More Than Good Enough(4)

“So how about them Marlins?” Brian (or Ryan?) would mumble.

Baseball was never my thing. Maybe if Dad had been around, he could’ve taught me the basics.

I must’ve been brain-dead not to realize Michelle was playing me. A couple weeks before I moved out to the Rez, we were making out in my room and her stupid cell kept buzzing against my leg. She just shrugged and tossed the phone in her purse. Later, she got up to use the bathroom and I checked her text messages. Yeah, it was shady thing to do. Not half as shady as what I saw:

Eric: I can’t wait to see u babe.

I scrolled through the list of callers. Michelle knew so many people at school, it was hard to keep track. She would clomp through the hall shrieking some freshman girl’s name, then swoop her into a bone-crushing hug as if they were going off to war. It was kind of annoying.

When I asked about the message, she got mad, of course.

“Don’t you trust me?” Michelle chewed her lower lip. Her teeth were a little crooked. She’d been lazy about wearing her retainer, but I didn’t care. I buried my face in her neck, breathed in the burnt popcorn smell of that gunk she used to “sculpt” her split ends.

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t trust anybody.

When I got home after school, Dad was slumped in a beach chair behind the Little Blue House like he’d just woken up from a nap. There was no escaping him.

“Target practice, huh?” he said, looking at the mess.

“Something like that.”

“We should go down to Trail Glades. Shoot some skeet,” he said as we headed into the house.

Now he was making scissors with his meaty fingers, pretending to snip my hair. For a guy who’d been eating off prison cafeteria trays, he looked more like a Mexican wrestler than a menace to society.

He was already making plans for the weekend. “Is that bowling place still open? You know. The one near Dolphin Mall?”

“I think it got torn down,” I said, which wasn’t true.

“Really? That’s a shame.”

A twinge of guilt shot through me. “Maybe it’s still there. Whatever. It was kind of ghetto. I’ll look into it.”

A promise I wouldn’t keep.

Dad tapped my arm. “Where’s that bowling bag you used to carry everywhere? The one with the robots?”

The last time I’d gone bowling, I was in fourth grade. It was somebody’s birthday. Luke Swisstack. Why was I even there? I couldn’t stand that kid. He used to make fun of me nonstop. He’d point at the toilets in the boy’s bathroom, the lids stamped with the word TRENTON in loopy capital letters.

“Hey Trent,” he’d say, laughing like crazy. “Is this what you’re named after?”

My cell was ringing. Shouting, actually. The voice of Drake, rapping about how he wanted it to be “forever.”

I glanced at the screen.

Michelle.

“Do these things really take pictures?” Dad swooped over and grabbed the phone. Snatched it right out of my hand. He held it up to the light, as if he could see inside it.

“Yeah,” I said, snatching it back. “And you can make movies and stuff.”

“Could you show me?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“I mean, when you’ve got time.”

“Okay, Dad.” I inched toward the door.

He grinned. “Time is one thing we’ve got plenty of.”

Dad had been out of jail since December, but after we moved to the Rez, it seemed he was suddenly everywhere. I’d come home from school and he’d be passed out on the couch. Lights off. TV blasting. He’d reach for the remote, put the Travel Channel on mute. Then the questions would start

rolling.

Like they were now.

“How’re you liking that new school?” he asked.

“Fine.”

Christmas break had just ended. Nobody was liking school. Including me. Mom wasn’t happy about me going to Palm Hammock, but Dad said it was good enough. I had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn and take the Florida Turnpike. My old neighborhood was a long haul from the Everglades. Almost an hour.

“Maybe you could try the school on the Rez?” Dad suggested.

Hell no. I was spending enough time there. Uncle Seth already had me working at the Miccosukee Indian Village on weekends, collecting tips for the gator show.

“Better work on those grades,” Dad told me. “Because if you screw up, there’s no second chances. Understand?”

He never gave a flying rip about my grades before. Now it was too late. Did he really think he could just act like things were normal?

“And no girls,” he added. “You need to keep your head straight.”

I was trying so hard not to laugh. Who was he kidding? No girls? Like that was going to happen. And I had my own questions. Lots of them. I still didn’t understand why he got busted. I was a little kid when Dad “went away.” Mom filled me in on the minor details. Nothing dramatic like first-degree murder. He got caught writing bad checks. That’s all. To be totally honest, I almost wished he’d robbed a bank.

After these non-conversations, I’d sneak off to my room and plug Rock Band into the Xbox. Seconds later, Dad would appear behind me, hovering like the Nazg?l from Lord of the Rings. It was majorly weird, the way he drifted around the Little Blue House.