Stupid Fast (6 page)

Downstairs in my room, I pulled the leather pouch out of my sock drawer and almost pulled out shiny rocks (semiprecious stones from Brazil) and crystals to try to relax but then caught myself.
Don’t do that.
I jammed the pouch back in with the socks.

Then I found my notebook where I always meant to take notes about life and whatnot, which I’d never done. I wanted to write something about how I wasn’t the problem. I wanted to write about Jerri, but I couldn’t. The notebook was completely empty. What are you supposed to write in these things? I emailed Gus:

there is strong possibility that i’m nuts primarily because my mother and brother have made me nuts, not to speak of my dad, who was also likely nuts (or maybe had been driven nuts by my mom). it’s not my fault. do you keep a journal of your thoughts?

Gus responded an hour or so later. Extremely out of character, he wrote like a million words, way too much to read. Clearly, he was bored out of his cabbage. Here is some of what he wrote:

i own nothing but my thoughts (and also my pants)…you ever hear of hugo chavez? he’s el presidente and he hates america because we love money and mcdonalds (i want a quarter pounder) and he took away american tv so i cant watch anything i understand…i’m writing a book about spies who eat tacos and hide in large house plants…grandma moans and farts and swears at dad in spaniard HILARIOUS…use notebook to write to-do lists. dad does that…

None of what Gus said made any sense. Not even my oldest friend made sense? I remember being at his house for dinner with my parents when we were toddlers. (Yeah, his dad and my dad were friends—at least colleagues; there were always colleagues around and parties and picnics—that’s something I remember from when Dad was alive.) I remember Gus had white baby booties with bells on them, and I chased him around because he made a jingle noise, which I liked, and both our dads were totally dying laughing because Gus didn’t want to be chased, but I wouldn’t stop. Gus’s dad said “Chasing booty. Chip off the old block” to my dad. I remember that perfectly. That might be my first memory actually. But even Gus had become incomprehensible.

Well, at least he mentioned I could use my notebook to make a to-do list of my goals and plans, etc. So I did. This is all I wrote. I’m reading the original right now (it seriously took me about three hours):

1. Lift weights with Cody.
   
2. Get driver’s license.
   
3. Consider giving up comedy, as comedy isn’t even funny anymore.
   
4. Stop talking to Jerri and Andrew.
   

Then because I was so exhausted from not sleeping the night before and from what Jerri called my “time of growth,” I went out and flopped onto the couch, flipped on the TV (truTV, not Comedy Central), and went to sleep. I had no dreams. I slept like a rock all afternoon (while the sound of
COPS
reruns played in the background), only waking a couple of times before morning—once to sneak upstairs and jam about a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese, and a banana in my mouth and once when Andrew poked me so he could show me a YouTube video of Aleah bashing a piano keyboard like a goddess. Even from Andrew’s laptop, the sound was like that Florida wave crashing on me.

“She’s too good,” he said. “She’s really, really good.”

“Uh huh,” I agreed, getting goose bumps. (I said uh huh—grunts, not words—so as not to break my plan to not speak to him or Jerri.)

“Yes,” Andrew whispered.

Before I fell back asleep, I replied to Gus’s mammoth email. I wrote:
beautiful girl in nightie lives in your house and plays your piano
.

I’m very certain that Jerri didn’t check on me or watch me sleep.

I’m the opposite of how I was that day. I am the opposite of tired. No sleep. No sleep.

Jerri couldn’t check on me if I did sleep. Jerri isn’t in the house.

Maybe I will be able to sleep soon. The air in the basement is getting cooler or maybe I’m finally cooling down. I was so freaking hot. I was a pee pan full of sweat. It’s possible I sweat more than most people because of my high metabolism (eat and eat and eat). Holy crap, I would kill for food. I’m going to get some food. Going to the kitchen.

***

Eating now. Ham and cheese in a sundried tomato wrap.

Painful trip to the kitchen though. I’ve got cuts and bruises on my shins. My foot hurts (stomped on). My left hand is throbbing. It’s swollen. I’ve got a big bruise and bump on my hip.

I’ve never been this beaten up, not even when I crashed my Schwinn Varsity and slid on the gravel. Beat to hell!

2:38 a.m.

Story. Story. Story.

The morning after I wrote my to-do list, I seriously got up at the butt crack of dawn. It wasn’t really intentional—I’d just slept so much of the day before that I couldn’t sleep any longer.
Why not hit the road, get it over with?
It, of course, being the paper route. So I rolled out of bed, checked to see if Gus emailed me back (he hadn’t), and picked up the papers super early and then went silent through the neighborhoods.

