Whitney's acceptance fuels me all through work that day, which is okay. I mean, to avoid getting seen, I'm in the back the whole time, which is hot as hell because of the brick pizza oven and the fact I have to keep chucking wood into the fucker in between chopping ingredients and washing dishes, but I get free pizza out of it, and the owner lets me take home two pies at the end of the night, orders that had been screwed up by the cooking crew, and that was on top of eating half a pizza for my dinner for free. Getting home, I feel great about my day until I open the door to my house.
Dad's not passed out drunk like I thought he'd be. I mean, it's after midnight, and he's usually passed out by nine at the latest. I close the door and can immediately tell why. Dad's out of booze. "Run short on Popov?"
"Landlord came by while you were gone," Dad rumbles. "Had to give him the last of the money to get him to leave. What did you do with the rest, you piece of shit?"
I blink, too tired, confused, and pissed off in general to really answer with any sort of restraint. "Me? In case you haven't noticed, I've been at work for the past seven hours, you hungover fuck! What have you done with the money? Oh yeah, you drank it all! I'm getting by on leftover pizza and school lunch, and you're asking me about money? Fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking blame. I'm tired of it!"
"Get out!" Dad screams back at me, coming off the couch and raising his hand. "Get out until you learn some respect for your father!"
Any other day, I'd apologize, if only to get to sleep in my bed. Instead, I turn on my heel, but I turn back and drop one of the pizzas on the table. "Here, you fucking bum. So you don't starve."
I go out to my car, get behind the wheel and drive off, trying to figure out where to go. I want to go to Whitney. I figure she might actually take me in, but I also remember the way her mother looked at me. If I showed up at their place after midnight looking the way I do, I'd never get a date with her again. I can tell that Whitney's the sort of girl who listens to her mother.
So I go to the one place that makes sense to me, the stadium. The gate's locked, but I jump the fence easily, but not before grabbing some stuff out of my trunk. A letterman jacket from the local boosters may not be a Tempur-Pedic bed, but it's a lot better than raw aluminum. Folding up my jacket into a makeshift pillow, I tuck myself into the little gap that is formed by the press box and fall asleep.
"Wake up, son."
I groan and stretch, and I think I'm back home and that I'd just had a bad dream. Then my hand scrapes on the concrete base of the stands, and I remember. I slept at the stadium last night.
"Troy. Wake up, son. It's nearly eight o'clock."
I open my eyes and see Coach Jackson standing in the row in front of me, looking at me, concerned. "You're lucky, Troy. When Hank, the groundskeeper, saw someone sleeping in the stands, he should have called the cops. He checked you out first, though, and called me instead. What in the devil are you doing here?"
"Sleeping," I answer. "Couldn't stay at home last night."
Coach sighs and sits down, looking out at the field. "Want to talk about it?"
"About what, Coach?" I reply, playing dumb.
He strokes his chin and looks back at me. "Troy, did you know that your father and I went to Silver Lake High together? He probably doesn't remember me. I was just a freshman when he was a senior, but I remember Randy Wood. God, anyone who played football against Silver Lake remembers him. Fast? Troy, Randy made you look slow out there. Had a cannon for an arm, and he had the looks too. The guys called him Iceman, because he looked so much like Val Kilmer in that old movie, Top Gun. I so wanted to be him when I was a freshman, especially when he got a football scholarship to Texas."
“Whoever you’re talking about, that doesn't sound like my dad," I say, trying to imagine the potbellied, jowly wreck that spends most of his days taking up the couch as a football player. "Sure you've got the right Randall Wood?"
"Sure am. You know, back when I played, we had a sort of initiation . . . oh, the school board would call it hazing nowadays, but we saw it as what it was, a rite of passage. We'd get what we called 'ripped,' where one of the varsity players would give you the atomic wedgie from hell, right up until your waistband literally ripped out of your underpants. The seniors would do it to the JV guys right before homecoming, kind of a passing of the torch. Woe to the poor schmuck who wore fresh boxers that week."