Carter's Unfocused, One-Track Mind

by Brent Crawford

  “I was so stressed about tonight,” she says. “I thought people would be judging me or thinking that you and I were really together.”

  “No need to be rude.”

  She laughs. “You know what I mean. That like, Rusty and I broke up. I’d be proud to be your girlfriend, Carter.”

  “Well, thank you and ditto…or vice versa…w-w-whichever one applies.”

  I just got nervous. Why did that happen? I try to regain my cool and change the subject by pointing back to Jeremy’s house (with the hand that’s not still holding hers). “These guys have some goofy fashion sense, and they may not understand the concept of an ‘inside voice,’ but they’ve got this right. You can’t care what other people think…especially now that you’re gonna be a mom. You’ll have poop on your shirt all the time and have to scream at your kid in the mall when he tries to pull the bikini tops off of the mannequins—”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Maybe that’s just my mom. You shouldn’t have that problem with a girl. My point is: there is no such thing as a cool parent. You didn’t care what other people thought about you tonight, and it was awesome, right? You don’t need to impress anyone anymore.”

  She makes a face and says, “I don’t really like the sound of that. I like it when guys notice me or check out my butt.”

  “Hold up! How could you possibly know if someone is looking at your butt?”

  “Trust me, we know,” she scoffs.

  “Really? Well, people are still going to do that. You’re not going to stop being hot just because you have poop on your shirt. You’ll just be a MILF! Tonight was fun because you didn’t care what those drama kids thought or what I thought.…”

  “You’re wrong. I do care what you think.”

  Amber stops talking and just looks at me. Uh-oh. I may have accidentally turned on the charm. Was I asking her questions and cracking jokes?! I was. Damn my playa instincts!

  She continues, “I think back to last year, and I want to pull my hair out. If I’d just gone to the stupid dance with you…maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess, and like, how much more fun would we have had?!”

  Amber Lee is looking up at me with those eyes, like I’m supposed to say something, so I try a joke. “What could have been more fun than walking home by myself?”

  Stop with the questions!

  She giggles and says, “I’m so sorry I did that to you. I really did feel bad.”

  “So you’ve stopped feeling bad?”

  Quit it!

  “I was just so hung up on Rusty that I was blind to what I was doing to everyone else. I was so worried about what he thought.”

  Oh good, Rusty has greased himself back into the conversation! I’m actually stoked for the first time to be wrong about a girl flirting with me.

  “I’ve come to realize, if he’s thinking at all, it’s just about sex.” She chuckles.

  “Well, t-that’s annoying.”

  “It’s like our only connection.” She sneers. “It’s all we ever do. But like, we never laugh!”

  “I don’t think I’d w-w-want a lot of laughter in the bedroom myself.”

  That was a dead-serious statement, but Amber Lee finds it hilarious. She stops laughing and turns on her sexy-witch vibe. Dang it. I know a green light when I see one. She wants me to kiss her, but my brain is like, No, nope, hell noooo!

  The alarm in my eyes must look like a green light to her, because she presses her bump into my stomach and puts her lips against mine. Not long after that, I’ve got an uninvited tongue in my mouth and her teeth have clacked into mine! This is a nightmare…but kind of a dream come true. It would be rude to not kiss someone back, right? I’m a lot of things, but rude is not one of them. Pregnant or not, she’s as good a kisser as I always thought she would be.

  I guess I’m usually wearing jeans when I get a boner, because these slacks are not disguising anything. Abby pops into my head and gives a disappointed look that helps calm things down.…Then Rusty—and Amber’s dad’s blowtorch—finally lower the mast.

  My mind starts racing: What if my boys find out? I’d be a legend! But I don’t want this to be the thing I’m known for.

  Amber eventually pulls back and says, “Sorry.”

  I wipe my mouth and say, “No, no…it’s totally my bad. I w-w-was asking you questions and I a-a-accidentally turned on the charm.”

  She laughs, and we start walking back to Jeremy’s house. She suddenly starts crying, so I put my arm around her and wait for it to stop. Then she cackles, “My hormones are just so jacked up!”

