Unpopular: An Unloved Ones Prequel #3 (The Unloved Ones) (4 page)

Third period is Chemistry. My lab partner is this guy from the debate team who is happy to do all the work for both of us. I've never even learned his name. He loans me a pair of sunglasses and I sleep with my arms crossed and my mouth open. The teacher doesn't care.

At lunch I don't know what to do. I don't want to see the guys again, but ditching them is out of the question. They're already mad at me, and I need someone on my side with my dad as upset as he is. Besides, guys have short memories. I just have to get through today and they'll all forget about it.

I do, however, make a stop at the school vending machines and get myself a Red Bull. It's nearly done by the time I'm sitting at the team table in the cafeteria. I'm not hungry, which is odd for me, and all the voices around me manage to keep me alert enough that I don't fall asleep.

Still, when the rest of the guys sit down with their hamburgers and fries, I can't follow the conversation. Or rather, I can't follow
their
conversation. All around me I can hear everyone else in the school talking, badmouthing me and calling me spoiled and making fun of my dad and saying mean things about how stupid I am and what clothes I'm wearing. The other guys don't seem to hear this, but from their eyes I can tell they’re thinking some of the same thoughts.

I barely remember the rest of the afternoon. Teachers pretty much leave me alone as I sleep, but in fifth period someone nudges my shoulder until I rouse enough to sit up and listen.

"Yeah?" I ask.

The girl, who I don't recognize, shoves a note into my hand and walks outside. She's on office duty. That's the kids who have a free period and elect to deliver notes and monitor halls so as to have something to show on their college applications.

The note is a message saying I'm supposed to go to my dad's office.

I've been called to my dad's office a few times before, but then it was for something good: to take a photo for the school paper after I won a game, or to get out early so my dad could take me to Denny's to celebrate a victory. I know that isn't going to happen now.

I get my backpack and walk through the empty hall with the office duty girl. She doesn't talk to me and that's just as well with me. I've got my own thoughts.

When we get to his door, she knocks for me. I hear my dad’s chair creak, and he limps his way to the door. I have trouble meeting his eyes, and the office duty girl gets the hell out of there. I envy her.

My dad stands in the doorway glaring at me. Under the harsh light of his office, the bags under his eyes are amplified, as well as his bulldog lips. He moves aside, and I come into his office and take a chair in front of his desk. He shuts the door. That is not a good sign.

He makes his way back to his chair and sits down. He doesn’t say anything for so long that I look up to make sure he’s still there.

He is. He’s got that look on his face like he wants to kill me again, but when he speaks, his voice is eerily calm.

“I spent the morning ignoring my better judgment and pleading with my contact at Vanderbilt to give you a second chance.”

My eyes widen, and my chest fills with hope. “Another chance?” I say. This whole horrible experience could be forgotten—forgiven, even—if I can still get in.

“I don’t think you deserve it,” he says, “but your whole life is getting things easy that you don’t deserve, so why should this be any different?”

I don’t respond. I can tell he’s not done yet. He just wants to take his time so that I feel as bad as possible.

“And what happens as soon as I hang up the phone? I get a visit from Mr. Tosh, letting me know that my son has decided the world of sociology is no longer relevant to him. That
my son
would rather spend his time
sleeping
than paying attention.”

His voice is getting louder, and the vein on his forehead flashes. I notice the sweat stains under his armpits, and the half-eaten bottle of Tums. As bad as my morning has been, his hasn’t been any better.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry?” he yells, and slams his palm against the desk. It knocks over a mug of pens, and he doesn’t bother to pick it up. “You disappear for two days, practically give your mother a heart condition while you’re gone, show up again without so much as an excuse, and then start sleeping through your classes on your first day back. You’re
sorry
? You’d damn right better be sorry. You should be on your knees thanking me for keeping your ass from getting suspended.”

He shakes his head, too angry to continue, and I just wait, staring at my shoelaces.

It takes a few minutes before his breathing returns to normal. “We play Merryweather next Tuesday,” he says. “The scout comes to the game after that against Washington. I’d rather he came to see us fight Jackson, that would have been an easy win. But you weren’t there.” He stops talking, trying to control his rage. He takes a deep breath. Then he loses it again and snaps, “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

I look up. I let him see the tears in my eyes. It doesn’t soften him at all. If anything, it makes his expression harder.

 “You’ve got a chance to redeem yourself, boy,” he says slowly. “Once with the team next Tuesday, and once with the scouts at the game after that.” He lifts up his hand and points to me. “You’ve already struck out once. You screw this up and I
swear
.”

He doesn’t bother to finish his threat. He doesn’t need to.

“I won’t let you down, sir,” I say, and I mean it. “I won’t let the team down. I promise.”

This placates him. He folds his arms over his chest, and leans back in his chair. “Merryweather’s an easy win,” he says after a moment. His eyes flash with a greedy excitement. “You hit them with your fastball, they won’t know what’s coming.”

I take this as my cue to leave his office, and he doesn’t stop me. He’s at his desk, running through plays in his head when I close the door.

