He drove me home so I could do that. He stayed in the living room, working on his reports, while I went upstairs to coax some life into my laptop so I could try to convince my professor that I wasn’t an idiot in the way that she thought. I hadn’t faked graphs and lied, but I had made the mistake of handing in a project that did those things. I wrote to her to explain what had happened and how, ultimately, it was my fault for not controlling the other people. I was able to show her the edit history and I sent over a previous version, one I had done alone. I asked if she would be able to grade that instead, at least for me. The other people in the group could figure out their own problems.
I waited a few minutes for an answer before I returned downstairs to find Shane. He was now in the kitchen, seated at the table with my brother Max. I walked in mid-sales pitch.
“It’s pretty much bound to succeed. It really can’t fail,” my brother was telling him. “It can’t lose because it’s me. It’s me, I’m the guarantee. I’m the guarantee.”
“This situation is entirely crappy andit’s me, I’m the guarantee.” I must have mumbled part of that out loud because they both looked up at me.
“I was just hearing all about your brother’s business idea,” Shane said. “As I explained to him, I don’t have extra cash to invest right now. Unfortunately,” he added nicely.
“Shane, you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. You’d be getting in on the ground floor of a business that’s going to explode.”
“Why would you want to be on the ground floor of something that’s going to explode?” I asked. “It seems like you’d want to run away.”
“Is it your purpose in life to piss me off?” Max asked me. “You know about mopping floors and filling ketchup bottles, not how to start your own business. Stay in your lane.” Then he turned to our guest and smiled. “What do you think? You’ll kick yourself later when this thing explodes. I mean, when it gets to be highly profitable.”
Shane stood up. “I’m not giving you any money,” he announced. “My job is to watch football players and drive around in my truck, and I still feel qualified to tell you that you have a bad plan that’s destined for failure, even with you as the guarantee. See you around.”
I trailed after him, back into the living room, where he looked at me and shook his head. “I remember what you said about the people you live with—”
“Jackoffs,” I filled in.
“What the heck is wrong with your family?”
“Let’s go,” I said. “I bet that my dad will leave Walter’s soon and he’ll come back here, since he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t want to see him again right now.”
I was pretty sure that Shane said something about avoiding my father for the rest of his natural life, but he was already on his way out the door so I wasn’t sure. And speaking of people who had nowhere to go…yes, I meant myself. I was always at the restaurant, school, or hiding in my bedroom. What would I do now?
“I guess I could hang out in the library at my college. It’s open for a few more hours,” I mused, checking the time. I had been avoiding the library ever since the video release, but that was dumb. I probably should have faced the people laughing at me, even though I didn’t want to.
“You could come with me,” he said. “I have things to do.”
“Sure, I’m in. What do you need?” I asked.
“You agreed very quickly. What if I said something terrible, like gravedigging?”
When I’d been a thirteen-year-old idiot, I had hung out in cemeteries and taken selfies with the tombstones, which I hoped would convince everyone that I really was cool. Really, I was! “I would prefer to avoid graves,” I said.
“Me too. I’m going to rent an apartment today,” he said.
“A nice one?”
“I think so.” He nodded. “I looked at one that sat on top of a mechanical room and another with a wavy orange line about midway up the wall.”
“Water damage?” I guessed. I had seen that when we’d had the flood at the restaurant.
He nodded again. “It came in from the parking lot. I said no to those places.”
“Do you want me to go over the lease for you? I’m pretty good at reading boring stuff,” I said. “I do it for the restaurant all the time.”
He was nodding but also kind of shaking his head, more like wobbling? It didn’t really make sense as a response.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Are you saying yes or are you saying no?”
“I don’t really need help with that, but it would be nice.”
I still watched him, not fully comprehending, but then my phone started to ring. Usually, that meant something awful because it was either my mom calling to sigh and say that she needed me at the restaurant, or it was my dad yelling and cursing about another problem. But this was my professor, so it could have been even worse.
We talked for a while as Shane’s truck crawled down the road and when we hung up, I was so relieved that I was shaking.
