Stupid Fast (9 page)

“I sometimes wonder, I guess, about other pianists. Not very much though.”

“I guess you won’t know for sure until you’re older and can fight it out with them in competitions for adults.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think about that.”

“No?”

“No. I practice at night.”

“That’s pretty dedicated. That probably tells you you’re the best, huh?”

“No, no, no.”

“No?”

“Stop saying no!”

“No.”

“Stop!” She grabbed my arm and squeezed. She laughed. Then she slid her hand down and grabbed my hand. We walked holding hands, which made me totally dizzy and sort of sweaty.

Om shanti shanti shanti.

“Go on please,” I exhaled.

“While I’m playing, I sometimes wonder if there’s a girl like me in London—that’s where my mom lives.”

“Wow. That’s cool.”

“Yes. Not really. I mean London is cool, but my mom isn’t.”

“Oh. Because she’s got too much life in her?”

“I guess. And she’s crazy and mean.”

“I hear that,” I laughed. Aleah laughed too. I’m not sure what we were laughing at.

“So I wonder about a girl playing in London or in Germany or Japan or something, who’s playing during the daytime because it would be daytime there while I’m at the piano, and maybe she’s practicing the same piece as me, a girl who loves it as much as I do.”

“I bet you beat them with a stick,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean,” Aleah laughed.

Just then there was a loud booming sound behind us. Loud guitar and drums, heavy metal music. We both spun around, dropping our hands. The sound came from an old car that was driving really slow. The car stopped and then its engine revved.

“Who’s that?” Aleah asked.

“Townies,” I said.

Then whoever was driving jammed on the gas and accelerated like crazy, heading right toward us. Aleah and I jumped up on the curb. As the car passed, someone within shouted “Squirrel Nuts!” An egg crashed at my feet.

“The Randles,” I said.

“What?”

The car squealed around the corner. We heard it accelerate down the block and then squeal around another corner.

“Hmm,” I said. “They’re probably coming back around.”

“What are they going to do?” Aleah asked.

“Just be jerks,” I said. “Let’s cut through yards back to your place.”

We walked quickly behind the nearest house, tripping in the dark. The car came squealing around the corner onto Davis Street. As it passed, someone yelled, “You doin’ Aunt Jemima back there, Squirrel Nuts?”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I…I can’t believe they said that,” I said. We cut through several backyards, heading in the direction of her house. I was a little worried that we’d trip motion sensors and get caught in spotlights.

“Said what?” Aleah asked.

“That Aunt Jemima thing. This town sucks.”

“I hear worse than that at my private high school in the city, Felton.”

“You do?”

“I’m more concerned that you’re part of a gang fight.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why did they come after you?”

“They didn’t.”

“They threw an egg at you.”

“That’s Rick and Rob Randle. They throw eggs at everyone. They’re criminals.”

“Are they your friends?”

“No. Of course not.”

“How do you know their names?”

“This is Bluffton. I know everybody’s name.”

“Weird.”

We crossed another couple of yards and then were back on Hickory Street, Aleah’s street. As we got to her house, another car squealed around the corner and skidded to a halt under the streetlight at her corner. It was a new Honda. There were three smashed eggs on the hood. Jamie Dern leaned out the window. “Yo, Rein Stone. Have you seen the Randles? They egged Reese’s car.” Jason Reese was driving. A couple of other honky football players sat in the backseat. They leaned over to look at us.

“Yeah. They were just over on Davis.”

“Who’s that?” Jamie nodded at Aleah.

“This is Aleah.”

“Okay. Nice to meet you,” Jamie said to her. Then he shouted “Let’s go.” They were obviously pretty mad.

“He’s very polite for a gangbanger,” Aleah said as we stood in her driveway.

“Jamie? His dad’s a dentist.”

“Do you think he’ll shoot the Randles when he finds them?”

“No,” I laughed. “Plus, he won’t find them. There’s like a million miles of streets and highways and county roads, not to mention all the gravel roads. Jesus, the Randles could drive all the way to the Mississippi on gravel roads. Reese will just drive around and around and around until they get tired and stop for a Quarter Pounder. Then they’ll probably go to Kwik Trip for a slushy or maybe to Walmart to walk around.

“What if they do find the Randles?”

