Prologue
August
You see that guy? The one standing precariously on the four-top, wearing tuxedo pants, a—God, is that a purple faux fur coat—and nothing else? The one yelling, “Are you not entertained?” with arms spread wide as a crowd of drunken onlookers cheer.
No, fucko. No, I am not.
I am embarrassed as hell. Heat-flushing, “please make it stop,” “why won’t it stop” humiliation. The problem is?
That wannabe gladiator fucko is me. And I can’t seem to shut him up. I am outside myself, looking on in horror as I decide to gild the lily and dance... Oh, God, is that... No, no, no.
It’s the Funky Chicken.
I am dancing the funky chicken. At a black-tie fundraiser, crawling with media. There’s got to be a hundred phones lifted high and facing me. All those little palm-sized rectangles, like eyes of hell, recording every second.
It might not have been so bad if Coach hadn’t given me a “lock it up and concentrate on your game” speech a few short hours earlier. My agent had done the same the day before. They’re both here now, standing on opposite sides of the room, sporting surprisingly similar stances: arms crossed over chests, legs braced shoulder width apart. Angry sentinels itching to take me down.
My pulse kicks up. Horror courses through my veins. Thisis not the way to celebrate our second game win. I know I’m fucking up. Inside I’m shouting:Stop, this isn’t me. I’m never like this. I’m a rock, the cool head both on and off the field.Yet what do I do? I wink at Coach before gyrating my hips. I’m woefully out of sync with the music. I mean, if you’re going to go down in flames, it should at least be skillfully done, with a certain panache. But I’m a hot mess.
Before you ask, I’ll answer: No. There is absolutely no reason for me to be acting like a clown right now. I have the world at my feet—good looks, good health, went number one in the draft, an outrageous contract, multiple corporate sponsorships, starting quarterback for a team that has a ton of potential...
Everything I’ve ever wanted is mine for the taking.
Maybe that’s the problem. When you’ve reached the top the only place to go is down.
Isn’t that what they say?
I think I’m about to find out. I take a wrong step, the table wobbles, the room spins. My stomach roils. What was once up is now down. I go down, down, down.
My first thought is,Not the arm!
My second?
Well done, fucko. Are you not entertained?
One
Pen
“Are you not entertained?” I mutter, as I squint into the void that has become my view and try to pinpoint when it all went wrong. I’m not lost; I know exactly where I’m going. But that’s just geography. My life however, is another story.
I push back on the swell of worry that threatens, and concentrate on the music throbbing all around the cocoon of my little car.
If you grew up in my house, you would have heard my mom listening to Nirvana. She’d blast it on those rare occasions she cooked dinner, and our town house would pulse with frenetic guitar licks, Kurt Cobain’s biting sarcasm slicing air thick with the heat of the stove and redolent withsoffrittoand garlic. To this day, if I catch a whiff of ragù, I want to shout out,Entertain us.
Mom says that, despite her generation’s demand to be entertained, they never expected it from anyone and made their own fun. My generation, on the other hand, has entertainment at the ready, 24/7 at the tap of a screen.
Given the utter glut of sensory riches we have, you’d think we’d grow tired of it all. But no, we thirst for more. Always more. Maybe that’s why some people act out the way they do; a desperate need to provide us with more.
I think of this. Of my mother. Of inebriated chicken-dancingyahoos and... other things, as I wind my way down a road that is too narrow and too dark for comfort. It’s my fault for taking an alternate route out of Boston to beat the traffic that flows into the suburbs. I’ve never been this way before. Darkness and the heavy rain are disorienting me.
My stomach has a nice little clench-and-unclench rhythm going that’s picking up speed.
With a huff, I forward “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in search of something a little calmer. U2’s “Bad” fills the small space of the car for about twenty seconds before it’s interrupted by the shrill sound of my phone ringing.
Despite white knuckling it through the night, my lips quirk. I hit the answer button on my steering wheel. “Speak of the devil.”
“And she shall appear,” my mom finishes happily, her voice coming at me through the car’s speakers. “Were you thinking of me, Penny Lane?”
