Holy Balzac. I’m a tremendous dork. When the plane took off, I totally whooped. Like, “Wooo-hoo! Yeah!” Everybody turned and looked at me.
Planes are very, very fast. Exciting.
Embarrassing.
I wish I could act like I look. I’m a big-looking man, Aleah—I know that from seeing pictures of me—but I feel like a dumb little kid a lot (and act like one). It was awesome taking off. Am I a dumb little kid?
No. I turned seventeen a couple weeks ago. Remember last year when you played piano for me, and your dad cooked me chocolate-chip pancakes for my birthday? That was before I became the best high-school football player in the state of Wisconsin. (I’m not trying to brag, just tell the truth.) That was right when I figured out I look and act like my dad (loaded situation, you know?). Big year.
Whoa. We’re above the dang clouds. This is awesome. (At least I’ll write it if I can’t shout it without everyone giving me the crazy eyeball. Woo.)
Okay, so here’s why I’m writing. It all went wrong.
Even though I was totally freaked this spring, worried about football recruiters and defeating my enemies, etc., I had no inkling that things had gone wrong until Gus got really mad at me on March 24. (The next week was our bad week, if you’ll recall.)
Later—when we were talking again—Gus told me about Narcissus. He actually called me a narcissist, which is a medical term for somebody whose head is stuck in his own ass.
Ha-ha. Gus. Funny guy.
On March 24th, Gus called me about a hundred times. I didn’t call him back, which makes me a donkey, apparently. I was in Madison at the State Indoor Track Meet. How could I call?
I could’ve called him later.
Gus left messages that I didn’t hear until the bus ride home. “Felton, I have to know today. Prom? Limo? Maddie will pay for a third. Aleah’s coming up, right? Call me, you rank taco dip!”
(You didn’t come up for prom, did you?)
When I heard his message, I thought, Jesus. Prom? It’s only freaking March. Give me a break. I have bigger stuff to worry about.
I had stuff to worry about, I guess.
Here’s what you don’t know because you stopped talking to me. There was a huge crowd at the track meet. All these college coaches from all over the country were there to see me race Roy Ngelale, that Nigerian kid I told you about who plays football too. (Game against us this coming Friday.) Roy “The Nigerian Nightmare” Ngelale. I actually didn’t notice all the coaches at first, which is good for me because I don’t run well when I’m thinking about scholarships and coaches and my future.
Both Roy and me breezed into the 60-meter final. And I felt good. Loose. Powerful. Generally, nothing bothers me when I run (other than recruiters).
Right before the final, Roy and I shook hands. We were in Lanes 3 and 4. He sort of looked nervous. I hadn’t seen the college coaches, so I wasn’t.
When the starter started his business, supercharged nitroid kangaroo power inflated my body. Take your marks…exhale…set…drink rocket fuel…BAM!
I exploded and the red track blurred. I saw nothing but color, no other runner near me, just waves of red and the color of fans blending in the stands.
Whizzzz (the sound of me running…sort of sounds gross, huh?).
At the string I’d run the fastest high-school 60 in state history. I killed Roy Ngelale and the whole stadium went totally nuts. The loudspeaker dude blurted, “That’s a new state record!” Karpinski and those guys fell all over, crashing over the railing high-fiving each other and screaming.
Aleah. I know you sort of know…but seriously. I am very fast. That’s a given, I guess.
Unfortunately, after the race, all these college coaches waved at me, gave me thumbs up and crap, although they couldn’t speak to me due to NCAA rules. I was all like, uhhh…because after that, I knew they were there.
Back in the stands, Cody said, “Dude, if there was any doubt before, there’s none left. You’re the top recruit in the state.”
I nodded but thought, Don’t screw it up…don’t screw it up…
Listen, I have a serious problem performing in front of dudes who hold my future in their hands. They start my head monkey-talking. And, in the next race, the 200 final, they caused me to seriously run weird.
In the blocks, I was totally aware of the guy in the gold and blue standing at the railing. I thought: Michigan. He stood next to another guy in a red and white shirt, with a little tree on his boob. I thought: Stanford. I should’ve been thinking, Explosion. I should’ve been filling with Jamaican Kangaroo Juice. Instead, I felt weak pools of tar in my legs and my heart pumped funny.
When the gun popped, I struggled out of the blocks. My brain said, Run fast. Jerri won’t have to pay for college. This is your future! My legs said, We are made of elephant turds. Because I was out front of Ngelale on the stagger, I still led the race for most of the way (me sort of odd-running, sort of stumbling down the track). He was not bumbling, though. He flat-out flew and he caught me on the final curve. (Indoor track curves are tight.) Then we were stride for stride down the straightaway (lots of crowd screaming) and right together when we crossed the line.
