“It’s time for Beer Skee Ball.” Altshuler pointed at Cliff, then Dell and Carpenter. But it was mostly for Cliff.
“What’s that?” Carpenter asked while catching his breath.
“It’s tradition.”
“What is it?” Cliff stayed put.
“You don’t like surprises, do you?” Altshuler gestured for Cliff to follow him, his eyes reminding him there was only one right answer.
* * *
Seconds later,Cliff came face-to-face with Beer Skee Ball. A rousing round of applause greeted him from the packed dining room; onlookers crowded around a janky replica of Skee Ball games Cliff had played at arcades as a kid, where you had to roll balls up into different circles for points. The dining table was propped up on a slant with a pyramid of Solo cups taped to its polished wood surface. Cliff had to imagine Mr. Leary would not be cool with this.
The bottom row had four cups, then three, then two, then one, with two single outlier cups taped above the pyramid at the table’s corners.
“It’s your turn to play Beer Skee Ball.” Althsuler said, standing on a dining chair at the top of the pyramid.
It was like a turnover in basketball and Cliff had to quickly recalibrate while his every move was being watched. Despite what was going on in his stomach, externally, he took it all in stride.
Cliff surveyed the mock court.
“It’s tradition for all new Whitetail basketball players,” Alshulter said. “You must play at least one game.” He handed Cliff a ping pong ball.
“Let me guess, I have to get a ball in each cup?”
“No, that’d take fucking forever.” Alshulter hopped off the chair and mustered up enough sobriety to clearly explain the rules. That was the thing about drinking games: for something with a very simple purpose, the rules were always complex. “You have to get a ball in one cup per level. Each time you miss, you have to take a shot.”
The crowd whooped and hollered. That was what they came here to see: freshmen getting trashed. Alshuler held up a bottle of clear liquor, a bottle shape Cliff was not familiar with. He moved his fat thumb from the label. Cliff’s eyebrows jumped.
Everclear.
Everclear could take the paint off a car.
“And because this isn’t a frat and we’re not hazing you, if you don’t want to participate, you don’t have to,” Altshuler said loudly. Plausible deniability. No freshmen in his right mind would step away at this point. Altshuler was not too drunk to know how to leverage peer pressure.
One shot of everclear would put him decidedly into drunk territory where his gay undercurrent could escape and unleash itself on an unsuspecting teammate. Then that would be it. His reputation would be sealed for his entire college career. There was a football player in his high school who came out as bi and was bullied off the team. He sat at a cafeteria table far in the corner with other social discards while popular kids and some of Cliff’s fellow teammates made nasty comments.How quickly people can turn on you, Cliff remembered thinking, a lesson he made sure to never forget.
Altshuler cradled the ping pong ball in both hands. “No player makes it out of this game able to walk a straight line.”
Cliff steadied himself. He was two beers in, but adrenaline set his brain right. He was back in the zone, surveying the court, mentally measuring the distance to the basket.
He launched the first ping pong ball which squarely sunk into the middle cup on the bottom row. There was a smattering of cheer because it was the easiest level.
Altshuler ran the ball back to him. “One down, four to go.”
Cliff took a breath and thought about the force of his arm, recalibrating it for the weight and size of the ball and the height of the middle row. His elbow flung the ball, and like a gravitational force, the middle row cup on the left seemed to pull it inside.
He exhaled a breath. Sweat beads formed at the base of his scalp. The kids around him clapped with more enthusiasm this time.
“You got this!” Dell cheered.
Altshuler nodded with begrudging respect, but Cliff clocked a dangerous glimmer in his eye. “Two in a row. He’s on fire, ladies and gentlemen!” He handed Cliff the ping pong ball.
Cliff replicated his same stance. He pictured himself on the court, where he could drown out the noise, where social standings and social niceties didn’t matter. All that mattered was winning. He released the ball. The cheer of the crowd more than his eyes alerted him that he was now three for three.
An upperclassman teammate Vince Cudia rubbed Cliff’s head. “Damn! Only two people have ever gone three for three. Nobody’s ever gotten all five.”
All that were left were the two outlier cups taped to the upper corners of the table, practically hidden from sight. Cliff steadied himself, adjusted his stance to keep a straight line to the basket. He was the one in control here, totally in control of his situation. He kept himself from looking at the bottle of everclear. He could do this. He had to do this.
