I entered the house from the garage. Andrew was lying on the couch watching a horror movie. He didn't even look at me. I pushed up his legs, sat down on the couch, grabbed the remote control out of his hand, and flipped the channel.

"Don't watch that crap," I said.

"Why not?"

"You're afraid to go upstairs as it is."

"Just don't want to see our mother," Andrew said.

"Yeah, she's a horror movie," I said.

"She certainly is."

I pushed myself up and climbed the stairs to the living room. No lights were on. With a twinge of fear, I moved to the hall light switch. The last thing I wanted to see was some grizzly death scene involving Jerri. But when I turned on the light, she was nowhere to be found. I moved down the hall and could hear Jerri breathing in her room.

A voice came from her bed.

"Felton, is that you?"

"Yeah. You okay, Jerri?"

"I feel like shit. Probably shouldn't drink wine."

"I guess not."

"Is Andrew okay?"

"Yeah. He's watching TV in the basement."

"Good. I'm going to get some sleep."

"Sounds like a plan."

I turned and walked back into the kitchen. Jerri sounded a little better. I felt better. In the kitchen, I gathered a bunch of chips and salsa and junk and some sparkling waters out of the fridge and took it downstairs to Andrew.

"Jerri isn't dead," I told him, putting the food on the side table.

"We're truly blessed," Andrew said.

Man, he looked beat up. There were dark circles under his eyes, and there was some dry grass in his hair. He had smudges of dirt on his cheeks. The light from the TV made him look pale and fragile. Man, he just looked bad! I honestly felt a little guilty for being so happy. I almost couldn't keep it inside. I almost said, straight up jackass style, "Aleah Jennings kissed my cheek. This cheek! This one on my face!"

I didn't tell Andrew anything. We watched George Lopez, a show we both hate, in silence, except for the crunching of our chips.

CHAPTER 23: MAYBE I DON'T NEED GUS?.

Andrew fell asleep immediately after he ate the chips. Poor little dipshit. He snored sort of soft, and I stood up to go to bed. I couldn't sleep though, so I checked email, hoping to find something from Gus. He hadn't responded. There was another message from Cody: dad told me about your mom. you ok, man? check this out. He sent a link to a website with a bunch of videos of asswipe Ken Johnson playing football. More crushing tackles and fumbles and touchdowns and crap that made me nervous. It had all kinds of recruiting information, height and weight and track times and other physical tests and an interview with Ken where he acted all cool and serious and good about helping his college team be great. Bullshit. Cody wrote that I'd get a page on this site too. I've never played football! I closed Cody's email.

Andrew snored outside my room. Jerri slept upstairs. Tough day.

But really, Jerri actually seemed okay. I figured she'd had her little blowup and things would go back to normal, which was not normal but was normal for me. I couldn't wait to get up and see Aleah playing piano. I couldn't believe that at that moment, a few miles away, she was awake too, practicing. Even though Gus hadn't responded to my earlier email, I wrote to him: I am a very lucky young man with a girlfriend.

Gus immediately responded by email: what girl wants you? must be cow.

Was that supposed to be funny? Why didn't Gus respond to my serious email about Jerri being crazy? What a jerk! Cody asked how I was doing. Gus said only a cow would like me.

Then I started wondering why Aleah would like me. She didn't know anything about me, except I have a weird family. Then I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn't sleep because anger boiled in my gut about what Gus said, and I wanted to yell at him for being a jerk, but I couldn't because he was on another continent. I worried that Aleah wouldn't like me once she figured me out because there wasn't much to like. What if I do date cows? Real cows? What if they moo and chew grass and smell terrible?

I suppose I drifted off to sleep but not for a long, long time. Gus had gotten all my emails and responded to just that one and he responded like a total jerk.

Because I had such a hard time falling asleep, I got up very late. Most of the night, I hallucinated about Aleah's piano and feeding Andrew chips and getting crushed on recruiting websites and dating cows. Awake, sort of, but having nightmares! Finally, when I had to get out of bed, I couldn't get out of bed. Jesus! I was so late for the paper route!

No problem. Going to her house. She'll be playing piano for me.

But Aleah wasn't playing piano for me when I arrived.

I was dizzy with sleepiness, even though I'd been gunning it, running up to doors, handing the paper to angry dudes dressed for business. "Just want to check the Brewers score before work. That too much to ask?" "No way, Mr. Dickweed! Sorry I'm not here earlier! Much prefer to hand you the paper when you're in your boxer shorts so I can see Wee Willy Wanky poking out." Like they couldn't just check the Internet anyway.

By the time I got to Aleah's, the sun was completely up, and although it looked like morning, it was definitely the day part of morning, not dawn anymore.

The garage door at Gus's place was open, and Aleah was resting against the back end of her dad's Volvo. She was wearing purple bike shorts and a tiger-striped bike helmet. "Holy cow. There you are! I've been waiting for an hour!"

