Betting Blind (19 page)

Something was telling me:

It was good I ripped up the money.

I had done a good thing.

I was finished dealing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

W
e had two days off between quarters, most of which I spent back in White Center playing cards with Mr. Gonzales and Marquis. On Wednesday, when school started up again, I had that hollow amp you get before a big poker game. That night was Irina’s concert. But before that, I had three massive finals grades coming in: English, math, and science. I knew I’d done okay on math, because it wasn’t a bubble test. If I got at least a B- on the English and science finals, I would pass.

I pictured Irina’s face to calm me down. The last week had felt like a year, but soon I’d be holding her. I thought about the part in her hair, because that’s what I always saw when she was in my arms. It was so straight, like somebody drew it with a ruler.

I parked in the front lot—I’d been doing that a lot since I got the Altima—and walked past the quad, zoned out. On my way through the door to English, Jamie Elliott whacked me on the shoulder. “You could at least say hi!”

“Oh, sorry, hey.” But my eyes were on my desk. Like all the other empty desks, it had an upside-down paper on it. I could almost see the big red stamp on the other side: “Plagiarism.” That was a word that all the Claremont teachers made sure we knew very well.

I walked fast to my desk and turned it over. A-.

A-! And I had screwed up some of the spelling on purpose. Relief is sweet even when you don’t deserve it. But after a second a devil whispered inside my head,
That paper was a B, maybe a C. She gave you an A- because Newport is pressuring her. You’re a charity case. They’re all teaming up to help you graduate, even though you’re a
loser
and a
fake
.
I shoved the paper into my backpack and slouched at my desk.

Ms. Mueller gave a speech about how we all did a good job and deserved a break, and she passed out cookies, which was nice of her, except they were crammed with seeds and raisins. Typical Mueller: she could even mess up a cookie. I felt so twitchy and screwed up that I ate three of them anyway. Then she put on a cheesy documentary about Charles Dickens. I looked over to roll my eyes at Forrest—and he wasn’t there.

I got a cold feeling as I looked at his chair. Forrest cut plenty, so that was probably it. He just didn’t feel like coming to English. Dude could have taught the class himself. Still I texted him under the desk.
WRU@

I hadn’t talked to him since his party.

I checked my phone three times, risking Mueller’s wrath, but he never texted back.

My head was going in bad directions.
Oh shit.
I started sweating.

He’d bought a whole bottle of pills.

Four hundred for a whole bottle of pills. I bet he did them all at once. You weren’t supposed to do that. What if he overdosed?

I knew a few people who had OD’d. You didn’t talk about it, after they were gone. But we all remembered. There was Alyssa in eighth grade. She and her boyfriend, Connor, were doing junk in his dad’s garage, and they went to sleep there. When Connor woke up the next morning, Alyssa was blue.

And there was Malik Hernandez. He—

The door opened, and my head whipped around. It was Forrest.

He looked like hell, but it was him. I was so relieved, my breath felt funny.

He slid into his chair and gave me a weak nod—he looked totally thrashed—and set his head on his arms. He was okay. At least for right now.

With dope, you can never say once and for all that somebody is okay.

The second I saw Newport’s face, I knew I’d failed. There’s nothing more pathetic than when somebody you admire (yeah, I sort of admired him) looks at you like they’re so, so sorry for you. He didn’t want to break the news, you could tell. In fact, he didn’t give us back our tests in class, even though everyone was bugging him about it. He said he wasn’t done grading and he’d e-mail grades that night.

I knew he was lying. This was about me, and the fact that I’d failed. He didn’t want me to see a big red F without getting to talk to me about it first.

When he kept me after class, I knew for sure. He took off his thick glasses and polished them on his shirt. He looked younger without them. “Gabe, I—”

“I know I failed.”

His eyes widened. “What—did you fail on purpose?”

“No. I can just tell from how you’re acting.”

Newport looked down at his desk and his cheeks got red. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I didn’t prepare you well enough. I know you’ve been trying during our study sessions, and we just didn’t . . . I guess I’m confused. You were doing so well. You seemed to know a lot of this stuff, but it just didn’t come through on the test. I’m going to—I’m going to let you do a makeup test, though.”

You could tell it cost him to say that. He had a “no makeup test” rule. The poor fool. He didn’t know a lost cause when it was staring at him like a mug shot.

“Thank you, Mr. Newport. But that’s okay.”

“Gabe, I really want you to take it. I feel like it’s just not fair to dump you in a school this competitive without the right preparation.” But you could see his spark had gone out. He was finally getting it that no matter what he did, he couldn’t fix me.

He started talking again, about telomeres and DNA strands and a makeup project, but his words fell on my ears, clink clink clink, not connected. My vision was weirdly clear and sharp. I could see the small letters on the human body poster behind him. Smell the whiteboard pens and air freshener and stale coffee. The books were closing in on me, books and papers and things I couldn’t handle.

I interrupted him. “You’re the best teacher I ever had. Thank you.” I hoisted my backpack over my shoulder and walked toward the door.

“Gabe! Don’t take this too hard. This was a setback, that’s all. I’ll e-mail you tonight. We have the rest of the year to work on this, and by the time you take my class in summer school, it’ll be cake. Gabe!”

