Betting Blind (10 page)

Guess who was there when I got home? I walked inside, and as I headed up the stairs, I heard giggling, footsteps, and the bathroom door slamming shut. My favorite man in the world was at the kitchen table, chowing down on eggs and bacon.

“Um, Phil?” my mom said through the bathroom door.

“Hi, Gabriel.” Phil took a sip of orange juice, looking pleased with himself.

“Phil?” my mom said again.

He glanced at the closed door. “Yes, honey?”

I stood there. I had a quick fantasy of walking over and slamming his face into his plate.

“Could you bring me . . . something from my closet?” said my mom.

Phil stood and headed upstairs to the bedroom.

I ran myself a glass of water and drank it fast. I had that good warmed-up feeling I get before a fight. I made a fist, imagined crashing it into Phil’s meaty face. I walked to the other side of the table, in the narrow part of the kitchen where it opened into the living room. He’d have to walk past me when he came back down.

There were steps, and Phil turned the corner of the stairs. He was holding my mom’s clothes. The ready-to-blast feeling drained out of me like sand. If I hit him, my mom would come running out naked, and . . . I couldn’t do it.

“Smells like you’ve had quite a night,” said Phil as he passed me, Mom’s dress dangling off his finger like a prize.

“Fuck you.” I stalked up to my room.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Life was messed up to the googol degree (I had learned what a googol was the other day in math). I was trapped. I would never be one of the smart, rich ones. I would always be the piece of shit getting stepped on. I couldn’t even protect my own mom. I probably wouldn’t graduate high school.

And if I did, what would I do then? Keep dealing and do a bid and get turned into some gang member’s bitch because I was a pretty boy? Work roofing or construction and jack up my body by the time I was thirty, then get screwed out of workman’s comp like they all do? Before I moved to Redmond, those things seemed like normal possibilities. Now they felt like low-life bullshit for suckers.

Screw feeling depressed
, I decided, and tried to think of something good. I had a fat honey roll in my pocket; that was good. I was going over to Irina’s to watch a movie later; that was good. I pictured her resting her head on my shoulder, cuddling on that big white couch and talking. When I was with her, I didn’t stress about anything (except maybe her dad).

I checked the clock. It was way too long until I could go to her house. And Phil was like a two-hundred-pound turd in my living room, sending waves of stink right through the ceiling. But I felt too torn up to leave.

I looked around my room and saw my schoolbooks staring at me from my dresser. Kyle and Matt and Forrest spent hours every day hitting their books. It was the first time I’d had friends who actually studied.

I made myself get out of bed and pick up my science book. I used to be okay at science. I even liked it, especially the stuff about human bodies. Maybe that was why I’d lied and told Irina I wanted to be a doctor. In a magical world where I could focus, it might be true.

I opened my bio textbook to chapter four. I had a test in microbiology on Wednesday. Mr. Newport said it was 15 percent of our grade.

Bolded words jumped at me like thugs: Taq polymerase. Thermostable. Protein denaturing. Cloning vector. Plasmid. I lay back down and tried to read for a second, but the letters kept getting smaller and sliding off the page. It was like aliens talking.
Greetings to your queen.

I closed the book. I wasn’t made for this. I should drop out.

I felt relieved just thinking about it. But Mom would die. And I only had a year left . . .

Maybe I could transfer back to Jefferson, where you could swing Cs if you could write your own name. I knew Mom wasn’t about moving, but what if I crashed with one of my boys in White Center, just on weeknights?

I started mentally scrolling through the choices: Jerrod’s parents fought too much; Andy’s mom was a head case who saved everything, so you had to walk around stacks of magazines to get through their house; but Mike’s dad would let me crash with them. They had that space heater in the garage. I got excited for about a minute, and then I started thinking about having no place to bring girls, no hot food, no furniture. Plus, Mike had three little brothers, and they lived on government cheese and weight-gain shakes. It would be wrong to step on their food or their space.

My brain crawled in circles. Live in a shed so I could finish high school so I could get a piece of paper that said I wasn’t a complete dumbass so I could work a job that I hated so I could come home to my sad digs so I could wake up the next morning and do it over again.

High school wasn’t worth it. I’d stay at Claremont, and if they wanted to flunk me, let them.

Once I decided that, I felt better. I chucked the book off the bed, set my alarm, and went to sleep until it was time to go to Irina’s.

I got to Irina’s house at seven, because I slept through my alarm. She was mad, even though I was only an hour late.

“I was just getting ready to leave,” she said when she answered the door. She was all dressed, with shoes on and everything. I was relieved to see her mom wasn’t behind her.

“I’m sorry. I was sleeping, and I didn’t hear my alarm.”

She rolled her eyes. “You were sleeping at six p.m.”

“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to beg. “I went out late last night. Come on. You’re not even going to let me in?”

She sighed but stepped aside.

I hung up my coat on the coat tree and caught her watching me. “I knew you liked me,” I said.

She huffed. “What are you talking about?”

I looked into her pretty brown eyes and took a step toward her. “Friends can be late and it doesn’t matter.” She backed up, and I took another step. “It’s okay. Just admit it.”

She pushed my chest. “Gabe, cut it out! You’re so conceited!” But she was grinning.

I didn’t let her move me. There was about an inch between us. “Admit it.”

“I do not like you.”

I put my hands on her waist and leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Well, I wish you would.” I could smell her sweet, clean shampoo and see the corner of her mouth trying not to smile. Then I straightened and said, “You gonna show me this subtitle thing or not?”

