Page 139 of The Cheerleader

“If they draft me, I’m playing.”

“The hell you are⁠—”

“I am. And there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it.”

He starts swearing, and I hear the phone crash to the floor as if he’s thrown it. Then Mom comes on the line.

“Bryan? What’s going on?”

I tell her the news about playing football.

She sucks in a breath, and I hear her moving. “You think a team will pick you?” She sounds worried and excited, her voice low as if she needs to keep a secret.

Before I have a chance to answer, she screeches, and I hear a scuffle. Shit.

“Foot-ball?” My old man’s voice pounds through the phone. “A child’s game? That’s what you think you’re doing with your life? You’re coming back to the farm.”

My mother screams in the background. “Forget about the farm! Play football. Make your money. Live your life.”

“Which life?” I don’t know who I’m talking to until my mother comes back on the phone.

“Don’t say that,” she speaks quietly.

In the silence that follows, my gut churns in disbelief that I said the words out loud, dredged from my conscience, sorrow and anger dripping from them. Because my old man has a point. And Mom has a point.

My voice ragged, I press on. “The pretend life where I play a game and make an unfair amount of money to get my head bashed in? Or the life where I work on a family farm until I’m crippled, tied to the earth, the seasons, the weather, the whims of the market, making barely enough money to scrape by?”

“The life where you go somewhere and do something while you’re young, and you maybe find a young woman.” She quiets and adds, “You can always come back to the farm, Bryan, in a few years, when he’s old and given up, five, ten years.” She groans. “Maybe never. It doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t turn my back on the farm. How many generations has it been in the family? It’s who I am. I was a farmer long before I was a football player.” I can’t quiet the guilt, the sense of betrayal to the farm or to Caleb’s memory.

Do I abandon the family legacy? Is my promise to Caleb enough to make up for that?

What do I want? All I see is a black hole of nothing in answer to that question.

“What about Dad?” My voice raw. “He needs my help.” She knows I’m really asking about her, whether she needs my help.

“We’ll all be fine.” She pauses, must be covering the receiver because all I hear is her muffled words with my old man. Then she comes back. “Your father wants to say something to you.” As she’s saying good-bye, he takes the phone from her.

“Bryan.” He takes in an unruly breath, and I wonder if something’s wrong or if it’s been a hard day. Then he delivers his message. “I survived your brother’s death. Go. Do whatever you want. Your desertion means nothing.”

I hear my mother’s wail in the background, and it pierces my heart more than my father’s words. I press the receiver to my head, squeezing it, wanting to crush it.

“My leaving means something! I mean something. You need me, admit it, old man.” I don’t realize I’m shouting into the phone until I stop.

There’s silence behind the drone of the phone line, the kind that reaches out and grabs me by the jugular and shakes me, a mean, merciless silence like my old man has aimed at me all my life. Or at least the half of my life after my brother died of stupidity. Dad’s and his.

Then there’s a click, and the line goes dead.

Fuck. I’ve lost my family. Wally—I should have asked about Wally. I bang the receiver into the cradle with enough force to dislodge it slightly from the wall, making it tilt sideways.

Pacing around the room now, I feel like a stupid fool, losing control, letting things go too far. Damn him.

I don’t know if I’m talking about my old man or Caleb. But maybe I should be blaming myself.

Later that night, I’m in bed staring at the ceiling in the dark, my mind a blank, when the phone rings. I know it’s Susie. That’s the only reason I get out of bed to answer the call.

“Susie.”