Tough Guy: PROVIDENCE PREP HIGH SCHOOL BOOK 2

by Allen, Jacob

  And closed it behind me, safe and sound.

  For at least one night, I had avoided my father’s alcoholism and abuse.

  Was it any surprise that I never brought guests over to my house and stayed away from home as much as possible?

  3

  Jackie

  I sat outside at 2 a.m. on Adam’s front steps, reeling from what Kevin had said just a couple of hours ago.

  If I had known that approaching him from behind would have scared him so badly, I never would have done what I did. I felt terrible about that, and even now, if I saw Kevin, I would have apologized repeatedly and asked for forgiveness.

  But, then, why couldn’t he give that to me? What was it about me that Kevin just couldn’t say “OK, appreciate it” and move on? Why did he insist on turning a mistake into a moment to mock and torment me?

  I didn’t know, and at this hour and time, I was too tired to try and figure it out. I would have liked to say I didn’t care, but that was an unfortunate lie. I did care about how Kevin felt, and I couldn’t just magically snap my fingers and move on from him. Not right now, at least.

  Maybe you could pull an Emily and, instead of running from your bully, get intimate with him. Date him.

  I actually laughed out loud at that. Good Kevin was someone that would have been worth it. Bad Kevin was never worth it, and Bad Kevin was the one who was there over ninety percent of the time.

  Maybe you could pull an Emily and, instead of running from your bully, strike back. Date one of his friends.

  That was even more laughable, although I’d expended my laughing energy on the prior thought. I could never imagine going out with Nick or Ryan to make a point to Kevin, and I wasn’t even sure that Kevin would care that much; he always seemed like a strange outsider to the group, as if Nick, Adam, and Ryan were an original trio, and Kevin just got added out of sympathy or something else that boys felt that wasn’t sympathy. And besides, Emily hadn’t even liked Nick. It was all just a childish ploy, in her words, to get back at Adam.

  I could certainly understand taking someone out you didn’t like. My homecoming date was a guy from my AP Biology class named Shaun; he was nice, had short brown hair, and was healthier and had better intellect than Kevin. But he wasn’t as witty or clever, and he couldn’t make my stomach flip or my arms tingle like Kevin could.

  Why? It was a question that would bug me until either Kevin left my life or until we came to a confrontation over it.

  “You OK?”

  I looked up to see Samantha walking over, her long legs requiring her to sit a step below me just to be at my height.

  “I’m doing OK.”

  “You… oh, yeah, that’s fair. If you said you were doing good, I was going to call you a liar.”

  I chuckled. She would have been absolutely right to have done that.

  “Yeah, I’ll be good eventually,” I said.

  “Because of Kevin, right?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I told you, the Broad Street Boys should really just be called the Broad Street Bullies,” Samantha said. “Emily got lucky with Adam, but I’m still not convinced that’s for the best. Far as I can tell, Adam’s still an asshole. He’s just not an asshole to one person.”

  “And us,” I added.

  “Yes, because Adam interacted with us so much before,” she said, which I hated to admit was true in its sarcasm. “Whatever, though. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Now?” I said, hearing the music behind me. “The party’s still going on, and—”

  I bit my tongue from saying his name, most especially after her harsh but true rant about the Broad Street Boys.

  “Let me put it like this,” Samantha said. “You know how I said Adam was still an asshole? He came down to me and said he was in the process of shutting us down, because, I believe his exact words were ‘the sooner I get Emily naked, the happier I’ll be.’”

  I rolled my eyes. Samantha wasn’t totally wrong about Adam being a dick. Apparently, it could still also extend to Emily.

  Or, maybe, I was just being too harsh and too mean on Adam. Boys like him showed kindness to people by trying to provoke a reaction and being mean. It was weird, and I would never understand it, but I had to acknowledge it as something real.

  “Alright, let’s heard to my Jeep,” I said.

  Samantha muttered “thank God” as she rose and started walking ahead of me. I wanted to stroll, observe the stars above, and just take my time as I always did, but Samantha probably had a book at home she wanted to read. That wasn’t even a mean remark, either. She really did like to read, and she really did probably prefer that to this at two in the morning.

  When we got into my Jeep and we pulled out of Adam’s driveway, I had no idea just how right that thought would turn out to be.

  “I don’t think I’m going to go to these parties anymore.”

  I looked at Samantha in surprise, but nothing about her body suggested tension or struggle with the statement. She seemed so at ease, in fact, that she could have chosen to go to sleep right there if she wanted.

  “You’re serious?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Well, for one, what’s the point? I don’t do hookups, and it’s not like I’m going to meet a boyfriend at these parties.”

  “Yeah, but just us as friends?”

  Finally, Samantha showed an emotion—but it was sadness.

  “It’s not the same when the three of us are separate,” she said. “Let’s face it. Emily is in love with Adam, and I mean, in love like a thirteen year old is in love with Channing Tatum.”

  “True,” I said with a laugh, but my laugh was more nervous than amused. I didn’t like this—we all went to parties as a unit, and even when Samantha had had a boyfriend sophomore year of high school, we didn’t stop going together. We just made him part of our circle.

