Page 18 of The Rebel of Raleigh High
6
ALEX
Pretendingto learn guitar is a complete and utter waste of time, and playing a sport is pretty much identical to signing up for voluntary torture, but I have no other choice. There really is no way I’m joining the fucking debate team, and I have to make an effort to show Rhonda that I’m taking this shit seriously. If that means I have to strum out a few chords and bulldoze a handful of jocks on a football field, then so fucking be it.
The apartment issue’s going to have to wait for now. I have a roof over my head, but Rhonda was right; no judge in their right mind is going to look at the trailer I call home and sign off on it as a safe, secure place for a child. I’m going to need to bust my ass to make some cash for a deposit on a better place, in a better neighborhood, but that’s not really a concern right now. The money’s there to be made if I want it. And that in itself is my main problem. Getting another job that pays as well as my position at the bar is going to be challenging to say the least.
If only I could get paid toliefor a living, I’d be rolling in cold, hard cash by the end of the fucking week. I barely even blinked back in that bathroom when I told her I wasn’t interested in her. I sounded seriously unimpressed by the very idea that I might be into Silver, that I was laughing at the very concept of an attraction between the two of us. I managed to sound that way, even as I was fighting the urge to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist, pin her to that vile yellow tiled wall behind her and shove my tongue down her throat.
From the moment she dumped that bag on the desk in front of me, she’s been plaguing my thoughts, day and night. I tried to tell myself on the way to Raleigh this morning that guitar lessons were nothing but an easy way to get where I need to be with the family court, but I’m no fool. There are other reasons why I chose her…
I saw the embarrassment creeping into her expression when I cut her down; I know I got a rise out of her. And inside, in the very pit of my stomach, that hadn’texactlyfelt good. I did tell her the truth, though. I don’t want any drama, which means no romantic bullshit, no miscommunication, no stupid, childish games, and absolutely no distractions. Ben’s the only thing that matters right now, and I can’t afford to deviate from this course of action, no matter how weirdly drawn to her I feel.
Silver.
Who calls their kid Silver? I read about a kid named Bus Shelter in New Zealand once, so I suppose it could have been much worse, but still…
I make a conscious effort not to speak to another living soul for the rest of the morning. I’m so accustomed to existing in a heavy, sullen silence that having to string so many sentences together the moment I stepped foot inside the building this morning has put me in a bad fucking mood, and so I button my lip and keep myself to myself. Sam Hawthorne, one of the meatheads that was hanging out with that Weaving asshole in the hallway, tries to start shit with me. As I make my way to a back-row seat in Spanish class, second period, he shoves me, standing in the way, but I hold the fucker’s gaze, making it plain what'll happen to him if he doesn't move. He deflates like a popped balloon and scuttles off to sit by the window on the other side of the room.
After that, I wait for lunch to roll around, boiling away on a constant simmer. My best friend, Anger, has an issue with personal boundaries. It shows up uninvited nearly every day and makes a nuisance of itself, roaring in my ears, too brash, too loud, until I can’t hear anything over it. I’ve come to accept anger as a constant in life, just as I’ve accepted that the sky is blue (or rather grey, here in Washington), and that night follows day; it feels completely normal to be consumed by my own bubbling rage as I forge a path down the hallway once midday arrives, heading for the locker rooms.
This might actually be fun. Get out onto the field. Run so hard your lungs hurt. Feel your muscles burn. Remember you’re alive.
The track pants and the red ‘Raleigh High, Home of the Roughnecks’ t-shirt Maeve gave me fit well enough. I’d tossed them into my locker, fully intending never to use them, and yet here I am, two weeks into my Raleigh career, donning them in the hopes that I’ll be accepted onto the football team. At Bellingham, I did more than scorn the football team. I made it my own personal mission to disrupt as many of their games as possible. I flooded the field, stole the posts, spread manure from goal line to goal line, put Ipecac in the team’s Gatorade, until the principal finally began to suspect I had something to do with the repeat incidents and banned me from attending events or going within a hundred feet of the field. So now, stepping out onto Raleigh’s pristine, highly manicured field, this is all beginning to feel a little…hypocritical.