  “Ditto! Or vice versa…whichever one applies.”

  We don’t talk much after that. The limo drops her off first, and I just offer up a high five and say, “Good game.”

  She slaps my hand and replies, “Good game, Carter,” so I guess we’re cool.

  12. DING-DING

  We got an early snowstorm, so Mom wouldn’t let me ride my bike on Monday. Lynn drove me to school. I go ahead and tell her about the prenatal make-out session. For the first time ever, she’s speechless. Her mouth is gaping and she’s just shaking her head as she drives.

  “I should just tell Abby, right? She called yesterday, but I didn’t pick up and she never called back. I didn’t really do anything wrong, but I feel guilty as hell. She’s not back in town until tomorrow. I should just tell her to make sure the situation doesn’t blow up in my face. Because you know it will!”

  Lynn shocks the hell out of me when she says, “Noooo, if Amber doesn’t confess, you really can’t. Even though Abby made you take that skank to the dance, and she must have known this was a possibility…But it’s not about you being a sick freak or your relationship with Abby. This secret has to be kept for Amber. You have to swallow it because that girl can’t afford any more scandal. She can’t lose one of her best friends right now. She clearly doesn’t know how to look out for herself, so you have to.”

  I start to defend Amber. “You know she’s dealing with crazy hormones, and I accidentally turned on the—WHOOOAAA, look out!”

  Lynn takes the corner into the school parking lot too fast (or furious) and slams the Honda right into a fire hydrant. I was hoping water would shoot all over the place, but the unit didn’t break off completely. It just bent back really far. Now it kind of looks like a little man wearing a funny hat, yelling, “AAAHHHHH!!!”

  Lynn doesn’t have a sense of humor about the wreck because people totally saw her drive right into the fire hydrant, and she hates mistakes, especially public ones. We’re fine, but the front of the Accord is mangled.

  I tell everyone to check out the hydrant, but I don’t breathe a word of the kiss to anyone (not even EJ). I’ve decided it’s not a big deal. I’m going to tell Abby that I had a great time with Amber, and unless she asks, “Did you kiss her?” there is no reason to bring it up.

  Because of the snow, football practice is canceled. No workouts, no game film, nothing! The season is almost over, but we have no idea what to do with ourselves. I think it was me who suggested that we go to EJ’s for fight club, but the rumor mill got a hold of the info, and suddenly EJ is having a party. At least a hundred new kids are in EJ’s backyard, drinking and smoking and betting on the fights. At first we weren’t supposed to let anyone in the house, but then some girls needed to pee. Next thing you know, people are having sex in EJ’s bed, and some girl is wearing his little sister’s pink cowboy hat.

  I’ve led my parents to believe that EJ’s dad and Jeremy are supervising our little fight club, so it’s a big problem when my dad comes walking down the slope of EJ’s backyard. He’s smiling as if he remembers what it was like to be a young man and do stupid stuff. But then he sees the ski glove being duct-taped to my left hand, and the “parent mode” washes over his eyes.

  There’s no supervision for miles. There’s snow on the ground and I’m not wearing a shirt. I’m also getting ready to get my brains beaten out by a guy who outweighs me by thirty pounds. I accidentally agreed t
o fight Andre this afternoon.

  I’ve got my mouthpiece in, so I just give him a nod like, It’s cool, Dad. Everything’s under control.

  “Hey, Mr. Carter!” Nutt yells, throwing his beer into the bushes.

  Everyone shuts up. Cigarettes and booze fly as if my dad is undercover Merrian P.D.

  “You’re just in time!” Bag says.

  My dad coolly replies, “I see that.”

  Dang it. If I’d remembered that he was going to pick me up, I’d have tried to fight Nutt or Doc. My father doesn’t need to see me get beat up, but I won’t let him see me puss out either.

  Our matches are supposed to be fun, but it’s not like a video game. When you get hit, it hurts like hell, and when you lose, it’s embarrassing.

  I can see that my dad is thinking about shutting this whole thing down. His phone is out like he’s debating if he should call EJ’s parents before he calls the police, or the other way around, but then someone starts chanting, “Carter, CARTER, CARTER!” He seems to be swept up in the moment (Bloodsport is one of his favorite movies), and he doesn’t do anything. I try to block him out and laser in on my opponent.

