It’s not bad advice, and I’m so tired I think my eyes are going to bleed, so I say good night to Dad and banish him from my room. As he steps through the door to leave, I say, “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“You should have been a whale.”

CHAPTER 12

If I am going to accept the Rich Marshalls and Mike Barbours of the world, I have to accept that it won’t be mutual. Big duh. The longer Heidi stays at our place, the more rattled Rich gets and the better look I get at him. The four weekends in jail he received for showing up at our place bearing arms are not rehabilitating him, and he has not taken his suspension from duties as Cutter’s returning jock savior lightly. My mother did as promised. The day after his midnight visit, she marched into Morgan’s office and told him if Rich Marshall set foot on the grounds while school was in session, Morgan had damned well better polish his witness stand persona because she would keep him up there until he was old and sorry. Let me tell you, my mother can turn from a protector of the young into the kind of lawyer everyone makes vicious jokes about in the time it takes Simon DeLong to eat a box of marshmallow-covered Snow Balls, so even though Morgan tried to minimize Rich’s actions, he doesn’t dare let him back onto the premises.

So Morgan calls me into the office on Tuesday of the week after my record-setting speeding ticket. Coach Benson is there, and my thoughts fly immediately to a future article in The Wolverine, exposing what I fear will be the Athletic Inquisition.

Morgan says, “T. J., I want you to know this is off the record.”

I ask if that means I can cuss.

“I suppose, if you feel the need,” he says. Morgan missed the humor class when he went to principal school. Benson was absent that day, too.

I promise to keep myself under control.

“I’ve heard rumors.”

I glance to Benson, but can read nothing.

“That something is brewing between you and Mike Barbour.”

“That’s not a rumor, that’s the way of the world.”

“So you admit it’s true.”

“Things have been brewing between me and Mike Barbour since we started high school,” I tell him. “I’ll do my best to see they don’t come to a boil just yet.”

“Is this about the letter jackets?”

I quote my mother. “It’s about dead baby deer and sports and girlfriends and your basic struggle between good and evil,” I say. “Nothing that can’t wait until five or ten minutes after graduation.”

“Coach Benson tells me there was trouble at the dance the other night.”

“There could have been, but there wasn’t; other than that I may be paying my own car insurance.”

Benson says, “I’d like to know what that was all about, T. J.”

“It was about your star defensive back hammering on a girl,” I tell him. “It’s a good thing my parents got to me before I got to him, Coach.”

“There are two sides to every story, T. J. That’s not exactly the way Mike tells it.”

“How many guys do you know who beat on their girlfriends and then come out and say so?”

“Mike tells that a little differently. And they’re back together.”

Shit. “It must be tough being an educator; having to figure out who to believe all the time. I know!” I say sarcastically. “Why don’t we go have a look at Kristen Sweetwater’s arm.”

“Don’t get smart with me, T. J.”

I turn to Morgan. “I thought this was off the record.” Then back to Coach. “Don’t worry, nothing will come of it. Your golden boy will graduate to O. J. status before you know it. Look, why am I here?”

“Mike Barbour has a full ride to the U. I think he has a pretty good chance to be successful there. I don’t want this ballooning into something bigger than it is. I’m just protecting his reputation. You have to admit, T. J., you can be pretty dramatic. I can’t help but remember that bloody shirt you wore to school for a full week, then brought in your parents to block the school from holding you responsible.”

“I can’t help but remember how it got bloody.”

“Maybe. But you and Rich Marshall tell a different story there, too.”

“So you’re worried about me soiling Barbour’s rep, huh? Well, everything from here on out is on the up-and-up. No dramatics, and my swimming guys won’t be wearing T-shirts with a picture of Mike Barbour under a red circle with a slash through it. We’ll be wearing letter jackets. No slanderous remarks. Barbour will last long enough in college to beat up plenty of girls.”

About ninety-eight percent of the time, Benson is Don Shula. The other two percent, he’s Bobby Knight. I’ve seen him blow on the football field a couple of times, and he can be truly scary. His face reddens like a thermometer in a blast furnace and the vein in his neck swells up like a miniature python. I see the reptile in him coming out this minute.

“By God, Jones, if you were eighteen, that statement would be libelous, and I’d encourage Mike Barbour to pursue it. I’ve kept my mouth shut about you for four years, watched you waste athletic talent most boys would kill for, flaunt your skills at Hoopfest or playing flag football games, and doing not one damn thing for your school. Well, you’ve pretty much ruined a career before it could get started, but I’ll be damned if I’ll watch you drag other athletes down with you. This charade you and your coach are pulling to get your band of nobodies into letter jackets is not going to happen if I have anything to say about it.”

“You already had something to say about it, Coach,” I say. “The Athletic Council already voted. It was unanimous.”

“It was unanimous because no one knew what you were up to,” he says. “It can be brought back for a vote.”

The trick to being a good smartass is knowing when to call it good, and I figure now is about right for me to take my leave. It always feels better to let the other guy get mad-a sensation I don’t get to have too often. “So, am I out of here, then? No assault rumors against Barbour, no subversive articles about the football team on steroids?”

Morgan says, “Yeah, Mr. Jones, you’re out of here.”

I’m in Simet’s room before Morgan’s door slams. “Benson wants another Athletic Council vote on our letters,” I say. Man, the last thing I want is for my guys to miss out on their jackets. Points and wins have been scarce and nonexistent in that order. The jacket remains the prize.

“Don’t worry about it,” Simet says. “When this whole thing started, I was a little skeptical about your plan to get Our Gang into letter jackets. But there isn’t another group of jocks in this school that works as hard as we do. The wrestling team would come closest, but even they have some slackers. Our guys put out every minute of every workout. I’ve never coached a team like this before. There isn’t a kid out there who doesn’t deserve a letter.”

“Yeah, but Benson is going to argue that we pulled the wool over the council’s eyes. He’s pissed, Coach.”

“Then I’ll be pissed, too. It’s all relative, like anything else. If we keep this team together after you’re gone, the requirements will get stiffer, plus this ‘better on every swim’ thing is finite. This was a good call.” He gets a firm grip on my shoulder. “And by the way, anything you hear in this room stays in this room, right?”

“Hey, I’ve signed a confidentiality oath,” I tell him. “’Course, I might have to charge you.”

When I get home from school, we have a new houseguest, and Heidi is beside herself with glee. My mother and Georgia and the caseworker have put their heads together and decided it’s best to put Alicia in foster care along with Heidi. That way she can’t make decisions that will put Heidi in danger and Heidi doesn’t have to lose her. Of course, that also means we have her twins. Alicia has sworn she won’t tell Rich she’s here, and she knows if she does anything to put the kids in his care, she goes and the kids stay.