Tell Me Something Real Read online

  It’s safe to say our relationship isn’t exactly blossoming. Since the party last weekend, people have been more than happy to fill me in on the history I’ve been missing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Colt hates me, or that people are all watching us with bated breath to see when the final straw occurred. Until today, I would have predicted sooner rather than later.

  Except, today, Landon Grier happened.

  There is nothing that bonds people together like a common enemy, and it appears Colt and I have found someone easier to hate than each other. Supposed big man on campus, Landon is a quarterback with a pretty face, a decent arm, and a loud mouth.

  Pretty boy hated me on sight, probably because a single Google search by one of his minions showed him that his parents’ 500 K a year wasn’t dick compared to what my dad pulls down annually. Which means Landon is no longer the richest boy on campus, and he isn’t happy about that. Probably doesn’t help Jacqueline was his… until last Saturday, when she most definitely was mine—and not because it was me pulling at her T-shirt and copping a feel while people were watching.

  I’m not complaining.

  Added bonus: she’s a cheerleader—and each day we come back to the field in the afternoon when she’s here, she shouts my name. Normally, I’d ignore her because I don’t do clingy, and this girl screams girlfriend-wannabe, but watching Landon grind his teeth prompts me to acknowledge her and fuel the fire. Impulse control can go fuck itself.

  Today, though, my status of irritating him for amusement has been notched up to a serious level. Colt came in to morning lifting ready to rip Landon’s head off. I was already in the middle of my circuit and didn’t acknowledge Colt’s tantrum until Coach snapped at him to get outside and run bleachers.

  Before he left, he slammed Landon into a wall.

  Now, we’re all walking from the weight room to the field to round out the morning with a mini-scrimmage, offense against defense. Colt is waiting for us, walking right up to me near the water cooler where I’m waiting while Coach starts calling out positions.

  “Tell Coach you want to play defense only today.”

  I raise a brow. “Gonna tell me why I’d do that?”

  “Because Landon deserves a beat down,” he throws back. “Besides, I’m your captain, and I’m not fucking asking.”

  I’m about to tell him to screw off—captain or not, I don’t have to take orders from him—when Grier calls to Colt from a few feet away. “Is this about Lincoln and me the other night?” Colt tenses, and Grier just laughs with a few of his idiot friends. Everyone else takes a notable step back. “Don’t get sensitive. I only told her what everyone else already knows, Slaughter—she’s the Friday night girl, not the forever one. Teasing and pretending to hold out isn’t why someone like me goes out with someone like her.”

  Colt lunges across the bench and has Landon pinned to the ground before anyone else moves. Coaches come running, and eventually, two of them get the boys separated. Colt’s breathing hard, but has no visible bruises. Grier is breathing hard, but in a way that tells me his ribs are going to be aching for a while.

  “Slaughter!” Coach gets in Colt’s face, and, for the first time, Colt’s body language doesn’t show remorse. In the past weeks, any time Beau or Coach has said something to Colt, he’s always complied, always done exactly what he was told. But right now, not so much.

  “One more time, you hear? And then it’s the stadium for the rest of the week.” He turns and shouts, “Slaughter two!”

  “Sir,” I acknowledge.

  He finds me in the crowd. “Safety. Let’s see if you can follow orders any better than Slaughter one.”

  I hate safety—too removed from the major action—and for a second, I almost say that. But then I see Colt’s face, and behind him, the smarmy ass grin Grier is wearing. I nod at Coach, and slap on my helmet before huddling up.

  Jorgensen, the center, calls the plays, and for two run throughs, we listen to him. Colt lines up at outside linebacker and does his job, and I stay back, looking for lone runners or the long game. When the offense runs the ball for three plays straight, and I’m left doing nothing but watching, I have to battle the urge to throw a tantrum. This is why I hate safety—I’m aggressive, but though my size is big compared to a lot of guys, Colt and the other linebackers have a good thirty pounds on me, which is why I don’t get to sit on their line.