“Probably cut them.”

“Really?”

“With their knives.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, Felton. What will they do if they find the Randles?”

“There could be a fight but probably not. The Randles don’t want to fight football players because they’d get smeared. Football players don’t want to fight the Randles because they’d get in trouble. There could be some shouting, I guess. Probably somebody will flick the bird, shout some names, you know, “You jerks, clean up this egg from my mom’s car or I’ll punch your nuts off!” But it won’t be a big deal. Tomorrow night, the same thing will happen all over again. Eggs. Chasing. Quarter Pounders. Crap goes on and on. Ten years from now, Jamie Dern will probably be a dentist.”

“Weird. What about the Randles? What will happen to them?”

“They’ll go to jail for stealing cigarettes. Their stinky kids will eventually be on Main Street playing video games.”

“Really?”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Weird.”

“It’s the circle of life.”

“I like this town.”

“Are you crazy?”

“The stakes are low.”

“That’s true. Low stakes. Yup.”

I followed Aleah back up toward her house. I wanted to go inside with her. She stopped me on the stoop.

“It’s time for me to practice,” she said.

“Piano?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”
Oh, man! No!

“I’ll be playing for you when you drop off the paper.”

“Don’t you ever sleep, Aleah?”

“All day long, all summer long.” Then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “See you in the morning, Felton.” She opened the door and went in.

I stood there for a second, stunned. Then I called after her, “I’ll tell Jerri not to come over tonight with her wine,” but the door had already shut behind her.

Then my cell started buzzing in my pocket.

***

“Where the hell are you? You left two hours ago. Aren’t you tired of riding your bike?”

I’d just answered my cell and was in Aleah’s driveway climbing on my bike one-handed so I could speak. “Why are you awake, Andrew? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” I was sincerely scared.

“I’m hungry.”

That’s not so bad.
I exhaled. “Is Jerri awake?”

“No. She hasn’t been up at all.”

“Get yourself something out of the fridge.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs. Can you come home please?”

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

Andrew hung up. I rode home slowly, sort of split between the monkey elation of Aleah’s lips touching my cheek and wariness over the Randles making a return and a mess of me with their eggs and also wariness over the Reinstein-Berbas making a mess of me with their true-life drama. The stakes weren’t really so low either. There aren’t low stakes. Jerri grew up in this town and married a professor that killed himself. The Randles probably wouldn’t die in gang violence, but they could easily get drunk and explode their Chevy against some tree out in the country. That definitely happened from time to time. Are the stakes low for the poop-stinker kids who get their arms ripped off by farm machinery? “Oh, no problem. I’ve got a whole other arm, Pa. Let’s bale that hay!” Easy come, easy go. Just another day in rural Wisconsin. I told Aleah a whole bunch of crap about driving around and being a honky or a criminal, and the fact is, I don’t know anything about it. Me, Peter, and Gus used to drive around sometimes, and I witnessed honkies shouting at the Randles and the like, but I have no idea what they do afterward. Would I find out, now that I’d been adopted into Honk Honk Honky culture?

Her lips touched my face. The stakes aren’t low.

I entered the house from the garage. Andrew was lying on the couch watching a horror movie. He didn’t even look at me. I pushed up his legs, sat down on the couch, grabbed the remote control out of his hand, and flipped the channel.

“Don’t watch that crap,” I said.

“Why not?”

“You’re afraid to go upstairs as it is.”

“Just don’t want to see our mother,” Andrew said.

“Yeah, she’s a horror movie,” I said.

“She certainly is.”

I pushed myself up and climbed the stairs to the living room. No lights were on. With a twinge of fear, I moved to the hall light switch. The last thing I wanted to see was some grizzly death scene involving Jerri. But when I turned on the light, she was nowhere to be found. I moved down the hall and could hear Jerri breathing in her room.

A voice came from her bed.

“Felton, is that you?”

“Yeah. You okay, Jerri?”

“I feel like shit. Probably shouldn’t drink wine.”

“I guess not.”

“Is Andrew okay?”

“Yeah. He’s watching TV in the basement.”

“Good. I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I turned and walked back into the kitchen. Jerri sounded a little better. I felt better. In the kitchen, I gathered a bunch of chips and salsa and junk and some sparkling waters out of the fridge and took it downstairs to Andrew.

