"Why is all this junk pulled out of boxes?" she asked.

Andrew shrugged.

On the third day, she drove Jerri to Dubuque, Iowa, to see doctors and therapists.

I didn't like Jerri going to Dubuque. I didn't like her not being close by. I had a job. When I wasn't sleeping those three days or on the computer or delivering papers or eating, I'd be next to Jerri watching TV in her room, laughing too hard, to make everything normal. That's what I had to do. My job was to make Jerri know I think she's great and know she can count on me because I'm not like my dead dad, who I missed more and more every hour, which really pissed me off.

Very upset.

Grandma Berba came down to my room before they left for Dubuque, after I asked to go with, then pleaded, but was turned down.

"Felton," she said. "You can't fix your mom."

"I can help."

"It isn't your job. You're the kid, okay?"

"I want to help."

"Be a kid, Felton."

"I want toa"

"No. I'm here to take care of you. Your job is to be a kid."

Oh, man.

It was decided in Dubuque that day that Jerri would leave. She was put on serious medication, which made her sort of dull and retarded but resistant. To get better, to make sure she wouldn't hurt herself, she'd go away. She'd be checked into some kind of mental health facility in Arizona that Grandma knew about (it looked like a freaking vacation ranch with doctorsa"I checked it on the Web). Jerri was leaving.

"She can't leave!" I shouted at Grandma Berba.

"She needs to get better," Grandma said back.

The voice in my head said: She's leaving you.

And so, three days passed. Three days closer to Aleah leaving, which didn't seem to matter anymore. Three days closer to Gus coming home, giving me an opportunity to officially lose my only friend. Three days closer to school starting, which I didn't want to think about at all. In four days, Jerri would go, which made me cry. And it was three days closer to my sixteenth birthday, which happened to be in three days.

Who cares about birthdays? I didn't want to. I probably did care though. I know I did.

CHAPTER 54: HONKIES DUMP TRASH.

Do farmers sometimes dump on your property?" Grandma Berba asked.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with Jerri on Wednesday, two days before my birthday, eating lunch, a ham sandwich and some cold tomato soup and another sandwich and some broccoli with ranch sauce and another sandwich.

"Dump what?" I asked.

"Trash."

"Farmers? No."

"Somebody just dumped some trash." Grandma Berba stood at the picture window and pointed.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and pushed back from the table. I joined Grandma Berba at the window. There were a bunch of black trash bags down at the end of our drive and hundreds of loose pieces of white paper blowing around in the breeze.

"Farmers never dumped before. Jerri?"

Jerri was stirring her cold soup around, staring at it. As usual, she was about ten feet deep in the haze.

"What?" she asked.

"Farmers ever dump trash on our property?"

"Umm, no," Jerri said quietly, looking up from her soup. "I suppose I used to find beer bottles every now and then, just kids partying probably. Not farm waste."

"I saw a pickup truck out there. I didn't see anyone throw trash. It was just leaving when I looked. I assumed farmers."

"Pickup?" I asked.

Just then Aleah rolled down the hill on the main road up to the foot of our drive. She stopped and looked at the trash. She got off her bike and bent over, staring at something on the ground. She stood up and surveyed the trash. Then she bent down and picked up one of the pieces of paper. She got on her Walmart mountain bike and rode up the hill, carrying the paper.

"Andrew," Grandma called. "Your friend is here."

"I'll be right out," Andrew called. He was in the bathroom after showering, which was never his strong point, even before he became a pirate.

Aleah walked up the front sidewalk and entered directly into the living room without knocking. She looked at me for a moment, sort of stunned. We hadn't seen each other since the morning Grandma Berba showed up. She smiled big, but I didn't smile back.

"What's in your hand?" I asked.

"There's a whole bunch of beer bottles and papers on your driveway," she said.

"Yeah? So? Why did you pick that up?" I asked, pointing.

"Oh." She stared at me, squinting.

"Yeah?"

"All the paper down there has FAKER written on it. See?" She handed me the paper. "I thought you'd want a look."

"Faker?" Grandma asked.

"The trash is for me," I said, looking at FAKER scrawled big in black marker. "I'll go take care of it."

"What do you mean for you?" Grandma asked.

"Honkies," I said, staring at Aleah. She grimaced.

"Honkies?" Grandma said. "I'm beginning to miss Arizona."

