Praise for
William Hazelgrove’s Novels
“American Fiction is not dead…Hazelgrove has skillfully revived it. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Hazelgrove writes with warmth and feeling, his characters richly drawn, moving and evocative of it’s time.”
—Booklist
“Its a steam roller of a story, starting small and getting bigger and bigger…”
—Starred Review American Library Association
“Hazelgrove has a natural grace as a storyteller that is matched by his compassion for his characters.”
—Chicago Sun Times
“Hazelgroves writing has the natural arc of a baseball game.”
—Junior Library Guild
“Proof that despite the fleeting nature of trends, good writing survives.”
—Time Out Chicago
“Hazelgrove is skilled at creating fully fleshed out characters and the dialogue carries the story along beautifully.”
—School Library Journal
“Hazelgrove marries the everyday dramas found in the novels of Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby to the high camp of Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry…”
—Kirkus (Real Santa)
“If somebody doesn’t make a movie out of this book, there’s something wrong with the world. Beautifully done.”
—Booklist Starred Review (Real Santa)
My Best Year
by William Hazelgrove
© Copyright 2016 William Hazelgrove
ISBN 978-1-63393-151-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Published by
210 60th Street
Virginia Beach, VA 23451
212-574-7939
www.koehlerbooks.com
For
Kitty, Clay, Callie, Careen
And
Parents Everywhere
“Don’t let school interfere with your education.”
Mark Twain
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PERFECT SCENARIO
BAD CHEMISTRY
DO OVER
TAKE A HIKE
PARENTHOOD
DEAL
RETARDO
NO PROBLEM
FORGET ABOUT IT
BREAKING BAD
HELL YES!
GO, STOP!
KLUTZ
BOY OH BOYS
TIGHT END
PAY TO PLAY
HOTTIE
HOMECOMING PARADE
JOY RIDE
GOING FOR BROKE
FLINGS
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
ALL IN
LONG LIVE ROCK
CRAZY, NOT DUMB
BUSTED
FLUNG
BMOC
VISCERAL REACTION
STAYIN’ ALIVE
YOU AND ME
HEAD FIRST
LECHEROUS GURU
FEVER
BAD COP
LEAVE OR DIE
CLARITY
THE SHAFT
A LOOKER
PENT UP
MIDLIFE CRISIS
DEATH STARE
ROUTINE
TWO TIMING
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
DOUBLE DATING
DIRTY DANCING
SOLO
OTHER MOVES
BAD ASS
THE MUSIC STOPPED
ICE AND CANDY
STUD
LONG GONE
HANDS AND EYES
NO THANKS
JOIN THE CLUB
PUT ME IN
SUIT UP
HUG IT OUT
ALL IN
HUT ONE, HUT TWO
JUST ONCE
A HAIL MARY
WILD CARD
MY BEST YEAR
FORWARD, BACKWARD
LOVED-IT CATEGORY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PERFECT SCENARIO
PAUL
THERE ARE ONLY TWO groups of people in the world—those who loved high school and those who hated it. I would argue that everything we do in life follows in the shadow of this fork in the road. I can usually tell what group someone is in. It shows in everything they do. How they hold themselves. How they talk. And everyone knows what group they are in.
I loved high school, especially senior year. I had been struggling along and then suddenly I bloomed. Just like a rose. And all those moments came together. I caught the winning touchdown at the Homecoming football game. Then I rode on the back of a baby blue convertible in the Homecoming parade. I stood up to the school bully. I did the morning announcements. I was the lead in the school musical. I pinned the captain of the wrestling team in record time. I gave the speech at graduation.
You really don’t need all of these things. A few will stand as touchstones in your life where you say that moment was the critical point where I became someone else. That was where I became confident and knew that I would be alright in the game of life. You don’t have to have a lot of success in high school, but you need some. You have to have a few memories you can reference as you stumble down the path of life.
That’s why I created a high school for Toby. I wanted to give him these moments. I wanted to give him a Best Year.
We had just moved from another suburb after Toby scorched the chemistry teacher’s ass with a Bunsen burner. An honest mistake, I maintain. But for a boy in the grand swath of autism that has swept our country, ASD, as they call it, was a deal killer. We all knew that the fights and tantrums and IEPs and team meetings had coalesced into a great big snowball that would knock us out of the school. Even people with good intentions have limits. So this was it, really. The whole ball of wax was coming down to his senior year and what he needed was a moment—just one glorious moment of success he could build off of.
So I plotted it out. We had to move. I mean really move, and it had to be to a small town where the school was hurting. People who are desperate will play ball. Get out of that mega competition around the big urban centers and find people who know what struggling is, people who know failure. I was going to alter Toby’s brain—and his future—with the best drug in the world. Success.
