“I don’t know. I don’t think…”
“Nothing complicated. Just a quote.”
“Okay. Okay. Fine,” I said.
“I’m recording.”
Here’s what I wanted to say: I banged this dude’s walnut against a metal bleacher yesterday. He bled. I shouldn’t say “dude.” He’s a little kid. Scrappy little shit hole of a kid with a fat dad. I did it because my friend’s little brother shot himself in the heart with a handgun. That’s real. That happened. But you’re interested in my response to a joke letter from the freaking governor? That’s what you care about?
“What did you think when you got that letter, Felton?”
I took a breath. Concentrated. And here’s what I actually said: “Pretty cool. Made me feel good. Thanks, Wisconsin. I hope I play for the Packers too.”
“That’s all we need. The spot will run tonight. Great talking to you again, Felton. Take care!”
“Bye,” I said.
I hung up.
“What the hell?” Jerri asked. “Are you a political asset?”
“I don’t know.”
“So many people care about you…” Jerri’s voice trailed off. Her ears turned red, which is a sign she’s pretty fired up. “Call that woman back. You call her back and tell her you will not be pushed around. You will not be made to look like a…a…supporter of some politician. Even if you did support that man, no one should listen to you. No one! Because you’re good at a sport, this is…this is…I’m really pissed!” she shouted.
“I don’t care about this. Pig Boy wouldn’t be forgiven.”
“What?” Jerri shouted.
“I don’t care about the governor.” I stared out the picture window at the darkening sky. Escape. That’s what I wanted. Shuffle off the mortal coil. Run farther than I can run. Fast. Instantaneously.
Jerri looked at the ceiling and shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” I said.
“Oh shit,” she sighed. “I used to get so pissed at reality, you know? So pissed about how things are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pissed, Jerri.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?” Jerri asked. “Who are we going to fight?” She inflated her cheeks and blew out slow.
“I don’t know. Who?” Tell me, Jerri. Who should we fight?
“Never mind, right? Never mind. Who really cares, right?” she asked.
“I do,” I said.
“Good for you,” she said. “Somebody has to.” The red bled from her ears. They turned the normal color again. She turned to walk into the kitchen. “You hungry?” she asked.
Help, Jerri.
She disappeared.
“Can I borrow your car?” I called after her.
“Oh, honey,” Jerri said. “I’ve got an economics study group tonight…”
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” I said.
“Terry might come over after,” she said.
“Yeah. Good. That’s perfect.”
Chapter 53
The Bully Takes a Shower
I had to shower. The freezing February rain had soaked into my skin and I shivered. I peeled off my pants and shirt, which wasn’t easy. They felt glued to my body. The cold reached deep into my muscles. I practically cramped up doing the job.
While in the shower, steam rising, I thought: You need to shuffle off the mortal coil. Just a couple of beers. Just fast and easy. Just have to get this shit out of your body. Forget track. Forget Cody and Karpinski. Forget Ryan. Forget Megan Hansen and the governor. Forget Pig Boy, who wants to be a bully, who needs to be a bully…
Wait.
You’re the bully, right? Just for the geeks instead of the jocks. Drunk bully scaring Carl Yang…
You’re one of them. Throwing weak kids against the bleachers, pinning necks against lockers. You’re a dude at a party shoving people, spilling beer. Brutal by nature. Brutal people make for good football players…and bullies and…and…members of the CIA? Death squad commanders? Flat-out murderers? Favorite sons of the State of Wisconsin. Deadly Hamlet, Prince of Bluffton.
Oh shit…Oh no…There’s something wrong with the world.
Don’t want this world.
I stood there in the water freaking out. Naked as a baby, eyeballs darting around.
Run from this shit. Run. You don’t want this.
I turned off the shower. There’s no place to run. Then what?
Oh God. Oh shit. No. Please stop.
My brain saw that rope. Saw the mortal coil. Stop. You have to stop. Please!
But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
Shuffle off this mortal coil…
Chapter 54
To Drink or Not to Drink, That Is the Question
Out of the shower, I called Abby. “Can you come get me?” I asked.
“Can you borrow Jerri’s car? The Buick is dead, remember?”
“Oh right. Shit,” I said. “We need a car. Jerri’s got a study group. What about your mom?”
“She left the house. Can you believe it? She went to Nolan’s JV game.”
“Awesome timing.”
“I’m glad she left. Do you want to call Gus?” Abby asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. No.” Gus would stop me. He knows me so well he’d see my crazy and stop me. Couldn’t have that. I couldn’t see a path out, and Gus would torture me.
“You’re a serious train wreck, aren’t you?” Abby whispered.
“Total and complete.”
“Oh…” Abby paused. “Maybe I can borrow Dad’s car,” Abby said.
“You think?” I asked. Fat chance.
“Maybe,” Abby said. “He probably feels guilty for screaming at me about the beer and…and for ignoring us. Mom asked him to go to a counselor with us and I…I…” Abby slowed down. Then she whispered, “I bet I can borrow his car.”
