by Blake Nelson
“Nick!” yelled a voice from behind me. Was that Emily? I turned and saw her pressed against the backstop.
Beside her was Jace. “Are you out of your frickin’ mind?!” yelled Jace.
Great. That’s all I needed. I turned back toward Kyle and then spotted Mike, from the Happy Bubble, standing off to the side. The whole town was here suddenly. How had this happened?
I refocused on Kyle. I stepped back up to the plate. He waited until I was ready, then went into his slow, deliberate windup again. It was kind of fascinating to watch. Each separate movement had been practiced and perfected. A flawless motion, at the end of which a deadly round ball, hard as a rock, came sizzling at your face, missing you by inches.
This time I could actually follow the ball for a fleeting second before it passed me. SLAP! The bat never left my shoulder. “Seventy-four,” said Uncle Rob. “Throw him a curve.”
I didn’t know what that was going to look like. But I prepared myself. I was, for a moment, aware of Jace’s presence. I was glad she was seeing this.
Kyle wound up again. I gritted my teeth and focused with every fiber of my being. With a tiny hesitation, the pitch appeared from a slightly different place on his body. It came straight for a moment and then, with astonishing movement, curved away from me. I had planned to swing no matter what, and I did, but the ball looped away from me so far and so fast that I lurched forward, tripped over home plate, and ended up in the dirt, nearly hitting myself in the forehead with the bat.
“Sixty-four,” said Uncle Rob. Everyone else was laughing. Only Kyle ran forward when he saw my awkward fall, face-first into the ground.
“You okay?” he asked, helping me up.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, dusting myself off.
“Nice try!” yelled one of the guys.
“Way to go, Nick,” said someone else.
Several people clapped.
“Oh my God!” I heard Jace say, behind me. “You almost killed yourself!”
11
That night, after work, Emily texted that she and Jace and Kelsey were going to the Sandpiper. Did I want to meet them?
I said yes. It would give me an excuse to avoid Justin. The girls were already in a booth when I got there. I squeezed in and ordered a milk shake when the waitress came. They were talking about different boys and other goings-on in their social world. There was a party later up in Astoria, which was thirty-five miles to the north. I could tell by how they talked that they considered Astoria to be just up the road, a nearby neighborhood. I was learning that’s how people thought about distances on the coast. Thirty-five miles was nothing, especially if there was a party.
“Nick came home totally drunk last night,” Emily suddenly announced to the table.
All three girls turned toward me.
“You got drunk?” said Jace. “Responsible Nick? How did that happen?”
“He was with Justin,” said Emily. “From the car wash.”
“Ha-ha,” said Jace. “Well, that explains it.”
“Wait,” I said. “Did you just call me Responsible Nick?”
“He was crashing around,” continued Emily. “Trying to get in the basement door. I was like, Uh-oh. . . .”
The girls all laughed.
“Hold on,” I said. “Responsible Nick? Is that what I’m known as?” I was sort of kidding, but sort of not.
“No! Not at all!” said Jace, with sarcastic concern. “We don’t call you that. We don’t call people things.”
“It’s not an insult; it’s a compliment,” said Emily.
“So you do call me that,” I said.
The girls all looked at Emily. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “I didn’t start it.”
“You did too start it,” said Jace.
“No,” said Emily. “As I recall, you started it, Jace.”
“Or maybe Kelsey started it.”
“I didn’t start it!” said Kelsey.
I interrupted: “Can I just ask why you call me that?”
“Because,” said Jace. “You’re so responsible.”
“You want everyone to get home safe,” said Emily.
“Like the night at the movies,” said Jace. “You were so worried about Kelsey and Lauren.”
“You were more worried about Carson and Wyatt,” said Emily.
“But I didn’t know them!” I protested.
The girls looked at each other. “Well,” said Jace. “That’s why you’re Responsible Nick.”
“You like to check up on people,” said Emily.
“You’re very concerned!” laughed Jace.
They were totally teasing me now. I got it. I laughed. It was sort of funny. But seriously, who wants to be known as Responsible Nick?
* * *
Later, we went to the party in Astoria. Tonight Jace was driving. She was sixteen, it turned out, and in the same grade as me, and also sort of smart, according to what she said about her classes.
The party was in the woods, on top of a hill. We parked along a road and walked uphill to a clearing where people were standing around a keg.
We each paid our five bucks for a plastic cup and lined up to fill them with foamy beer. Then we stood around with the other people. Astorians were similar to Seasiders, I noticed. Guys with trucker hats, flannels, baggy jeans. Girls with the strange choppy hairstyles you only saw on the coast. There was weed and pipes and lighters. People took deep hits and then cocked their heads back to blow long streams of smoke into the cold night sky.
A bit later a different boy showed up and came over to Emily. His name was Oliver. He was better dressed than the others and better looking. He and Emily walked off somewhere. Then Jace and Kelsey began whispering to each other about something. This left me to hang with the Astoria guys, who were talking about Tasers.
“Dude, my cousin got tased. He said you can’t do nothin’. You can’t think, you can’t move . . .”
“And you’re all jerkin’ around and shit. . . .”