  And now, this close to the end, we were just going to call it? We were going to stop going to parties right when we most needed to go to parties, when we were all going to separate really soon?

  “I like you, Jackie, I like you a lot. You’re a wonderful friend. But you and I can go see a movie together or grab a bite to eat instead of going to these parties. If it’s not all three of us…”

  Left unsaid—something that had never been said before, actually, but was painfully honest to anyone who took half a second to look at our group dynamics—was the fact that Samantha was much closer to Emily than she was to me. Emily was probably equally close to us, but Samantha much preferred Emily to me, probably because Emily was more grounded while I could become a bit untethered in my optimism.

  “I get it,” I said sadly.

  “Besides, I’ll probably be the only one to go wherever I go, unless Tyler winds up at Duke or something,” she said. “So besides you two, I don’t really feel a strong connection to anyone in the class.”

  I grimaced and nodded, silence falling over on the two of us. What would this mean for me going to such parties? I didn’t want to go alone, both for safety and for social reasons. Maybe Adam would be nice enough to let me hang out with him and Emily, but it was much more likely that the two of them would be out for an hour or two before disappearing somewhere for more intimate matters.

  Did that mean my time spent seeing Kevin would be much less?

  Why did I even care?

  “I understand.”

  Those were the last two words said until I got to Samantha’s house. I needed time to figure out what my social life would look like now. Granted, the Collins traditionally didn’t throw a party until Valentine’s Day after the Christmas break party, but still. There was also the Spring Break party, the pre-exam bash, the post-exam bash, the intro to summer… this was not a case of this being Adam’s last hurrah.

  And if he was going to go to Vanderbilt, he was probably going to throw many more parties at his house. Granted, I would probably be hours away at some state school, but I knew as long as I was in Tennessee, Emily would be cal
ling me over. At which point Samantha will be at Harvard anyways.

  Figure it out later. Just try and appreciate the good night you had. Besides Kevin, it was good, right?

  “You need anything before you head in?” I said, trying not to answer my question unrealistically.

  “I’m good,” Samantha said. “Thanks for driving. Text me when you get home safe. Although in your Jeep, I don’t worry.”

  I smirked. There were concerns about it rolling in rough spots, but I drove so safely anyways that such an incident seemed unlikely.

  “Sounds good, I will,” I said.

  I paused for a second to text Emily to let her know Samantha got home safe, even though she was probably on her back with Adam right now. I paused, thinking if there were any other texts I needed to send.

  Needed? No. But wanted?

  I put the car into drive and headed toward Murfreesboro, the cars on the highway thinning out the further out I got. By the time I took the exit off, there wasn’t any car within sight. Stop signs were less for other drivers and more for avoiding hitting wildlife; in an area like this, one was as likely to run into a deer or a turtle as a human being.

  Which was fine by me. In fact, I really liked it.

  I pulled onto the long gravel trail that led to our house, checking the time. It was after 3:30 in the morning. I again sent texts to Emily and Samantha, advising I was safe, and turned the car off. Even though I didn’t play music much when I drove alone, turning the car off at my house was like exiting human society and entering a natural world that most people never truly got to experience. Staying at my house was more akin to camping than it was an actual home.

  After all, there were no air conditioning machines, no generators, and only a couple of lines for water and a small amount of electricity. It was very easy to overload our house, and my father encouraged us to take a lights-out approach anyways. “If the stars won’t light it up, you don’t need to see it,” was his favorite phrase.

  Too bad when I tried to use it as a reason to get out of schoolwork, it didn’t go over very well.

  I put the Jeep driver’s seat into a recliner, staring up at the stars. So many billions, if not trillions, of stars in the sky, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction which were visible from my perspective—and even then, counting them all would take more than the entire night. The Collins’ house was too close to civilized Nashville and had too much light pollution for this. Here, it was like I was back before the dawn of civilization.

  The good days.

  I never understood why more people didn’t want to come here more often. When Emily and Samantha had come over, they called it one of the coolest experiences ever. They didn’t come but maybe once a semester, but I never heard such praise for Emily’s or Samantha’s home.

  Ah, well. I wondered how Kevin would feel about this place. Maybe he’d like it. Maybe he’d mock me for it.

  After tonight, he would probably mock me for it.

  Feeling my eyes start to flutter, I got up, got out of the car with a sigh, and clicked my tongue to call our old German Shepherd, Roscoe, over. Roscoe got up from the front porch, started wagging his tail, and came up to me, licking my ankles. I bent down, kissed him, and hugged him.

  “I’m glad one boy is nice to me tonight,” I said.

  I walked up to the front porch and through the beads of the front door. I could faintly see a couple of candles lit as I approached, and when I walked through the entrance, I saw my mother meditating on a rug. I sat silently before her, folding my legs and trying to get into it.

  I had meditated many times before. Growing up with hippy parents all but guaranteed that that would happen. For the most part, I was able to clear my mind pretty easily.