  Frustration starts to mount, until, finally, Grier throws the ball. I beat the defensive back by a mile, ignoring the opportunity to intercept, and instead going for the hard tackle while the receiver is in midair.

  Whistles blow, and while I take a small slap for being so rough, Grier receives most of the ass chewing because he telegraphed his pass and never saw me coming.

  Back in the huddle, Colt eyes me and I stare right back. Finally, he cuts Jorgensen off in the middle of the play call. “Shark blitz.”

  The center’s head snaps up. “That’s not the call.”

  “It is now.”

  Colt looks at me, and so does everyone else. Shark blitz. Safety blitz.

  I have two options: ignore Colt because I know damn well I’ll be running stadium stairs for this—especially since I just got told to tone it down—or fucking do it.

  God, I want to do it. My cousin and I might not be besties, but hitting a guy like Grier always serves up a type of satisfaction you can’t get anywhere else.

  “Rich Boy?” Colt taunts me, and my hands clench.

  Finally, I nod, clapping my hands on Jorgensen’s count before jogging back to position. I line up, body vibrating, starting my jog a little early. Landon’s wearing a red jersey, but it doesn’t stop me, and neither do Coach’s yells when the ball is snapped, and it’s clear where I’m headed.

  Sweeping the outside, I rush Grier’s backside from the edge, the offensive line’s speed no match for me once they figure it out. His arm is cocked back and ready, when he turns his head slightly, already more worried about himself than completing the play. Pussy.

  I let him see me just long enough that his eyes widen before I lower my head and use my shoulder to smash straight into the small of his back below his pads, propelling myself forward hard enough that Landon leaves his feet before he’s smashed into the ground.

  Whistles are going off and coaches are yelling, but I stay where I am, shoving on Landon with my weight and making him groan again. “Tsk, tsk, Landon, looking backward when you should be working to complete the pass.” I shove my face in his and speak quietly. “Who’s the Friday night girl now?”

  Hands yank at the collar of my practice jersey, and I let them drag me up.

  Coach is in my face, yelling about idiot genetics and not a smart one in the entire bunch. I take the heat without saying anything, removing my helmet when he points to the stadium and finishes with a “go.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Colt is waiting for me at the end of my last stair, a water cup in one hand, and a towel in the other. Tossing them to me, he flicks his head and begins walking toward the parking lot. “Nice tackle. Rich Boy.”

  I don’t move, but then he looks at me over his shoulder. “Let’s go. I called Beau and told him I would bring you to the farm. You’re moving hay again today—by hand.”

  “Screw that,” I say, and start walking. “What are you doing?”

  “Overseeing the pressing of the last group of large bales to be shipped. You know, big boy work. Not grunt work.”

  “I thought I was the rich boy,” I mumble when we reach his truck.

  “So did I.” We both stop, and Colt eyes me over the bed of the truck where we’ve both thrown our gear. “You know Coach is going to make you run again this afternoon, and then we’re both going to have to make things right with Grier, so we don’t fuck the entire season.”

  I nod. “Worth it. I haven’t hit someone that hard in a long time.” Then I motion to him. “Or at least since I popped you one on Tuesday.”

  Colt scowls, mumb
ling under his breath while we open our doors and hop into the truck. “Don’t mention this to Lincoln. She hates when I do stuff like this.”

  I nod, but then I ask what’s been on my mind since last week, and again when Landon started spouting his fool mouth. “Was what he said true? Did he hook up with Lincoln?”

  Colt’s jaw works back and forth while he grinds his teeth and pulls out of the parking lot to the street. “She’s my best friend.” His answer makes me think he’s telling me to back off, so I don’t say anything else.

  He shifts and the engine rumbles, the gears audible. “And I’m sure he hit on Lincoln and she let him. Linc…she doesn’t think sometimes. She’s always doing what she wants, or what she thinks is right, and sometimes… she just doesn’t think.”

  “So, you what, think for her?”

