Almost Somebody

I wasn’t good at soccer. I knew it. Everyone knew it. But I played anyway. Adrien was good. He had that thick blonde hair, the kind that caught the sun just right. The kind of hair a kid with a name like Adrien was supposed to have. He got the cheers. The attention. The fifth grade star at the American school in Brussels.

The coach was a mean son of a bitch. Spat when he talked. Called kids names. One of those guys who probably failed at rugby and took it out on children. One day, I saw my dad walk up to him on the sideline.

"Be easy on him, he's sensitive."

The coach gave him a look, then looked at me like I had some kind of disease.

After that, he stopped yelling at me. Stopped pushing me. Stopped talking to me altogether.

I was still on the team, but I wasn’t really on the team. I was just there taking up space.

Then came basketball. I wasn’t great at that either, but one day, something happened. I scored a bunch of hoops and they upgraded me. All the attention was on me. I felt like a god. Maybe this was my thing. Maybe I’d join the NBA. And then the next game—nothing. Not a single basket. Third quarter, I was back on the bench.

Maybe I wasn’t meant to win.

I sat there with a towel around my neck as the court emptied out. Felt like one of those pros who choked in the finals. Except no one gave a shit.

After basketball, we still had the walk home. Me, Lars, and Smathers.

“Hey, I heard Mr. Tomlinson is fucking the nurse.”
“No way.”
“I saw them fuck.”
“What’s fucking?”
“It’s when a guy puts his weenie in her thing.”
“What for?”
“I dunno. I heard that’s how they make babies.”
“I heard you just have to sleep next to each other for 20 minutes.”

We weren’t ready for girls. We were just beginning to suspect they existed for a reason.

Still, I had crushes—Alana Lane and Margot Dobson. Never told them. Never even considered it. That wasn’t the point. Imagining Alana waiting for me after school, walking home together, maybe our hands brushing. Margot smiling at me from across the classroom, a secret understanding passing between us. I didn’t need more than that. In my head, they were perfect. And if it all led to that—putting my you-know-what in her you-know-where and making babies? Yeah, no thanks.

That was my world. My friends and the girls I dreamed of. This was what eternity looked like.

And then one day, we left.

To Beirut.

“Keep in touch,” Lars said.
“Yeah, keep in touch.”

But we wouldn’t. They were gone. These kids I spent every day with might as well have been dead. I felt like the earth was splitting and leaving everything I loved behind. Better not get too close. Sooner or later, one of us leaves.

At the airport, my parents spoke Arabic—loud, like they wanted everyone to hear. Shame crawled up my spine.

Stop saying my name.
“That’s your name,” my mom said.

Exactly the problem. I went from all-American to the Arab kid with the foreign name. The parents with the accents.

I wanted to be Tom.
White. Generic. Invisible.
A name that passed like a breeze. A kid who belonged everywhere and nowhere.

In Beirut, I started sixth grade. I wore my American varsity jacket like armor. Proof that I had been somewhere. That I had lived something. I saw a kid with a mushroom cut slam a Dr Pepper.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“Abu Mazen Market. Has all the American stuff. Even has Nerds and Jolly Ranchers.” No way. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad.

Me and Isam became friends. We popped Dr Peppers over recess and scrawled Bon Jovi lyrics on our agendas like we were hot shit, like we came up with them ourselves. He gave me a Zippo and we burned shit down. Maybe I could have friends.

One day in class, Reem leaned over to me.
“I’m not gonna ask you. You have to ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“You know.”
So I did.
“You wanna be my girlfriend?”
“Yes.”

And that was it. I had a girlfriend. The next lecture sounded different. Like the teacher was speaking through water. None of it mattered anymore.

I was somebody. I had the girl. I aced all my tests, top of the class. The only kid exempt from final exams. While everyone else sweated it out in humid classrooms, I was swimming and eating French fries under the sun.

My mom told everyone. I was the star.

Then at the end-of-year dance, I saw Reem slow dancing with another guy. I thought we were going to get married. The next day, she was his. That was that.

Summer hit. My lips got bigger. My face broke out. I looked in the mirror and thought I was ugly. Before I knew it, seventh grade began, and the air felt different. Everyone was taller. I was the same size.

The golden year was over.
One year, I had it all. The next year, it vanished. The bright confidence started to slip.

One day, Isam came up with his new friends.
“You shape up or ship out.”

I shipped out. Kicked from the group. An outcast.
Then the grades started slipping. I couldn’t keep up.
My mom stopped bragging. Nobody called me a star.
Maybe success was a trick. Maybe failure always followed.

I stopped trusting myself. That golden year felt like a fluke, a dirty joke the universe was playing.

Success wasn’t mine to keep.

So I disappeared. Into obscurity. Into video games. Where nothing was at stake. Where I couldn’t lose. Because if I didn’t reach for anything, I’d never have to watch it slip away.

And if I never succeeded, I could never fail.