"Felton can't come to the phone right now. Yes, he's all right. Really? I'll have him check his phone. Oh, no, he seems fine to me. Oh, well, that's nice. I'll let him know. Good-bye."

Grandma Berba came downstairs and found me in my room.

"First things first," she said. "Don't you ever tell me to have a caller stuff something in his"a"she swallowed and pursed her lipsa""ass. That's disrespectful to me and completely inappropriate."

I breathed. I swallowed. Looked down. Such a jerk, Felton.

"Second, your football coach informs me that someone from the school will be videotaping you doing drills next Wednesday because of a recruiting website? Is that what he said?"

"Maybe."

"He'd like to put your profile on a recruiting website."

"Recruiting for what? I'm not playing football. I don't know how to play football."

"Third, during practice on Thursday, he's invited a couple of gentlemen from the university in Madison to meet you."

"Wisconsin?" I sat up. "For football? Oh God, no! I want out of this!"

"Felton," Grandma glared at me. "Why aren't you returning messages from your cell phone? What are you doing?"

"How do you know?"

"Your football coach told me."

"I don't want to speak to him."

"Andrew's little friend said the same thing yesterday. You're not returning her calls, either."

"Aleah?"

"What are you doing? What's wrong with you?" Grandma Berba was pressuring me, and that made me hot.

"Is Jerri staring at the wall upstairs?" I asked.

"She isn't going to recover overnight, Felton."

"Did my dad have girlfriends all over town and then kill himself in my garage?"

"Yes," Grandma whispered.

"That's a lot to absorb, Grandma Berba! That's pretty big, don't you think?"

"I don't appreciate your tone," she said.

"Well, maybe I don't appreciate being responsible for Jerri cracking up. Maybe I don't appreciate that I look just like my asshole dad. Maybe, huh?"

"I'm sorry, Felton. I understand how upset you are, but you can't speak to your grandmother that way." Grandma Berba turned and left my room.

I was such a jerk.

When I found my phone after digging around for it, I saw that others shared that opinion: Felton Reinstein, Jerk. There were a dozen FAKER texts from numbers I didn't recognize.

The last text before my inbox got full three days earlier was from Cody Frederick. It said: cant believe i plan a party for six weeks and you wont call me back!

Yeah, I can't believe you trash my house because I won't go to a stupid party.

I erased the entire inbox and then erased my voicemail, which was also full. If Aleah wanted to get hold of me, all she had to do was come downstairs.

It did occur to me that neither she nor Andrew were at the house at that point. They weren't playing piano anyway.

I looked at my phone. It was still on. Then I did it. I called her cell, breathing really shallow, but she didn't pick up. I left a message and then left the phone on, waiting for her to call back.

CHAPTER 56: CELL PHONE.

My phone was like a ticking bomb that could go off at any minute. Maybe I wanted it to ring? Maybe. Maybe it would be Aleah, and she'd call me hers, and she'd bike over, and we could hold hands on the couch.

It didn't ring. I looked at it.

But what if it did ring and it was Cody Frederick telling me how they were all coming after me because I was a jerk, because I wasn't a jock and I ruined his party? I looked at the phone.

Did it light up?

No, that was a reflection from the overhead light. I hoped it would ring. I was terrified it would ring. I paced back and forth. I growled and jumped in place. It didn't ring.

Andrew wasn't at home for dinner. Grandma Berba made lasagna, which I hate, except this was delicious because it contained no turnips or radishes or zucchini or spinach or whatever else Jerri always used to throw in there. It was made with meat and cheese, and my leg bounced up and down. My phone was in my pocket. I ate and ate and ate. Grandma Berba told me to slow down. Jerri stared at me, watery-eyed from her medication. My leg bounced. My phone didn't ring.

"Where the hell's Andrew?" I asked.

"He stayed at his friend's for dinner," said Grandma Berba. "They weren't done practicing."

"Great!" I stuffed a whole piece in my mouth.

"Slow down, Felton," Grandma Berba said.

And my phone didn't ring.

After dinner, I tried sitting on Jerri's bed, tried watching TV, but I couldn't sit still.