“Okay,” I said. “Try.”
“Call you soon,” Abby said.
Can you bike there? You can bike. It’s raining. You’ll wear rain gear. It’s dark. Where’s your flashlight?
I had a plan. Friday night bar plan. I couldn’t see any other path to that beer. I had to go out to Maddie’s brother’s country shit-house, where I knew I could relax with music and that Love Sac, and the mortal coil could stop tightening around my freaking neck for a few hours. I needed to know those angels were still there.
Abby called me back five minutes later. She sounded somber, but she said, “I just have to pick it up. We have an extra set of keys over here still. Dad said okay.”
“What? Are you kidding? He did?”
“Terry would be delighted to let us use the car for the night,” Abby said.
Thank God.
***
Ten minutes later, Jerri came through the basement, where I sat on the couch staring at the wall.
“Sorry about the car, Felton. Maybe I should get a new car so you can use the Hyundai this summer?” she said.
“That’d be great,” I said. Fat freaking chance. I stared at the wall across the basement, which was just chipped beige plaster. “We haven’t painted this wall,” I said.
Jerri stopped. “No?”
“Isn’t it weird that it’s the same surface as when Dad lived in here?”
“We can paint it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Felton…Do you want to go for a walk in the morning?” she asked. “It’s supposed to be wet but still warm. Remember we’d take those hikes when you were a kid? I thought maybe we could…”
“Sure. Talk to you in the morning. Go to your study group.”
“Great.” She smiled. “I won’t be late,” she said.
When Jerri left, I climbed the stairs and took forty dollars out of t
he cash drawer in her bedroom. I will pay Cal. He won’t be mad.
After I stuffed the money in my pocket, I felt terrible for a second, then I felt mad as hell. You should be a better mother and then I wouldn’t take your money.
Chapter 55
Leave Him
Ten minutes later, Abby showed. She texted from the driveway. I pulled on a thick Bluffton Football hoodie and left through the garage, leaving the garage door open. It was wet but wasn’t raining anymore. I still felt cold.
I climbed into Terry Sauter’s Cadillac Escalade.
“Can’t believe Terry said yes.”
“Yeah, me either,” Abby said. “What are we doing then?”
“Living the dream,” I mumbled.
“Dark, dude. Okay, I mean, what do you want to do?”
“Cal’s. Please.”
“Uh-huh.” Abby turned the Escalade around and rolled down the drive. “I don’t know, Felton. That’s a bad idea.”
“No. Why?”
“First, duh. Remember what Andrew said? Second, I’m not drinking anything because my mom caught me and she’s snapping back into reality and I don’t want to be any more out of control than I already am. Third, Cal doesn’t want us out there. He told us not to show up or he’d shoot us.”
“I’m Felton Reinstein. You’re Abby Sauter. We can go wherever the hell we want.”
“Felton, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t have to drink. We don’t have to. It’s secluded out there and I would seriously like to hide for a couple of hours.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes. Please,” I said.
Abby paused. She breathed deep. “If we go out there, will you please confess your trouble?”
“Yes,” I said. “At Cal’s.”
“Oh shit,” Abby said. “Okay. Fine.”
Abby aimed the car at Cal’s place and we rolled into the Wisconsin darkness in silence.
We didn’t have a problem finding it. We rolled south toward Big Patch. We pulled onto the tiny gravel road down through a creek bottom with high bluffs around us and then onto the tiny gravel drive and up into the woods.
The Escalade’s lights were so powerful that the valley of darkness was totally illuminated in front of us. We caught sight of the building. Cal’s dumpy schoolhouse looked smaller than before (maybe because the Escalade is so huge).
“Hope he’s not pissed,” Abby said, turning off the car.
“It’ll be fine,” I said.
We climbed out and knocked on the door.
A little girl with tangled brown hair answered.
“Who are you?” she asked. Her big blue eyes were wide and her face pale. I could see a resemblance to Maddie.
“Are you Cal’s daughter?” Abby asked.
“Uh-huh.” She stood staring at us.
Then Cal opened the door wider behind the little girl. He flipped on the light above the door. “What the hell?” he said.
“Uh,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got my kids this weekend. Go home,” he said.
“Please,” I said.
Cal looked at me. “I suppose I should be honored, right? Dickhead football star and his prom queen show up at my house in the middle of the dark night.”
“No. I don’t want you to be honored. We just…we just have some problems that need to be sorted…We just need a place to hide out for a little bit,” I said.
Cal squinted at Abby and me. Then he said, “Well, aren’t we angsty this evening? What’s up your hole, brother?”
“Long, ugly story.”
“How long?” he asked.
“My whole life.”
“Ha. Stanford, here we come, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Go on back. I might join you in a bit. Got to get the girls down to sleep first,” he said.
I stepped toward the door.
“No,” Cal said. “Go around. Go around.”
Abby and I walked slowly and blindly around the pitch-dark side of the house, stumbling over metal baskets and bike frames. I tripped, cutting my shin, and almost fell.