  Bag bangs the pots together and says, “Ding-ding!!!” The crowd roars when Andre and I step over the garden-hose ring and touch gloves. We circle around a few times to see if anyone has a plan. I know I don’t have one, and it doesn’t seem like he’s got—WHAM, WHAM! He punches me in the head a couple of times, and I stagger backward. He thinks I’m stunned, but his blows just woke me up. He comes in wild to finish me off, but I pop him with a quick three-punch combination that shocks me almost as much as him. And the crowd goes nuts! He stumbles back and loses his footing in the snow, so I come after him. He makes me pay for my cockiness by nailing me in the stomach with the ski glove hand, hard. I wasn’t flexed, so my lunch thinks about making an encore appearance.

  Thankfully, it stays down for all three rounds, and we mostly just trade blows and block each other’s shots for the rest of the fight. We don’t count punches or keep score. If we did, I bet I would have lost the fight, technically, but I didn’t get knocked out or quit, and I didn’t freak out or cry, either. I can tell my dad is proud. That’s about as good as it gets. He’s way more familiar with the Will Carter who bawled every single time he fell down or got pinched by his sister, so this a pleasant surprise.

  He still makes me put on my coat even though I’m covered in sweat. He grabs my backpack and starts toward the street, so I say good-bye to a few people and follow him. He stops at the top of the slope and turns to yell, “The Merrian Police Department will be here in fifteen minutes!”

  EJ looks at my dad in hurt shock, but my dad gives him a sly wink and continues, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

  Grumblings abound, and kids call my dad a dick under their breath, but they start rounding up their friends to leave. You can hear EJ shouting, “Get out!” from inside the house as Dad and I approach the mangled Honda.

  Dad says, “So that’s fight club?”

  I just shrug my shoulders. I assume he’s going to tell me I’m grounded and not allowed to attend anymore, but he just says, “You did pretty well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, son, but…” He really wants to tell me what to do, but EJ’s dad isn’t the only one trying to allow some healthy failure into his son’s life. “Let’s get you guys another pair of actual boxing gloves, huh?”

  “That would be cool.”

  “And when did you get so buff?” he asks.

  “We have to do all of that CrossFit stuff for football, so I’ve been hitting it pretty hard lately.”

  “I can’t believe you got into that ring with Andre,” he adds.

  “It’s not much of a ring, and I’m pretty sure I lost.”

  He wipes some blood off my ear before he replies, “No way. I think you had him.”

  We both know he’s lying, so I give him a nod.

  We get into the car, and he continues, “You won when you agreed to fight a guy that you’d probably lose to. The only people who’d do that are crazy, or destined for really big things.”

  “So you think I’m nuts?” I ask.

  “Absolutely.” He laughs. “Seriously, though, son, you don’t have anything to prove…to anyone. If Terry Moss or anyone like that comes after you again…just walk away.”

  “I already did that. I actually ran, and it felt so bad.”

  “I know,” he says. “And on some level, it’s smart that you guys are learning how to defend yourselves. But you need to make sure that your fights are worth the trouble. Some idiot calling you out at a party doesn’t merit what it could cost you.”

  “I guess Terry joined the navy, so I don’t really have to worry about that anymore.”

  Dad continues, “There are going to be other Terrys. Hopefully they won’t be quite as bad, but there will always be guys with nothing to lose who’ll want to take a guy like you down a few pegs. Because you have a bright future, and guys that don’t will always be jealous.”

  He attempts to start the mangled Honda, to no avail. Kids are driving past us as they make their way out of EJ’s neighborhood. On the fourth try, the little engine finally rattles to life. I have to raise my voice over the knocking sound. “I don’t know if I can handle New York, Dad.”

  He sighs. “No one does. But you’re capable of anything you put your mind to, son. I’m not talking about New York or acting here, though. I’m telling you that you have more control over confrontations than you realize, and if you look for trouble…that’s what you’ll find.”

