Stupid Fast

Chapter 57: SWEET SIXTEEN




My alarm didn’t wake me. There was much stirring around the house. Hammering. Music playing. I looked over at my clock. It was only 4:15. What? I climbed out of bed and sleepily made my way upstairs to where the noise was. Jerri and Grandma Berba were hanging a big banner above the fireplace. I rubbed my eyes. It said “Sweet Sixteen.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s my birthday,” I said.

Jerri and Grandma, who was asking Jerri to lift up her side so the banner would be level, swiveled and looked at me.

“There he is!” Grandma Berba shouted.

“Happy birthday, Felton,” Jerri said. She looked tired.

“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!” Grandma cried out.

“I’ve been kissed,” I said.

“Oh?” Grandma said. She scrunched her eyes at me. Then smiled.

“Well, happy birthday anyway!”

“Okay. Thanks. Should we do the route now? Is Andrew sleeping?”

“He didn’t come home!” Grandma Berba said. “He called and asked to stay at his friend’s house because they were working on a four-hand piece!”

I was getting a little sick of the false cheeriness.

“Aleah?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Umm, I’m coming too, Felton!” Jerri said with a terrible false cheeriness.

The three of us loaded into Grandma Berba’s giant rental SUV, me in the passenger seat and Jerri in back, and rolled down the drive. At the bottom, our way was blocked by trash. Grandma Berba put on the brakes.

“Not more of this mumbo jumbo.” She put on the high beams because it was still dark. Somebody had gone to the trouble of writing out HAPY BDAY FAKER!!! in trash down about fifty feet of the drive. The H was closest to us; the exclamation points went out to the road. “Enough of this crap,” Grandma said. She gunned the engine, and we flew right over the top of the trash, scattering it behind us.

“Whoa!” I shouted.

“Terrible people,” Grandma said.

“That probably took them a long time to make,” I chuckled.

“Idiot kids can’t spell,” Grandma said.

Grandma Berba was funny, but the trash still hurt my feelings, which immediately turned to boiling in my gut. Did Cody decide to put all his organizing skills into vandalism? Cody is the one who’d remember my birthday. It had to be him. A*shole.

We rode through the route really slow. Jerri sort of meandered around. She’d get out of the SUV and walk a few steps and then stand and look at the sky.

“Get a move on, sweetie,” Grandma would call to her. “We’ve got places to be.”

“What places?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. Home,” Grandma said.

But she was lying. I knew that for a fact when we arrived at Gus/Aleah’s. For the first time in a week, the house was all lit up. Andrew and Aleah were staring out the window. When the three of us got out of the car, they ran away.

“Just two peas in a pod!” I said with false cheeriness.

“Let’s stop at this lovely house for a moment,” Grandma smiled.

“Oh, God,” I said, but I followed her up the stoop and in, staring at my feet the whole way.

Immediately upon entering, Aleah and Andrew began to play happy birthday on the piano. Just the standard happy birthday. Aleah went first. Then Andrew followed. Then Aleah made up stuff that sort of sounded like happy birthday. Then Andrew did the same. Then Aleah went completely out of this planet, playing something that sounded like happy birthday a little but had so many notes. Her hands went up and down the keyboard, striking keys, pounding for emphasis, nearly knocking Andrew off the bench. I remembered the first time I saw her in her white nightie pounding the keys like that, how I was mesmerized and couldn’t not watch, even though I hadn’t learned to talk yet, and how that wave just built and crashed over me. I remembered her spinning around on the bench and staring at me. I remembered talking and walking through the night holding hands and biking double on the Schwinn and kissing in the garage and snuggling in the basement while watching dumb movies. Aleah stopped, turned, and smiled. Jerri and Grandma clapped and shouted bravo. Ronald leaned in from the kitchen, whooping. I swallowed hard. My nose was sort of running.

“Oh, man,” I said. “That was so good. You’re so good.”

Andrew jumped off the bench and ran up and hugged me around the stomach. I was like a foot and a half taller than him.

“We worked on it all night!” he shouted.

“Happy birthday, Felton,” Aleah said.

“Thank you,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Now get going, little girl,” Ronald called from the kitchen. “Chocolate chip pancakes coming up.”

Aleah jumped up and headed for the door.

“You ready, Mrs. Berba?” she asked.

“Aleah and I are going to finish your paper route, young man!” Grandma shouted.

“I’m going too!” Andrew followed.

“And it won’t take long because I’m going to run as fast as Felton Reinstein,” Aleah said, running out the door.

“You two make yourselves comfortable,” Ronald called to Jerri and me from the kitchen. “I’ve got some cooking to do.”

I stood there with my mouth hanging open.