“Jerri isn’t dead,” I told him, putting the food on the side table.

“We’re truly blessed,” Andrew said.

Man, he looked beat up. There were dark circles under his eyes, and there was some dry grass in his hair. He had smudges of dirt on his cheeks. The light from the TV made him look pale and fragile. Man, he just looked bad! I honestly felt a little guilty for being so happy. I almost couldn’t keep it inside. I almost said, straight up jackass style, “Aleah Jennings kissed my cheek. This cheek! This one on my face!”

I didn’t tell Andrew anything. We watched
George Lopez
, a show we both hate, in silence, except for the crunching of our chips.

Andrew fell asleep immediately after he ate the chips. Poor little dipshit. He snored sort of soft, and I stood up to go to bed. I couldn’t sleep though, so I checked email, hoping to find something from Gus. He hadn’t responded. There was another message from Cody:
dad told me about your mom. you ok, man? check this out.
He sent a link to a website with a bunch of videos of asswipe Ken Johnson playing football. More crushing tackles and fumbles and touchdowns and crap that made me nervous. It had all kinds of recruiting information, height and weight and track times and other physical tests and an interview with Ken where he acted all cool and serious and good about helping his college team be great. Bullshit. Cody wrote that I’d get a page on this site too.
I’ve never played football!
I closed Cody’s email.

Andrew snored outside my room. Jerri slept upstairs. Tough day.

But really, Jerri actually seemed okay. I figured she’d had her little blowup and things would go back to normal, which was not normal but was normal for me. I couldn’t wait to get up and see Aleah playing piano. I couldn’t believe that at
that
moment, a few miles away, she was awake too, practicing. Even though Gus hadn’t responded to my earlier email, I wrote to him:
I am a very lucky young man with a girlfriend.

Gus immediately responded by email:
what girl wants you? must be cow.

Was that supposed to be funny? Why didn’t Gus respond to my serious email about Jerri being crazy? What a jerk! Cody asked how I was doing. Gus said only a cow would like me.

Then I started wondering why Aleah would like me. She didn’t know anything about me, except I have a weird family. Then I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep because anger boiled in my gut about what Gus said, and I wanted to yell at him for being a jerk, but I couldn’t because he was on another continent. I worried that Aleah wouldn’t like me once she figured me out because there wasn’t much to like. What if I do date cows? Real cows? What if they moo and chew grass and smell terrible?

I suppose I drifted off to sleep but not for a long, long time. Gus had gotten all my emails and responded to just that one
and
he responded like a total jerk.

***

Because I had such a hard time falling asleep, I got up very late. Most of the night, I hallucinated about Aleah’s piano and feeding Andrew chips and getting crushed on recruiting websites and dating cows. Awake, sort of, but having nightmares! Finally, when I had to get out of bed, I couldn’t get out of bed. Jesus! I was so late for the paper route!

No problem. Going to her house. She’ll be playing piano for me.

But Aleah wasn’t playing piano for me when I arrived.

I was dizzy with sleepiness, even though I’d been gunning it, running up to doors, handing the paper to angry dudes dressed for business.
“Just want to check the Brewers score before work. That too much to ask?” “No way, Mr. Dickweed! Sorry I’m not here earlier! Much prefer to hand you the paper when you’re in your boxer shorts so I can see Wee Willy Wanky poking out.”
Like they couldn’t just check the Internet anyway.

By the time I got to Aleah’s, the sun was completely up, and although it looked like morning, it was definitely the day part of morning, not dawn anymore.

The garage door at Gus’s place was open, and Aleah was resting against the back end of her dad’s Volvo. She was wearing purple bike shorts and a tiger-striped bike helmet. “Holy cow. There you are! I’ve been waiting for an hour!”

“Holy cow?”

“Oh, does that sound dumb, farm boy?”

“Um, no. I don’t like cows.”

“Why not? They’re cute.”

“Yeah. What are you doing?” I sort of laughed because of her crazy bike attire.

“I want to go on the rest of the paper route with you.”

“Where’s your bike?”

“I don’t have a bike. We were going to buy a bike for me when we got here, but haven’t yet. I do have my bike helmet though!”