So we moved to Sycamore, Indiana. We were able to survive the price beating we took on our house and rent an old farmhouse. The high school was small; a tall brick fort built in the 1920s to give farm kids their ABCs before turning them loose on those cornfields. The last graduating class had one hundred and ninety-five kids. Kind of a Footloose high school, only more down, more post 2008. Probably had music, drama, and theatre classes cut long ago with an eye on whacking the English Department, too. The median income in Sycamore was hard hit after the hammer factory pulled out for China. Joblessness eroded the tax base, which meant less money for public schools. Sycamore bordered on a Detroit scenario.
The town had two streets intersecting with a hardware store, a coffee shop, and then of course the Hoover vacuum of commerce destruction—Walmart, Target, and Sam’s Club. The Dairy Queen was built in 1959 and the sign doesn’t light anymore. The town is basically in the middle of nowhere and poor—a perfect movie set for my Best Year scenario. Hard times. Hard luck. Small school. The perfect storm of people open to just about anything for a man with some ca
sh. Full disclosure; Sycamore is my hometown. This is my old high school. Life is a circle and I figure why not go back to where I had my best year and try and duplicate it for my son. Love has no bounds. Right? Parents will do anything for their kids.
My wife, Julie, and I are one on this. We are both computer people, chasing companies with big service contracts and helping out all those people who just can’t seem to get online. We made some cash and we worked at home. One thing computers have taught me is that things can follow a program if you get all the bugs out before it runs. I write programs and I have seen many a system crash because programmers didn’t do their homework.
So when the moving van pulled away I lost no time in finding a place for High School Central. I don’t let any system go live without me being there to catch any problems. Planning. Foresight. Execution. I mean Julie was going to service our clients and I had done what professors do—take a sabbatical. A one-year contract to get Toby to graduate and have a great year. Both of these things had been declared out of reach in the suburban high school with the amped up IEPS and the team meetings where basically everyone rips on him while he is sitting there.
This scheme would require full onsite monitoring. This was going to be a very complex program with no room for error. We started mapping a plan as soon as we moved into our farmhouse, circa 1898. It is gothic and white, a real Bonnie and Clyde house. Maybe Julie and I were closer to those two desperados now; two people with not a lot to lose.
BAD CHEMISTRY
TOBY
CHEMISTRY IS REALLY ALL about interactions. And I would like to say that, first of all, I was instructed to light my Bunsen burner along with the rest of the class. But before I get into what happened in Lab, you should now that I am autistic. A couple of my doctors say I have a mild form called Asperger syndrome. They keep coming up with new subgroups of autism, but sometimes I think they don’t really know. The bottom line is that I am socially awkward. Sometimes I feel like I am in a silo where you just keep running straight until someone tells you to stop. I’m one in sixty-eight, and our numbers keep growing. Some say it is the male sperm that is to blame. Actually nobody really knows.
But Mr. Slayballs had told us to all turn on our Bunsen burners. My sparker wouldn’t work. So I picked up the burner, which looks like a short candle, and held it my armpit while I took out my lighter. Mr. Slayballs has walked to the table next to us and is helping Carrie who is this blond cheerleader from California and Mr. Slayballs is always calling on her and asking her to explain to the class what she is doing.
“Pardon me Mr. Slayballs. But could you go over the periodic tables again?”
He’s bent over helping Carrie and I’ve got the Bunsen burner under my arm and I have out my ignitor. I sparked it once and the gas shooting toward Mr. Slayballs ignited and WHOOOOOOOOOOSH! The Bunsen burner became a flame thrower. It burned through Mr. Slayballss polyester pants and blow-torched his butt. Mr. Slayballs jumped straight up and grabbed his ass.
“My pants are on fire!”
I could have told him his pants weren’t burning because they vaporized, but now he’s running around with his red cheeks sticking out.
“TURN THE FUCKING BUNSON OFF CLAMPET!”
I’m standing with the Bunsen burner blasting across the room and it never occurred to me to turn it off. Much like the time Dad and I went driving and Dad says to floor it because a truck is bearing down on us. I kept it floored until we were doing eighty on a two-lane heading for another car in the other lane and Dad screams: DON’T FLOOR IT! But by then an ambulance is behind us and Dad screams: PULL OVER. So I do and we are knocking over mailboxes and running over bikes and those light posts people put in their lawns until Dad finally screams: HIT THE BRAKES!
Anyway, I turn off the Bunsen and Mr. Slayballs is sitting in one of the chemistry sinks. He glares at me.
“You retard you almost killed me!”
Not true. His life was never in danger. Also I didn’t know teachers were allowed to call us retards—and I am not retarded. The result was third and second degree burns to Mr. Slayballs’ butt and another team conference where they listed everything I’ve done wrong over the past few years. Yes, I called the principal a prick on Facebook. And yes, I almost got the Driver’s Ed teacher killed when he didn’t tell me to wait for the dump truck. And yes, I was flunking every class, except for gym, and yes I had called several teachers dickheads on my Facebook page as well.
