Famous in a Small Town(22)

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We split up inside Jake’s house, pulled in several different directions as a guy from the football team waved Brit down, and Flora spotted some junior girls. August and I wandered a bit, eventually making our way to the kitchen to get drinks.

A group of guys was gathered there in a rough circle. They were, apparently, discussing how to crush a can on your forehead.

“You have to squeeze it first,” the guy nearest us said.

“Nah, that’s like pre-crushing. That’s cheating.”

“You have to! Or else it won’t do it!” he insisted.

“I got this, I got it.” One guy finished off his drink quickly. His name was Dylan, and he was a sophomore in the brass section. All eyes were on him as he held up the can for the group to see and then raised it dramatically in the air and aimed it toward himself.

Next to me, August shifted forward. “Hey, maybe don’t—”

Dylan slammed the can straight at the center of his forehead, and then let out a yelp, the decidedly uncrushed can falling to the ground.

The group erupted as Dylan clutched his head:

“Wooooooow.”

“I told you, you have to crush it first!”

“Coach Junior,” someone said, and they all cracked up.

“Fuck you guys,” Dylan said, face angled downward, still holding his head.

“No, that was a Coach Junior right there, even you have to admit it.”

August cut past me as the guys kept talking, went to the fridge, and got out a couple of cans of soda. Dylan had shuffled to the side.

I watched as August moved toward him. He pulled Dylan’s hand away from his head—Dylan, who was blinking rapidly, let him—inspected his forehead for a moment, and then held the soda up against it. “Just hold it there.”

Dylan looked confused—pained and probably drunk. “To crush it?”

“In case it swells up,” August said.

“It’s gonna swell?”

“Not if you hold that there.”

Dylan nodded dutifully, and August returned to me.

“Who’s Coach Junior?” he said, handing me the other soda.

The guy nearest us heard him. “The coach’s kid? He was a few years ahead of us. He tried to kill himself senior year by jumping off a garage. All he did was break his legs.”

August frowned. “Is that … funny?”

“It’s funny ’cause he lived. If he died we wouldn’t joke about it, obviously.”

“Obviously,” August repeated.

The guy speaking was named Troy Fowler. I had been all through school with him. I still remembered one time he missed a week of school in fourth grade to go with his mom to visit family in Michigan. When he came back to class the next week, all he could talk about was an accident they had seen on the interstate driving up there. Two semitrucks had crashed into each other, and multiple cars piled up behind.

“The trucks crashed together, and then the cars behind them crashed into trucks, just bam bam bam”—he had smacked his hands together—“ka-blam!”

There were fire trucks and ambulances and a helicopter apparently, and Troy and his mom were in terrible traffic, even coming the opposite way, backed up for miles as people slowed to look while they passed. The firefighters had held up sheets around some of the crashed cars.

Dash had listened to this account with a frown, his brow furrowed. “Why?”

“So people couldn’t see the dead bodies when they pulled them out.” Troy slapped his hands together again for emphasis. “Ka-blam, remember?”

Right now he blinked at August. “No, he’s totally fine. So it’s funny. He legit thought he was going to end it jumping like eight feet. It was idiotic.”

August opened his mouth to speak, but I had had enough of Troy Fowler, so I tugged on August’s arm.

“Want to go outside?”

We ended up on the back porch. I shot off a quick text to WWYSE: We’re in the back

It was quiet between August and me. I could hear Troy laughing inside. That loud bray. It was idiotic.

“He wasn’t trying to kill himself,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Coach Junior.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s not even—it’s a stupid nickname. His name is Luke. And he was high. Some guys at a party slipped him something. He was totally out of it. Thought he could fly or something.”

“You know him?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Brit’s brother.”

Luke was probably my first crush, though I wouldn’t have known to call it that at the time. Maybe he was Ciara’s too—when we were little he had pegs on the back of his bike and she used to stand on them, holding Luke’s shoulders as he pedaled fast up and down the street, her hair flowing out behind her, a huge grin on her face. She’d say I was too little to ride, but I think she just liked keeping it as something between them.

The breaks in Luke’s legs were bad, and he had to have a couple of operations, had to go back and forth to Effingham for physical therapy. He missed the last few months of his senior year, and deferred his acceptance to University of Illinois. He never ended up going.

He got around fine now, but whatever plans he had before—college, everything—were derailed, and he couldn’t seem to find his way back to them.