A vice tightened around my heart.
No. Not like Sullivan.
4
Keith: The ‘T’ Word
The trip to Universal Studios on Tuesday had seemed like such a good idea – at the time. And ditto to yesterday’s outing to Hollywood. Even today’s planned beach day hadn’t raised any red flags in my mind, and trust me, I’d had plenty of time to ponder the dangers while climbing out my bedroom window and pushing my car to the end of the street to avoid detection.
Certainly I could see how my adventures might not endear me to authority figures, like principals and parents… and cops. Case in point – my father, who was currently clutching the steering wheel with such force that his fingers were turning a sickly shade of white. A few minutes earlier I’d spotted him trudging his way through the sand, dressed in all shades of postman blue. The Terminator grimace he wore on his face told me all I needed to know. I was in big trouble.
It was currently eight-thirty in the morning. He was supposed to be at work. I was supposed to be in school. And now neither of us was where we were supposed to be because I couldn’t make a good decision to save my life.
Dad was an infinitely patient man, but even he had his limits. And judging by the demented swearing under his breath, I’d not only hit that limit but had busted through it. He was mad. I got it. Dealing with me couldn’t be easy. I was one of those people who never made the same mistake twice. Instead I made it like five or six times; you know, just to be sure.
The garbled mumbling coming from the driver’s seat motivated me to get my story straight. I’d screwed up and was going to have to dig deep, employing every last alibi in my depleted arsenal of excuses. What had I been thinking? Skipping class one day, sure, but three? How could I have overlooked the obvious? By not being in my first period seat by the time the bell rang, I was marked as absent. Those absences would generate a report. And that report would produce a call. And that call would prompt my father to leave work and go in search of me. Truly, with all odds stacked against me, it was a miracle I’d made it to day three.
Even as I tried to avoid direct eye contact, I could feel his glare burrowing into me. Dad hated getting called by Principal King almost as much as I hated being sent to his office. It wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to take a detour from his postal route to drag my ass off the beach. And, in all honesty, it probably wouldn’t be his last.
I cleared my throat. Once. Twice. Eleven times.
“Do you have something to say?” His voice was high-pitched and jittery, like a jacked-up clown preparing to end my life.
“Yeah, I just want you to know how sorry I am, Dad.”
And I was. Truly. I never set out to make his life difficult; it just happened organically nearly every day.
His jaw clenched. Nothing in his distressed demeanor favored my survival. “Three days, Keith! You haven’t been to school in three days! What the hell have you been doing… for three days?”
Oh, man. The real question was whathadn’twe done? We’d been all over the Southland, and this morning’s surf break had just been the start of another epic adventure. Left unchecked, my buddies and I would have had a kick-ass day at the Santa Barbara Zoo followed by some highly illegal pier jumping. Of course, that seemed like information my father probably didn’t want to hear. He was simply too agitated for the truth.
“Just chillin’.”
“Just chillin’,” he repeated, nodding like one of those loony bobble-heads. “Well, how nice for you. I sure hope you’re feeling rested.”
Actually, I was, but certainly I wasn’t stupid enough to admit that to my father – not when his own stress levels were through the frickin’ roof.
“Well, while you werechillin’, Principal King was screaming at me over the phone. Something about incompetent parenting and… oh, yeah, he was throwing around the ‘T’ word.”
Dad knew better than to toss puzzles at me so early in the morning. I scratched my head, searching my brain. “Tits?”
A blast of energy escaped him. “Truancy!”
Oh, right. That made more sense than tits.
Dad didn’t let me finish my thought before he was asking a follow-up question. “And what follows the ‘T’ word, Keith?”
My brows furrowed in concentration. So much thinking so early in the morning. “U?”
He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Stop playing dumb, Keith. The ‘S’ word. The ‘S’ word follows the ‘T’ word.”
What the hell was with all the letters? He knew damn well I couldn’t recite the alphabet without singing the song.
“Suspension!” he blurted out. More beastly growling followed. “And, after what happened last year, if your mother even gets wind of that word again, you’ll be on your way to military school. I hope you like scrubbing toilets.”
I ignored his baseless intimidations. I’d been threatened with military school more times than I could count. The truth was I’d probably already be off to boot camp boarding school if my parents had the money to send me. As it was, my interventions were typically of the bargain basement variety. For example, instead of the Scared Straight program, where a group of my equally doped up peers got screamed at by murderers in prison, I got poison oak from a weekend narcotics prevention camping trip. And instead of pricey drug counseling sessions with a trained professional, I got Justin, the twitchy ex-addict who praised sobriety while pulling strands of hair from his head.
Yes, my parents tried, but I prided myself on staying a step ahead of them at all times. I mean, who said potheads weren’t creative? Give us a bud and nothing to smoke out of and we’ll turn into frickin’ MacGyver.
