It wasn't that Neil had never heard a joke before. He'd heard plenty of them. He remembered being Nathaniel and overhearing the knock knock jokes in his kindergarten class. He'd sat in his corner in elementary school, watching the bright laughter of his classmates as they huddled together, whispering during class time. He heard them shout at each other across the lunchroom as he choked down his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The laughter, the warmth, are almost enough to draw him in, to pull him out of his isolation, but if he opens up, two things happen, the children close to protect their ranks, to push out the child whose father is a murderer, and Nathaniel hears the voice in his head, Lola, bright blood on her hands, welling up under her knife and asking, "you have any little friends, Nathaniel? Bring them over. We can play."
Nathaniel doesn't need them anyway. He's not so sure what the fuss is about. He doesn't know what oranges have to do with bananas and why they would be knocking on doors to begin with. So he puts his Exy picture book up in front of his face and pretends it doesn't hurt when they turn their backs at his approach.
Neil remembered being Alex and starting a new school. At first, he thinks things might be different. He shed his father's reputation with his old name and now the other children don't know to be afraid of him. He has a glorious first day. A kid named Andy held his hand and dragged him around to look at the reading corner with its bright books and the class pet, a sleepy iguana named Tad Cooper. And Alex would laugh, even though he didn't know what the hell a sleevie was. Didn't kings keep their armies in a garrison or a barracks or something? He dragged Andy over to meet his mom at pickup but she tore Alex's hand away and yanked him into the car. He never forgot the lecture that followed. Attachment could get him killed. He could have friends or he could be safe. He couldn't have both. And so the next day, Alex found Nathaniel's corner and rejected every offer of friendship that came his way. Andy looked hurt at first but soon was off playing with some other kid and making her laugh instead. Alex took the little bubble of warmth that had grown inside him the day before and shoved it down deep so it couldn't hurt him anymore.
There were other school, other towns, other names, and Neil remembered them all. He wasn't made of stone. Sometimes, that little bubble rose to ruin his life and he would let someone else in, let them touch him, let them love him, sometimes let them kiss him. But his mother always knew and she would hurt him until he let go of the little bit of human warmth he clung to.
By the time he became Neil, it was just his nature to pull away, to guard himself. His walls were so good that no one tried to climb them. His coach occasionally made overtures but knew better than to push too hard. And so Neil surrounded himself in Exy and continued to survive. He wasn't deaf to anything going on around him. He doesn't ignore them or their jokes. On an intellectual level, he knows what they mean. He's not completely oblivious to the concept of wordplay. He just doesn't know why it's funny.
The Millport team was on an away game one time. It wasn't a big deal but it meant a couple extra hours on a bus. Neil had one of his ever present Exy books to keep him company and he mostly tried to tune out the other members of his team. They were necessary in that they allowed him to play the game he loved but he wouldn't count any of them among his friends.
"Apparently, it's going to storm," Greg, one of the other strikers grumbled, looking out the window.
"Hey, you should be lightening up," Cory stuck his tongue out at Greg.
"This is snow joke," Ben jumped in.
"Are you trying to steal my thunder?" Cory yelled back.
"Like you can withstand this downpour of awesome jokes." Ben laughed.
"I will reign over all of you," Greg finally got in on the fun.
"Yeah," Ben agreed. "All hail to the king."
And then they looked at Neil who, as the other striker, had yet to join in. Neil just looked back at them, confused as to what they wanted from him. "What?"
"Have you never been in a pun war?" Cory asked, scandalized.
Neil just shook his head and turned back to his book.
"Leave him be, guys," Ben scoffed. "I guess he's feeling under the weather." Everyone else groaned and laughed and the battle for humorous dominance continued.
Neil just wondered what he was missing.
And then he went to Palmetto and the Foxes started to get under his skin. All of the defences he had built up were useless. At first, he ignored any and all jokes, but by the time he was shopping with Allison and going to movie nights with Matt and having coffee dates with Dan, he was too close to them for them not to notice when he didn't get a joke and didn't laugh along with them. So he started faking it. He watched his friends, analysed the cues, tried to figure out what signaled a joke. And he would laugh along with them, trying to mimic their sounds and rhythms. If he squeezed his eyes tight shut, he could force a few tears to wipe away when he noticed them getting lost in their hilarity. He was getting pretty good at it too.
Disaster struck once Andrew was sober. They were on a relatively civil night out with all of the Foxes. Nicky had a list entitled "50 lamest jokes from elementary school." He would call out a joke and one of the others would yell out the punchline and they were checking off how many of them they had heard before.
"What's brown and sticky?" Nicky giggled.
"A...stick…" Allison gasped as she held her stomach.
Neil could feel Andrew's eyes on him as he tried to keep up and he turned to look at him.
Andrew narrowed his eyes and glared at Neil. "You're not laughing."
"What?" Neil gasped, panicking.
And suddenly the whole table was staring at them, completely silent.
"You're pretending to laugh. Why?" Andrew asked, his face impassive.
"What?" Neil protested. "No I'm not. It's funny. The jokes are funny."
"What's funny about them?" Andrew challenged him.