“I can definitely see that. And bike shorts.”

“They have a butt pad, so I’ll be comfortable on your seat.”

“Am I supposed to run along beside you?”

“No.”

“I mean, I will.”

“No, you’re going to chauffeur me.”

I got off the bike and ran a paper up to the stoop. Ronald Jennings opened the screen door before I could. “Yo, Felton!”

“Hi, Mr. Jennings.”

“Aleah’s hell bent on going with you. Make sure she drives some. I’d like her to get a little exercise too.”

“Okay,” I said.

Aleah was holding my Schwinn Varsity steady when I got back. We had to try like five different ways, but we finally figured out how to get both of us on it. Mr. Jennings laughed his ass off at us.

“Hold it steady, Felton. Get Aleah perched on that seat first.” He was right. That worked.

I had to press on the pedals like a dang elephant to get us moving. Aleah held on to my hips to stay balanced. We were totally unsteady and were laughing and laughing.

As we biked down the block toward the next house, it occurred to me that Ronald was being pretty nice.

“Why’s your dad so nice to me?” I asked.

“He knows about your dad from the college,” Aleah said. “He told me all about it this morning. He knows you’re a good kid too.”

“Oh.” All about it? What all about it?
You’re a good kid?

“And, of course, he’s dying for me to be a happy girl.”

“Why?”

“Duh! My mom moved to England last winter!”

“Oh. Yeah. Was she living with you before she moved?”

“Yes. She left right out of me and Daddy’s apartment after she spent about five years yelling at us.”

“Nice.”

“Uh huh. Daddy said she was too young when they got married and she didn’t know who she was, and when she figured it out, she had an apartment and a husband and a little girl, and it drove her crazy.”

“That’s a lot of information.”

“Too much?”

“No. No. I mean, I’m surprised you know all that stuff. That your dad told you.”

Just then we rolled up to the next stop on the route, and I leaned the bike, which completely toppled us. Thankfully, we fell on grass next to the curb, not on a sidewalk.

“Oh my God!” Aleah laughed. We lay there on our backs laughing, spread-eagled on the yard. Then I did it. Just a burst. I rolled over and gave her a kiss on the lips.

“I didn’t mean at all that you were telling me too much.”

We stared at each other, my face like two inches above hers. Heart pounding. She’s so beautiful. We were probably lying there staring at each other for two weeks when somebody spoke above us.

“Excuse me. Could I get the paper?” It was the lady who lived there. She was none too pleased.

I jumped up and pulled a rumpled paper out of my bag. The woman grabbed it out of my hand, turned, and walked back to the house, mumbling, “Kid thinks he’s on a date. He’s got a job. This isn’t a date.”

Aleah and I quietly mounted the Schwinn, repeating our successful procedure from her driveway. About twenty feet down the road, Aleah whispered in this nasal tone that mimicked the woman, “This is a job, kid. You want a date, go to the roller rink. A paper route isn’t a date.”

“You’re funny,” I turned back to look at her, smiling my ass off.

“Oh, yes, I am,” Aleah whispered dramatically.

Then we hit a parked car (we were going really slow, of course).

It seriously was pretty smart of Aleah to wear her helmet. We could’ve sustained major head injuries no fewer than fifteen times as we teeter-tottered, occasionally crashing, through the rest of the stops.

Finally, we arrived at the crown jewel of the route: the nursing home.

“Do they really read?” Aleah asked.

“I don’t think so, but they get the paper.”

We both limped toward the front door. I actually had a welt on my thigh from the car collision. Because it was late, the old ladies were milling about in the common area at the front of the home.

“Let’s move fast. I don’t like the smell in here.”

“I don’t like it in here period,” Aleah said.

We rounded a corner, dropped off a paper in one room, then hit another spot down the hall where one of the only old men in the place lay sleeping on his back, the TV on in front of him, his mouth wide open. We dropped another off in an empty room (the one where I almost always find a half-naked lady who wants me to help her escape) and then high-tailed it toward the front to drop two off at the nurses’ desk. We flew around a corner and were instantly face-to-face with the younger woman who freaks when she sees me. On cue, she screamed bloody murder, turned, and ran down the hall, spitting and mumbling.

“What was that about?” Aleah asked.