"Holy cow?"

"Oh, does that sound dumb, farm boy?"

"Um, no. I don't like cows."

"Why not? They're cute."

"Yeah. What are you doing?" I sort of laughed because of her crazy bike attire.

"I want to go on the rest of the paper route with you."

"Where's your bike?"

"I don't have a bike. We were going to buy a bike for me when we got here, but haven't yet. I do have my bike helmet though!"

"I can definitely see that. And bike shorts."

"They have a butt pad, so I'll be comfortable on your seat."

"Am I supposed to run along beside you?"

"No."

"I mean, I will."

"No, you're going to chauffeur me."

I got off the bike and ran a paper up to the stoop. Ronald Jennings opened the screen door before I could. "Yo, Felton!"

"Hi, Mr. Jennings."

"Aleah's hell bent on going with you. Make sure she drives some. I'd like her to get a little exercise too."

"Okay," I said.

Aleah was holding my Schwinn Varsity steady when I got back. We had to try like five different ways, but we finally figured out how to get both of us on it. Mr. Jennings laughed his ass off at us.

"Hold it steady, Felton. Get Aleah perched on that seat first." He was right. That worked.

I had to press on the pedals like a dang elephant to get us moving. Aleah held on to my hips to stay balanced. We were totally unsteady and were laughing and laughing.

As we biked down the block toward the next house, it occurred to me that Ronald was being pretty nice.

"Why's your dad so nice to me?" I asked.

"He knows about your dad from the college," Aleah said. "He told me all about it this morning. He knows you're a good kid too."

"Oh." All about it? What all about it? You're a good kid?

"And, of course, he's dying for me to be a happy girl."

"Why?"

"Duh! My mom moved to England last winter!"

"Oh. Yeah. Was she living with you before she moved?"

"Yes. She left right out of me and Daddy's apartment after she spent about five years yelling at us."

"Nice."

"Uh huh. Daddy said she was too young when they got married and she didn't know who she was, and when she figured it out, she had an apartment and a husband and a little girl, and it drove her crazy."

"That's a lot of information."

"Too much?"

"No. No. I mean, I'm surprised you know all that stuff. That your dad told you."

Just then we rolled up to the next stop on the route, and I leaned the bike, which completely toppled us. Thankfully, we fell on grass next to the curb, not on a sidewalk.

"Oh my God!" Aleah laughed. We lay there on our backs laughing, spread-eagled on the yard. Then I did it. Just a burst. I rolled over and gave her a kiss on the lips.

"I didn't mean at all that you were telling me too much."

We stared at each other, my face like two inches above hers. Heart pounding. She's so beautiful. We were probably lying there staring at each other for two weeks when somebody spoke above us.

"Excuse me. Could I get the paper?" It was the lady who lived there. She was none too pleased.

I jumped up and pulled a rumpled paper out of my bag. The woman grabbed it out of my hand, turned, and walked back to the house, mumbling, "Kid thinks he's on a date. He's got a job. This isn't a date."

Aleah and I quietly mounted the Schwinn, repeating our successful procedure from her driveway. About twenty feet down the road, Aleah whispered in this nasal tone that mimicked the woman, "This is a job, kid. You want a date, go to the roller rink. A paper route isn't a date."

"You're funny," I turned back to look at her, smiling my ass off.

"Oh, yes, I am," Aleah whispered dramatically.

Then we hit a parked car (we were going really slow, of course).

It seriously was pretty smart of Aleah to wear her helmet. We could've sustained major head injuries no fewer than fifteen times as we teeter-tottered, occasionally crashing, through the rest of the stops.

Finally, we arrived at the crown jewel of the route: the nursing home.

"Do they really read?" Aleah asked.

"I don't think so, but they get the paper."

We both limped toward the front door. I actually had a welt on my thigh from the car collision. Because it was late, the old ladies were milling about in the common area at the front of the home.

"Let's move fast. I don't like the smell in here."

"I don't like it in here period," Aleah said.

We rounded a corner, dropped off a paper in one room, then hit another spot down the hall where one of the only old men in the place lay sleeping on his back, the TV on in front of him, his mouth wide open. We dropped another off in an empty room (the one where I almost always find a half-naked lady who wants me to help her escape) and then high-tailed it toward the front to drop two off at the nurses' desk. We flew around a corner and were instantly face-to-face with the younger woman who freaks when she sees me. On cue, she screamed bloody murder, turned, and ran down the hall, spitting and mumbling.

"What was that about?" Aleah asked.

"She's a total nut bag," I said. "She screams like that every time."

"She's like my mom's age. They take just flat-out crazy people here, not just old ones?"

"I guess they do."

We dropped the papers off with the nurses, hit the security code on the front door (1, 2, 3a"Genius! No one will ever figure it out!), and then left the building. We were finished with the route.

As I held the bike to let Aleah get on, she paused.