"Yessss."

"Noooo."

"Oh, God. Look at you."

"Stop it, Jerri!" I was scared because as a peace-loving hippy, Jerri had never been a name caller (although she would shout at times).

She spat: "You are helping out a friend, you little jerk. You are not a slave."

I was scared, yeah, but she was also making me mad.

"Yes, I am. I'm a slave."

"No, you'reayou're acting like anaeffing jerk."

"Effing, Jerri? Effing?" I shouted.

Jerri breathed. "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus."

She did a little instant Buddha meditation. (I could hear it when she breathed outa"om shanti shanti shanti shantia"which means peace or heaven or maybe, in this circumstance, don't let me kill my kid.) Then she looked at me and said really quietly, "Felton. Please."

I stared at her. Then I said really quietly, "What is going on, Jerri?"

She breathed deeply. She said quietly, "You have to get off your butt, Felton."

I said louder, "My butt's got no place to go."

She said louder, "Please, Felton. Why don't you give Peter a call?"

I said pretty dang loud, "Peter Yang? Please no. I'm tired, Jerri."

Jerri exhaled, then sat down next to me on the couch and said really quietly, "Felton, I'm working really hard."

I shouted, "On what? What the hell?"

She tilted her head and scrunched her eyebrows and rubbed her eyes and took a big breath.

"I honestly appreciate you doing this paper route. I sincerely do. And I appreciate that you went out for track this spring. But now you've got to take these gains, this engagement, and continue to grow. You can'tarecoil from life, you know?"

"Why do you treat me like a retard?" I shouted.

"I told you not to use retard like that, Felton."

"Aw, man, Jerri. Come on. I'm trying to sleep here," I groaned.

"Felton, please," Jerri said.

"Let me sleep!" I shouted.

Jerri exhaled hard, shook her head at me, and then stood.

"I don't know what to do with you," she said.

Then she left, and I shouted thank you. But I couldn't sleep. Why? Because I was totally awake and really hungry, and Jerri was crazy, and I could feel that my pants had grown too short becausea"I could feel ita"I was growing again and probably ready to sprout another mound of man-hair from someplace. It was humid, and the doorbell was ringing, which meant Andrew had invited his dipshit friends over to play music, most likely. Chamber music. What thirteen-year-old crew of friends plays chamber music? Not me. I surely didn't do that at thirteen.

Of course, I didn't really have any skills back in June, so I couldn't have done anything. I really couldn't do crap.

That thought hit me hard. You can't do crap.

And then I thought, I'm almost sixteen. I'm very nearly a track superstar. This is no way to live. I've got to do something.

So I got up and emailed Gus, Jerri is crazy.

He was online, so we messaged.

what you mean crazy?

she calls me jerk then meditates then calls me jerk grandma doesn't like my hair don't lose hair wad, man sucker crack ass taco poop hate this And with that, he signed off. Gus didn't have time for my problems. He had his own. I sat back on the couch and wished me, him, and Peter Yang were driving to the pool for some relaxation instead of being off in separate worlds of pain. Peter Yang?

I listened while Andrew and his dork music friends set up their instruments upstairs. Jerri was right. I had to do something So I thought about being almost sixteen.

Peter Yang has a driver's license.

Almost sixteen! Do you know what that means?

Of course. A driver's license. A car. If I had a car, everything would be okay. If I didn't use it to escape to Mexico or Venezuela (can you drive to Venezuela?), I could use it to gain acceptance. Oh, yes, I could be a Suckville Standard Jackwad driving around the town, tearing it up, racing the poop-stinkers over at the quarter-mile. Oh, I'll engage, Jerri! I got up and climbed the steps to find her.

Jerri wasn't upstairs where Andrew's geek friends were gathering to play their weenie music. I looked out the window in the kitchen while I stuffed a piece of bread in my mouth (growing boy). Jerri was walking out to the garden. I opened the window and shouted, "Jerri, I have to get my driver's license."

"What?"

"I need a driver's license so I can engage with the world, Jerri," I cried.

"Well, that's a good sign, I guess."

"What do you mean, sign?"

"Sign up for your permit, Felton. Okay?"

"How's that?"

"Figure it out," she called back.

"What?" I shouted.

Then she started walking back toward the house, shaking her head, looking a little mad.

"Listen," she said when she got under the window, "I'll teach you to drive if you sign up for your permit."

"Okay," I said, then closed the window. Jerri stayed right down there below the window. She wasn't looking up at me. She was seriously staring at the wall, which was like a foot in front of her face (Jeez, what's the problem?), so I went back to the refrigerator to look for some food. Oh, man. I wasn't sure how to get a permit. I supposed I could ask Peter Yang because he did thata"got a permit and learned to drive.

I opened the refrigerator door, and my thoughts began to drift.

Drive. Drive. Drive!

