“I saw a pickup truck out there. I didn’t see anyone throw trash. It was just leaving when I looked. I assumed farmers.”
“Pickup?” I asked.
Just then Aleah rolled down the hill on the main road up to the foot of our drive. She stopped and looked at the trash. She got off her bike and bent over, staring at something on the ground. She stood up and surveyed the trash. Then she bent down and picked up one of the pieces of paper. She got on her Walmart mountain bike and rode up the hill, carrying the paper.
“Andrew,” Grandma called. “Your friend is here.”
“I’ll be right out,” Andrew called. He was in the bathroom after showering, which was never his strong point, even before he became a pirate.
Aleah walked up the front sidewalk and entered directly into the living room without knocking. She looked at me for a moment, sort of stunned. We hadn’t seen each other since the morning Grandma Berba showed up. She smiled big, but I didn’t smile back.
“What’s in your hand?” I asked.
“There’s a whole bunch of beer bottles and papers on your driveway,” she said.
“Yeah? So? Why did you pick that up?” I asked, pointing.
“Oh.” She stared at me, squinting.
“Yeah?”
“All the paper down there has FAKER written on it. See?” She handed me the paper. “I thought you’d want a look.”
“Faker?” Grandma asked.
“The trash is for me,” I said, looking at FAKER scrawled big in black marker. “I’ll go take care of it.”
“What do you mean for you?” Grandma asked.
“Honkies,” I said, staring at Aleah. She grimaced.
“Honkies?” Grandma said. “I’m beginning to miss Arizona.”
***
I rolled Andrew’s old plastic wagon down the drive. The wagon was Jerri’s utility vehicle in the yard. The sun was really hot, and the beer bottles, even though they were mostly in bags, were incredibly stinky. They reminded me of how much I hated the smell at weights that first day. Pee and poison.
How could the honkies turn on me so fast? I couldn’t return their stupid texts because my father was a giant, dead, sex maniac tennis player, and Jerri was crazy. I had a life outside their piddly assfaced circles. How could they turn on me like that? Didn’t they know I was a kind guy who wanted to take care of his mother but wasn’t allowed?
I’d be of no use to them without football. And, no, I wasn’t going to play football. There was too much going on. Cody probably figured out I wasn’t going to play since I hadn’t gone to his game—hadn’t been at weights or pass routes the last couple of days—so he must’ve joined Ken Johnson and the senior honkies in their total contempt for me. It was probably his pickup that Grandma Berba saw. He, Karpinski, and Reese probably emptied dumpsters behind bars and hauled the crap out here to throw on my yard. Abby Sauter and Jess Withrow probably spent hours writing FAKER on a thousand sheets of paper. Those assholes. This how you’re going to shake me out of bed, Cody? I’d learned a lesson: never trust a honky. My stomach hurt at first. But then it didn’t. It began to boil. You’re assholes.
I had to make five trips to get the garbage up to our bins. There were no other messages other than FAKER. That was message enough. I was hot and stinky like a honky lifting weights. Disgusting, I thought.
I couldn’t go back inside, not to Aleah and Jerri and Grandma Berba. I didn’t want to explain myself. My family didn’t need to take more hits. My family didn’t need to know the gory details.
This is bullshit.
I had too much energy. Probably from being mad.
I hopped up and down in place. While I did it, I wished my dad were alive and loved me enough to take these jerks down. I wished we were driving in his car, him with a baseball bat across his lap, looking for honkies. Looking so we could show these idiots they shouldn’t mess with Reinsteins.
But my dad is dead. Even though I finally had a real picture of him in my head. Even though I could see his long arms in my arms and sense his wicked court speed in my legs.
I wanted to go to the big M. I wanted to run. I’d killed my dad’s bike. Oh, shit. I took off running and ran up and down the hill on the main road for as long as I could. A couple of cars went by, kicking up dust that choked me. Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the same as the Mound, but it felt good. The scab on my side cracked and bled. Sweat poured into my eyes.