  I accidentally wink at him because the left side of my face is twitching; he thinks I’ve understood the point of his lecture and slaps me on the back.

  I’m not nearly as beaten up as the Honda, so we squeal our way down Merrian Lane to Lee Auto Body. Dad pumps me for more info about the wreck. “In case I need to talk to the insurance company.”

  He wants me to tell him that Lynn was driving recklessly, which she was, but I don’t focus on that part of the story. Instead, I just stick to how slick the streets were this morning. He’s proud that I’m becoming a man but bummed that I’ve stopped being a tattletale.

  Mr. Lee is out today because he took his daughter to the birth doctor. While she is biologically old enough to be a mom, she is not yet of legal age to drive. And Rusty couldn’t get the day off of work (from Lee Auto Body).

  One greasy guy takes our keys while another types on the computer, one finger at a time. My dad is waiting for the estimate to be calculated while I pretend to read a ten-year-old copy of Popular Mechanics. I’m trying not to stare at Rusty through the shop window. There is no way he knows that I kissed his baby mama, but I’m not exactly comfortable here. He’s covered in oil, looking miserable, tired, and lost…with a blowtorch in his hand. Amber Lee is hot, but this seems like a hard trade for having sex with her.

  My dad knows the situation, and he has no shame. He really is watching Rusty as if he’s an animal in the zoo. “You really dodged a bullet by striking out with that girl.”

  “It wasn’t a choice, Dad.”

  He explains, “Sometimes getting lucky…isn’t lucky, if you know what I mean.”

  He points at Rusty, so I give him a nod to let him know that his joke landed (and I’m not ten years old).

  As if to drive my dad’s message home, Rusty is struggling to spark the torch of his welding machine. He keeps clicking this spark box and twisting the knob on the handle. Dad takes a step back from the glass as if he knows something bad is about to happen. “You’re using condoms, right?” he asks.

  “No…but I’m being safe.”

  He might be under the impression that his son is cooler than he really is, so I clarify. “I only have partnerless sex, Dad.”

  Rusty’s spark box finally flicks a long white flash that shoots a burst of flame all around the garage. The other mechanics hit the deck and yell things like, �
�Idiot!!!” and “Stupid mother…” You can tell they are not happy with their newest employee. Rusty, on the other hand, is so beaten down that he just focuses the wide flame into a sharp point and starts cutting something off of a car.

  We get the estimate, and my dad throws a fit because he’s going to have to tell the insurance company. I guess our rates have doubled since my sister started driving, and he thinks the sky is going to fall when I turn sixteen. The only positive thing he’s ever said about New York City is that I won’t need a driver’s license and therefore will not be added to their insurance policy. Ms. McDougle lived there for a few years after college, and she says only morons drive cars there.

  Dad wants to leave a note for Mr. Lee, to remind him who we are and how I took his daughter to homecoming, twice, but I doubt it’s going to get us much of a discount. If Yosemite Sam finds out I made out with his fallen angel, we might get some fresh dents and told to take our “dad-blame business elsewheres!”

  13. MOUNTAIN DON’T

  I still have trouble falling asleep. I can pass out ten seconds into a biology lecture, but around ten p.m. my mind just starts racing. That assignment notebook is not helping with my sleep. It just stares at me from the dresser and reminds me of all of the crap I didn’t get done.

  The notebook says I should have been in bed at 10:30, and asleep by 10:45. Unfortunately, it’s 11:38. It shows me that I’ve been tardy to bed twenty-three nights in a row. At least I’m consistent, but that damn alarm clock is going to do its thing at 6:39 a.m. whether I’m rested or not! Seven hours of sleep is my goal, so I’ve got thirty seconds to fall asleep, but it’s unlikely because I drank a can of Mountain Dew after dinner.

  I’ve just got to clear all of these thoughts out of here…and I will…just as soon as I figure out what’s causing that clicking sound in the handlebars of my bike.

  I have trouble focusing when I get eight hours of sleep, and somehow it’s 12:11 a.m. all the sudden! If I conk out right now, I’m only going to get, like…No! It’s not time for math…it’s time for sleep!