“I heard you piss yourself.”
“I know this guy said he just pulled the thing off. Like before they could zap him.”
“You can’t pull it out. The minute it hits you, you’re zapped.”
“I saw them tase this guy at Burger King once . . . some homeless dude. . . .”
“I heard it can kill you. If they keep doin’ it? You can’t breathe. Cuz your muscles are all seized up.”
“Nah, you don’t die—that’s the whole point. . . .”
“You can buy ’em online. Tasers. Four hundred bucks. You could tase yourself.”
“Now why would you want to tase yourself?”
“You could tase a dog, I guess. . . .”
“Or someone comes at you. You could tase ’em.”
“Someone breaks into your house . . .”
The conversation went on like that. Eventually I went back to Jace and Kelsey. Emily and Oliver were still off doing whatever in the woods.
And then a police siren squawked from the road below. Through the trees I could make out the rotating lights of a slow-moving cop car. I quickly looked around for an escape route, assuming the Astoria people would make a run for it, into the forest. That’s what we did in Eugene when the police showed up.
But nobody seemed concerned.
“Here comes Tony,” said someone.
“Tony’s here!”
“Tony the cop.”
People casually refilled their beers and drank them down a little faster than before. When the siren squawked again, they finished their cups and tossed them into a brown paper bag someone had thoughtfully provided. They gathered their stuff and began to amble down the trail toward their cars. Jace and Kelsey and I followed the others.
Down below, the cop car was stopped in the middle of the road, its lights flashing.
“Hey, Tony!” someone called.
“Tony! Wudup?”
“Tony the cop!”
The squad car was a modified Mustang with cop light
s on it and ASTORIA POLICE painted on the side. When we got closer, I looked in the passenger window. The guy driving the car, Tony, looked like a real cop, young but with an official uniform. But the guy sitting in the passenger side was just some dude with a mustache and a dorky expression on his face. Tony was talking to some people on his side of the car. He asked what kind of beer we were drinking. When someone said Pabst, he said, “Pabst? That piss water? I wouldn’t drink that shit if you paid me!” The kids all laughed. It was pretty funny how casual everybody was.
Tony remained in the middle of the road until most of the partiers had left. Then he left too. We were still there, standing beside our car, waiting for Emily, who had not returned from the woods with Oliver.
Finally, they appeared on the trail above us. Oliver was touching Emily’s shoulder, like he was trying to convince her of something. Emily was not being convinced. Then he turned her toward him and kissed her. She did not resist this, I noticed. Jace saw that I was watching them and laughed.
“Don’t worry, Nick,” she said to me. “Everything’s fine. Everyone’s okay.”
12
Driving home, I felt annoyed with Jace. I wasn’t that worried about Emily. I wasn’t that uptight about people. And I did not want to be referred to as Responsible Nick for the rest of the summer, that’s for sure. What if my friends in Eugene found out people were calling me that?
My ex-girlfriend Kate, she was the responsible one. I remembered the first time I saw her in English class, sophomore year. You could feel how organized she was. Her tight hair bun. Her clothes all matched. Even her posture was perfect. And naturally, she was super smart in that class.
I was more the smart-ass guy in the back. Or I was at the start of the year. Once my mom got arrested again, I stopped being so quick with the witty comments.
The problem was, all this stuff I didn’t know started coming out. My mother didn’t just have an alcohol problem. She had boyfriends. She did cocaine. She lied and had mood swings and rammed her car into the mailboxes of people she didn’t like. She had two DUIs and couldn’t legally drive in California. My dad had to sit me down and explain it all to me.
Needless to say, this messed with my head in a big way. I felt like I was the one in trouble. And my mother, who had always been difficult to deal with, now became impossible. I went into advanced avoidance mode, slipping in and out of the house as quick as I could. School was better, but not by much. There was no actual enjoying things or pursuing something . . . like a girlfriend. I couldn’t trust myself in social situations. I’d be standing around with my buddies, and some bizarre thing would pop out of my mouth. Or I’d start babbling or get pissed off for no reason. I just wasn’t right in the head.
But then, in all that confusion, there was Kate. I’d see her in the hallways, or in our English class, and I’d feel better instantly. She was so solid. And she was cute and a girl and soft and all that. Whatever it was, she made me feel better. Just knowing she’d be in English class, fourth period, third desk from the window: It got me through the day.
When I noticed she sometimes went to the library after school, I started going there too. I didn’t expect anything to happen. We weren’t really friends. But then, the first time she saw me there, she walked right up and started telling me something about our homework. It wasn’t flirty or romantic, which made it easy to respond. It was like an instant calm came over me. I felt like my old self again.
* * *
That was November of sophomore year. So then after we’d talked a couple times, we made up some reason to meet at the Springdale Mall. We never said it was a date, but we both knew it was. We met up and got smoothies and walked around. She was a little nervous, and so was I, but it was a good nervous, a comfortable nervous. It was easy being with her. I felt like I didn’t need to tell her about my mother, not right away, and that when I did, it would be okay. I actually thought she might know already, since that was starting to happen.
