Falling Into Us (2 page)

See, Dad had been All-State three years in a row during high school and then had gone on to play as a starting WR for Michigan State, and was widely praised as one of the best players in college football. He’d then been scouted by the Kansas City Chiefs, the Minnesota Vikings, and the New York Giants. He’d torn his ACL his first game with the Giants, though, and it had been a career-ending injury. He’d returned to his hometown here in Michigan and joined the police force as a bitter, angry man. When the first Gulf War happened, he’d joined the Army and done two tours with the infantry, and had come back even more fucked up from the things he’d seen and done.

He liked to get drunk after work, and he’d tell me horror stories. Unlike most combat vets I’d heard of, Dad liked to talk about his experiences. Only with me, though, and only when he was at the bottom of a fifth. He’d tell me about the buddies he’d seen shot, blown up by IEDs, hit by snipers and RPGs. If I tried to leave, he’d lay into me. Even drunk, Dad was formidable. The ACL injury had ended his career as a professional wide receiver, but it hadn’t made him any less physically intimidating. He stood several inches taller than me, wide through the shoulders with thick biceps and corded forearms, his short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair beaded with sweat as he swayed in front of me. He had quick, hard fists, and even drunk he was accurate. He knew where to hit to cause the most pain. I’d gotten better at blocking and dodging, which Dad encouraged. He wanted me to be a
man
, a
warrior
. Men don’t feel pain. Men can run plays with bruised ribs and battered kidneys. Men don’t cry. Men don’t tell. Men break records.

Kyle knew all this—he understood it as much as anyone who didn’t live it could, and he never told.

“Yeah, but I’m fine.” I hated sympathy.
 

Kyle just met my eyes, staring me down, assessing. He knew I’d never admit to being in pain, so he’d gotten better at gauging how bad off I was. “You sure? Coach wants to run tap-dance drills today.”
 

“Shit,” I muttered.
 

Tap-dance drills were usually run with the coach or the QB throwing a ball and the receiver practicing catching it near the sidelines, tap dancing to stay in bounds with one or both feet. Coach liked to run these drills with full interference, so I’d learn to make the catch while a defender tried to stop me. What this meant was I’d spend most of the practice getting tackled over and over again. With already-bruised ribs, I’d be lucky if could walk off the field under my own power.
 

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “We’re playing Brighton on Friday, and they like to double-team me. I need the practice.”

Kyle just shook his head. “You’re such a stubborn asshole.”

I laughed. “Yeah. But I’m the best motherfucking wide receiver in the state. There’s something to be said for Dad’s ‘training program.’” I made air quotes with my fingers as I said the last part.
 

“What was that word Mr. Lang used yesterday? Talking about the Spartans and how they trained their warriors?” Kyle dug a Powerbar out of his bag and opened it, handing me half.

“
Agoge
,” I answered.

“That’s it,” Kyle said, chewing noisily. “Just pretend you’re a Spartan, training in an
agoge.
”

“It wasn’t a building, I don’t think,” I said, eating my half. “It was more of a lifestyle, a program. And yeah, that’s basically it. Mike Dorsey, Spartan
agoge
trainer.”

“Am I gonna have to drag you off the field again?” Kyle asked, only half joking.

“Probably,” I answered.
 

“We’ll hit up the hideout after practice, then.” Kyle took off for his fifth-period science class on the other end of the school, hustling so he wouldn’t be late.

“Sounds good,” I said, calling after him.

The hideout was a spot out in the woods behind my house. There was an old lightning-struck oak tree with huge spreading branches bending low over the ground, forming a cave-like canopy. Over the years Kyle and I had turned the spot into a clubhouse of kinds, weaving branches together and old boards and pieces of tin from the junkyard around the thick trunk so that we had an enclosed area. We’d dragged old chairs, some crates, even a ratty old couch in there. It was our secret, and even now, when we were old enough that we should be embarrassed about having a secret clubhouse, we still kept it secret. My cousin Doug had once somehow looted several cases of cheap beer from a liquor store, and he’d given me a couple of them, so Kyle and I often went to the hideout to drink together.
 

For me, though, the hideout was just that, somewhere I could go to get away from my dad. I’d spent the night there on several occasions, to the point that I kept an old wool blanket in one of the crates.
 