“Whoa,” Abby said.
I had to put my hands down to keep from planting my knees in the mud. From down near the ground, I saw something.
“Abby. Do you have a flashlight app on your phone?” I asked. My hands were caked in cold mud. I wiped them on my jeans.
“Oh, duh,” she said.
A second later, she’d illuminated the area around me. Right in front of my face, lying on the ground, was a tall, blue bike frame, a Schwinn Varsity frame, the same bike my dad had, that I inherited and rode constantly for three years, even when it was way too big for me, a bike I crushed to pieces when I found out who my dad really was (tennis star who knocked up his student, not a short, fat, gentle dude like Jerri had always said—he was a man like me).
“Oh shit,” I said. “My bike.”
“Is that really yours?” Abby asked. “I remember that bike.”
“Just like mine.” I pulled it off the ground. It had handlebars and a fork and a chain wheel, crank and pedals but no wheels and no chain. “It’s not really mine. I broke my front fork and killed the derailleur with a shovel.” I carried the frame to the side of the barn and set it upright, leaned it against a wall.
“I always liked that bike,” Abby said.
“Me too. I loved it. I killed it.”
“Why?” Abby asked.
“It was my dad’s bike.” I turned away and entered the barn. Stop.
We had to turn the lights on in the barn, which was fine, except I couldn’t figure out how to make the outlet with the Christmas lights work, so it didn’t look like I wanted it to.
“Do you think Cal would mind if we drank something?” I asked.
“Felton, I said no. You just want to hide. You aren’t drinking.”
“No. I’m here to drink.”
“Come on! Did you just flat-out lie to get me here? What about what Andrew said? What he told you about your dad?”
“I need to shuffle off my mortal coil.”
“What?”
“Seriously, Abby, I feel like I’m going to burst.”
“Why?” Abby asked. “It sort of seems like things are going great, Felton. Stanford and the video…”
“And the governor sent me a letter accepting my apology to the State of Wisconsin.”
“What?”
“Seriously.”
“So…” Abby stared at me for a second. “That’s good. That’s all good. Are you really worried about Karpinski? Cody is going to forgive you during track, you know? You’re just not spending any time with those guys right now. You’re just not together. It isn’t that big a deal.”
“Abby,” I breathed deep. “Knautz kicked me off the track team.”
“What?” she shouted. “When?”
“Yesterday. That’s what he was shouting about in the locker room. Not about being out of shape.”
“He can’t just kick you off. Why would he do that?”
“Someone turned me in for drinking.”
“Oh no,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Jesus. Cody.” She shook her head. “How could he?”
“No,” I said. “He can.”
“He’s such an arrogant jerk,” Abby hissed.
“No,” I said.
“He said my shit would put you in danger, Felton. He threatened me outside the school on Monday. I told him we’d stopped. I told him we were taking care of each other. And now you’re kicked off track? Is this to get you back for Karpinski?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s right. It’s what I did. I broke the rules. I’m glad someone is making me pay for doing the wrong thing.”
“No,” Abby whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“No, dude. You’ve totally spent this whole year protecting Tommy Bode. You’re the only one of our friends who…you wouldn’t have sex with me, man. I would’ve done it and it might’ve sent me over the edge. You saw the truth and took care of me. You’re such a good guy. Why should you pay? What do you need to pay for?”
“Can we please have a drink? I brought forty dollars. I’ll leave it for Cal. Please?”
Abby paused. She shook her head. “No.”
“Come on,” I pleaded. “I’m off track. I have nothing to lose.”
“Call Andrew.”
“What?”
“Call Andrew. If he can’t talk you out of it, I’m in, okay? We’ll drink up.”
“Abby,” I whispered, “I cracked Ryan Bennett’s head against a bleacher yesterday.”
“Jesus, dude.”
“Okay?”
Abby shook her head. “No. This is probably what happened to your dad. He probably couldn’t deal with the whole thing. Call your brother or I’m leaving.”
Can I tell you how much I hated Abby at that moment? My damn skin was screaming and there it was, all this beer and crap right there behind Cal’s bar.
Please. Please. Please…
She reached out and grabbed my hand.
“Please, Abby?”
“Call Andrew,” she said.
“Shit,” I said. “You’re killing me.”
“No, I’m not,” Abby said.
I shook loose of her hand, glared at her, then pulled my phone out and called Andrew. It took him four rings to pick up.
“Felton, I have a gig,” he said. “Can I call you back in a couple hours?”
“He’s busy,” I said to Abby.
“Come on,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “I guess I need you right now.”
Andrew paused for a second. “What is it?” he asked. “Is this bad news? Do you want me to sit down on my butt so I’m safe from fainting?”
“No. Maybe.” My voice wavered.
“Felton, what?”
“Okay…Please? Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t have a beer because I’m telling you, Andrew, I’m all wound weird and I’m not feeling good and I know from experience that beer helps.”
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