Because I ran funny (not my normal easy stride), something weird happened in the last few meters. It felt like a tiny man had a wrench cranked on one of the tendons in my hamstring. I actually slowed a little, I’m sure. And I was thinking, Huh? What is that little pain? Turns out short hamstrings are a genetic Reinstein disorder. I didn’t know that then. I thought, Huh???
At the line, Ngelale threw his arms over his head and screamed like he was the king of the whole world, because he thought he got me. He turned back to me and hugged me, and I hugged him back and said good job, but I wasn’t even worried about whether I’d won or not. I worried that I’d forgotten how to run. I worried that I had a little man in my hamstring, and I bent over and thought, What in the hell is that? and started massaging the little man, trying to get him to go away.
Unfortunately, just as I bent over, a photographer for the State Journal snapped a picture (me bent over, rubbing my leg in front of Roy Ngelale’s groin…he standing above me screaming, his arms in the air).
The crazy thing is this: even with my terrible race, the electronic clocks had me beating Roy by like a hundredth of a second, which made him throw a pretty bad temper tantrum and threaten to kill me in our football game (coming this Friday!), which doesn’t really scare me (not like football scholarships scare me).
Still, it was a terrible day.
What did I get for winning two indoor track titles? A hamstring strain, an intensifying complex about running in front of college coaches, and a vaguely pornographic news photo, which was distributed all over the state of Wisconsin in the newspaper the next day (and was used against me the following week).
And, I got this: while I was still at the meet, my hamstring man hurting, Gus called and called and called, and I didn’t return his calls so his messages got bitchier.
“What part of call me now don’t you understand? Come on, Felton. CHOP-CHOP!”
And then, I think, he started going super crazy, which seemed wrong at the time but, in retrospect, makes perfect sense.
After the team got home, I went over to Cody’s house to eat some burgers and brats with everyone. (I did not enjoy this, as I’d stopped enjoying everything.) While we were all sitting outside Cody’s on those white plastic lawn chairs (fifty-five degrees, warm for March) and shooting the crap, my phone kept buzzing and buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, which is crazy. Gus called every minute for like twenty minutes—until I turned off my phone.
“Who is blowing you up, man? Your mom?” Reese asked.
“Nobody,” I said. I didn’t worry about Gus at all.
Later that night, when I turned my phone on to call you, I had twenty-five new messages from Gus (all of them crazy—“You’re a butt munch, man!” etc.). While I was calling you, he called again, which sort of freaked me out, you know?
And he called again while I was leaving you a message and again while I texted you to call me, which you didn’t, which began to seriously freak me out, because why weren’t you returning my texts or calls?
Turns out, while Gus was calling to curse me out, you were talking over Germany with Ronald, right? You couldn’t call me because you were in “Serious Discussions about Your Future.”
What happened to our future?
I know. We’re just kids. Children…
Gus didn’t stop calling until like eleven that night (when I turned off my phone again).
I woke up Sunday morning thinking about him, feeling bad about him. He’s been my best friend my whole life. I called him to say sorry for not answering, sure he’d understand that I’d had a rough day.
He answered and said, “You are dead to me, Felton Reinstein.” Then he hung up.
I called back. He didn’t answer.
I called again. Nothing.
For some reason, right then, I remembered this time, this sunny day, when Gus and I were both in diapers, running through a sprinkler, our dads laughing so hard because our diapers got so huge and loaded with water that we looked like we had elephant privates and butts. Squish, squish. I can still feel how heavy that diaper was on me.
“You are dead to me, Felton Reinstein.”
I did feel sort of bad, but remember my head was in my ass, so I forgot about it.
Holy crap. We’re already going down. That’s because Madison and Chicago are really close (in the air—doesn’t feel so close in the car, does it?).
I have to find the gate for the Fort Myers flight at O’Hare when we land. O’Hare is supposedly the busiest airport on the planet. Nice. My ears hurt. Jerri told me to chew gum, but I forgot to get gum. My ears! Feels like my brain is trying to suck air through my dang ears.
• • •
You flew out of O’Hare on your way to Germany, I bet.
This is what I want to say: I was a really messed-up person when you broke the news that you were going to Germany for the summer. Narcissus, head in butt. Gus called me dead. Hamstring man. Weird newspaper picture. It got worse too.
Ow. Ears.
I’m not making any excuses, Aleah. Okay?