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I hit a brick wall, or so I think, that just appears out of nowhere. Diego glances over my shoulder, and I realize someone else is here. Two someones, to be exact.
“I think my friend needs a hand to the back hallway,” Diego smiles sympathetically.
Ansel starts to slide out of the booth but Diego blocks him off.
“I’ll keep track of her,” Ansel objects.
“Oh, excuse me just a moment,” Diego mutters, cutting Ansel off completely.
And then I am moving, propelled across the empty dance floor, swimming through the swirling lights with a man on either side of me. This is definitely the way I wanted to go, and I am a little bit grateful that I don’t have to do it under my own steam.
These guys just seem to know exactly where I need to be. They escort me to the ladies’ room, then politely stand aside, looking away.
“I’ll just—”
“We’ll be right here,” says one.
“Take your time,” says the other.
No idea what just happened there, but something tells me I should be grateful. I slip into the ladies’ room, as if washed in there by an invisible tide.
Chapter 7
ZEKE
The guys like to complain about the frat house, but this is seriously the nicest place I ever lived. Everything works, at least most of the time. There is always a fridge full of food. There’s even two housekeepers who come five days a week to keep it from smelling… like a frat house.
Yeah, we are short on privacy. Yeah, some of our parties get out of hand. The yard could get some attention. But in general, it’s really nice. All the windows have screens. All the walls are painted. No holes. Carpeting is only a few years old.
I’m on scholarship. Football seemed like a good way to waste time in middle school. In high school I grew like a weed, they told me. I got big, but I stayed fast. Puberty was on my side.
Friday nights, what else are you going to do in a small farm town but play some football, pick up some girls, try to give your friends the ass-whoopings they so richly deserve?
About junior year, these college scouts started to follow me around. Not just home games, either. Away games too. The same few guys, always showing up to the game. They would see me after, shake my hand, slap me on the shoulder.
Eventually, one of them caught my dad at a game, and they started talking. By the end of the third quarter, they had everything pretty much mapped out. The next four years of my life, bought and paid for.
Which is how I got here, and the rest of my family stayed there. Still living in that frame house by the corn cribs. Still going to Friday night games even after my brother graduated high school.
One day, it is all going to pay off. All this work. All these years… I’m going to graduate, get an amazing teaching job, and it’s going to be better for all of us. Everything will change.
I can get them out of that house. Get my dad new truck. Maybe even get my mom to go to school. She always wanted to be a nurse or a librarian or something. I don’t even know.
I can feel it. It’s all going to work out.
After class, I only have a couple of hours to get something to eat, get my work done, and head for practice. I grab three Clif Bars from the kitchen and head up to my room. I stop at the door, chewing and surprised.
“Hey,” says my brother, Frankie, raising an arm to wave at me.
“Oh, hey,” I answer, swallowing. “Just make yourself at home.”
Frankie wriggles back against the quilt, like our German shepherd used to do.
“You know what? Scratch that,” I correct myself. “Stop making yourself at home. What are you doing here?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot,” Frankie groans, pushing himself up to sit, letting his big boots clomp on the floor.
The mattress sags dangerously in the middle under his weight. He’s a big guy. He could have played football too, but he didn’t go that way. He’s more mechanical. He’s almost two years into the auto-repair curriculum at the junior college near our parents’ house.