“She’s a total nut bag,” I said. “She screams like that every time.”

“She’s like my mom’s age. They take just flat-out crazy people here, not just old ones?”

“I guess they do.”

We dropped the papers off with the nurses, hit the security code on the front door (1, 2, 3—
Genius! No one will ever figure it out!
), and then left the building. We were finished with the route.

As I held the bike to let Aleah get on, she paused.

“You mind if I do an experiment?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Wait here a second please.”

Aleah went back into the nursing home. She was gone for about five minutes. I had no idea what she was up to.

When she returned, she was nodding.

“That lady in there is terrified of you.”

“Well, yeah. That’s apparent.”

“I mean, just you. She didn’t look at me at all when she screamed. She was staring only at you.”

“So?”

“So I found her sitting at a table tearing a picture of George Clooney out of a
People
magazine, and I asked her how she was, and she smiled at me and said her breakfast was mushy, and she hoped they had something better for lunch.”

“Maybe she’s scared of men?”

“Hello? Tearing out a picture of George Clooney?”

“Maybe she was tearing it up.”

“Don’t think so. She gave George a kiss while I was standing there.”

“Maybe she’s scared of real-life men. Flesh and blood men. Real big hairy and muscley men.” The conversation was actually making me nervous.

“You’re not that hairy.”

“I’m pretty hairy. You should see my belly button.” Okay, I was sounding stupid.
Shut up, Felton.

“I don’t know. I saw two male orderlies in that place, and they were both plenty big and hairy, I’m sure.”

“Do you think I did something to her?”

“I’m just saying she specifically doesn’t like you.”

“Can’t win ’em all, I guess.” I felt sort of pissed. I looked down.

“It’s very important to me to figure out the mysteries of life,” Aleah said.

“Sometimes, it’s better not to know.” I continued to look down.

Aleah reached up and put her hand under my chin, raising my face so we made eye contact.

“I specifically do like you,” she said. “Specifically a lot.” She smiled.

“Why?” I could feel intense heat in my face and ears. I must’ve been blushing like a Christmas bulb.

“I don’t know yet. But it’s a mystery I’m interested in figuring out.”

“Me too,” I smiled.
Then I’ll write Gus to tell him why, the jerk.

“But that lady sure doesn’t like you.”

“Shut up!” I laughed.

We teeter-tottered home, nearly hitting the curb and nearly straying out into traffic. But we didn’t crash again, which sort of sucked because I wanted another excuse to roll over to her. I did consider intentionally crashing, but I didn’t want it to be forced and for me to seem like too much of a dork (after all, I’d already told her I have a hairy belly button).

When we got back to her house, we expertly slid off the bike.

“We’re good,” I said. Aleah and I fist-bumped. “And that was so dang fun.”

“Yes. It was great,” she said.

“Maybe I can stop by tonight?”

“Oh, well, actually, I wanted to say that I can’t really do anything at night except for Fridays and Saturdays because that’s my weekend.”

“Why?”

“If I want to be a professional pianist, I have to act like one. I couldn’t focus very well after last night. I kept thinking about you. I need to focus.”

“No, okay. That makes sense.” I felt a little sad. I don’t know what I was expecting. That we’d spend every last minute with each other for the rest of our whole long lives, I guess.

“You can come in for breakfast if you want though. Daddy’s probably left for school.”

“Oh, crap. What time is it? Oh, shit,” I said.

“What?”

“I’ve got weights. It’s late, right? Cody’s coming to pick me up.”

“What’s weights?”

“Weight lifting. Weights.”

“You lift weights?”

“Football.”

“You play football?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m a D-I prospect. That’s the only reason I can even talk to you.”

“What?”

I stopped my scrambling, looked Aleah straight in the eye, and said, “I like you specifically. A lot. I can’t say any more without making a total dipshit out of myself, okay?”

“Very mysterious,” Aleah smiled. “See you soon, my football player.”

That’s right! That’s it! I’m not a football player. I’m her football player. I’m Aleah Jennings’s football player! I’m very close to acting like a complete retard! Go! Felton! Now!

I totally bolted.

“Well, maybe you can watch me practice sometime,” Aleah shouted after me.

This is turning into a great summer, I thought. I biked home bursting, without any consideration of what I might find there.