The route skirts the edge of town where there’s a mixture of new and sort of old ranch-style houses. Jerri hates ranch-style houses. I don’t know why. On the route, when it was later and people were awake, I really liked those houses because they have really big front windows, and I could look in and see what the people were up to. All these houses have lots of very dark, prickly evergreen bushes in front of them, which sort of scared me the first few days I did the route because they seemed like good places to hide if you wanted to surprise and kill the paperboy. But I’d begun to like these bushes because they smell really good. They smell like the holidays, I guess. Really piney. That morning, most of my route smelled like Christmas in the summer (not the farm poop smell that Bluffton usually has). And I couldn’t see in houses because nobody was awake yet, but I could imagine all those normal people cuddled up in their beds, sleeping, which was kind of comforting too. And there wasn’t much noise, no radios or TVs or lawn mowers or anything, but I could hear farmers in their tractors, probably miles away, and the occasional semi driving down State Highway 81. I liked how dark it was. I was unseen in the dark, sliding from house to house like a ghost.

It was still pitch-black dark when I got to Gus’s house. Aleah wasn’t asleep though. She practiced. I could hear her for a couple of blocks before I arrived. The sound wasn’t loud, but it carried. Piano floating on dawn air. Sort of spooky, and classical music sounds really old, like something ghosts would listen to, and so I might have been scared if I didn’t know it was her.

Like the day before, the front door was open, and Aleah Jennings—because it was definitely, no doubt, the same girl Andrew showed me on YouTube winning the Chicago Competition—was at the piano playing in her white nightie. And once again, I couldn’t help it: I set down my bike, walked to the door, pulled open the screen, and leaned my head in so I could watch her hit those keys. There was something sort of angry and ferocious in the way she pounded that piano. There was like this “Don’t eff with me, mother effer” feel to it. Amazing. More than that. I guess hypnotizing is a better word. My mouth was open, and I was probably drooling. I was halfway breaking and entering to hear her, and I couldn’t help it because I was glued in that spot and then she promptly stopped and spun around on the piano seat. She looked directly at me.

“Daddy said you stopped to listen to me yesterday too.”

“Uh!” I felt my muscles coil. I could feel the animal spring about to happen, that damn squirrel nut donkey leap. But instead, I breathed out slow and said “No.”

“You didn’t watch me yesterday?” she asked.

“No. I did. Uh. This is my best friend’s house.”

Then, Aleah jumped. She leapt from the piano bench, a shocked look on her face.

“And I think I’m a little freaked by you guys being here in Gus’s house.”

“I thought…Daddy and I thought that you were slow.”

“Slow?”

“Retarded.”

“No. I mean, maybe a little.”

“Because you ran away like that and can’t talk.”

“I can talk.”

“Well, that’s obvious.”

“Actually, I’m trying very hard not to be retarded.”

“Oh. That’s admirable.” Aleah stared at me hard.

“Yeah. It’s hard work.”

“Yes. I know.” Aleah stared at me harder.

“I have to deliver more papers, okay?”

“Okay.” Aleah stared at me so hard I thought my head might catch fire.

“You play piano really, really, really well,” I said, saying the final “really” really slow so she could tell I meant it.

“Thank you.”

“I know too because my little brother is the best piano player of his age group in…in the world, I’d guess, and he isn’t even close to as good as you.”

She walked a few steps closer, across the living room. She spoke slowly. “Is his name Andrew?”

“Yes.” I backed up a step, out the door.

“Do you know your mom called here?” Aleah got to the door and put her hand on the screen to hold it open.

I backed to the edge of the stoop.

“Yes.”

“Then maybe you know that me and my daddy are coming over to your house this afternoon.”

“I do. I’m going to deliver my newspapers, Aleah.”

“And you know my name,” she said.

“I do. I’ll see you later.”

I turned, jogged to my bike, got on, and pedaled away.

“Wait,” she called. “I don’t know your name.”

“Felton,” I called back.

“What?”

But that was enough. Man. Then I delivered all the rest of the papers in mere minutes because I was on beautiful fire.

When I got home, the sun was exploding orange in all its glory over the bluffs east of town, and Jerri was out on the stoop drinking coffee.

I forgot my pledge to not talk to her.

“Good morning, Jerri,” I said.

Jerri squinted at me. Maybe she made a similar pledge she hadn’t forgotten.

“Umm,” she said.

Okay.

I went in and ate two enormous herb bagels I found in the fridge. I ate them with mounds of cream cheese. The bagels were great. Super fresh. And the sun was bright and the sky clear, and I actually talked to a girl, a pretty and talented girl, without running away immediately, which I hadn’t done since fifth grade when Abby Sauter was actually my friend for a few weeks. I mean, what a great morning!