Those honky bastards were very lucky they didn’t happen upon my hill while I was out there. It would not have been pretty.
That’s what I thought.
CHAPTER 55: FAKER!
On Thursday morning, the day before my birthday, there was more trash piled at the end of the drive. I had to move it to the side so Grandma Berba could get her giant SUV past so we could do the paper route. I swore and kicked those stupid bags, which was dumb because there was old milk in one that sprayed all over me and made me nearly throw up. Sour milk smells like Andrew’s baby poop.
When I got back in, Andrew plugged his nose and complained. Grandma didn’t complain. She said, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?”
“What?” I asked, even though I knew what she was talking about.
“Somebody has it in for you. Does this have something to do with you being in sports? Are your rivals coming after you?”
“I’m not in sports.”
“Yes, you are,” Andrew said.
“I’m just a guy.”
“No,” Grandma said. “I’ve heard you’ve become quite an athlete. In part, that is why your mother had troubles.”
“Great. Exactly. I’m just a guy, okay?”
“No,” Andrew said. “I know for a fact you’ve been running up the big M all summer. Aleah said. No regular guy would do that. I can’t even make it up walking.”
“That’s because you’re a turd,” I hissed.
Andrew gasped. He looked like I slapped him.
“Sorry. I’m just mad.”
“Because your rivals are dumping garbage on your lawn?” Grandma asked.
“Sure. Let’s leave it at that.”
“We should notify the police,” Grandma said.
“That won’t help. They are the police.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police’s kid,” I said.
“I hate this town,” Grandma said.
“Maybe we should contact Homeland Security,” Andrew said. “They have jurisdiction over terrorism.”
Grandma Berba giggled.
“What?” Andrew asked.
“I’ll clean it up,” I told them.
After the route, I did clean it up. It took me over an hour, and it was totally gross and smelly. Then I ran up and down the hill on the main road. It didn’t help my urge to destroy. You all better watch out.
***
That afternoon, while I was lying downstairs and considering all kinds of ways that I’d have my revenge, the phone rang. Grandma Berba answered it. She shouted down the stairs, “Felton, your football coach is on the line.”
“Tell him to stuff it in his ass!” I shouted.
“Felton can’t come to the phone right now. Yes, he’s all right. Really? I’ll have him check his phone. Oh, no, he seems fine to me. Oh, well, that’s nice. I’ll let him know. Good-bye.”
Grandma Berba came downstairs and found me in my room.
“First things first,” she said. “Don’t you ever tell me to have a caller stuff something in his”—she swallowed and pursed her lips—“ass. That’s disrespectful to me and completely inappropriate.”
I breathed. I swallowed. Looked down. Such a jerk, Felton.
“Second, your football coach informs me that someone from the school will be videotaping you doing drills next Wednesday because of a recruiting website? Is that what he said?”
“Maybe.”
“He’d like to put your profile on a recruiting website.”
“Recruiting for what? I’m not playing football.
I don’t know how to play football.”
“Third, during practice on Thursday, he’s invited a couple of gentlemen from the university in Madison to meet you.”
“Wisconsin?” I sat up. “For football? Oh God, no! I want out of this!”
“Felton,” Grandma glared at me. “Why aren’t you returning messages from your cell phone? What are you doing?”
“How do you know?”
“Your football coach told me.”
“I don’t want to speak to him.”
“Andrew’s little friend said the same thing yesterday. You’re not returning her calls, either.”
“Aleah?”
“What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?” Grandma Berba was pressuring me, and that made me hot.
“Is Jerri staring at the wall upstairs?” I asked.
“She isn’t going to recover overnight, Felton.”
“Did my dad have girlfriends all over town and then kill himself in my garage?”
“Yes,” Grandma whispered.
“That’s a lot to absorb, Grandma Berba! That’s pretty big, don’t you think?”
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” she said.