  “No,” he bites off. Then, he grumbles, “You don’t get it. Lincoln… her life isn’t hers, not really, between her mom and being Type 1. Sometimes, she takes control the only way she can—and however much I understand why she’s doing what she is, drinking or hooking up with some douche like Landon Fucking Grier, I hate it. And I hate that she does it.”

  “But you’re not dating?” I can’t help the question. This kind of commitment to someone, the level of selflessness, especially when there is no benefit in it for him… I don’t get it.

  He pauses, shaking his head eventually. “Linc’s the only real family I’ve ever known—it’s not about dating her. It’s about needing her to be okay. When she forgets to eat, or doesn’t have enough money for real food or strips, I make sure she gets it. When she hooks up with an asshole who’s going to treat her like trash, I take care of him, too.”

  He doesn’t say anymore, and I don’t either. We ride to the farm in silence, but when I get out and go to change while Colt automatically goes to find Lincoln before the workday starts, I wonder what it might feel like to care about someone like that, and know they feel the same.

  I hate registration. It’s not the idea of going back to school I hate—it’s that, in order to get all of the things I need, and to have the fees waived because there is no way I can pay them all, my mom has to come with me. Can’t have that free and reduced lunch without a parent signature verifying we are, in fact, poor.

  For the same reason I hate registration, my mother loves it.

  She’s dressed to impress—or at least, she thinks she is, in her skin-tight capris, heels, and spaghetti strap tank top. Like me, she’s small, but her naturally narrow frame has been carved down to skeletal, while her face remains puffy, even underneath the caking of make-up, thanks to the steady diet of booze and drugs for the past decade or more.

  I’ve seen pictures of her from high school, so I know that her hair was once the same wheat gold as mine, thick and long and heavy—rich girl hair, she once called it. “God forgot what he was doing when he created us. Gave us rich girl hair that ended up in a trailer park.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but over the years the abuse she’s both endured and put her body through has left her hair broken and stringy like the rest of her, the dark roots cutting through the bottle blonde like the crevices in her face cut through her Maybelline foundation.

  “My daughter needs stuff. She’s ill.”

  Currently, I’m staring at a wall, wondering if I can somehow sink into it and disappear while she screams at Mrs. Riedl, the registrar, about making certain my paperwork covers not only food, but medicine. It doesn’t—that’s a different set of paperwork with different people, and for a pre-existing condition, no amount of free health care is going to cover all of my stuff, but telling her that won’t get me anywhere, because she doesn’t really care if she’s right or wrong. Right now, she only cares about being seen and heard and paid attention to. Honestly, it’s the only reason she ever comes to these things. Kind of like a social event for her—except she never grew out of the “any attention is good attention” phase.

  “Mrs. Brewer—Lisa,” Mrs. Riedl starts. “I need you to sign the form, and then I can turn it in and start the process for the rest of the paperwork. I assure you, we will assist Lincoln in any way she needs.”

  “What about me?” my mom snaps. “Does anyone care about what I need? My hours at the bar got cut, you know. And no one tips anymore.”

  To her credit, Mrs. Riedl doesn’t sigh, or groan, or show any of the other things I’m sure she’s thinking. Instead, she just smiles and reassures my mom that they will do their best to assuage her fears.

  Assuage. Well played, Mrs. Riedl. Can’t argue when you don’t understand, and SAT words like that one are way above Lisa Brewer’s head.

  We struggle through the rest of the process, me doing my best to blend into every wall we pass and not be seen, while my mom calls out to everyone. People stare, but when I stare back at them, they look away after a second. This is our twelfth year of being together—Lisa Brewer is old news.

  “Hello, Lincoln.”

  I look up from counting cracks in the tile, and into the faces of Beau and Maggie Slaughter. “Hello.” Next to them is Ford, casual in a football T-shirt and mesh team shorts. I nod at him, but look away when heat stains my cheeks. My mom is talking at an ear-splitting volume to Mr. Dugan, who graduated with her from high school. He’s now my teacher, and she’s teasing him about tutoring girls the way he tutored her when they were in school.

