Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,45
property at some point.”
“Why don’t you visit your friends?”
“What friends?”
“Music friends.”
“Janie left with her parents for the summer. She’s the only one with a serviceable piano.”
“You’ve got other friends.”
“I don’t,” Andrew spat, turning his head, glaring. “I don’t have friends, okay?”
“Okay. Whatever. You can’t come to weights with me. You’re too young. You’d hate it up there anyway. It smells bad.”
“You smell bad.”
I felt heat rise in my face, but I really didn’t want to fight poor Andrew.
“I know. I’m a jock. Jocks smell, right?”
“Very bad,” he nodded.
“Fine,” I said. I went inside, slamming the door, and changed into lifting clothes. When I got back out to the garage, Cody was pulling up the driveway. Andrew was still digging through junk.
“Your smelly friend is here,” Andrew said without looking up.
“I know. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yes, you will, Felton. I’ll be here with Jerri sex book, digging through dirt piles, trying to find the key.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s roll,” Cody shouted.
“Never mind, Felton.”
Andrew was very irritating, okay?
Ken Johnson wasn’t at weights that morning, and that meant I could be totally free to concentrate and pump iron because I loved pumping iron and that second week of lifting, I could already feel this big difference—like my arms were muscley jungle snakes that could crush stuff. Yo, check out my pythons! And I just wanted to lift more and more weight.
After weights, Cody threw passes to just me and Karpinski. We went up on the field furthest from the school, where we could see the big M, the big Mound, the big bluff east of town where Dad jogged all those years ago (and I ate a rock), and me, Karpinski, and Cody just did pattern after pattern. Because Cody didn’t have a baseball game until Monday of the next week, he threw and threw and threw, and we ran and ran and then Karpinski fell over because he was going to barf if he ran anymore, and I just kept running and catching and running and catching, never dropping the ball, never stopping, not thinking at all. It was seriously like breathing to me, like taking a big breath and letting it slide out. Run, catch, run, catch, breathe, breathe, run, catch, and nothing else existed except the ground, my legs, my hands, the ball. I could’ve gone on forever. Cody could’ve too. We wouldn’t have stopped except Karpinski shouted, “Goddamn it, I’m hungry! Aren’t you done yet? Let’s get the hell out of here!”
He sort of woke me up. I sort of felt like I was in a trance.
“That was awesome,” Cody said.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“Recruiters’ wet dream,” he said.
Then we went to Walmart to get a sandwich and water.
Karpinski shouted out the window the whole way, at everyone, everything, people, cars, trucks, dogs.
“Hey, dawg,” he shouted at a barking dog, which was jumping behind a chain-link fence on Mineral Street. “You want a piece of me, dawg?”
The owner was on the front stoop of the house.
“You leave my dog alone!” he shouted as we rolled past
“Stick it in your ass!” Karpinski shouted, hanging out the window, flipping the bird back at the man.
“Jesus Christ, stop,” Cody said. “My dad’s a damn cop.”
At Walmart, I got an extra couple of sandwiches for Andrew. Thank God for my stupid, ridiculous paper route so I had money. I left them on Andrew’s bed. I saw him sitting at the dirty kitchen table eating them late in the afternoon, but he didn’t say thanks or anything. I walked down the hall and listened to Jerri breathing in her bedroom.
That night, I drove over to Karpinski’s with Cody to grill and watch an old football movie. Karpinski wouldn’t shut up. While we ate burgers that Karpinski’s mom (big hair lady, wears short shorts) grilled for us, Karpinski talked and talked and talked and talked, and everything that came out of his mouth was so stupid that I sort of felt like choking him to put him out of his misery.
“Shelby Adams is pretty hot, don’t you think? She’s got a big ass, but I like a big ass because what’s the point of a small ass. You might as well be dating your little skinny ass brother, and the last thing I’m going to think about when I’m all over Shelby Adams is your little brother, Rein Stone, so stop talking about him when I’m trying to talk about a chick’s ass. Just kidding, man. You know I’m kidding. You know who else is