Instead, I scan the field for my dad. He’s out of earshot. I walk back to Calvin, who’s surrounded by guys on the team like he’s king and they’re his court.
“My problem? Are you fucking kidding?” I’m losing it. I know I’m losing it, and I can’t help myself. “You stole my position. You stole my girlfriend.”
“I stole them? You didn’t own them.”
“Whatever,” I say. “Enjoy my sloppy seconds.”
Calvin doesn’t flinch. No, that motherfucker smiles. He’s having a grand time. Why wouldn’t he be? He has everything I want, everything I had, and we both know it.
“Tell me something,” he says like we’re having a pleasant chat. “Why’d Juniper dump you anyway?”
I need to walk away. I need to not have the reaction Calvin is clearly gunning for. I need to get a grip.
“Sounds like you have a theory,” I say.
Calvin’s grin gets even wider. He’s the freaking Cheshire Cat.
“I don’t know for sure, ’cause Juniper’s too classy to talk shit,” he says, and though he pretends he’s addressing me, his speech is clearly meant for the guys around us, who are hanging on his every word. “But my guess is that you couldn’t get it up for her. Like what happened with Dessie Greerson. Now that girl has never kept a secret in her life.”
I lunge toward Calvin faster than I’ve ever moved during a game.
And yeah, it feels good when my fist smashes into his face.
He goes down quickly, collapses on the turf. The other guys are shouting, and my dad blows the whistle, but I can’t stop hitting Calvin. He tries to hit me back, except I have the advantage, and I’m not letting up. One side of his face is pressed into the turf, and I know it must burn. When it’s more than a hundred degrees outside, that turf gets hot.
It’s almost like I black out. I totally lose control. All that matters is destroying Calvin, using my fists to erase every smug smile, every jab he’s taken at me in the past months. The field fades away. The rest of the team fades away. There’s only me and Calvin and the rage that’s coursing through my veins.
The next thing I know, someone—my dad, I think—is pulling me away.
“Stop it!” he keeps yelling.
I try to catch my breath. I close my eyes and wait for my heart to stop drumming in my ears. Sweat drips down my forehead, and I swipe at it. Regular sounds come back. I can feel my feet firmly planted on the field. The world becomes real again.
I open my eyes, and everyone is looking at me like I’m a monster.
Calvin staggers to his feet, blood running down his face. If I’m lucky, I broke his nose before my dad interfered.
“You’re insane,” Calvin says, pointing a finger at me. He sways, and Clem Johnson reaches out to steady him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” my dad shouts, grabbing my shoulder roughly, forcing me to face him.
I shrug his hand off.
“Get off the field,” he says.
I don’t move. I’m disoriented, as unsteady as Cal, but no one’s offering me a shoulder to lean on. I search my teammates’ faces for any sign of sympathy, but I’m nothing but a sideshow attraction. Step right up, and see a once promising football star entirely lose his cool! Grab a front row seat, and watch as he destroys everything he loves!
“I’m not telling you again,” my dad says coldly. “Get off my field.”
I finally meet his gaze, which is a mistake. I’ve never seen anyone look so disappointed.
• • •
I’ve got my head together enough to remember Merrill wanted to meet up. I text him, say practice ended early and I’m free.
The last of my adrenaline fades as I make my way to the skeleton house. I wish it would come back. At least when I was beating up on Cal, I wasn’t thinking. I’d happily live in a rage-induced blackout if it means I’m otherwise numb.
The sun feels hot enough to melt my organs, and I’m already feeling sore from the fight. I try to hang onto my fury, but there’s nowhere to direct it. I don’t even know who I’m angry at. Maybe myself.
When I get to the house, Merrill’s already there. He’s not in our usual spot up in the eaves though. Instead, he’s pacing what would have been the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He stops and stares. “What happened to you?”
“Got in a fight.”
“With?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I wait for him to make a joke, but it doesn’t come. He has a weird expression on his face. Maybe he thinks I’m a monster too.
“Look, I’m sorry about last night,” I say.
He eyes me cautiously. “You are?”
“I shouldn’t have called you a sheep. Can we move on?”
“That’s actually not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“OK.” I wait.
Merrill takes off his glasses. Looks at them. Puts them back on. Runs his hands through his hair. Shuffles his feet.
“You mean talk about it now or sometime next decade?” I ask. I’m trying to be chill, but I’m a little short on patience.
Merrill takes a deep breath. “Do you like Norie?”
I hope my cringe isn’t visible.
“She told me about last night,” he goes on.
I shrug, and pain shoots down my arm. Yep, I’m going to be paying for my fight with Calvin for a while. “I was drunk,” I tell Merrill.
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.” I force a laugh. “Why? Do you like her?”
I only mean it as banter. He’s supposed to joke back, restore the balance of our friendship. But Merrill keeps staring at me with that weird expression and goes a little pale.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Shit. You do like her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, man,” he says softly.
He turns away, gives me a minute to process the information. It’s hard to wrap my mind around. How did I not notice this? What the hell else have I been missing?
“Wait a second,” I say. “Has something been going on between you two?”
Merrill sighs deeply again, like this conversation is just so difficult for him. Like he’s wanted to tell me for so long, and it’s killed him to keep it from me.
“Something has been going on,” I say flatly. “Behind my fucking back.”
“It’s not like that, Eldon.”
“What’s it like then?” I snap.
Anger flashes in Merrill’s eyes, washing away his woe-is-me expression. “You don’t get dibs on every girl we speak to, OK?”
“I never said I did.”
Merrill snorts. His mouth curls in a smirk. “Sure you didn’t, buddy.”
My fists clench at my sides. It takes every bit of my willpower not to hit him. Which he sees.
“What, you want to beat on me? Is that gonna make you feel better?” He takes off his glasses and folds them, carefully tucks them into his pocket. “Go ahead. Believe me, I know how to take a beating.”
I struggle to get control of myself. This is Merrill. It’s not Calvin or Fletcher or some other douchebag. It’s the guy I’ve called my best friend since I could speak. I’m not going to fight him.
I unclench my fists and take a step back. “Why didn’t you tell me? If you didn’t think anything was wrong with this, then why wasn’t there any oh, by the way, Norie and I have been hooking up for weeks?”
“And what, you would have wished us well?”
“Maybe!”
We both know that’s probably not true, and Merrill being right while I’m wrong—wrong about everything—makes me angrier.
“Look,” Merrill says, sounding much more composed than I feel, “I had no idea you liked her. Norie’s not even your type. I wasn’t trying to screw you
over.”
“Gee, thanks for being such a pal.”
Disbelief washes over his face. “You know what, Eldon? I’ve been a great friend to you. I’ve had your back through everything. And trust me, you don’t always make it easy.”
He’s right.
Right again.
“Yeah, well, I never asked you to,” I say.
I walk away from him and sit on the poured concrete floor, lean back against one of the beams that’s keeping the half-built roof over our heads. I close my eyes and wait for Merrill’s footsteps on the gravel, the sound of him walking away from me. It doesn’t come.
I open my eyes, and he’s still squinting at me like I’m a stranger. A stranger who he doesn’t particularly want to get to know.
“What?” I ask.
His sadness is focused on me for what feels like an eternity. “Why couldn’t you let me have this one thing?”
I don’t respond.
After a moment, Merrill shakes his head, pulls his glasses from his pocket, and slides them onto his face. “Later, Eldon.”
I don’t respond to that either.
He walks away from the skeleton house, leaving me sitting on the dusty floor. Completely alone.
Chapter 27
Countdown: 4 Days
When I open my eyes the next morning, the only positive thought in my head is that it’s Saturday, so I don’t have to deal with school. Then I remember the UFO festival and my double shift at the gas station.
Fantastic. Exactly what I’m in the mood for.
Ma’s at her usual place in the kitchen, tearing through a flyer for a grocery store we don’t have in Madison, looking for ways to save money on items she doesn’t intend to buy.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, hovering in the doorway.
She won’t even look at me. “In the garage. But I’d give him space if I were you.”
Probably good advice. But the longer I wait, the worse I’ll feel, so I go out to the garage anyway. He’s slumped on the couch, not even bothering with one of his projects. I take that as a very bad sign. I wonder if I’m going to get Dad or Coach.
“Hey,” I say, walking in and sitting down next to him.
The TV is on, news from Vegas again. Another drowning at Lake Mead, more kids cliff-jumping out there.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
He doesn’t respond, and I think maybe he won’t. Maybe we’ll sit here in silence until I take the hint and leave. But then he sighs.
“I didn’t get to play in the Clash, you know. Got hurt about a month before the game.”
“I know,” I say.
“It was one of the biggest disappointments in my life. But when I had you, I knew I’d get to watch you play in it.”
“Does that mean I’m off the team for good?”
My dad frowns, as if he can’t believe I’d ask. “Eldon, I can’t let you play tomorrow. Your behavior was unacceptable.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. And it’s true. I really am sorry. Sorry I let my dad down, at least. I’m not really repenting busting up Calvin’s face.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
I can’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I was mad.”
“You can’t go around hitting people when you get mad at them. How can you be eighteen years old and not realize that?”
My dad seems to be having an internal fight of his own. His sadness and fury are locked in a battle, and I have no idea which emotion will win. Not that it matters. He loses either way and is stuck with a son he’s ashamed of.
“The last game of the year,” he goes on. “The last game you’ll ever play. And you threw it away because some jerk made a comment you didn’t like. Guess what, Eldon? There are a lot of jerks in the world. And they’re gonna make a lot of comments. You need to learn self-control.”
This is not the first time I’ve been told that. I guess if I weren’t such a screwup, it would’ve sunk in by now.
“I have to get to work,” I say, standing. “But I really am sorry.”