We walked around for a couple hours, and then I kissed her, waiting in the bus shelter outside. It was cold and raining, but that made it better in a way. We kissed for a few minutes and then held each other and kept each other warm. I smoothed Kate’s hair with my hand for some reason, like she was the hurt one, though she didn’t seem to be hurt at all. She was the definition of unhurt. Her family was super normal. Which was a relief.
* * *
Soon after, Kate and I had “the conversation.” Dr. Snow had coached me on what to say. We were sitting on the bench outside the library. It was after school; nobody was around. I told Kate my mother had a drinking problem.
She looked surprised when I said this. She didn’t know anything about it. “Like what kind of drinking problem?” she said.
“She drinks too much, and she gets in trouble.”
“In trouble? Like how?”
“Like drunk driving. And other things.”
“But she’s a professor. . . .”
“Yeah, I know.”
Kate thought about this. “Well why doesn’t she . . . can’t she just not drink so much?”
“She tries. We all try to help her. But certain people get addicted to alcohol, and they can’t stop.”
“So she’s an alcoholic . . . ,” said Kate. I remember the look on her face. Like in her mind she was trying to figure out what this meant and how it would affect the two of us. “But aren’t there places for people like that? Rehabs?”
“Yeah, she went to one. And it worked for a while. But then she started again. She’s going to go back. That’s the plan.”
Kate nodded. She looked sad now, and upset.
“I know,” I said. “It’s super frustrating.”
Kate was still having trouble believing all this. She really liked my mom. And she respected that she was a professor. Kate had actually read my mother’s book, The Gender Response, and got it autographed by her.
“I wasn’t sure when exactly to tell you,” I said, looking into Kate’s lap.
“So she drinks like . . . all the time?”
“Not all the time,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said Kate, getting frustrated again. “But I find it hard to believe that a college professor . . . an author . . . it just doesn’t seem possible.”
“I know. But it’s true. I thought I needed to tell you. So I’m telling you.”
“That’s so weird,” she said.
“I know.”
She looked into the distance. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
After that first conversation we didn’t talk about it again. Not until the night my dad punched Richard in the face, in our front yard, and the cops came and my dad got hauled off to jail. After that everyone was talking about it. That was the period when I sometimes slept in the basement at Kate’s. Of course I’d creep upstairs and sleep in Kate’s bed with her for part of the night, and then sneak back down before her parents woke up. The sad thing was we never had sex. That was Kate’s one negative reaction to the situation. She became reluctant to do certain things. Most couples our age, if they loved each other, and were together for a while, they had sex. But we never did, which was messed up. Kate should have been my first. She was my first love. The first person I told everything to. The first person I trusted completely. Kate not being my first, that was the worst thing of all.
13
During the last weekend of June summer finally arrived in Seaside. Eighty-six degrees, with clear bright skies. This was great for business, but not the best time to be wearing a 100% polyester uniform shirt, which was hot and scratchy. Long black Dickies were also not the most comfortable choice. Fortunately, even when it was hot, there was still the ocean breeze, which always kept things tolerable.
We got swamped with customers. The line of cars went out to the highway. The tunnel was turned up to max speed, and Justin and I scrambled to keep up with the windexing and vacuuming. It was fun in a way, racing around, rushing
to finish each car. Kyle was in charge in the morning, and then Uncle Rob came in and took over. When it got really busy, he even helped us, cleaning windows in his unique side-to-side style.
At one point Nicole and Phoebe came in to talk to Kyle. They only stayed a minute, but then later Kyle pulled me aside and told me there was a big beach party happening that night and did I want to do a beer run with him? Of course I did. I then texted Emily and Jace to tell them about the party. Emily wrote back: We already know.
I was psyched, though. A beach party! This was one of the main things I’d looked forward to, coming to Seaside: beach fires, people playing guitars, pretty girls with blankets around their shoulders and their bare toes curled in the sand.
We closed the Happy Bubble at eight. Then Kyle and I drove north of town to a large store called Billy Malone’s Beer and Spirits. Kyle parked in the gravel parking lot in back and strode inside, with me hurrying along beside him.
It was a big deal when Kyle Reilly stepped inside Billy Malone’s. Everyone wanted to say hi. There were lots of questions about his baseball workouts. How was his arm holding up? How did the team look? Would they win another Pac-12 championship next year? Kyle handled it perfectly as always. He was always humble, always polite. Then Billy himself—the old guy who owned the place—took us into the large refrigerated stockroom. Kyle pointed out six cases of cheap American beer. Without a word, two of Billy’s guys quickly loaded them into Uncle Rob’s truck. Even these guys were in awe of Kyle, I noticed, glancing up at him, moving extra fast since it was him.
This was totally illegal, since Kyle was only eighteen. I don’t know how he paid for it. Maybe he had a tab. Maybe Uncle Rob had a tab. When we were all loaded up, Kyle thanked Billy and shook his hand.
“Good luck, Kyle,” said the old man, his eyes sparkling, both of his hands still gripping Kyle’s. “We’re all pulling for you. A young man, like yourself. You make us very proud. You know that, don’t you?”