My conversation with Malcolm and then Kyle had taken most of the seven minutes before fifth period, so I was surprised when Nell still hadn’t shown up for class. I thought I’d shit myself if I got myself all psyched up to ask her out and then she didn’t show up for class.
 

Then she appeared, hair loose around her shoulders, smiling and laughing. Becca was on one side of her, Jill on the other. Those three girls were, in my opinion, the three hottest girls in the entire school, and I could never decide how to rank them in terms of who was the hottest. It depended on my mood, most days. I knew Nell the best, since I’d spent most of my life daydreaming about her like a little puppy, but Becca was just as hot in a different way. She was shorter and curvier than Nell, and Becca had long curly black hair, so tightly curled that it was a thick mass of springy ringlets, whereas Nell’s hair was a perfect shade of strawberry blonde. Becca’s skin was the color of dark caramel, where Nell’s was like ivory, white and pale. Nell was outgoing and cheerful, whereas Becca was quiet and painfully shy, but brilliantly smart.

Jill was almost lost in the shuffle when she was with Becca and Nell. She just couldn’t compete, if you ask me. If you looked at her when she was on her own or with other people, Jill was hot for sure, but she just wasn’t in the same league as Nell and Becca. Jill was a Barbie doll, like, for real. Tall, impossibly proportioned, naturally shock-blonde hair and blue eyes. She was the sweetest girl you’d ever meet, and yeah, I know, guys shouldn’t use the term “sweet,” but it just fit. Jill was sweet as a spoonful of sugar. She was also a stereotypical bubbly blonde in that she was almost unbelievably air-headed and kind of shallow. She was loyal as hell to her friends, though, and I liked that about her.
 

It was a
High School Musical
moment: the three hottest girls in school, striding side by side down the middle of the sun-bathed hallway, Nell in the middle, everyone watching her, admiring her, talking about her. And then she stopped right in front of me, smiling at me, saying hi to me, and I was frozen, gaping, stunned.
 

Someone bumped me from behind, hard, knocking me out of my reverie. Malcolm stumbled past me, coughing. “My bad, bro. I didn’t see you there.” He nodded at Nell and the others. “Hey, whassup girls? Lookin’ fine today, I see. Lookin’ real fine, don’t you agree, Jason?” Malcolm liked to “play up his blackness,” as he put it, especially when he was trying to be funny, which was most of the time.
 

I glared at him, then turned my attention to Nell. “Hey, Nell. What’s up?” Lame. Lame.
So
lame.

She grinned at me. “Hi, Jason.”

Becca and Jill had kept walking, stopping at their lockers a few feet away. This spot, the humanities hallway on the first floor near the lunchroom and the adjacent outdoor courtyard, was the prime focal point of our high school’s social world. It was where everything happened. You asked girls out there, you challenged guys to fights there, you broke up there. If you were popular, it was where you hung out and got seen, where the leaders of the various cliques held court. So, of course, being one of the stars of the football team, I had to ask her out there. Nell was popular, but she was the kind of girl who didn’t have a clique. She was cool with everyone, popular because she was beautiful, smart, and the daughter of the second most influential man in our town, second only to Kyle’s dad, and she was Kyle’s best friend. Kyle, of course, was the god of the high school. He was the star quarterback, All-State at sixteen, the son of a senator, and so good-looking it was stupid. He had the perfect life. Best friends with the hottest girl in school, rich, good-looking, popular, athletic, awesome parents. He even had a badass car, a classic Camaro SS his older brother had rebuilt and then left behind when he ran off at seventeen. The only reason I didn’t hate Kyle was that he was my best friend and I’d known him since kindergarten, and I could tell everyone the story of when he peed his pants in third grade and I’d covered for him.
 

 
Everyone was watching me. They knew something was going down. Malcolm and Frankie had probably told everyone they knew, which was everyone, that I was asking Nell out, so the whole crowd of “cool kids” was standing in the hallway, not even pretending not to watch.
 

I couldn’t puss out now. Damn it.

I swallowed the ball of dry nerves and clenched my trembling hands into fists at my sides. “So, Nell. I was thinking. You wanna go out with me tonight? Seven o’clock?” My voice hadn’t shaken or squeaked, and I’d sounded suitably nonchalant.