My dad looks up at me. “When are you gonna stop apologizing and actually change your attitude?”
I wish I knew.
• • •
The alien hunters are out in full force. Carload after carload of people, making the pilgrimage to Rachel to buy Area 51 coffee mugs and T-shirts and swap made-up stories about their encounters with UFOs. We’ve never had so many people pass through Madison before.
Mr. Casey is on edge from the moment I clock in.
“Swarming,” he says, frowning at the tourists through the window. “All nosing around, looking for something supernatural.”
“They’re looking in the sky, not the mountains,” I say.
“No matter. It’s still a risk. Get ’em out of here as fast as you can, got it? I want you working all the pumps at once.”
Yeah, sure. Seems easy enough.
“I’ve only got two hands,” I say.
“Then grow a few more.”
I wonder what the UFO hunters would think about that.
Cars roll into the parking lot without let up. I do my best, but I’m having trouble turning on the charm. I keep thinking about Merrill and how I can’t remember the last time we had a fight. A real fight, over something that matters. A girl coming between us is pretty high on the list of crap I never expected.
A car pulls up. I smile, flirt with the women, talk aliens with them, tell them how boring Madison is, how Rachel is where everything’s happening. Before that car is gone, another appears. Mr. Casey runs outside at one point to help me, which has never happened before.
“And you were worried about prom,” he says.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” I reply. I’m not going to prom alone to watch Juniper and Calvin, Merrill and Norie. Madison High School is filled with happy couples these days. Even catering to alien-obsessed tourists is better than dealing with that.
The mass pilgrimage to Rachel is finally slowing down, and Mr. Casey has returned to his air-conditioned haven, when a beat-up car pulls into the gas station. At a glance, it looks so much like Merrill’s Mustang that for a second I think it’s him. And yeah, I guess I’m disappointed when it isn’t.
Which is senseless. Because if it were Merrill, it wouldn’t only be him. It would be him and Norie, on their way to prom, rubbing it in my face that they’re part of a secret duo where there’s no place for me.
The car stops at the gas pump, and the driver’s window rolls down. Nope, definitely not Merrill. Unless he turned into a ridiculously hot girl.
“Hey there,” she says, flashing me a crooked smile.
I grin back.
She’s a few years older than me, college aged. She’s got this bohemian look, a scarf wrapped around her head like she’s some sort of hippie-pirate. You don’t need to be local to tell she isn’t from Madison.
“I guess this is what passes for a gas station around here,” she says.
If another tourist made that remark, I would have been insulted. With this girl, I let it slide. “You guess right,” I reply.
I move toward the gas tank. There are two guys in the car with her. I assume the one in the passenger seat is her boyfriend. They match each other, like they’re extras on the same movie set. The guy in the back is a massive dude who looks like he’d be more comfortable on Madison’s football field than crammed into the car.
I nod to the guy in the front seat. He smiles back. All three of them seem totally at ease. They’re having fun. Madison is only a stopover on the way to a bigger adventure.
I’m hit with a pang of jealousy so sharp that it makes me pause in the middle of what I’m doing.
“You into this whole UFO obsession?” the girl asks.
“Not exactly.” I fit the nozzle into the gas tank and look
over at her. “You are, I guess?”
She and the guy in the passenger seat glance at each other and laugh. “Not exactly.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Well, you didn’t come to Madison for the awesome scenery.”
“Oh, we’re going to the UFO festival. But it’s not the end goal.”
“What is?”
The girl laughs again. “Dunno. I guess we’ll know when we find it.”
More jealousy. I want that life. I have the urge to jump in the car with them. To make them take me with them, anywhere. Drive the desert roads until we land in some mystery place, far from Madison.
“I’m Abby,” the girl says, holding out her hand. “This is JP, and that’s Sweet Pete in the back.”
“Eldon,” I say, walking over and shaking her hand.
Instead of letting go at the appropriate time, her grip tightens, and she pulls me closer to the window.
“Hey, Eldon,” she says, lowering her voice, like we’re conspiring. “Maybe you can answer a question for me.”
“Uh, sure?”
She’s still holding my hand. Her palm is warm and sweaty and alive.
“I heard a rumor that aliens aren’t the only mysterious occurrence around here.”
I pull my hand from hers and take a step back.
“What’s that mean?”
“I wish I could say exactly.”
She draws out the word. There’s no mistaking it. She most definitely put emphasis on wish.
The guy in the front, JP, leans forward and watches me closely. The sun suddenly feels hotter. Dust rasps against my skin. I glance around the gas station parking lot.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
Abby winks. “Sure you don’t.”
The gas pump clicks. They’re done filling up, but I don’t move.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I guess you could call us explorers,” JP says.
“Close enough,” Abby agrees.
We stare at each other. My mind races. Who are they, and how do they know? Do they know? Am I misreading the situation?
“Look, we’re not here to blow your cover or anything,” Abby says. “We like mysteries. And it sounds as if this town has a pretty big one.”
As You Wish Page 22