“Ah. Cat got your tongue, Felton?” Jerri smiled. She was sort of teary.

“I think I’m experiencing happy?” I said.

“That girl. She can really play piano.” Jerri sat down on the couch in the sort of awkward, slow way she did everything. “Just amazing.”

“Oh, man,” I said.

“Hey, Felton?” Jerri said.

“Yeah?”

“Sit by me?”

I moved and sat down on the couch next to her.

“You know what?” Jerri said. “I watched you running around the house last night.”

“You did?”

“Umm.” Jerri nodded slow. She looked like a little girl. “I watched the whole time. I couldn’t take my eyes off you, Felton.”

“Oh.”

“You run like Aleah plays piano. It’s beautiful.”

“Really?” I never thought about how I looked.

“No offense to Andrew,” Jerri said, “but you run like Aleah plays piano. Not like Andrew. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“I hope this thing, this trouble I’m having, won’t stop you from running.”

“No. Your trouble isn’t it why I don’t want to. I just don’t see the value in…”

“You’re not going to play sports?” Jerri blinked.

“No. I can’t. Look what those a*shole jocks did to me with the trash last night, Jerri. I don’t want to be like them—like Dad.”

Jerri’s eyes focused. She squinted and looked really serious. Then for the first time in months, an “old Jerri” thing came out of her mouth. She spoke really quiet.

“Listen, Felton, your father was compelled to make different choices. Lots of them were bad. But this is the truth: playing sports was one of the good ones. He was at peace. He was sincerely happy when he was on a tennis court. Nowhere else maybe. But playing? Movement made him happy.”

“Moving?”

“He was beautiful when he ran.”

“But look what those jocks did to our yard,” I said.

“Those people—those jocks—they really don’t matter.”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course, I’m crazy,” Jerri said, staring out the window, the sun beginning to light the trees around the house. “I don’t even know if I make sense.”

“Yeah,” I laughed.

Jerri didn’t laugh.

“Thanks, Jerri,” I said.

“I love you,” she said.

***

Bacon sizzled in the kitchen. Ronald hummed along to classical music. Jerri stared out the picture window. And I got up to use the bathroom and noticed the masks had been removed from the living room and replaced by Gus’s parents’ mountain photos. There were boxes in the hall—and half-packed suitcases too.

***

After Grandma, Aleah, and Andrew got back, we ate. I stared at Aleah the whole time. She looked at me and nodded like Jerri, like a little girl. Breakfast was delicious and—I’m not kidding—cheery. Then we all moved to the living room and talked like nothing at all was wrong in the world. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my brain that I might never see Aleah again.

Before we left, Aleah grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall. She put her hands on my shoulders and stared at me. Then she said, “I didn’t know what to do, Felton. You know, when you didn’t return my calls? I didn’t know what to do. Daddy told me to give you space.”

“I thought…”

“Andrew said you were acting all weird, so I decided to give you space.”

“You didn’t want to…I was acting weird?” Duh.

“I had the greatest summer,” Aleah said. “I…I loved every second.”

“But I thought…”

“Last spring, I wrote out a list about the only kind of person I’d want for a boyfriend. I met him, exactly.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, Felton. Duh.”

“Exactly?”

“Funny, gentle, passionate.”

“Passionate?”

“About football.”

“Oh.”

“You ask me questions and tell me stories and…”

“But I don’t understand opera. And I’m sort of a chucklehead. And my family is a disaster. And I say honky because I don’t know what it means. And I freak out like a little kid.”

“You think I want to date an old man? I want to be with another kid.”

“Oh.”

“I’d like you to listen to opera though.”

“I’ll try, Aleah. I’m not sure if Andrew has any CDs.”

“Please, Felton. We’re leaving as soon as Daddy’s grades are in. Please.”

“When?”

“This afternoon, late morning if Daddy can get done.”

“Oh, crap.”

She spoke quickly.

“Please. Please. Can we stay together? I feel like I’m going to die without you,” she said. “Please?”

“Oh.” I paused and thought. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

Aleah stared at me. She swallowed hard.

“It’s okay. I know you’re having a hard time right now. I know. I know.”

“What? No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, no, no. I want to be together.”

“Oh!”

“I’m just sorry I’m so weird.”

“Shut up, Felton. You know I like that,” Aleah said.

Then we hugged for approximately six years. Then we kissed.

Then we said good-bye and kissed some more.

Then we went into the living room, and I said good-bye to Mr. Jennings. Jerri, Grandma, Andrew, and me all shook hands with him, etc. Then my family left for home, with Andrew’s bike jammed in the back of the SUV. I turned and watched Aleah’s house disappear. How would it ever be Gus’s again?

“Wow, Aleah is the greatest,” Andrew said, smiling at me.