Then I remembered Cody Frederick and breathed deep and fought the response to be worried.

Weights. Coach Johnson. Maybe Ken Johnson? That chuckleheaded fat fart Jason Reese for sure. Fine. Fine. No problem. You can do it.

Then Jerri walked in and looked in the fridge. “Did you eat both bagels, Felton?”

“Yes.”

“One of those was for Andrew. You’re selfish.”

Then Andrew walked in and shouted, “You ate my bagel? You ass brain jerk!”

I continued to chew and look out the window. Aleah Jennings playing piano in a white nightie—that’s what I thought about. And also this: My family is nuts. I’d better not be here when Aleah comes for her visit. It will likely be a complete disaster.

After my breakfast, I checked email again. Gus had not returned my message. I wrote:
listen up…a beautiful girl our age plays piano in your house and sleeps in your bedroom.

I didn’t really know where she slept but hoped that bit of info would at least pique his interest.

It didn’t seem to.

I say this respectfully because Cody Frederick is probably the best person I know, seriously, but Cody’s truck smells vaguely like pee in the same way he smells vaguely pee-like. Sorry. Maybe my nose is just super-smelling, which is bad?

At 9 a.m., the vaguely pee-smelling Cody Frederick came by the house and picked me up in his vaguely pee-smelling pickup truck, which was sort of cool. I’d never ridden in a pickup truck, pee-smelling or otherwise. You get to ride really high in the air compared to the low Hyundai Sonata that Jerri drives. You get to see stuff. I considered the possibility that I should buy a pickup truck after figuring out how to get my permit and then getting my driver’s license (and saving money from the paper route so I have money for a truck). I wouldn’t run over honkies in this truck, I decided, because honkies can be okay. We drove toward the school to lift weights.

“You ready for this, Reinstein?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said, although I had no idea what we were going to do at weights except for lift weights, which seemed painful and ridiculous.

“I remember that you’re a pretty good catch,” he said as we made it off our gravel drive and onto the pavement of the main road. “At least, back when we were little. Can you catch a football, you think?”

“I can catch pretty well,” I said. Then I said something dumb. It just popped out. “Are we big now?” I immediately wanted to take it back, but Cody didn’t respond like a jerk.

“You are,” he said. “You seem big. Bigger than me, I think. We’ll find out because Coach is going to measure you and take your weight this morning.”

“It’s possible I’m big,” I said, nodding, thinking. Even with all the growing and eating and hair growing I’d done over the months, it hadn’t exactly dawned on me that I might be “big.” I mean, I knew I was bigger because my clothes didn’t cover my body. But actually big? I’d always been small or at best average, and I’d always felt tiny.

We drove through town high off the road, and I felt big.

At school, we walked along the west side on a sidewalk I’ve never been on before to a side entrance I didn’t know existed. From there, we climbed up a back stairs to a loft overlooking the gym. (I’d noticed this place before from the gym floor but had never been in it.) This was the weight room.

I almost folded right then and there.

I can’t even begin to say how bad it smelled. Oh, to smell that terrible smell. I’ve never in my life smelled anything so terrible, not even when we visited the Milwaukee Zoo and all the monkeys in the monkey house took dumps within like thirty seconds and then started flinging it around on each other, which got the poop smell thick in the air, which means we were getting monkey poop particles in our mouths and noses. I mean, that was totally gross, but this jock-o weight smell was even smellier. (I couldn’t even tell what kind of particles I was getting in my nose and mouth, like nut sack particles? Yeeeeeek.) The smell burned my eyes. But I knew I would have to power through it. No folding. I couldn’t gag, although I wanted to. I couldn’t turn around and run back down the steps. Where would I go? Over to Peter Yang’s fish-smelling house to hang out with his sisters and his mom?

Everywhere I looked, pee-smelling honky jocks and poop-stinking farmer boys, who are football players, sweated like crazy and screamed and pushed all kinds of weight up on bars.

“Gaaaaahhhh!”

“Push it! Push it!”

I’ve known every one of these people for as long as I can remember but haven’t talked to any directly in several years and had no idea that they spent any of their time doing this weird thing, pushing weight up on bars, while sweating animal smells and screaming “Gaaaaaahhhhh!” I stood there blinking. Cody said, “Smells terrible up here, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Let’s find Coach.”