I let the door shut behind me. I was quiet inside, and very focused. I walked down the hall, down the steps, and into the parking lot. I got into my ride and started the engine and drove slowly out of that place, past all the rows of sweet cars and redbrick buildings—all nice containers for people whose brains worked right.

The leather seats and smell of my car told me I wasn’t a complete screwup, though; I’d managed to hustle and get myself something. Because that’s what life was, right? A big hustle, all of us racing around trying to get the biggest piece of the pie, build our forts, trick them out, load up on diamonds until we were staggering, wondering,
What am I gonna do with all this shit?

I turned left down Mountebank, past the “Children at Play” sign. If life was a poker game, it was rigged. Some people were born already holding whole stacks of chips in their arms. Some people had the best plays wired into their brains, ready to—ticktock—start making money.

And then there was the rest of us. We had to fight for it, hustle for it, figure out a way to not be forty years old, raising a kid alone, living in a shitty town house bought by some guy who was married to someone else.

I barely noticed the time going by, and it felt like I was home instantly. Walking up to the front door, I wondered how my mom would react. She wanted so badly for me to be the first person in our family to go to college. I’d never planned on going, but it was sort of nice that she thought I could. And maybe in a corner of my brain I had started playing with the idea, because of Irina and Mr. Newport and Kyle and Matt and Forrest.

But now there was no way. I’d have to do summer school to even graduate.

Mom had been talking lately about Seattle U and UW. She’d even watched some Husky football this season, and I remember being confused, but now I thought I got it: she was rooting for the team of the college her kid might go to.

I pushed open the door, and guess what was lying on the bottom step like a snake? Phil’s belt. That bastard couldn’t wait? It was the worst possible moment, the one minute when I wanted to be with my mom, just the two of us alone in our own house.

I walked upstairs slow and loud as a warning. Mom and Phil were curled up in front of a football game. And then I got it: I was wrong about the Huskies. She wasn’t watching them for me. She was watching them for him. Because he liked football.

I took a Coke out of the fridge and walked past them. Phil’s face was making me so sick at the moment, I couldn’t even say hi to Mom.

“Hi, Gabriel,” he said.

Mom clicked the remote and turned off the tube. “Gabe, you want to sit down?”

They knew. Somehow Mom’s psychic streak had kicked in (she could always tell when I’d been in a fight), and she knew I’d failed. I frowned. “What?”

“We’d like to chat with you about something,” said Phil. He glanced at Mom, and she gave a little nod. He said, “We have some good news for you.”

“Phil left his wife,” said Mom, and she started to cry.

I stared at them. I was having a hard time breathing.

Phil looked embarrassed. “I, ah, think you’re aware that I’ve been in a troubled marriage, and my only hesitation to commit to you and your mom was out of concern for my . . . ex-wife’s mental health. But we’ve finally . . . ended things.”

“He’s moving in.” Mom’s eyes were shining with happiness.

Phil squeezed Mom’s shoulder and smiled at me. “Hope that’s okay with you.”

“No! That’s not fucking okay!”
Is that me screaming?

“Gabriel!” Mom gasped. She stood up, as if that would stop me from saying anything else. “This is a special day for us, and I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t ruin it!”

But all I could see was Phil’s smug red mug as he leaned back on the couch he bought in the pad he owned, looking at me man-to-man and saying he was moving in. And behind his yellow-ass drinks-too-much eyeballs, there was a cheating, conniving, woman-screwing brain that was always clocking to get laid. I was sure—no,
positive
—that he already had another girl stashed somewhere, because everyone knows that when the player makes a woman his main wifey, she’s toast. And I was supposed to live with him, knowing what kind of bastard he was and what my mom was in for?

Phil stood, too, and took Mom’s hand like they were a team, and all these things melted into a red bull’s-eye of rage on his face.

I punched it as hard as I could.

Phil fell straight back on the couch, his mouth pouring blood.

“Phil! Oh no, honey! He didn’t mean to! Gabe!” Mom sounded so horrified, it brought me back to myself. I didn’t hit him again, even though I was high on the taste of blood and wanted more.

I made myself walk away. Go upstairs. Slam my door.

Then I started packing. Because even though I was in a rage, my brain was like a blade cutting open the truth: Mom had picked Phil over me. And I was getting the fuck out and never coming back.

I had some nice threads from dealing, and I crammed them in a duffel bag along with a few Gs, which was all I had left after buying my car. I put my kicks in another bag, and dragged all of it, plus my blanket and pillow, downstairs. Phil was sitting on the couch, holding ice to his face. He glared at me as I walked past.

Mom followed me to the front door. She was crying, of course. “Where are you going?”

“I’m moving out.”

She made a sound like she didn’t believe me.

“’Bye, Mom. Have a nice time living with Phil.” I didn’t look back, and she didn’t come after me. I threw my stuff in the trunk and tore out.

Where was I going? White Center? I had plenty of places to crash there.

But why think small? Why even stay in Washington? There was nothing to hold me here except school. I decided right there. Fuck school. I was dropping out. A dark happiness filled me. She’d be sorry.

But Irina. What about Irina? With that same cold, clear thinking that I’d been having since I walked out of Newport’s class, I knew there was no future there. Sooner or later she’d find some tie-wearing douche with a trust fund and marry him.

But then I thought about her tiger eyes. I sort of cared about her. I turned for the I-5. I was going to Winterfest to her concert. I had to at least say good-bye.