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Aftermath
The walls of Alex’s room are covered with posters: former Dodgers pitcher Greg Maddux, eight-time NBA All Star Paul Pierce, and a lone shot of Britney Spears. Alex is willing, in the bashful way of a 17-year-old boy talking to a lady he doesn’t know, to discuss what happened.
“I didn’t pressure her into it or anything,” he says. Not that he didn’t appreciate the gesture or didn’t like the photos. “It was all right,” he admits. “It was good.” As for the images themselves, they were not shocking or unusual. His friends frequently show him sexy pictures sent by female friends of theirs. Now, though, he has a policy about looking. “I always ask my friends, how old is she?” he says. “My rule is, 18.”
Around Alex, the supposition that kids who swap naked photos shred social decency while laying waste to their own futures falls apart. If there’s blame to be assigned, he’s ready to take it. “It’s kind of like that for everything,” he says. “Like when I play basketball. If we lose, it feels like I did what I had to do but I still have most of the blame on me. I’ve learned to deal with it.”
And he would have dealt with it, whether it meant going to jail or delaying college (where he plans to study business administration, with the goal of helping run his family’s farms) or apologizing to Laurie’s parents. The latter doesn’t seem to be in the cards. When they see him, it seems to Alex they avoid eye contact, and he hasn’t been sure they want to hear anything from him, including that he’s sorry. “But I think one of these days I will apologize, just for how everything went down,” he says. “I don’t want her family to think I’m that type of kid.”
Alex pauses, broad-shouldered and loose-limbed, wearing sweats on a Saturday morning after winning the big game. While the photos may have been a big deal to the grown-ups, to him and Laurie they weren’t. “I mean, this is my senior year, and I just want to have fun with it,” he says. “I see her. She’s a star cheerleader. We don’t let it faze us.”
From his point of view, the problem wasn’t the pictures but the aftermath. “This is a 16-year-old boy and an almost 15-year-old girl going through their young adult lives here,” Alex says.
“I just wish the families could have handled it better. I mean, I would have been glad to mow their lawn all summer.”
After which, maybe, she could have mowed the lawn at his house.
Alex grins. “Exactly.”