I rolled Andrew's old plastic wagon down the drive. The wagon was Jerri's utility vehicle in the yard. The sun was really hot, and the beer bottles, even though they were mostly in bags, were incredibly stinky. They reminded me of how much I hated the smell at weights that first day. Pee and poison.

How could the honkies turn on me so fast? I couldn't return their stupid texts because my father was a giant, dead, sex maniac tennis player, and Jerri was crazy. I had a life outside their piddly assfaced circles. How could they turn on me like that? Didn't they know I was a kind guy who wanted to take care of his mother but wasn't allowed?

I'd be of no use to them without football. And, no, I wasn't going to play football. There was too much going on. Cody probably figured out I wasn't going to play since I hadn't gone to his gamea"hadn't been at weights or pass routes the last couple of daysa"so he must've joined Ken Johnson and the senior honkies in their total contempt for me. It was probably his pickup that Grandma Berba saw. He, Karpinski, and Reese probably emptied dumpsters behind bars and hauled the crap out here to throw on my yard. Abby Sauter and Jess Withrow probably spent hours writing FAKER on a thousand sheets of paper. Those assholes. This how you're going to shake me out of bed, Cody? I'd learned a lesson: never trust a honky. My stomach hurt at first. But then it didn't. It began to boil. You're assholes.

I had to make five trips to get the garbage up to our bins. There were no other messages other than FAKER. That was message enough. I was hot and stinky like a honky lifting weights. Disgusting, I thought.

I couldn't go back inside, not to Aleah and Jerri and Grandma Berba. I didn't want to explain myself. My family didn't need to take more hits. My family didn't need to know the gory details.

This is bullshit.

I had too much energy. Probably from being mad.

I hopped up and down in place. While I did it, I wished my dad were alive and loved me enough to take these jerks down. I wished we were driving in his car, him with a baseball bat across his lap, looking for honkies. Looking so we could show these idiots they shouldn't mess with Reinsteins.

But my dad is dead. Even though I finally had a real picture of him in my head. Even though I could see his long arms in my arms and sense his wicked court speed in my legs.

I wanted to go to the big M. I wanted to run. I'd killed my dad's bike. Oh, shit. I took off running and ran up and down the hill on the main road for as long as I could. A couple of cars went by, kicking up dust that choked me. Doesn't matter. It wasn't the same as the Mound, but it felt good. The scab on my side cracked and bled. Sweat poured into my eyes.

Those honky bastards were very lucky they didn't happen upon my hill while I was out there. It would not have been pretty.

That's what I thought.

CHAPTER 55: FAKER!.

On Thursday morning, the day before my birthday, there was more trash piled at the end of the drive. I had to move it to the side so Grandma Berba could get her giant SUV past so we could do the paper route. I swore and kicked those stupid bags, which was dumb because there was old milk in one that sprayed all over me and made me nearly throw up. Sour milk smells like Andrew's baby poop.

When I got back in, Andrew plugged his nose and complained. Grandma didn't complain. She said, "Are you going to tell me what's going on here?"

"What?" I asked, even though I knew what she was talking about.

"Somebody has it in for you. Does this have something to do with you being in sports? Are your rivals coming after you?"

"I'm not in sports."

"Yes, you are," Andrew said.

"I'm just a guy."

"No," Grandma said. "I've heard you've become quite an athlete. In part, that is why your mother had troubles."

"Great. Exactly. I'm just a guy, okay?"

"No," Andrew said. "I know for a fact you've been running up the big M all summer. Aleah said. No regular guy would do that. I can't even make it up walking."

"That's because you're a turd," I hissed.

Andrew gasped. He looked like I slapped him.

"Sorry. I'm just mad."

"Because your rivals are dumping garbage on your lawn?" Grandma asked.

"Sure. Let's leave it at that."

"We should notify the police," Grandma said.

"That won't help. They are the police."

"What do you mean?"

"The police's kid," I said.

"I hate this town," Grandma said.

"Maybe we should contact Homeland Security," Andrew said. "They have jurisdiction over terrorism."

Grandma Berba giggled.

"What?" Andrew asked.

"I'll clean it up," I told them.

After the route, I did clean it up. It took me over an hour, and it was totally gross and smelly. Then I ran up and down the hill on the main road. It didn't help my urge to destroy. You all better watch out.

That afternoon, while I was lying downstairs and considering all kinds of ways that I'd have my revenge, the phone rang. Grandma Berba answered it. She shouted down the stairs, "Felton, your football coach is on the line."

"Tell him to stuff it in his ass!" I shouted.