“Well, maybe I don’t appreciate being responsible for Jerri cracking up. Maybe I don’t appreciate that I look just like my asshole dad. Maybe, huh?”
“I’m sorry, Felton. I understand how upset you are, but you can’t speak to your grandmother that way.” Grandma Berba turned and left my room.
I was such a jerk.
When I found my phone after digging around for it, I saw that others shared that opinion: Felton Reinstein, Jerk. There were a dozen FAKER texts from numbers I didn’t recognize.
The last text before my inbox got full three days earlier was from Cody Frederick. It said:
cant believe i plan a party for six weeks and you wont call me back!
Yeah, I can’t believe you trash my house because I won’t go to a stupid party.
I erased the entire inbox and then erased my voicemail, which was also full. If Aleah wanted to get hold of me, all she had to do was come downstairs.
It did occur to me that neither she nor Andrew were at the house at that point. They weren’t playing piano anyway.
I looked at my phone. It was still on. Then I did it. I called her cell, breathing really shallow, but she didn’t pick up. I left a message and then left the phone on, waiting for her to call back.
CHAPTER 56: CELL PHONE
My phone was like a ticking bomb that could go off at any minute. Maybe I wanted it to ring? Maybe. Maybe it would be Aleah, and she’d call me hers, and she’d bike over, and we could hold hands on the couch.
It didn’t ring. I looked at it.
But what if it did ring and it was Cody Frederick telling me how they were all coming after me because I was a jerk, because I wasn’t a jock and I ruined his party? I looked at the phone.
Did it light up?
No, that was a reflection from the overhead light. I hoped it would ring. I was terrified it would ring. I paced back and forth. I growled and jumped in place. It didn’t ring.
Andrew wasn’t at home for dinner. Grandma Berba made lasagna, which I hate, except this was delicious because it contained no turnips or radishes or zucchini or spinach or whatever else Jerri always used to throw in there. It was made with meat and cheese, and my leg bounced up and down. My phone was in my pocket. I ate and ate and ate. Grandma Berba told me to slow down. Jerri stared at me, watery-eyed from her medication. My leg bounced. My phone didn’t ring.
“Where the hell’s Andrew?” I asked.
“He stayed at his friend’s for dinner,” said Grandma Berba. “They weren’t done practicing.”
“Great!” I stuffed a whole piece in my mouth.
“Slow down, Felton,” Grandma Berba said.
***
And my phone didn’t ring.
After dinner, I tried sitting on Jerri’s bed, tried watching TV, but I couldn’t sit still.
“You’re bouncing the bed,” Jerri said.
“I’m going to run.” I got up.
“Run?” Jerri asked. “Like go running?”
“Yes.”
I left the room carrying my stupid phone. Asshole phone. In the garage, I grabbed a hammer and smashed the stupid thing to pieces.
Then I took off.
It was getting dark, and it was hard to see. Down on the main road, because we’re just outside of town, there are no lights, and the footing got terrible. I couldn’t really run.
I needed to find a lighted place, like the track by the college. How the hell would I get there? My bike. Oh, no.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.
The Bluffton air smelled like poop-stinker. It closed in on me. I just wanted to bolt on my bike and break it all up. I couldn’t.
Out on the road in the dark, I stepped in a hole and then stopped because I’d break my ankle if I tried to run there, so I turned around and jogged back toward the house.
Would Grandma Berba drive me to a track?
I had to run.
By the house, I turned right and began to circle. The house was all lit up, light in every window, so much cheerier than before Grandma arrived. Because of all that light, I could see where I was going, and I gunned it. One lap around the house at top speed. One lap around the house slow to catch my breath. Then again and again and again. I spent easily the next hour doing that until I could run no more. My body stopped its twitching.
I showered to rinse blood off my leg and the pee smell off my body. Then I went to bed. Andrew still wasn’t home. My phone couldn’t ring because it was smashed in the garbage.
That’s fine, I thought. Really. Fine.
Oh, no.