Neil opened his mouth to answer but realized he had nothing to say. He deflated before their eyes. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I just don't get it."
"You don't get the joke? It's pretty simple. Sticky could also be sticklike…" Nicky babbled.
"I get that," Neil glared. "I'm not a moron. Just, why are jokes funny? Why do people tell them?"
"They…" Matt started. "They just are?"
But no one had an answer. They went home shortly after. Neil actually felt a little relieved. Now that his secret was out, he didn't have to pretend anymore. He could go back to ignoring them when they tried to be funny.
He noticed his phone flashing the next morning. He thought he might ignore it. But maybe Wymack had a message for them before practice. It was from Nicky.
(00:56) Wat do u call a sheep with no legs?
Neil looked at it for a moment. It was probably a joke. He rolled his eyes, deleted the message and rolled out of bed to go grab his running shoes.
His legs ached from running by the time he made it to practice but he started off on the warm up jog immediately anyway. He was surprised when Nicky jogged up beside him, making a bigger effort than usual to keep to Neil's pace. Neil looked over and raised his eyebrow.
"A cloud!" Nicky announced proudly.
"What?" Neil asked.
"The sheep with no legs? It's a cloud," Nicky's step faltered and his brow furrowed.
"Ok," Neil said before putting on a little burst of speed and leaving Nicky in the dust. He figured that would be the end of it but Nicky was nothing if not persistent. He texted Neil constantly with the set up and then would pop out with the punchline whenever they next ran into each other. They ranged from the predictable: "why didn't the oyster share his pearls? Because he is a little shellfish," to the truly ridiculous: "what's gray and very dangerous? A pigeon with a machine gun." The only thing this gave Neil was the assurance that Nicky was not nearly as funny as he thought himself to be.
Nicky recruited Matt next. Matt never texted. And Matt never told one-liners. No, if he was going to tell Neil a joke, he would sit down and explain and Neil would look at the nearest clock and wish he could be running.
"So Neil, this one time, there was this physicist named Heisenberg and he had just gotten this brand new convertible. It was red and it could go 0-60 in like 6 seconds. And Heisenberg really wanted to test out his new car and so he got out onto the highway and really let her go. He did this for a long time until finally he saw red and blue lights in his rear view mirror. And, being the conscientious citizen that he is, he pulled over. The cop walked up to him and Heisenberg rolls down his window and the cop says to him, he says to the guy, 'can you tell me how fast you were going?' And Heisenberg says, 'no, but I can tell you where I've been.'" And then Matt would look at Neil all hopefully with his puppy face and Neil was a little tempted to go back to pretending to laugh, but it was sheer stubbornness now that kept him from giving in. Because he still didn't think it was that funny. And were jokes supposed to take that long to get to the punchline? He always listened to the whole joke, even if Andrew and the promise of hot, bruising kisses were waiting on the roof, because clearly it was very important to Matt and Matt was important to Neil, but he really wishes he knew how to make him stop.
Dan was next, probably because she had to sit through Matt's joke rehearsals. What kind of nerd practices telling jokes? The next time she walked in and Matt was opening his mouth to begin, she slapped her hand over his mouth, pushed his chair back and sat down on his lap, then, as if she was not pinning down her struggling boyfriend, she looked straight into Neil's eyes. "What do you call a rooster's one night stand?"
Neil could only look at her, wide-eyed, and shake his head.
"Cock and toodle-loo," she enunciated carefully then watched him for any hint of laughter. "There, I tried," she announced to Matt. "Now leave the poor boy alone. You're going to drive him to drink." She hopped off her boyfriend's lap, leaned down and whispered something that made Matt's cheeks go bright red, and then dragged him from the room, leaving Neil to finally climb the stairs to the roof.
Andrew didn't ask what took Neil so long, just asking "yes, or no," and then pinning Neil to the ground and leaving marks along the column of Neil's throat after his shaky "yes."
Renee tries next. She and Allison have decided it is "Pamper Neil" Day and they've got him sitting on a chair in the middle of their dorm room, his feet are soaking in a bucket of hot water and epsom salts, Allison is trimming his hair, and Renee is painting his nails a violent orange.
"Hey, Neil, have you heard the joke about the pizza?" Renee asks.
Neil sighs and rolls his eyes but dutifully answers, "no."
"Never mind, it's too cheesy," Renee smirks at him.
Neil feels bad about being too obvious about his bad attitude. "No, it's okay, really. You can tell me. It can't be cheesier than one of Nicky's jokes."
"Oh...Neil, sweetie," Allison speaks from behind him and he doesn't know if she is about to laugh or cry. She drapes herself over his shoulder and hugs him from behind. Neil feels very proud of himself when he doesn't panic at the sight of her scissors so very close to his eye. "That was the joke. Obviously this isn't working. We need a new strategy."
Allison pulls out her laptop and brings up a series of pictures, mostly of dogs or cats with various sayings plastered across them. Neil looks for a long time at a picture of a cat that looks like it is frowning with "I had fun once, it was awful," written across it.
"Is that how you guys see me?" Neil asks softly. "I have fun with you guys, I promise. Just because I don't laugh at jokes doesn't mean I don't like you guys."
