle so I ensured I would make weight tomorrow morning. The neon lights in the windows of the Hot Pot called out like a siren to a lonely sailor out at sea.

"I should probably go home," I replied as I looked from the ramen shop window up at Shaun.

"You can go home later. It's only eight o'clock. I know training is important, but so is being a kid, you know?"

I did know that. And I wanted it more than anything. I wanted to be a dumb kid with Shaun and the Coyotes. Shaun was giving me that stupid expectant golden retriever expression of his. My resolve weakened.

"I can't eat any of the deep-fried stuff," I answered. He smiled. "And no one mentions seeing me in my underwear."

A shadow moved over his face, then disappeared. "They won't say a word. I will grind anyone who makes fun of you into karashi."

"You included. Not a word about anything that has skates. Promise me."

He crossed his chest with his finger. "I promise. Come on. Have some soup, chill out. We can talk about that new Netflix documentary about Genghis Khan."

"Genghis Khan. Cool. Okay, history and soup, no skate talk, no deep-fried food."

"Yep." He," he nudged me with his shoulder, just enough to get my feet moving back in the direction of the ramen shop. "Nothing to make you mad. I promise."

I planned to hold him to that. "Did you know that Genghis's father was poisoned by rival Tartars when he was only nine?"

"I think I read that somewhere."

The bells over the door of the noodle shop and the sounds of hungry, happy teenagers greeted us. Okay, yeah, this was maybe a good idea. Peeking at Shaun, grinning like he had won the lottery as he steered me past the trio of asps in Gucci to the Coyotes' table, made me feel a million and one things all at once. Every one of them tingly.