“Actually, I think we’re going to walk down the street to Taki’s Tacos.”
She takes her reading glasses off and they hang around her neck, bouncing against the kittens and their balls of yarn on her shirt. “Well, why would you do that when I went grocery shopping this morning? I’ll make salami sandwiches. Or there’s some leftover chicken spaghetti casserole, too.” She turns to me. “Not to brag, but my chicken spaghetti casserole is something to behold.”
“We want to get out of the house, Mom. Why is that such a big deal?”
“It’s wasteful is all.” She puts her glasses back on. “But it is a Saturday night. Be home before midnight.”
The taco stand is on an old car lot. Weeds creep up through the cracks in the pavement as a reminder that the focus here is tacos and not landscaping. Next to the stand is a rusted playground set that looks like it was plucked from a city park and dropped in this parking lot. We sit on a bench at the edge of the circle of light put off by the taco stand to get as far away from the mosquitoes as possible.
After we eat, we wander into the playground. I sit on a swing and so does Mitch. The chains groan against his weight.
“Good tacos,” I say.
He nods. “Did you like the movie?”
“It was . . . bloody. But I liked it.”
“So you really entered the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I’m pretty screwed. I need a talent and I’ve got nothing.”
I walk back in the swing and let the momentum push me forward as I pump my legs. “Not to mention these other girls ended up entering because I did. It’s like I’m supposed to be guiding them or something. But I don’t even know what I’m doing. And I feel responsible for them, ya know?”
Mitch stands up behind me and gently pushes me every time I swing back. “Maybe if you worry about you figuring your own stuff out, you can help them with their stuff.”
He pushes me back and forth a few times while I let that thought simmer.
“Hey, Mitch?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re really good at football, right?”
“That’s what people tell me.”
“I bet you’ll get a scholarship out of here.”
For the first time, Mitch doesn’t respond.
“What?” I ask. “You don’t think you will?”
“I don’t know. I guess I will.” He stops pushing me and sits down again in the swing beside me facing the opposite direction. “I never really like doing the things I’m supposed to like. I’m good at playing football. But the whole season feels like something I have to get through.”
It’s a hard thing for me to grasp. The idea that you can be so good at something and still not enjoy it.
“Being a guy in a town like this people expect things from you. You’re supposed to play football and hunt and fish. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I had Patrick. We’d go hunting on the weekends with our dads.”
“You hunt?” I ask. I shouldn’t be surprised. Tons of people hunt here. It’s disgusting, but it’s not like I’ve sworn off meat, so I’m not one to talk.
“Well, sort of,” he says. “I’ve been hunting since I was a kid. I’d go out with my dad and he’d let me have half a beer while we waited for whatever animal was in season to show itself. But whenever it came time to shoot, I always missed. For a while, I blamed it on me being a bad shot. My dad would get so mad at me. I’d miss the mark. Just barely. Then he started to realize that it was on purpose.”
I feel this prickle of warmth in my chest for him. I think maybe it’s the things we don’t want to talk about that are the things people most want to hear.
“We were in seventh grade, and my dad was harping on me real bad. Patrick and his dad were there. It was deer season. I hit one.” His voice trails off. “It was an accident. He was a big proud buck. My dad slapped me on the back. I remember feeling like I was choking.”