My ass is killing me.
Just checked. No word on the flight. I am very stressed out.
Do you get stressed out, Aleah? The only time I’m not at least a little stressed is when I’m playing something (like football or Frisbee). Track is sort of stressful to me (not the practice part, but the actual events, because everything is riding on one shot—which I don’t react well to sometimes—like when I false-started and barfed at Regionals when I was a sophomore). Even with football, recruiters stress me out, so I don’t know if I’ll enjoy playing this year.
Jesus, I really, really don’t want to spend my whole life feeling like that. I don’t want to stay awake half the nights of my freaking life sweating sweaty bullets, Aleah.
Do you ever wonder if you’re not cut out for life? You probably don’t. I know you don’t. I wonder about my dad. Is this how he felt?
• • •
The morning Gus and I hatched our plan, I actually studied the one picture we have of Dad in the house. It’s the only one Jerri saved, remember? As part of Jerri’s new-style peacemaking with the past in February, she put the picture on the refrigerator. In it, I’m like a toddler, blurry big head in the front left-hand corner. Jerri and Dad are behind me, him behemoth and square-jawed and happy, with the same Jewfro hair that I have. Jerri looks young and pretty and happy (which I know wasn’t the case).
Dad looked happy.
He wasn’t happy. He couldn’t have been.
I want to be happy, not look happy.
Gus called while I sat at the table staring down at that thing.
“So, you have an idea?” Gus asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said. I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to say it. (I knew Gus would do something with it, start plan making.) I took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to go to a football camp at the University of Michigan this weekend. You want to drive me there, but not drive me there?”
“Oh,” Gus said.
“Uh-huh,” I said. I could feel myself flush. Fear.
“Oh hell, yeah.” I could hear Gus thinking. Gus’s gears turned. “I can work with that. Uh-huh. I think I need to make an academic visit to the University of Michigan,” he said.
“Yeah. That makes sense,” I said.
“Good school. Mama Teresa will like this…”
“Mama Jerri might not,” I said.
“Call you back in a bunny breath, dude.”
It took Gus ten minutes to get back to me. (The whole time, I stared at my dad’s picture and got more and more hesitant to go to Florida and face my grandfather. Why is Andrew so interested in the family, I wondered. Why isn’t he scared?)
“Okay,” Gus said. “Michigan is the fourth-ranked public university in the country. I used that. The parents are in.”
“Oh shit,” I said.
“They’re giving me a credit card for the gas and the Motel 6 I pretended to book, and a Triple A card, whatever the hell that is.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Only one hitch—my dad wants me to meet up with an acquaintance of his from grad school. I’ll figure a way around that.”
“Why are they so easy?” I asked, really not believing it.
“You get near perfect on the SAT, you get what you want,” Gus said.
It’s true. He missed like one freaking question.
“How about Jerri?” he asked.
“She really wants to drive me. She wants to see Aleah’s dad for some reason.”
“Let me talk to her. You’ll mumble and crap. You sound like a liar even when you’re not lying.”
He’s right. I do sound like a liar. Also, isn’t it weird that I didn’t know about our parents’ affair in June? Did you know, Aleah?
We decided Gus would come over before dinner to talk to Jerri. (He said flat out he wouldn’t stay for dinner because he wasn’t going to eat another shitbag, veggie-slop, Jerri-made meal ever again.)
• • •
Wait…
Someone is saying my name on the loudspeaker?