STOP SAYING THANK YOU.
I can feel his presence behind me as I flee, and I’m wondering whether it’s worse to stay silent or to make some horrible, awkward small talk on our way down the stairs. Then I hear the door across the hall, his bedroom, click shut.
And I’m alone.
And I still have no idea what I want.
Chapter 8
Silas
I find a joint in my room, and kill the whole thing in a few minutes.
Bad decision.
She didn’t say it, but that’s what she was thinking. She wanted to avoid bad decisions, and always, no matter what I do, no matter how far away I get from the trailer park and that shack of Granny’s, I’ve got that written all over me.
The high comes on fast and hard, and I spend the next half hour, maybe more, staring at my ceiling. I’m f**king blank, barely even there. And it’s perfect.
But when I start to level out, it all gets worse.
I’m horny as hell, and the weed only amplifies it.
Instead of clearing my head and relaxing me like normal, my thoughts turn dark, and I get stuck thinking about the past. I start thinking that there’s no point. To football or classes or friendship or anything. I know where I came from, and I know where I’m gonna end up, and the longer I lie here, baked out of my mind, the more it starts to feel like those two things aren’t as far apart or as different as I want them to be.
I start laughing, and I’m not even really sure why. Only that this all feels like some script I’m playing directly into. Like these first couple years at Rusk were just the setup, letting me believe I’d moved on, created something better for myself, only to have it all start falling apart, or rather falling back into familiar territory.
I laugh even though it’s not funny, but what the f**k ever. I stumble down the stairs, and I must have been staring at my ceiling for much longer than half an hour because the party is over.
Torres is indeed passed out na**d on the floor, and someone has balanced a throw pillow on his bare ass, and that seems so damn funny to me that I forget how to breathe through my laughing.
Torres doesn’t stir. Neither does the new recruit asleep on the couch.
I make my way to the kitchen, but it feels like ages before I get there. Time never makes sense when I’m high. I blink, and it somehow feels like my eyes have been closed for centuries and seconds all at the same time. I load up on snacks, more weed, and a couple of beers. With my arms full, I turn to head back to my room only to find Torres standing at the entrance to the kitchen. He’s pulled the throw pillow around front to block his junk, and he’s looking at me through squinted eyes.
“Is it morning?” he asks me.
My chest bounces on a silent laugh, and I shake my head. He rubs a hand over his face and says, “What the f**k happened last night?”
He’s the one laughing now, and my mood turns on a dime. All of a sudden things don’t really seem that funny.
I can’t shake the feeling that last night was the beginning of the end, and everything is downhill from here.
“Nothing good,” I answer. “Nothing good at all.”
Torres groans in agreement, and stumbles off in the direction of his room, while I head up to mine. I only eat a couple of handfuls of chips before I pass out for the night. Perfect oblivion.
I keep chasing that nothingness through the rest of the weekend, switching to alcohol when I’m out of weed and too lazy to go buy more.
Brookes comes in Sunday evening. He’s the most stable in the house. He and Torres are best friends . . . both receivers. They’re the jokers on the team, but really couldn’t be more different. Torres clowns around for the attention. Brookes does it to put people at ease. He’s also a fast motherfucker, which is why I barely have time to raise my hands before he’s by my bed stripping back the sheets.
He’s holding one of those jugs of water you buy at the grocery store. Throwing it on my bed, he says, “You’ve had your final weekend of fun or whatever the hell this was. Take a shower. Drink some water. Get it the f**k together. Practice starts tomorrow.”
I groan, but I grab the water because he’s right. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Scratch that. I know exactly what happened. I’ve been trying my damnedest not to think at all.
It’s not about Dylan. She’s just a girl. A girl who is nothing like any other girl I’ve ever known, but still just a girl. It’s all of it. All the things that have happened, and all the things that haven’t, but inevitably will.
Because she was right. Levi was right. I’m bad . . . a bad decision, bad seed, bad blood . . . whatever you want to call it, that’s what I am. And it’s only a matter of time until it has me turning out just like Levi, cut off from the people I know and the only thing I love.
I peel away the circle of plastic around the mouth of the jug and pop it open.
“Isaiah,” I stop Brookes as he turns to leave, my pale hand wrapped around his dark forearm. He flexes his fingers into a fist, and I let him go. He might be a little more pissed than I thought. “I’m sorry, man. It was just one of those weekends. I’m good.”
He walks to the door frame and lightly raps his knuckles against it a few times. “I’m not really the one you’re hurting, Silas. Just be glad we already took our drug tests when we reported on Friday.”
Fuuuuuck. Yet another thing I hadn’t thought of. The chances of Coach popping another drug test on us now are almost zero, but still . . .
He leaves, and I do as he says, starting with the shower. I drink the full jug of water and try to get some sleep.
Try being the key word.
I mostly lay there, resisting the urge to scream obscenities loud enough to wake the whole house.
I go for a run, but a hangover has already started creeping over me, and the nausea makes me feel like my organs are shifting with each stride. I call it quits and walk the rest of the way home, knowing I’m going to be a f**king wreck at practice in six hours.
I take another shower. I think about jacking off, but as soon as I picture Dylan draped over my lap, her hair falling out of that braid, the feel of her against my hand—a bass drum pounds in my head. I brace my hand against the tile, let the water pelt my face, and try not to throw up.
I chug some more water when morning comes, and think again how damn lucky I am that we did our drug tests when we reported on Friday. Not that there aren’t ways to beat them. I learned plenty of tricks freshman year, but none of it is foolproof.
I remember Torres being scared shitless last year when his name came up for the random test. We taught him all the things that gave him a better shot at passing (which he did), and all the dude talked about for the week afterward was that he was scared the Midol we had him take was going to give him manboobs.