CHAPTER 57: SWEET SIXTEEN
My alarm didn’t wake me. There was much stirring around the house. Hammering. Music playing. I looked over at my clock. It was only 4:15. What? I climbed out of bed and sleepily made my way upstairs to where the noise was. Jerri and Grandma Berba were hanging a big banner above the fireplace. I rubbed my eyes. It said “Sweet Sixteen.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s my birthday,” I said.
Jerri and Grandma, who was asking Jerri to lift up her side so the banner would be level, swiveled and looked at me.
“There he is!” Grandma Berba shouted.
“Happy birthday, Felton,” Jerri said. She looked tired.
“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!” Grandma cried out.
“I’ve been kissed,” I said.
“Oh?” Grandma said. She scrunched her eyes at me. Then smiled.
“Well, happy birthday anyway!”
“Okay. Thanks. Should we do the route now? Is Andrew sleeping?”
“He didn’t come home!” Grandma Berba said. “He called and asked to stay at his friend’s house because they were working on a four-hand piece!”
I was getting a little sick of the false cheeriness.
“Aleah?”
“Yes!”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Umm, I’m coming too, Felton!” Jerri said with a terrible false cheeriness.
The three of us loaded into Grandma Berba’s giant rental SUV, me in the passenger seat and Jerri in back, and rolled down the drive. At the bottom, our way was blocked by trash. Grandma Berba put on the brakes.
“Not more of this mumbo jumbo.” She put on the high beams because it was still dark. Somebody had gone to the trouble of writing out HAPY BDAY FAKER!!! in trash down about fifty feet of the drive. The H was closest to us; the exclamation points went out to the road. “Enough of this crap,” Grandma said. She gunned the engine, and we flew right over the top of the trash, scattering it behind us.
“Whoa!” I shouted.
“Terrible people,” Grandma said.
“That probably took them a long time to make,” I chuckled.
“Idiot kids can’t spell,” Grandma said.
Grandma Berba was funny, but the trash still hurt my feelings, which imm
ediately turned to boiling in my gut. Did Cody decide to put all his organizing skills into vandalism? Cody is the one who’d remember my birthday. It had to be him. Asshole.
We rode through the route really slow. Jerri sort of meandered around. She’d get out of the SUV and walk a few steps and then stand and look at the sky.
“Get a move on, sweetie,” Grandma would call to her. “We’ve got places to be.”
“What places?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Home,” Grandma said.
But she was lying. I knew that for a fact when we arrived at Gus/Aleah’s. For the first time in a week, the house was all lit up. Andrew and Aleah were staring out the window. When the three of us got out of the car, they ran away.
“Just two peas in a pod!” I said with false cheeriness.
“Let’s stop at this lovely house for a moment,” Grandma smiled.
“Oh, God,” I said, but I followed her up the stoop and in, staring at my feet the whole way.
Immediately upon entering, Aleah and Andrew began to play happy birthday on the piano. Just the standard happy birthday. Aleah went first. Then Andrew followed. Then Aleah made up stuff that sort of sounded like happy birthday. Then Andrew did the same. Then Aleah went completely out of this planet, playing something that sounded like happy birthday a little but had so many notes. Her hands went up and down the keyboard, striking keys, pounding for emphasis, nearly knocking Andrew off the bench. I remembered the first time I saw her in her white nightie pounding the keys like that, how I was mesmerized and couldn’t not watch, even though I hadn’t learned to talk yet, and how that wave just built and crashed over me. I remembered her spinning around on the bench and staring at me. I remembered talking and walking through the night holding hands and biking double on the Schwinn and kissing in the garage and snuggling in the basement while watching dumb movies. Aleah stopped, turned, and smiled. Jerri and Grandma clapped and shouted bravo. Ronald leaned in from the kitchen, whooping. I swallowed hard. My nose was sort of running.
“Oh, man,” I said. “That was so good. You’re so good.”
Andrew jumped off the bench and ran up and hugged me around the stomach. I was like a foot and a half taller than him.
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