Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,40
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