Coach Johnson wasn’t in the weight room. We ended up downstairs in the coaches’ office in the locker room. And, oh, shit, his son, that jerk Ken Johnson, was in the office with him. Ken crossed his arms and curled his lip when Cody and I walked in. I thought about Aleah Jennings pounding on piano keys. I smiled at him big and fake, which made my heart pump.
Take that, honky!

His dad, the large-assed Coach Johnson, was happy to see me though. He said as much.

“Reinstein, I’m sure happy to see you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re the missing link, we believe.”

“What?”

“You’re a weapon. Potentially. A big gun.”

“Big gun,” I said.

“Frederick, you’re showing great leadership for this team. Thanks for bringing Reinstein in.”

“Yes, sir,” Cody said.

“Reinstein. First things first. Pull off your shoes and socks. Let’s get your measurements.”

I did what he said and then stood against a wall with a bunch of numbers on it.

“Yes, sir, just about what I figured,” Coach Johnson said. “Six feet, one and one-quarter inches.”

“What?” I shook my head. “Say that again?”

“Six feet, one and one-quarter inches,” Coach Johnson repeated.

“I’m six-one?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “Are you kidding me?”

“That’s right,” Coach Johnson said. “You’re an inch taller than Kennedy right now.”

“Who?”

“Ken Johnson? My son? You ever hear of him? Ha ha ha.”

“Yeah. Hah,” I said. Ken glared at me. I smiled back, heart pounding. This time, my heart wasn’t pounding because of conflict with Ken Johnson though. This time, it was pounding from non-squirrel-nut adrenaline. I had no idea I’d gotten so tall.

“Get on the scale, son.”

I walked over and got on the scale. Coach Johnson kept moving things around, weight things, to put the scale in balance. He kept saying “Yup.” Finally, the scale balanced. “Felton Reinstein,” Coach Johnson said. “You weigh a hundred and sixty-eight pounds.”

“Whoa,” I said, startled. “Am I fat?”

“You’re a beanpole, Reinstein,” Ken Johnson said.

“I’ve gained like forty pounds,” I said.

“Seems to me your puberty went steroidal, kid,” Coach Johnson said. Both Ken and Cody giggled when Coach said puberty. “You’ve got no fat on you. None.”

“No muscle either,” said Ken.

“Well, some muscle,” Coach Johnson said, “He’s about as fast as you, Kennedy. But we can do better.”

“Beanpole,” Ken whispered.

“Jerk,” Cody whispered, looking at Ken.

“We can do a lot better,” Coach Johnson nodded.

“I grew seven inches and gained forty-three pounds since the beginning of gym last year,” I said, thinking back to Coach Knautz measuring us right before our Ping-Pong unit started last fall.

“Reinstein, you’ve got a frame. You hit the weights, keep eating and growing, and you could be carrying two hundred easily by your senior season.”

“Is it good to be so fat?” I asked.

“That’s D-I sized,” said Cody.

“Pfff. Yeah,” said Ken Johnson.

“And with that speed?” said Coach Johnson. “You’re telling me. D-IA.”

“D-I?” I asked.

“Division I college athletics, my boy. You could get much bigger too. Two-hundred and twenty isn’t out of the question. You might get taller, of course. When do you turn sixteen?”

“End of July,” I said.

“My goodness, you’re big,” said Coach Johnson.

Ken Johnson, who was shorter than me but probably weighed over two hundred, just glowered. I didn’t smile at him. I was lost in swirling thought, guilty, crazy thought:

How did I grow so much? Am I driving Jerri crazy by eating everything? Maybe Jerri really needs my paper route money? I probably ate ten thousand pounds of food in the last year. Oh my God. We’re running out of money, and that’s why Jerri is so stressed out and has to go to a therapist and is crazy and calls me the f-bomber. I am eating Jerri and Andrew out of house and home! I ate that bagel! I ate an extra bagel! Oh, Jesus, I’m eating my family! Oh my God!

Coach Johnson talked, and Cody talked, and I spun out in my brain, and Ken Johnson shook his head, and then Cody motioned for me to follow him, which, thankfully, I did.

As we climbed the stairs to the weights, Cody said, “See, I thought you were big, Reinstein.”

“I don’t feel big, man.”

“You gotta start carrying yourself like you’re that big. Really, Reinstein. Nobody will ever mess with you again.”

“Nobody messes with me now.”

“Are you kidding me? Everybody does. I used to, and I don’t mess with anybody because I think messing with people is dumb.”

“Really? You messed with me?” Duh. I knew that. People messed with me all the time, and I hated them for it. That’s why I spent an hour drawing a picture of Ken Johnson getting shot with bottle rockets two nights before.

“Carry yourself the way you really are, though, and it won’t happen.”

“How am I really?” God, I said stupid stuff. Pee-smelling Cody could’ve made shit of me, but he didn’t.

“Here’s the truth, Reinstein. Without ever setting foot on a football field, you’re a Division I prospect. You’ve got unbelievable speed and a big frame. I’ll never have any of what you’ve got.”

“No. I’m a beanpole. You heard Ken.”

“You’re maybe a beanpole for an eighteen-year-old but not for a fifteen-year-old. You’re just plain big for a fifteen-year-old.”

“That makes sense.”

“So carry yourself like a real athlete, and everyone will treat you that way. Okay? I’ll let everybody know that you are a serious D-I prospect and then you just act that way.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

The voice in my head was still barking at me a little. It was going on about how I was eating Jerri and Andrew.

Then Cody stopped climbing and grabbed my arm, which shocked me out of my head completely.

“But you have to do something for me. You have to lift weights and practice all summer. You have to learn the playbook. If you do, we’re going to be unstoppable come fall. That’s what I want. I want to be unstoppable. We’ve got a huge line. Karpinski’s sort of an ass, but he’s an awesome receiver. I’ll get him the ball. And you? With you, Reinstein? Nobody’s gonna know what hit ’em. Jamie is going to be pissed to lose his spot, but you’re our tailback, Reinstein. No doubt. Will you work hard?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. I meant it.

“Thanks, man.”

Cody looked deep into my eyes. It was sort of weird. I got a surge of adrenaline.

“I really appreciate it,” he said.

I swallowed hard. I seriously meant it. I’d work my ass off.

We started climbing again toward the weight room, and I thought.

Who is Jamie? Oh, Jamie…Jamie…Jamie Dern…honky…grade older than me…dentist’s son. Have I ever said a word to him? Is he in the weight room now? What the hell would Gus think about this? He’d hate it. He’d make mean jokes. Should I tell him? He might not even respond to my email. I don’t have to tell him anything. Why don’t I hate it? Why do I want to do what Cody says? How did I get so damn big? When will I stop growing hair? What if I keep growing and growing and growing? What if I turn into King Kong? (Accidentally smash Ken Johnson?) What if I have to move to an island away from people because I crush them if I live among them?

We popped into the putrid-smelling weight room.

“When’s your birthday, Reinstein? It’s coming up, right?”

“July 31st.”

“I’m going to throw you a party.”

“Oh, thanks.” I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.

And then we lifted weights. Jamie Dern was up there, pumping it like the rest of the yahoos. At one point, after a couple poop-stinkers prodded him, he came over to where me and Cody were. He said he wouldn’t give up his spot without a fight, but he didn’t look mad or anything. Maybe he looked relieved? He actually shook my hand. And even though I could keep up, pumping weight and shouting gah and sweating and stinking and lifting because I’m apparently naturally strong, at the end, I was so exhausted that I could barely walk.

“That’s what I’m talking about! That’s what I’m talking about!” Cody shouted.

Sort of couldn’t walk. Before we left, Cody made me go down to the gym. He handed me a basketball. He said, “Dunk it, Reinstein.”

“I can’t. I can barely touch the net.”

“No. Dunk it.”

I looked up. Half the honkies of the world were hanging over the weight room railing, staring down at me. I got a burst of adrenaline. I bounced the ball once, looked up at the rim, took about five steps, sprung up, and stuffed the ball through hard with my right hand.

“Holy effing crap!” I shouted.

“Woooo!” Cody shouted.

“Jesus, Rein Stone,” someone shouted from above.

“You’re big,” Cody smiled.

Then my legs turned to rubber, and I almost fell over. Cody and I shuffled to his truck, and he drove me home. When he stopped in front of my house, he said, “This is going to be a great summer.”

“Yeah,” I smiled and then climbed down from the cab. “Thanks, man.”

I went in through the garage door and avoided Andrew and Jerri, who were upstairs talking. I showered but couldn’t get the smell out of my nose. Pee smell. I wondered if I would smell vaguely of pee for the rest of my life? A brawny pee-smeller with fur and muscles. I wondered if it was worth it. I figured it was. I already knew it was. Definitely.
“Did you notice your brain didn’t talk to itself the entire time you were lifting?”
the voice in my head asked. That’s great. Maybe I’ll learn to enjoy the pee smell. I thought of my dad and the smell in the Volvo. I sniffed and crinkled my nose. Weird smell. Then I coated myself in deodorant. I literally put deodorant on my whole body. Slip slop. Smelled like flowers soaked in pee. Gross.

The doorbell rang.

Oh, no.

Aleah.

Andrew.

Jerri.

Me.