They didn’t exactly kick me out, but they said there was no way I could graduate and Mr. Slayballs procured a lawyer. So, I think that is why Mom and Dad decided to move. I didn’t mind leaving Highland High school. Dad had always talked about how high school was the best years of his life.
My worst moment is when Dad is dropping me off in the morning and I sit there with one hand on the door handle and I’m watching all those other kids going into the school and my feet just won’t move. “Have a great day Toby!”
Dad said that to me every single day after they threw me off the bus for hitting the bus driver in the head with a tennis ball. I beaned Mr. Hegford right in the back of the head. He is a large man with white socks and black shoes. He charged down the aisle and grabbed me by the neck and made me sit up front with him. Then he made Mom come down and get me.
So Dad started driving me and that is when I would freeze with one hand on the door. The faculty couldn’t stand me. One time the PE teacher, Mr. Hendricks, threatened me and said if I raised any more shit in his wife’s English class he and I would go at it. I didn’t go to her class for two weeks after that. Mr. Hendricks coached the football team and made me run around the field by myself for a half hour. Still, he gave me a D-, my only passing grade.
So finally, I would get out of the car and Dad would drive away with his “Have a great day” hanging in the air like a dead balloon. I have to say I really hate high school and Dad says we are moving, so I can make myself into somebody new. My only problem is I don’t know who to make myself into. But Dad says I’m going to be a new man. Goodbye Highland High School. I am not sorry for losing five gym shirts and all my books and the three locks that had to be cut off my locker. Or for spray painting FUCK YOU across the front door.
DO OVER
JULIE
“WE ARE NOT ONE on this.”
Paul had laid out his plan in our living room with Toby upstairs in a video game. We were speaking in our Toby voices; very low modulation like two people in a cave.
“We have talked about moving many times,” Paul whispered, rubbing his goatee, something I have seen him do a million times working out bugs in computer programs.
“Yes. And I just don’t see the upside. What, so you can have him catch a winning touchdown in some football game?”
Paul nodded slowly.
“No. So he can have a year he can look back on and say ‘that was my best year.’ Or at least he can have a moment. He has been cheated out of everything because he is autistic, Julie. He needs some success. Something he can start from and stop this slide where everything just sucks for him.”
I breathe deeply.
“And how are you going to fund this?”
“Our retirement,” he said without blinking an eye.
I just stared at him.
“You’re crazy,” I said, and then I gave in.
I personally liked high school. I was a cheerleader. I was one of the popular girls. And I am not so sure that people who hated high school ended up with a bad life. Maybe they were just a little more discerning, a little more wary. But I agree with Paul on one thing: Toby needed success in his life.
I was skeptical when the whole “do over” concept came out of Paul’s mouth. We had fantasized about this for years; a radical move to somewhere where nobody knows us, and Toby could remake himself. Isn’t that what we all want to do? Just go somewhere and become a different person. I know adults who would give their right arm to get a do over. The problem with being an adult is you just don’t get the chance.
But after Toby torched Mr. Slayballs’ ass it was really a fait accompli.
I assumed we might move to another suburb, but Paul went all the way. Kind of like when he suggested I quit teaching and join him in starting a computer company. I had once been a high school teacher, so I knew what Toby was going through even as everything went to hell. I think about when he posted on Facebook that the principal was a prick and all his teachers were douche bags, and somehow the principal saw it. My son was suspended for three days. These things just didn’t happen to other kids.
Paul laid it out the way he mapped strategies for our computer clients. Toby needed to have success in his life. He needed to have a do over. Paul envisioned a great year at high school where Toby could master the things that had hurt him so badly as a freshman, sophomore, and junior. He needed friends. He needed to make the football team, go to the Homecoming dance, get his driver’s license, fall in love. He needed not to get yelled at because he kept forgetting his books, his assignments, where his lock was. He needed to go to a school dance instead of sitting home playing Xbox in our basement. Toby is a handsome boy with long brown curly hair and big dark puppy dog eyes. Maybe all mothers think their sons are handsome, but I think Toby looks like his father who was very good looking in high school and still is, even though he now has gray in his goatee and his hair has started to recede.
And so I signed on with that. Paul said it was very simple. We were going to create a high school for him. We would do it by finding a small school that would work with us and then with a bit of money and a lot of tech we would give our son the kind of year every parent wants their child to have. So we picked this town in Indiana where Paul grew up and went to school. I never knew he was from a small town like this—just like that town in Footloose.
And now we are talking to some man who looks like a farmer and is telling us we could rent the old hammer factory. He was a caretaker and said nobody would care if we wanted to use the warehouse and the small offices inside.
“What exactly is your business Mr. Clampet?”
My Best Year Page 1