  But right now, my mind went blank not because I was able to meditate, but because I was so damn tired. I could feel myself drifting off into the dream land just a few minutes into it, and I had to open my eyes. My mother knew I was there, and I didn’t want to go to bed without at least saying hi to her.

  Like I said, I was a people pleaser, and I couldn’t help it.

  A couple of minutes later, my mother finally did open her eyes, and she smiled gently as she put her hands on my knees.

  “Was it a good night?”

  I nodded, hoping that my mother would just assume my fatigue was the result of staying out late and not from emotional weariness.

  “Were you able to get into the spirit of the party?”

  Kevin would laugh at that. Call it stupid. Say there’s no such thing as the spirit of the party.

  I wonder if he’s right.

  I nodded. I wanted my mother to be happy. She smiled back.

  “Then you have had a productive night connecting with your fellow human beings,” she said, rising.

  “How about you?” I asked.

  “I always have a good evening,” she said, stretching out in a more natural, casual way. “Your father went to bed a little bit early. I’m probably going to join him in a bit. Any plans with your friend’s tomorrow?”

  I shook my head. Tomorrow was just going to be a day that I spent relaxing at home, playing with Roscoe, and maybe going for a jog. I liked to spend the day after parties as low-key as possible; despite my tendency to want to please everyone and want to make everyone happy, I was very much an introvert. I could go without introverted time for a couple of days, but if I didn’t get it, I could actually get irritable.

  “Then we look forward to connecting with you tomorrow, daughter.”

  She leaned forward, kissed me on the forehead, and then headed upstairs.

  “Good night, Jackie.”

  “Good night, Mom,” I said as I stood up myself.

  I headed to my room, through the bead strings, and toward a mattress my father and mother had made for me. It was nice, it was homely, and it was something I was going to terribly miss.

  But I also couldn’t help but wonder, for perhaps the first time since middle school, if I might be better served by being a little more grounded, a little less hippy, a little less… me.

  Such an approach had worked well for Emily and Adam.

  Maybe it would work for me.

  But would it be wise to make it work for me?

  4

  Kevin

  Four and a Half Years Ago

  My father didn’t say a word to me on the car ride over.

  He rarely did, frankly. And when he did, it usually wasn’t very pleasant. In fact, it was downright scary at times to hear my father speak to me. After Mom had died, I’d decided that the less I said, the better.

  It was the first day of eighth grade, and I was starting at a new school—Providence Middle. I didn’t know anything about it, other than my father continue to grumble about how rich kids had to also be assholes. I didn’t know anyone who went there; I didn’t even know any friends of friends who went there. Providence Middle might as well have been in Chicago, for as much as I knew.

  The first thing I noticed when we pulled into the line to drop me off was just how nice it looked. The campus wasn’t dirty and disgusting; the sign up front was professional, with LED lighting, and without spelling errors. The teachers all had smiles and dressed professionally, and the students all wore uniforms. Supposedly, that would end once we got to tenth grade, so long as we behaved in ninth, but for right now, I was wearing the same white polo and tan khaki shorts that every other student was.

  It was a purchase my father had grumbled about the entire time, saying that if they could afford to give him some sort of financial break on tuition, why couldn’t they throw in a hundred bucks for the uniform? Like all other times, I’d just kept my mouth shut.

  We got to the spot where I could finally exit, and I hurried to open the door of the 1997 Honda Civic my father had put over two hundred thousand miles on. Just before I got out, though, he grabbed me hard by the shoulder and turned me around.

  “I didn’t fucking get you into this school for nothing,” he growled. “Don�
��t you dare fuck up; you hear me?!?”

  I nodded. My dad scowled at me, as if he expected me to suddenly crack and admit that I was planning on slacking off and not doing my homework. But I was very intent on doing everything asked of me. I was very intent on doing my schoolwork and using this as a springboard for a future.

  It wasn’t like any of the students would be friends with me, anyways. These weren’t my peers. Too preppy and too stuffy.

  “Don’t fucking waste my money,” he shouted as I finally did get out of the car.

  I tucked my head low as the teachers nearby looked at me. I knew where I needed to go; I’d already taken an orientation of the area and knew that Ms. English’s homeroom was on the second floor. I just didn’t want the entire school staring at me as I did.

  I got to the flight of stairs leading up when I saw a taller boy, with dark eyebrows and darker eyes, staring at me.

  “You must be new,” he said. “I don’t know you.”

  I know how this game goes. Time for the bully to get his way.

  “I’m new everywhere I go,” I said.

  But I’m not going to let that happen. I take enough shit from my dad. I don’t need it here.

  “What do you want?”

  The boy chuckled.

  “You got fire; I like that. I need new friends, as my old ones suck. I’m Adam Collins.”

  He offered his hand. I stared at it curiously. What sort of game was this?

  I took it very slowly. I was prepared to fight back if this wound up being a prank of some kind. I hadn’t come to my third school since third grade to get picked on again. I’d learned my lesson before.

  “Kevin Torres,” I said.

  “Kevin, welcome, bud,” Adam said.

  So no surprises. Interesting.

  “Nick!” Adam said, looking up the stairs. “We got a new honorary member of the Broad Street Boys.”