Riley rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha. I think I already know your nickname.”
“What’s that?” I sat across from Riley.
“Lame Comedian.”
“Ha. Ha.” I mimicked her tone.
“So,” Riley said as the five of us stared at each other around the picnic table. “Nicknames?” Her gaze swept over us, prompting us to begin. Her eyelashes dipped when she reached me.
After a handful of quiet, uncomfortable seconds in which we all had to listen to Riley tap her pink pen against the wooden table, I said, “Um. Suggestion. Shouldn’t we introduce ourselves first? You know, try and get to know each other?”
“Would you like to be team leader?” Riley’s eyes widened.
“Do we need one?” Before she could reply I said, “My name is Sam Tracy.” I turned my attention to the other faces at the table. “I’m a junior at Lone Butte. I live on the Gila River Rez. That’s me.” I swiveled toward Matt.
“Hey,” he said. His leg began to shake against the bench. “I’m Matt.” He even gave a little wave. “Used to go to Lone Butte. Now I’m a junior over at Hamilton.” He paused to drag a hand through what little blond hair he had. “Live in Phoenix. Born in Chicago. I guess that’ll do.” Matt turned to the girl beside him.
The girl next to Matt crossed her arms when everybody looked at her. Hazel eyes widened behind her wire-rimmed glasses. She forced a nervous smile and spoke just a hair louder than the whistling pine trees surrounding us. “Cassidy McMahon.” We all leaned closer. “Basha High sophomore.” She spoke very fast, as if she wanted to get the whole introduction thing over with, and who could blame her. I hated these kinds of things, too. “I collect comic books,” she added, her pale cheeks blushing as she said it.
Cassidy turned to the boy wearing a baseball cap who was seated across from her. He sat sideways with his legs pointed away from Riley so I didn’t get a good look at him at first. But then he spun around to face everybody, a piece of brown grass spinning between his teeth. “Jay Hawkins.” He said his name like he couldn’t wait to tell us. Like it was a piece of vital information necessary for human survival. I couldn’t help but groan inside. Jay Hawkins was one of my least favorite people at Lone Butte, even one notch lower than Ryan Berenger, and that was saying something. “And I really hate these team-building things or whatever they’re called. When’s lunch?” Jay added, which got the others to chuckle. Naturally he didn’t bother with any further details, because guys like Jay Hawkins assumed the rest of the world already knew about him. Humility was not one of his strengths. He turned to Riley and flashed a set of perfectly white teeth instead.
Riley beamed back at him, tugging on the scarf that had found its way back around her long neck.
It was hard not to eye roll, watching the silent flirting. Of course Riley fell for it. Girls always did.
“Well, I guess that just leaves me,” Riley said, tapping her pen again against the table. I noticed she bit her fingernails. As if she could sense me and everyone else at the table staring at them, her fingers curled around the pen until finally she hid her hand beneath the table. “I’m Riley Berenger. Sophomore at Lone Butte High.” She smacked her lips, as if considering what else to add. If I knew her, she had something clever memorized, no doubt recorded in her notebook in her perfect handwriting with her perfect hot pink pen. “I love to dance and I love to draw.”
Then she turned to me, like I was supposed to add something additional to our introductions, which, in her defense, I did suggest.
Before I could respond, Jay leaned forward and looked straight at me. He had on his pretend-serious face. “Dude. I’m curious. What do you like to be called? I mean, Gila, Indian, American Indian, Native American? What?” He paused. “Sorry for asking, but I never know. It’s confusing.” If it had been anyone else, I would have told him that it was a legitimate question and there were a lot of names, some of which I truly hated, but Jay was hardly sorry for asking. His tone was anything but innocent.
I let a few uncomfortable seconds pass between us. Then I said, “Just Sam. I prefer to be called Sam.”
Softly, Riley said, “Fred told me that she prefers to be called Gila first. Then, Native. Then—”
I interrupted her. “Well, that’s Fred.”
“Well, you have to admit, it does get confusing sometimes. Right, Sam? Knowing what’s right. What’s proper. What’s best.”
I finally broke my gaze from Jay and turned to Riley. “You don’t have to remind me about that, Berenger.” I deal with it every day, I wanted to add. Of course guys like Jay Hawkins would never have to deal with it. It wasn’t something that they’d have to stress over for one solitary second.
Riley’s eyes grew big and she pulled her cap lower on her forehead, like she wanted to cover her whole face. Like she preferred that I look away. So I did.
“Then Sam it is,” Matt added brightly, trying to inject some lightness into the discussion. “I can live with that.”
I nodded at Matt, once, as Jay grinned. “Yeah,” Jay chimed in. “Just Sam it is.” Jay had gotten under my skin and that pleased him. I could kick myself for letting him get the best of me.
Our group grew quiet again. After a few more seconds, Riley cleared her throat. “I think we should probably decide on nicknames before we run out of time,” she said, tapping her pen all over again.
“How much time we got?” I asked, grateful for the tapping. Grateful to move away from a topic that no one ever understood and one that was almost impossible to explain.
“Mr. Romero said we had until he started to grill the hot dogs for lunch.”
Naturally Riley continued with more directions. “I suggest we write our names on the back of the name tag and then pass it around the table so that everyone gets a chance to write a nickname for everybody.”
“Okay,” I said again. “Anyone else have any other ideas?”
“What do we base the nicknames on?” Matt said. “I don’t get it....”
Riley looked down at the agenda, turning it over for the instructions. “Says here that we’re supposed to base them on first impressions.” She air-quoted. “And then see if our impressions still hold by tomorrow.”
I turned over my name tag. I wrote Sam on the back and tossed it in the middle of the table. “Give me your best shot.”
7
Riley
Grumpy? Needs a Haircut? Condescending? He Who Irritates? Those were the nicknames for Sam Tracy floating in my head.
Poor Jay. Why did Sam have to be so snippy about his question? It wasn’t dumb. Sometimes I wondered the same thing, especially when I heard so many names and labels bandied about. It was confusing. Somehow I would need to come up with a less caustic nickname for Sam by the time my fingers found his name tag.
And why did he think I was trying to take over the team? I was merely getting us going. No one else had stepped up.
I