I walk back to class, determined to make good on my word. I stop by the vending machine on the way and get another can of Red Bull. I can do this. I can make things go back to normal, and forget this whole crazy thing ever happened.

I get back to class and throw away the empty can on my way to my desk. I sit up straight, and when the kids in class look at me, I’ve got my casual grin back on my face. It says: I can do this. It says: Things are back to normal. It says: Everything’s fine.

A week later, I miss the next game too.

It wasn’t all my fault. I mean, I couldn’t help it.

First, I spent the weekend locked away in my room. It was just as well; I don’t think I would have gotten invited to any parties anyway. My mom brought me meals like a warden, and I ate on my bed.

I didn’t sleep Friday night, not until dawn. Then I had trouble staying awake once the sun was up.

Saturday night was the same.

And when Sunday night was the same, I knew that I’d never be able to stay awake for school on Monday.

I was in such a daze, I honestly don’t even remember the school day. There was still enough good will toward me then that students would shake my shoulders when class was over, and prompt me to go to the next period.

I slept through lunch. I slept on the bus ride home.

Practice was thankfully cancelled due to a teacher’s meeting, and instead my dad made me throw the ball in the backyard for three hours after supper. My mom didn’t comment.

Tuesday was worse. The morning light physically hurt my eyes, and the whispers of all the other students seemed turned up a notch. I drank so much Red Bull that the vending machine ran out, and I was still tired.

At lunch, I discovered the study rooms in the school library. These are small cubbies of rooms meant to give private study. I locked myself in one, shut off the light, and passed out on the desk.

I didn’t hear the bell ring. Or the next one. Or the next.

I slept there until the sound of a vacuum cleaner woke me up. When I stumbled out, I startled a cleaning woman half to death.

It was night. That was how I had missed the game. That was how I had missed my second chance.

“You are never leaving my sight again,” my father screams. He has been screaming for nearly an hour, and I’m surprised he hasn’t lost his voice yet. “I don’t care if I have to handcuff you to the batting cage, you are
not
missing another game
.”

I nod, but I can’t look at him. I can’t say anything. I know this isn’t entirely my fault, but my excuse of uncontrollable sleeping will only make things worse.

“Go to your room.”

I go, gladly.

When I get to my room, I listen to my parents fighting though the walls as clearly as if they were in the room with me.

“Don’t you think you’re being too hard on him?” my mother asks.

“He’s a screw-up,” my father responds. “We’ve spoiled him, Barb. To fix it we can’t be hard enough.”

“But he’s just a boy.”

“A boy? And what happens in two years when he’s eighteen, huh? You want him living here the rest of his life? You want that? You know he’s not smart enough to make it on his own.”

She doesn’t answer.

“I just worry about what the other boys will do to him at school,” she says after a minute.

“He deserves what he gets,” my father snaps.

* * *

The next week is a waking nightmare. Time blends and events mingle in my zombie-like stupor. I stop smiling, but I manage to make it to school every day. I don’t have much of a choice about that though.

It becomes a fact around school that I have narcolepsy, and that I have chosen it. It is my fault the team is losing (even though they weren’t winning before I was on it).

The whole school starts to hate me to the exact degree to which they once loved me.

I find notes on my desk when I get to class telling me to kill myself.

I wake up one day at lunch covered in cold chili. Someone has poured a bowl of it onto my back while I was sleeping. I try to scrape off what I can before the next period, but I spend the rest of the day with a huge red stain on my back. It looks like someone stabbed me in the back.

I’m at the grocery store with my mom, and the woman at the checkout stand closes her aisle when we get in it. It’s my fault her son won’t be on a winning team. They start to open up another lane, but my mom is too ashamed and we leave the cart in the middle of the store. She goes back to shop alone the next day at a store two towns over.

Even though I don’t drive my truck, the tires are slashed by the end of the week. It sits sagging on its rims like a sad reminder that I’ve got nowhere to go.

I have to delete my Facebook because it gets too tiresome to remove all the insults from my wall.

My chemistry partner complains to the teacher that I’m not doing my fair share of the work. I suppose he’s right, but it never bothered him before. My grades fall.

At home, my parents have stopped speaking. My mom has been sleeping on the couch at night. I know this because I hear her pacing sometimes when I can’t sleep either. She leaves before I “wake up” in the morning, and she’s talking to me less and less in the evenings. She has stopped defending me in her fights with my father. Now she simply says, “Well, Henry, what did you expect? What did you expect?”

Time passes in slow drips.

I am miserable. I get used to being miserable.

Finally, the night before the big game comes, like a train pulling into the station in slow motion. My dad insists that we practice in the backyard, and the hopeful tension in the air manages to pull back the hazy veil of insomnia. A full moon shines in the sky, making all the blue-black trees and blades of grass in our yard gleam with silver edges.

I realize that if I do well tomorrow, things might go back to the way they were.

I might get to be myself again. That is, who I was.

I put all my effort into catching and throwing the ball, and it encourages my dad. He wants this just as much as I do. He even makes a joke that he’ll have to borrow the Sheriff’s radar gun to measure my fastball, that it might set a new Guinness record.