Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Just another manic school day

"Need I remind you boys that winter is almost over and we'll soon be playing our dicks off? I don't care if you're cold. Run! Hit the fucker! Get yer stick up!" Coach Michaels shouted at the St. Jude's School for Boys' varsity lacrosse team. The boys were running drills in the corner of Sheep Meadow in Central Park beneath a gray, sunless sky. Frozen balls of ice crunched beneath their cleat-clad feet. Most of the boys wore shorts, as if to prove how studly they were, impervious to the cold.

Talk about impervious. Coach Michaels was wearing the same hunter green Lands' End windbreaker he'd worn all fall and all spring. Either he had some serious polypropylene ultrawarm, ultrathin long Johns on underneath it, or he was totally insensitive to heat or cold or much else, which was most likely the case. "Archibald, just because you're my youngest player doesn't mean you can be the pansiest. Goodred, grab Archibald and do some relays. Shove your stick up his ass!"

The other boys snickered. Coach Michaels was famous for his foul mouth and absurd commands. He never said what he meant, or if he did, there was no way the boys could actually do what he said. But they got the picture. He wanted them to run hard, take command of the ball, pass accurately, and score. He was a good coach and they usually won. Plus, he recognized talent. Nate was only a sophomore, but Coach Michaels had swiped him from the junior varsity team "to give him bigger balls."

Luke Goodred, the varsity team captain, cupped Nate's crotch with the basket on the end of his beaten up Brine lacrosse stick and pretended to toss Nate's growing balls over the trees bordering the park and out onto Central Park West.

Splat!

Luke was tall and skinny with curly reddish brown hair, Mick Jagger lips, and nervous brown eyes. He would have been pegged a geek if he weren't so confident and such an ace lacrosse player. "You're wearing sweats," he observed wryly. "I bet you're still a virgin. Jesus, Archibald. How can you spend all your time with those two smokin' babes and still be a virgin?" Luke took great pride in knowing the sexual status of every player on his team and did his best to help the virgins get devirginized. "You ever talk to L'Wren anymore?"

Nate shrugged. "She's in college," he responded before chasing after the ball.

Luke ran after him. "Well, she's coming back for my party tomorrow. You coming?"

Normally it would be strange for a senior to invite a sopho- more to his party, but something about Nate transcended class hierarchies. Perhaps it was the fact that he never went anywhere without his two gorgeous female friends, Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen, making him welcome basically any- where. He was still trying to figure out exactly who he was, just like the rest of his fifteen-year-old peers, but he wasn't a dork about it. In fact, it was already sort of obvious that some of the seniors at his school worked very hard to emulate him.

"You girls just keep talking!" Coach Michaels yelled at them from across the grass. "Would you like me to bring you some tea and biscuits? This isn't fucking cricket, you morons!"

Luke laughed. "Hey Coach, I'm having a party tomorrow night, wanna come? It's gonna be a freaking orgy, I can already tell!"

Coach Michaels stuffed his hands into the pockets of his wind-breaker. "No, thanks. I got my own orgy going on at home! "The entire team winced, their faces wrinkled in a collective grimace. Coach was always talking about himself and his wife like they were the hottest couple alive. The boys had seen Mrs. Michaels' picture on the wall of Coach's office in the gym, and they'd all agreed she looked sort of like Jennifer Aniston. Her dyed red hair was long and wavy, and she had smiling brown eyes and a nice smile. But she wore huge amounts of makeup and sported a pink windbreaker to match the coach's green one. The team's official verdict was that the Michaelses kept their windbreakers on when they did it.