Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,39

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.

CHAPTER 23: MAYBE I DON'T NEED GUS?

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: