Sometimes Lindy would come to lunch on Sundays, usually bringing take-out, and the three of us would watch the Bears on TV, or the White Sox if it was baseball season. On one of those afternoons, my father said business was picking up every month. “It would go faster if I got on the claimant’s side more often in slip-and-fall cases, but so many of them smell bad.”
“Tell me about it,” Lindy said. “You could make short-term gains, but in the end that work would bite you on the ass.”
Just before the start of my junior year at Hillview High, Dad said we had to have a serious talk. I braced myself for a lecture about underage drinking, or a discussion about some of the crap I and my friend Bertie Bird had gotten up to during （and—for awhile—after） his drinking years, but neither of those were what he had in mind. It was school he wanted to talk about. He told me I had to do well if I wanted to get into a good college. Really well.
“My business is going to work. It was scary at first, there was that time when I had to reach out to my brother for a loan, but that’s almost paid back and I think I’ll be on solid ground before long. The phone rings a lot. When it comes to college, though…” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you much, at least to start with. We’re damn lucky to be solvent at all. Which is my fault. I’m doing everything I can to remedy the situation—”
“I know.”
“—but you need to help yourself. You need to work. You need to score high on the SATs when you take them.”
I planned to take the Scholastic Aptitude in December, but didn’t say so. Dad was on a roll.
“You also need to think about loans, but only as a last resort—those loans’ll haunt you for a long time. Think scholarships. And play your sports, that’s also a road to scholarships, but mostly it’s grades. Grades, grades, grades. I don’t need to see you graduate valedictorian, but I need to see you in the top ten. Understand?”
“Yes, Father,” I said, and he gave me a playful swat.
10
I studied hard and made my grades. I played football in the fall and baseball in the spring. I made varsity in both sports as a sophomore. Coach Harkness wanted me to play basketball as well, but I told him no. I said I needed at least three months a year to do other things. Coach went away shaking his head at the sad state of youth in this degenerate age.
I went to some dances. I kissed some girls. I made some good friends, most of them jocks but not all. I discovered some metal bands I liked and played them loud. My dad never protested, but he got me EarPods for Christmas. There were terrible things in my future—I’ll tell you about them eventually—but none of the terrible things I had lain awake imagining ever came to pass. It was still our house and my key still unlocked the front door. That was good. If you’ve ever imagined you might wind up spending cold winter nights in a car or a homeless shelter, you know what I’m talking about.
And I never forgot the deal I made with God. If you do that for me, I’ll do something for you, I’d said. On my knees I said it. You just show me what you want and I’ll do it. I swear. It had been a child’s prayer, so much magical thinking, but part of me （most of me） didn’t believe that. Doesn’t now. I thought my prayer had been answered, just like in one of those corny Lifetime movies they show between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which meant I had my end of the bargain to hold up. I felt that if I didn’t, God would take back the miracle and my dad would start drinking again. You have to keep in mind that high school kids—no matter how big the boys, no matter how beautiful the girls—are still mostly children inside.
I tried. In spite of days not just crammed with school and after-school activities but bulging with them, I did my best to pay back what I owed.
I joined a Key Club Adopt-A-Highway commitment. We got two miles of Highway 226, which is basically a wasteland of fast food joints, motels, and gas stations. I must have picked up a bazillion Big Mac boxes, two bazillion beer cans, and at least a dozen pairs of castoff undies. One Halloween I put on a stupid orange jumper and went around collecting for UNICEF. In the summer of 2012, I sat at a voter registration table downtown, although I was still a year and a half from being old enough to vote myself. I also helped out at my dad’s office on Fridays after practice, filing papers and doing computer input stuff—your basic scutwork—as it grew dark outside and we ate pizza from Giovanni’s straight out of the box.