Nell’s eyes widened and she sucked in a surprised breath, then let out an excited squeal before chomping her teeth together to stop it. “Yes! I mean, yeah, sure. I’d love to. Where are we going?”

I had actually done some prep for this, thank god. “I was thinking Bravo.”

She grinned again. It was an expensive place for high schoolers, and you had to have reservations, especially on a Friday night. I had an agreement with my dad: I would focus on my grades and football, and he’d make sure I didn’t need to work. I got a two-hundred-dollar bonus for every game we won, plus twenty dollars for every touchdown I scored. Our team was undefeated so far this year, and I’d already scored six touchdowns in the four games we’d played.
 

Yeah. My dad really pushed me to succeed at football. Winning was everything, second only to being “a real man.”

“Don’t you have to make reservations to get in there on Fridays?” Nell asked.

I just grinned cockily and shoved my fist in my hip pocket. “Yep.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “How could you be so sure I’d say yes?”

I grinned even more widely, mainly to cover my hammering heart. “Well, you did, didn’t you?”

She couldn’t hold the serious look for long. “I’ll see you at seven, then.”

I nodded and pushed past her into our classroom, ignoring the hushed whispers. I slumped into my seat in the back by the window and pretended not to see Nell doing the girly whispered freak-out with Becca and Jill. I wanted to have a whispery freak-out myself, but I couldn’t, because I was a man, and men didn’t show emotions.

Nell settled gracefully into her seat a few rows over and in front of me. She set her backpack on the floor beside her foot and bent over to open it, using the opportunity to steal a glance at me, blushing and smiling when she saw me looking right at her. I wondered in the back of my head if she would let me kiss her.
 

Probably not, but it sure would be cool if she did.

*
 
*
 
*

Fortunately for me, Coach made us watch a film instead of running drills. He let Kyle skip the film, knowing Kyle would study it at home on his own. The rest of us weren’t so lucky, so we were stuck watching Brighton games until almost six-thirty.
 

I’d planned on picking Nell up right after practice anyway, so I’d smuggled some jeans and a button-down shirt in my backpack. The shirt was wrinkled, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I showered after the guys all left and then hopped into my truck. I’d bought the truck myself, saving my earnings from all of last year’s football season plus my end-of-year straight-A bonus to buy it. It was a ten-year-old F-150, black, long-bed, manual transmission, four-by-four. It was my baby. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. Dad couldn’t and wouldn’t take it away from me no matter what I did, since I’d saved and paid for it myself. He respected that.
 

He had his own kind of honor, in a warped way. He had no qualms about beating me until I pissed blood, but he respected my space and my things, and he paid my way as long as I earned it. He’d cut short his
lessons
if I fought back. Of course, the lesson would be shortened via me getting knocked out, but it would be less of a beating, so I’d started fighting back more regularly.

I drove to Nell’s house, my tires crunching on the gravel road. My nerves were wreaking havoc on me now. It was finally happening. I was going out on a date with Nell Hawthorne. I could picture her wearing a demure but sleek knee-length skirt, some kind of top that couldn’t disguise her incredible rack. Long strawberry blonde hair loose around her shoulders, just the bangs pinned back behind her head like always. She liked to paint her fingernails bright colors, usually red or orange or pink. Sometimes blue or green, but never black or gray or any dull colors.
 

I stopped in the middle of the road a mile from her house and tried to pull myself together. It was just a date. We were just two friends going on a date. Nothing else. There was no reason to think I’d get to kiss her. I wouldn’t even try to hold her hand. Just…hang out and talk. No need to get excited.

But I was. I was wired, I was so excited.
 

I let out a long breath, slapped my steering wheel with both hands, and whooped as loud as I could, releasing some of my built-up excitement.
 
I was pumped, so worked up at the prospect of going on a date with Nell that I didn’t even feel my bruises.

I put the truck back in drive and pulled up to Nell’s driveway. My cell phone rang just as I was stopping in front of her house. I glanced at the screen, sliding the “answer” key when I saw Kyle’s name. The digital clock readout at the top of the screen read 6:54 p.m., so I was a bit early. I’d been ignoring the fact that I’d have to tell him I was going out on a date with the girl who was closer to him than a sister. Now that he was calling, minutes before the date, I almost didn’t want to tell him.