“If you mean one of the greatest films ever made, yes.”

“Do you have anything to eat while we watch?” I had that hollow, thrashed feeling you get after a night of too much partying and not enough food.

“Sure. Come on.” Irina led the way to the kitchen, which was so big you could have stuck a couch in it and called it a living room. Everything was wood and tile, and there were pots hanging from the ceiling and paintings on the wall. Who hangs paintings in the kitchen?

Irina pulled stuff from the fridge and cabinets: white ball-shaped cookies, and cookies that looked like squashed donuts, and Cokes, and a chunk of grayish stuff that I was worried might be cheese. Also a box with foreign writing on it—some kind of Russian food.

“So how did your recital go?” I asked while she was getting out plates. She’d told me the week before that she had a big-deal recital on Friday night.

She opened the box. “Terrible.”

“What happened?” I tried to see her face, but her hair was hanging like a curtain.

She started setting thin white crackers on a plate. “I didn’t practice enough, and I didn’t play as well as I should have.”

I frowned. “You practice six hours a day. How much more could you do?”

“More. But I’m tired, and I didn’t.” Irina closed the box and turned to face me. The bright kitchen lights made her look extra pale.

“Of course you’re tired. You work too hard. I mean, seriously, how could you practice more than six hours a day?”

She shrugged. “Other professionals work eight or ten hours a day at their jobs. It’s no different, really.”

“Okay, but you’re not a professional. You’re seventeen. And anyway, normal people spend like half their work time texting, getting coffee, or whatever. You’re alone in some room with your violin.”

She opened one of the Cokes and took a drink. It was regular, not diet like most girls drank. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “I’m getting kind of sick of it.” Her voice had an edge.

I was about to tell her to chuck the stupid thing, but Mom says sometimes girls don’t want advice; they just want to talk. So I said, “Uh-huh.”

She fiddled with the pop-top. “I’m worried that . . . I have this feeling I’m going to be, like, thirty? And I’ll look back and think I never got to be a teenager.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“Yeah. And I don’t even know if it’s worth it.” She was staring at me, eyes big, and I could tell she’d thought a lot about this. “Do you know how many prodigies just fail when they get to be adults? It’s called the Icarus effect. You fly too high, and your wings melt.”

I opened my mouth to remind her she wasn’t a prodigy, and then I realized maybe it wasn’t the time. “You should take a break,” I said instead.

She leaned against the counter next to me. “My parents would freak. They’ve been building me toward this my whole life, and if I mess it up, it’ll be like I totally failed them.”

“That’s harsh. Sorry they’re like that.”

Irina frowned. I should have known better than to say that. People can complain like crazy about their own parents, but if you agree with them, it’s a slap.

“They love me,” she said, kind of sharp. “That’s why they’re pushing me. Americans don’t understand that. They think loving kids means being easy on them.”

I felt annoyed, because I was getting tired of the
Americans
comments, and yeah, my mom had always been easy on me, and here I was, a total screwup, and there Irina was, a genius. But my mom loved me. I never had to wonder about that for a second.

Irina must have seen something on my face, because she added quickly, “There’re a lot of different ways of loving kids, that’s all I’m saying. I just don’t want you to think my parents are horrible.”

“I don’t think that.”

“I just . . . I need a break. I feel tight in here.” She touched her chest. “And I know it’s hurting my music.”

“Have your parents send you to Hawaii,” I told her. “That’s like, what, one day’s salary for your dad?”

“Yeah, a vacation would be nice,” she said. “Except it wouldn’t really be a vacation if they were there.”

I picked up her hand and started playing with it. “
I’ll
take you on vacation. We’ll go to Vegas and lie by the hotel pool. I’ll teach you to play poker.” I was only half kidding. Vegas had always been my vacation fantasy. I’d seen the ads; those dudes always looked like they were having the times of their lives. And they were doing stuff I was good at: drinking, playing cards.

Irina didn’t take her hand away. “That sounds fun.”

I pulled her into a hug. “It would be fun. We’d get all dressed up and check out the Strip and the casinos. And we’d go see that one circus. You know the commercial with the trapeze guys?”

She let her head rest on my chest. “Cirque du Soleil.” She was tiny, and she smelled good. It felt amazing to have her in my arms. I wanted so badly to kiss her, but I could tell I had to take it slow or she might run away.

“Yeah, them,” I said softly. “Then we’d go out to the clubs. I want to dance with you.”

“Except we’re both seventeen, so I guess we couldn’t do any of that stuff, except maybe walk down the Strip,” she said a little sadly.

“I have an ID,” I told her. “I could get you one if you want.”

“Are you serious?” Irina pulled back and looked at my face. When she saw I was for real, she gave a delighted giggle. “Okay, get me one, then.”

“I’ll set it up.”

Irina looked excited, and it was the best feeling in the world knowing I’d made her feel better. Then she asked, “How do you keep everything in balance? Like, Claremont is supposed to be intense, and I’m sure you have good grades if you’re going to medical school, but you know how to have fun, too. Sometimes I feel like I forgot how to have fun.”

It was like somebody vacuumed the good feeling out of my chest. But I kept smiling. “It’s not that hard. I just study.”

“That’s cool.” She pulled out of my arms and gave me a mischievous look. “Gabe, let’s not watch the movie. Teach me how to play poker.”

I grinned at her. “Done.”