A tall guy with a ginger mustache is yelling at a kid on the other side of the grass, getting in his face as the kid stares down into the football helmet in his hands. He has to be a freshman. Must be. He’s reedy. Small, even for a fourteen-year-old. His immature physique isn’t helped any by the fact that he looks like he’s about to cry.
“How you’re related to your brother, I don’t fucking know. Your mom always was a little free with her affections. She spread her legs for a different dude every week when she attended Raleigh. Maybe she fucked the mailman and you, Oliver, are the unhappy byproduct. I don’t wanna see you back on this field until you’ve grown some fucking balls. You hear me? I don’t care if your brother runs this entire school. You won’t be embarrassing me by wearing that uniform until you’ve damn well earned it.” The coach glimpses me off to the right, watching the exchange, and he sets his jaw.
I learned at a young age to assess men very quickly; when you’re passed from pillar to post as often as I was, performing an accurate threat assessment on the guy who’s supposed to be looking out for you becomes a vital skill. This man is one of the worst kinds. I read a lot on him in the first three seconds when he straightens and faces me: power hungry, because inside he feels unvalued and worthless; ex-military, was probably deployed but sent home on health grounds. Mental health, I’m guessing. Guys like him don’t accept a fifty-one-fifty lying down. He probably fought it. Railed against the decision that he was unfit for service, and then became embittered and soured against the world when they forcefully ejected him from active duty.
He grew up without a father, which is how he inadvertently ended up here, pretending to be one to all of us poor, misguided miscreant youths. In the morning, when this harrowed, worn, rejected man gets out of bed and looks at himself in the mirror…he’s so unhappy with what he finds staring back at him that he takes it out on the world around him.
I have met his type before, and let’s just say this: it has never ended well.
“Alessandro Moretti. You don’t look Italian to me,” he says. There’s a large embroidered ‘Q’ on the left breast pocket of his ultra-white polo shirt. Presumably, this stands for Quentin—I already know this is the guy’s last name. It’s plastered all over the local newspaper clippings that are tacked to the notice board inside the locker room.
“Coach Bobby Quentin leads Raleigh Roughnecks to State.”
“Raleigh local, Coach Quentin, whips Roughnecks into shape pre-spring training.”
It all seemed pretty masturbatory. Grab a blue light and shine it on that notice board, and I’m fairly sure the whole thing’d be covered in Coach Bobby Quentin’s jizz.
I sigh down my nose. “What does an Italian look like?” I offer. “Isn’t that the same as telling someone they don’t look American?”
Quentin’s top lip curls up, signaling his confusion. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. You know what I mean. You’ve seen an Italian on T.V.”
This…is just about the strangest, weirdest, dumbest…fucking…thing I’ve ever heard in my life. “So…I’m supposed to look like Tony from the Sopranos? Five foot seven? Pudgy ’round the belly? Balding? Spaghetti sauce around my mouth?” I pretend to wipe something from my lip.
Quentin eyes me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m fucking with him or being serious. Man, the guy must have played football in high school himself. He’s definitely taken a few knocks to the head. After a long pause, his eyes narrowing further and further until they’re nothing more than slits, the coach slides his clipboard underneath his arm and points a finger at me. “I don’t appreciate your attitude, boy. And I didn’t like the Sopranos either. If you want to be a member of this football team, the sass has gotta go. Is it permanent, or is there an off switch? ’Cause if it’s permanent, you might as well walk off this field right now and don’t come back.”
Holy shit, I’d fucking love to do it—walk off this field and never come back. But I think of Ben, stuck at that bitch’s house, waiting for me to go get him, thinking I fucking abandoned him there and just left him, and I swallow down the fire in my throat. Hard. It’s really fucking hard to do. “I’m just here to try out. Nothing more. You won’t get any trouble from me.”
Quentin squints. Funnily enough, he looks just like James Gandolfini when he does it. “You a team guy?” he asks.
The winning smile I send his way must dazzle the shit out of him. “Sure am.” I refrain from mentioning that Maeve’s file on me clearly states, ‘Does Not Play Well With Others’ in big, bold letters on the very first page.
“Alright, then. Suicides. Move. And don’t you dare stop running ’til I say you can stop.”
