The beginnings of Chapter 1…
HANSON IS SO CLOSE. I can practically smell it from way over here, the air in that classroom in McCloskey Hall that me and Mom visited in the spring. I can smell the popcorn and basketball leather and sweat in that gym. I picture the girls huddled up, excited in that classroom, and I picture shooting basketball with Thad Stanley at halftime of Duncan’s games and having his whole crew in the stands loving me and wanting me to make the move in sixth grade.
Well I’ll be a year late, it turns out. And all those guys are in high school now.
Eating applesauce instead of junk food for a few weeks, combined with the return of my athletic coordination, has slimmed me down almost to where I was before the nose surgery. I’m still a little chubby in certain areas, but I don’t believe I’d qualify as an oinker in Thomas Boone’s eyes anymore. Plus I think I set him straight once and for all at the party. Having Mom and then later Dad be proud of me for sticking up for myself has gone a long way toward helping me see them in a completely different light.
“You protect yourself if the need arises,” my dad says.
“I doubt if I have any problems again,” I say.
“You never know. I had boys I thought were friends hold grudges against me for a long time. I found that out later. Anger’s a funny thing.”
“You ever got in a fight?”
He smiles. “That’s for me to know and you not to find out. Don’t go looking for trouble, but if a man comes at you…”
He doesn’t finish the statement, but I understand.
The absolute impossible crosses my mind that maybe, just maybe, Mom and Dad wouldn’t care one bit about what happened in Kindergarten with Chrissy Dunne and that Duncan has been pulling one giant scam on me for what is it now, almost eight years? It is actually starting to be funny to think about. Maybe? Just a little on the funny side?
No, I’m still scared. Deathly so. Nothing about that is funny.
The problems with my dad do continue, even though I did recognize that there was a new feeling of respect that came my way when he found out about my fight with Boone. Some of the issues are my fault, but I think a lot of the part that is my fault is in reaction to the part that’s his fault. No pride in his face and words at anything I do will ever erase the fact that he smokes and keeps me sick. I hate to say it, but there are times where I just hate him and want to get back at him, and I’m stuck there knowing my Father in heaven is disappointed in me because I’m sinning by feeling this way toward the man who gave me life and sacrifices so much for me.
Reasons, good ones in my mind, don’t excuse the terrible guilt I feel when I think about the things I do sometimes, especially when it’s trying to pull one over on either of my parents. I don’t respect them as I should. Not all the time, especially in recent months. How can a person know how he will feel after he does something wrong before he does it and then still do that wrong thing anyway?