"You're bouncing the bed," Jerri said.

"I'm going to run." I got up.

"Run?" Jerri asked. "Like go running?"

"Yes."

I left the room carrying my stupid phone. Asshole phone. In the garage, I grabbed a hammer and smashed the stupid thing to pieces.

Then I took off.

It was getting dark, and it was hard to see. Down on the main road, because we're just outside of town, there are no lights, and the footing got terrible. I couldn't really run.

I needed to find a lighted place, like the track by the college. How the hell would I get there? My bike. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

The Bluffton air smelled like poop-stinker. It closed in on me. I just wanted to bolt on my bike and break it all up. I couldn't.

Out on the road in the dark, I stepped in a hole and then stopped because I'd break my ankle if I tried to run there, so I turned around and jogged back toward the house.

Would Grandma Berba drive me to a track?

I had to run.

By the house, I turned right and began to circle. The house was all lit up, light in every window, so much cheerier than before Grandma arrived. Because of all that light, I could see where I was going, and I gunned it. One lap around the house at top speed. One lap around the house slow to catch my breath. Then again and again and again. I spent easily the next hour doing that until I could run no more. My body stopped its twitching.

I showered to rinse blood off my leg and the pee smell off my body. Then I went to bed. Andrew still wasn't home. My phone couldn't ring because it was smashed in the garbage.

That's fine, I thought. Really. Fine.

Oh, no.

CHAPTER 57: SWEET SIXTEEN.

My alarm didn't wake me. There was much stirring around the house. Hammering. Music playing. I looked over at my clock. It was only 4:15. What? I climbed out of bed and sleepily made my way upstairs to where the noise was. Jerri and Grandma Berba were hanging a big banner above the fireplace. I rubbed my eyes. It said "Sweet Sixteen."

"Oh, yeah. It's my birthday," I said.

Jerri and Grandma, who was asking Jerri to lift up her side so the banner would be level, swiveled and looked at me.

"There he is!" Grandma Berba shouted.

"Happy birthday, Felton," Jerri said. She looked tired.

"Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!" Grandma cried out.

"I've been kissed," I said.

"Oh?" Grandma said. She scrunched her eyes at me. Then smiled.

"Well, happy birthday anyway!"

"Okay. Thanks. Should we do the route now? Is Andrew sleeping?"

"He didn't come home!" Grandma Berba said. "He called and asked to stay at his friend's house because they were working on a four-hand piece!"

I was getting a little sick of the false cheeriness.

"Aleah?"

"Yes!"

"Let's go," I said.

"Umm, I'm coming too, Felton!" Jerri said with a terrible false cheeriness.

The three of us loaded into Grandma Berba's giant rental SUV, me in the passenger seat and Jerri in back, and rolled down the drive. At the bottom, our way was blocked by trash. Grandma Berba put on the brakes.

"Not more of this mumbo jumbo." She put on the high beams because it was still dark. Somebody had gone to the trouble of writing out HAPY BDAY FAKER!!! in trash down about fifty feet of the drive. The H was closest to us; the exclamation points went out to the road. "Enough of this crap," Grandma said. She gunned the engine, and we flew right over the top of the trash, scattering it behind us.

"Whoa!" I shouted.

"Terrible people," Grandma said.

"That probably took them a long time to make," I chuckled.

"Idiot kids can't spell," Grandma said.

Grandma Berba was funny, but the trash still hurt my feelings, which immediately turned to boiling in my gut. Did Cody decide to put all his organizing skills into vandalism? Cody is the one who'd remember my birthday. It had to be him. Asshole.

We rode through the route really slow. Jerri sort of meandered around. She'd get out of the SUV and walk a few steps and then stand and look at the sky.

"Get a move on, sweetie," Grandma would call to her. "We've got places to be."

"What places?" I asked.

"Oh, you know. Home," Grandma said.

But she was lying. I knew that for a fact when we arrived at Gus/Aleah's. For the first time in a week, the house was all lit up. Andrew and Aleah were staring out the window. When the three of us got out of the car, they ran away.