Forty-Eight
IF I WERE a different person—or if I’d been raised differently, first by my parents and then by EJ—I would drive straight to the nearest bar, probably Rowdy’s just because it’s closest. Or maybe try to find one where nobody would care who I was, if there even was such a place around here.
But that’s never been me.
I drive straight home to my basement gym instead.
I take everything I’m feeling, all the anger in me and hurt and frustration, an almost overpowering urge to hit somebody or something, the feeling I’d get on the field sometimes even when I was the one with the ball—I take all of that home with me and get into my workout clothes and take it all out on myself.
The only way I feel even remotely lucky right now is that it’s Burt who has to meet with that girl’s family and not me.
But all the way home I kept wondering how things might have been different if Riley Millsap had been inside the stadium today, listening to me—really listening—and not outside.
What if I’d somehow gotten through to her?
Or, and more likely, had she already made her choices before I’d seen her that day in the school parking lot?
The only thing to do is find a way to save the next one.
If I get the chance, that is.
When I’m inside the gym, EJ in town still doing some dinner shopping, the first song on my playlist just happens to be the Buck Pets singing “A Little Murder.” I start to skip past the song, just because of the title, but before I do I hear this lyric, and the air comes right out of me again:
Now it’s gonna stay dark forever…
I do three sets of everything, more than I usually do, hardly any breaks except for water, lost in the work and the grind, feeling all the predictable aches and pains in the predictable places, the right shoulder and both knees especially.
I power through almost grimly, sweat soaking through a faded blue UNC T-shirt, unable to unsee the dead girl being loaded into the ambulance…
Occasionally I stop to make the music even louder, wanting to drown out the world and shake the walls down here so much it will start to feel as if the whole place is about to come down on top of me.
Now I’m back to the Buck Pets singing “Hammer Valentine.”
Seems like a sacrifice
Some kind of self-destruction…
Tell me about it, I think, barely able to hear my own thoughts above the music.
When the Texas alt rock finally stops, I hear this:
“Did you miss me?”
I look up and see my agent, Laurance Most, standing in the doorway, and have no idea how long he’s been there. It’s the first time I’ve set eyes on him since he last visited me in the hospital.
“I come bearing gifts,” he says.
There’s a shopping bag in one hand. His cell phone, of course, is in the other.
“If we’re talking gifts,” I say, “I’m guessing the Bobcat you still owe me can’t fit inside that bag.”
He just stays where he is, not moving, just staring at me, as if any fun just walked right past him and out of the room.
“I’m so sorry, Silas.”
“That you stiffed me on the Bobcat?”
“About everything,” he says.
Then: “I was at the stadium.”