“A little. We just met,” I say, finally, my delayed response clearly exposing my nerves.
“Hmm,” he says with a nod.
I pull my lips in tight, mostly to keep from saying anything else.
“Go on,” he says, after another painful pause.
Yes, sir. I only think it this time.
I round the clubhouse and look out on the track, where Hollis is about to lap someone. Zack hasn’t even finished tying his laces. My cousin is in trouble, but not as much as I am. If I want to make it to Vanderbilt, or anywhere like Vandy, I need to be at the top of my game. One midnight kiss, though, and my season is cursed. So help me if that vixen ends up calling my pitches.
2
Hollis Taylor
For a bedroom filled with so much crap, it’s weird how I can’t seem to find anything. We’ve been moved in for a month. That’s thirty days I’ve had to dump my clothes out of trash bags and put them into actual drawers. I miss my gym, though, and I found a place to lift and work out that I want to try. The only thing stopping me is locating my Nikes. I’m probably compounding things by the piles I’m making in the center of my floor while I search.
“Mom!” She’s going to rip me a new one the second she walks in, but her lecture is worth the use of her location superpowers. My mom can find anything. My dad reported a credit card missing last Christmas, before consulting her. The moment she found out he lost it, she walked straight out of the house and to the driveway where she began surveying the bushes. She plucked it from some branches in seconds and held it up proudly. He’d been holding it in his teeth while wheeling in the trash receptacles the night before and must have spit it out and forgot. She remembered; she always remembers.
“Jesus H. Ch—”
“I know. I’m working on it,” I lie, cutting off my mom’s assessment of my room mid-blaspheme.
She digs her fingertips into her forehead with both hands as she steps over the pile in the entryway and into the center of my room. Chin down and jaw tight, she holds back all the little comments I know she’d like to make about how could she have raised such a slob.
“Nikes,” I say. It’s best to give her a task.
She breathes out through her nose loud enough that I fully understand how irritated she is. She makes a slow quarter-turn while she scans the perimeter of my room and stops abruptly, letting out another huff that indicates I would have seen them myself if I only got my shit together.
“They are on your PlayStation, for whatever reason,” she says through a grimace.
“That’s right!” I leap over the new pile I made and grab my shoes before leaping toward my mom and kissing her on the cheek. “You’re the best.”
“Mmm hmm,” she hums.
“Keys?” I know, it’s a big ask considering the state of my room. My parents are suckers, though. With her tongue over her front teeth, she sucks in and reluctantly hands me the keys to the van.
“Tonight, this gets taken care of, okay?” She doesn’t bother to look me in the eyes, and it’s probably because she knows I’ll fail at her ultimatum. I’ll try to unpack, though. I truly will.
“Deal,” I say, catching the short laugh that leaves her chest, showing her doubt.
I dart from my room, shoes in one hand and keys in the other while my mom lingers in my room and opens my drawers. I bet most of my things are put away by the time I get back.
“Off to try that workout place. I’ll let you know,” I shout at my dad as I hit the driveway. He gives me a quick wave while playing street hockey with my little brother, Ben. He’s taking shots at my brother with whiffle balls. Ben is eight, and he wants to be a goalie. My dad tried to talk him into catching instead, but Ben is obsessed with the ice. He’s going to outgrow my dad’s hockey-coaching skills soon, but until then, Coach Travis Taylor will be splitting time between the ice and the grass.
I slip my feet into my untied shoes before backing the van out, my dad moving my brother’s goal out of the way while I pull into the road. It’s going to take me a while to line up the view I’m used to seeing with the one I will for the rest of my senior year. Both my old street and this one are tree-lined, and both houses have a certain nineteen-seventies charm about them with banged up vinyl siding and pretend shutters glued on either side of the windows. But where a two-minute jaunt down a Staten Island road took me to Sal’s Meats and Cheese, Al’s Liquors, Rose’s Deli, and Rick Manning’s Boxing Elite—the gym I grew up on—the only thing two minutes down this street is more trees. They’re nothing but winter sticks now, but I bet when spring rolls around, it’s pretty.
Having a real yard is nice too. And Dad promised Mom a pool in the ground. The above-grounder we had back home—our old home—leaked twice a season. Even when I take off for college, my family will stay put. That’s what this deal is about, finding a good place to settle in and raise Ben. While I loved being so close to the city, it made my parents nervous. They said Ben isn’t tough like I am, which I guess I can kinda see. He doesn’t get bullied or nothin’, but he’s quiet. Whatever their logic is or was,