  Vomit.

  “Are you running cross country again this year, Lincoln?”

  I nod at Maggie, as embarrassed as I am grateful that she’d make the effort to distract me.

  “Yes. We’re, um, already training, once in the morning, and again in the afternoon. Mostly strength stuff in the afternoon.”

  “Need to quit and get your job back.” I glance at my mom, who is done talking to Mr. Dugan, and is now focusing on me. Although she knows Colt’s grandparents, she doesn’t greet them. For all her attention-whore ways, Lisa steers clear of those people who can see through her. “Running ain’t going to pay the bills.”

  “Funny, neither are you.”

  I regret the words instantly, not because they’re false or mean-spirited, but because they’re useless. My mom is like any other woman who always has an excuse as to why her life is the way it is: not enough support, no good men, a greedy government, and even greedier daughter. (Because, you know, diabetes was my choice. As was being born to her. Totally picked that myself.)

  “Don’t you sass me, you ungrateful girl.” Her fingers are surprisingly strong when they wrap around my upper arm, the nails she spends money we don’t have to get done digging into my flesh. “You think it’s easy being strapped with a sick kid whose own daddy wouldn’t stick around? You think it was me who wanted you when that line turned pink?”

  Now people are staring, because however routine, drama never gets old. I school my expression to bland, never taking my eyes off my mother. “You weren’t the one who wanted me,” I repeat, miming the motion of taking out a pen and paper with my free hand. “Check. I’ll make sure to write that down—maybe add it to my high school memories for the yearbook. Unwanted by mother—father unknown.”

  Her nostrils flare, and her face is mottled with red when she jerks my arm. Before anything else can take place, Beau steps forward and says her name at the same time as a few administrators. This, too, is routine for registration. Sometimes I think they trail us, waiting for the moment they need to step in.

  “Ms. Brewer, why don’t you let Lincoln get her books on her own? You can come with us and make sure her paperwork is filled out.”

  Mom stares at me again, those nails breaking skin right before she releases my arm. Her upper lip is beaded with sweat, which tells me she’s crashing from whatever she took this morning, and in need of her next hit. “You better watch your mouth, girl, and remember who puts food into it.”

  And then she turns on her heel, flouncing out on her five inch stilettos while she spits obscenities in the direction of anyone she catches looking at he
r. I keep my place in line, nodding when Maggie asks if I’m all right.

  When it’s finally my turn to hand Mrs. Carson my schedule, she offers me a small smile, and though I understand why, I don’t smile back. I just stare, my expression bordering hostile, because pity is like anger—I don’t accept it, don’t let myself embrace it, afraid that once I open those gates and feel that emotion, I might not ever stop.

  And, whatever it says about me, I don’t want to feel the sadness or despair or embarrassment that is caused when people look at me with understanding or pity or disgust. I don’t want to feel anything, because it means that I don’t feel my mom’s words, either.

  My books are set down, and, as I reach for them, a strong body moves into mine and nudges me out of the way. I glance at Ford, who’s setting his few textbooks on top of mine and shoving a blue piece of paper at me. “Show me how to find my locker, Blondie?”

  Before I can respond, he’s hefting the large stack of books like it weighs nothing and motioning to someone over my shoulder. “I have football until seven. Jacqueline said she would give me a ride to the farm after that.”

  There’s a pause when he stares and no one answers. Then I hear, “All right. Dinner will be in the oven for you. Good seeing you, Lincoln.”

  I turn my head and nod at Beau and Maggie, not quite meeting their eyes. Then, I look to Ford. “If Jackie sees you carrying my books, you might find yourself walking home tonight.”

  The look on his face isn’t quite a smile, but it’s definitely amused. “I’ll risk it.” He nods his head in the direction of the exit. “After you.”

  I walk out of the production center, ignoring the stares and whispers, and smiling at those people who are bold enough to watch me the entire way. And, then, because I can’t help myself, I stop at a particularly mouthy group of girls whom I haven’t spoken to since middle school.