Allison looks at him and deliberately closes her laptop before hugging Neil again. "We know. It's ok. It's just a joke."
Neil really wishes he knew what the big deal was.
The day of the Binghamton game, Wymack stopped Neil as he got off the bus. "I might have to join you on your runs sometimes. I'm getting a bit of a dad bod. Although I prefer father figure."
"Yeah, okay," Neil shrugs at the coach and follows Andrew toward the dressing rooms, most of his mind preoccupied with the zero still sitting in his phone's incoming messages.
After that, there were no jokes for a long time. There was pain and fear. And then there was Andrew, nothing but Andrew in his whole entire world, Andrew's hands pulling him back from the brink of panic, Andrew's mouth an anchor in the shifting world, Andrew's body the only future he could bring himself to want. Everyone else orbited their world, wanting to smother him with their love and care, but not daring to push past the boundary that kept them all at arm's length.
Surprisingly, Kevin was the first person to try again. He was probably fed up with Nicky running his mouth off about his worry for Neil. It went about as well as could be expected. He got as far as, "yo mamma so fat…" before he was lying on the ground, blood gushing from his nose and painting Neil's scarred knuckles. It was a disaster but it broke the ice and soon after, Nicky became his usual annoying self.
"Hey, Neil! What's E.T. short for?" Nicky cornered him in the hallway outside his room.
"I don't know, Nicky," Neil tried to push past the taller boy but Nicky was feeling determined.
"Well, he's got little legs," Nicky crowed.
Neil frowned up at him. "Is that a person?"
Nicky put his face in his hands and groaned loudly before dragging Neil down the hall, pushing him down into a bean bag chair and refusing to let him leave until he had watched some alien movie in its entirety. Yup, the alien was short but Neil didn't think much of the movie until Andrew responded to his text for help and sat in the beanbag next to him, leaning close so Neil could feel a line of warmth up his side.
Kevin tries again the next day. Neil gets the impression that he doesn't really care; he just wants to win. He wonders idly just how many hundreds of dollars are riding on this.
"How do you drown a blond?" Kevin confronts Neil as they're heading onto the court for night practice.
"Why would I?..." Neil tries to interrupt.
"Stick a scratch and sniff sticker at the bottom of a pool." Kevin glared, leaving Neil unsure if he was supposed to laugh or fight.
"Andrew would never fall for that, Kevin. Don't be such a moron." Neil shoves Kevin out of his way and makes sure to whip a few balls extra hard at the other striker during drills.
Neil never expected Aaron to join in. He usually just watched disapprovingly at his cousin's antics. So Neil is very surprised to find the other Minyard blocking his path to the coffee machine one early morning.
"What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?" Aaron poured a cup of coffee and barely looked at Neil.
Neil just waited for his answer.
"I don't know and I don't care." Aaron glared pointedly at Nicky where he sat at the table, practically passing out in a bowl of cereal, and left the room.
Neil snorted, probably the closest he had come to laughing at one of their dumb jokes yet. Nicky started snoring and didn't notice.
"What am I missing?" Neil asked Andrew that night. They lay beside each other in Andrew's bed, close enough to share breath but still a space between them. "Why is it so important that I laugh at their jokes?"
Andrew reaches out with one hand, slow enough that Neil can pull away, and tangles it in his auburn curls. He carefully pulls Neil closer until there are two points of contact, Andrew's callused palm, warm on the side of his head, and Andrew's nose, sliding along his own as his mouth draws nearer. "Yes or no?" he whispers.
Neil loses himself in 'yes,' and doesn't think about it anymore.
Wymack has the team for dinner. Neil expects Andrew to make excuses for the both of them and duck out after supper but Andrew surprises him by taking his hand and pulling him into the living room. Neil cringed as all eyes are immediately on the two of them. Andrew sits down and Neil moves to sit beside him on the couch but Andrew pulls on his arm until he overbalances and drops rather ungracefully into Andrew's lap. The other Foxes are staring but trying so hard to not be obvious about it. Andrew glares at them all as if daring them to comment.
Eventually, they all go back to their previous conversations and Neil slowly feels himself relaxing into Andrew. He's truly enjoying himself, even though he's not contributing to any of the discussions going on around him and then Andrew tugs his head down and whispers into his ear. "Pretend that I told you a joke that is actually funny and laugh for me."
Neil doesn't hesitate. He puts on the performance that fooled them all before, doubling over from his perch on Andrew's lap and clutching weakly at the other boy's hand.
"What?" Nicky shouts, leaping to his feet. "What did Andrew say?"
Neil just shakes his head, allowing the fake laughter to render him too breathless to speak.
The room is in an uproar. Everyone is talking at once. Money is changing hands. Matt and Nicky are begging on their knees to be let in on the joke. Neil looks down at Andrew to see the faintest smile on his usually expressionless face and the bubble he had been pushing down for so long rises up through his gut and pops in his chest and suddenly he is laughing for real. The jokes aren't any funnier than they had ever been, but right here, with the people who loved him surrounding him, and Andrew, solid beneath his thighs, just a hint of mirth reflecting in his eyes, Neil thinks that maybe he gets it.