Here's an early summer fantasy: I am the Standard Suckville Jackwad: Look at me: I'm sixteen, and I've got a license, and I'm driving up and down Main Street, picking up dirty girls in the Pizza Hut parking lot (You wanna make out? Okay!), driving out to the cornfields or the quarry to smoke weed (yeek) and get smashed (yeek), then I'll drive back to town to go to Kwik Trip to see if anyone's there (probably not) and then to McDonald's to see if anyone's there (probably not) and then around and around the college to see if anyone's there (drunk nineteen-year-olds! Heyo!), then I'll fight the honkies in fast-food bathrooms and race the poop-stinkers in their pickups. Oh, glorious driver's license.

Get a license. Drive around. That's what I thought.

Or be another geek in the basement watching movies and playing video games.

Or be another geek in the living room playing chamber music.

Or sit around listening to my body grow hair.

We didn't have a lot of food I could instantly jam into my mouth without preparation, so I shut the refrigerator door.

In the living room, five dorks began to play stringed instruments while Andrew tap-tapped on the piano what I think was some kind of Johann Sebastian Bach bullcrap. Andrew loves Bach. I, like my father, love the Beatles (me and Andrew do have his music). I leaned my head into the living room and listened. A couple of dorks looked at me. I shouted "Hi!" and waved at them. Then I went back into the kitchen, where I stuffed a banana in my mouth, then two more pieces of bread, then I ate half a brick of Jerri's favorite musty goat cheese, then I drank a half gallon of milk, then I ate an English muffin while listening to the dorks play their music.

Here's this: The dorks aren't retarded. They're good. Andrew is good.

I stopped chewing so I could hear them play better. Andrew is really, really good. Then I went downstairs to try to get some rest. It was so humid though.

CHAPTER 8: I HAVE NO TALENT FOR DRUMMINGa"ANDREW DOES (I CARRIED AROUND A BAG OF ROCKS)

Andrew started playing piano when he was seven because Jerri's drumming teacher, Tito, said he had musical talent.

It was August, and I'd just turned nine. Jerri had invited all these musty, woodchip-smelling people out to our house to drum in this big circle around our fire pit. At one point, the sun going down, the sky orange, Tito put a drum in front of me and said I should drum along, "Let it all out, little man," but I'd had heart attacks at school all spring, and all those people drumming around the circle caused a vibration in my chest that scared the holy crap out of me, so I wouldn't touch the drum. So Tito moved the drum in front of Andrew, and Andrew just started bobbing his little mop head and pounding along and all the woodchip-smelling people oooohed and ahhhhed, and Jerri clapped her hands over her mouth, she was so happy. The next week, he was in piano lessons.

That night, Tito gave me a leather pouch full of polished rocks and crystals. He told me the rocks had special powers and I should hold them in my hands if I got scared, so I carried the leather pouch around and took the rocks out a couple of times at school that fall, but everybody made crap out of me for carrying around a "jewelry collection," so the rocks didn't work right.

It wasn't very long before Andrew's piano teacher said that Andrew was his best student ever.

Even though I couldn't pull the rocks out at school, I carried them around in my pocket. I actually carried them with me almost every day through the last school year. After my Regionals disqualification, I held a crystal in my left hand for two days.

Believing rocks have power is a lot like thinking your dad's ghost is watching out for you.

I carried them for years!

Not anymore. They're gone.

Andrew got piano, and I got a bag of rocks? That didn't work out.

I don't know. What do I know? Maybe Dad is watching?

Yikes. That actually just scared me.

Holy crap. It's 1:51 a.m.

Go!

CHAPTER 9: THINGS BEGAN TO SERIOUSLY CHANGE AT THE POOL.

After an hour of sweating in the dark basement, I figured I'd better really do something with my day or else the summer would begin to seriously kill me. We don't have air conditioning. Have I mentioned that it was really humid? Hot and moist like a good cake (but bad weather). My curly hair was getting really curly from the humidity, which I don't like. I have what Jerri calls a "Jew-fro." This, like my Schwinn Varsity and love for the Beatles, is a gift from my father (one Jerri obviously couldn't burn in the fire).

Upstairs, the kids were laughing.

So I did it. I called Peter Yang. Peter doesn't have a cell phone, and he has like a hundred brothers and sisters, all of whom are as boring or more boring than Peter, and I don't like talking to any of them, so I was very pleased that Peter was the one who picked up. He sounded happy when he answered "Hello!"

"Wassup, Peter?"

He sounded less happy when he said, "Oh. Um. Hey, Felton. What's happening?"

"Not much, my man. Summertime, right? You must really be missing Gus, huh? I'm surprised you haven't called me! Ha ha. You want to go hang or something?"

"Um, I'm kind of busy."

"With what?"

"Debate club."

"Aw, Jesus, Peter. It's summer. There is no debate club."

"Well, we're going to go to the pool togethera"me and the debatersa"to build team cohesion."

"Okay. Sounds great. Can I come with?"