Chapter 16

Kim wasn’t expecting me to give her a ride, so I drove over early to wait for her. She came out of the house five minutes earlier than normal and got into my car. “Decide to go to school?”

“Dane’s clan is all going home today so I don’t have a reason not to. Have fun yesterday?”

“Definitely. I think everyone did. We took them for a carriage tour, a stroll down Market Street, lunch at Fleet Landing, then dancing at Dane’s wedding. I don’t know how the day could have been any better.”

“I can think of one way the day could have been better,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I think I can make up for it this afternoon, if you don’t mind too much.” We were out of the neighborhood so I honked my horn. Man, it was loud. “I think I can push a button that is even louder than that.”

“You’re a butt, you know that, right?” I just smiled. “Now, I won’t be able to concentrate on anything all day.”

“Oh. Sorry. Is that because you’ll be imagining me making you scream with pleasure or scream for mercy?”

“You’re a double butt. Both!” she complained, laughing.

I was in the same class with Kim several times each day. I gave her the eye, every chance I got. Right up until lunchtime. “Keep that up and you’re going to have a very lonely ten days, Mr. Pierce.” I thought the laughing might have been over.

“That doesn’t sound like fun at all.” I tried to lead her to our private table but she wasn’t having it.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” she whispered, “But I’ll give you one clue what won’t get into me.”

“I surrender.”

“That’s more like it.” I had the distinct impression that I had dodged a bullet.

The entire squad was gathered around to hear about Mom’s wedding. Kim gave the details and I had the cafeteria lunch, which wasn’t that bad. Kim was doing a great job answering questions until Annie asked me, “Are you going to change your name?”

It caught me completely off guard. I didn’t plan on it. Why would I? “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Pierce is your second last name, right?” Mel asked.

“Yeah. But I don’t really remember being a Strzok,” I said, pronouncing it, struck. Ronnie Pierce was my dad for a long time and I’m not the one that just got married.” I was thinking it through and making it up as I went.

“What about you, Kim? You’re going to get a new last name in two years, right?” Allie asked. “What do you want to be, Mrs. Strzok, Mrs. Pierce, or Mrs. Edris?”

The heads all turned to Kim as though they were following a tennis match. It was the first time I saw her with a deer-in-the-headlights look. She didn’t know, either.

“I’ve been Jack Pierce the whole time we’ve been together. Maybe we should just stay with that.” Everyone was still looking at Kim.

“I’ll just be Mrs. Aquaman. Whatever name Jack has on his eighteenth birthday, that’s what I’ll take.”

“Wow. I think I’d want to be a Pierce,” Annie said and batted her eyelashes. Everyone laughed. What had started out with me sticking up for Annie more than a year ago, turned into a little crush on her “hero” and morphed into an ongoing joke – sort of. It didn’t bother Kim and everyone else thought it was funny. Annie had enough in common with Sally for me to keep my guard up.

That afternoon, I was stuck at batting practice while Kim traveled to Northwoods for a track meet. I had no idea how long a girls’ track meet would last and neither did any of the guys. An hour? Two? We didn’t know. As soon as we finished, I took off for North Charleston.

I’m a goody-two-shoes. I don’t drink or do drugs, I don’t smoke. I rarely cuss. And I never speed. Almost never. I went zinging up the I26 as fast as I could without being reckless. My eyes were all over the place, watching for cops. All I needed was a speeding ticket the first day after Mom left. I pulled off the freeway at Ashley Phosphate, without getting a ticket and turned toward the school. Ashley Phosphate? Who named that road? Everyone calls it Ashley Frustrate because of the busy intersections.

Northwoods doesn’t have a giant athletic complex so it was pretty easy to find the track. There were a couple of dozen people in the stands and two events happening at the same time. I stopped at the chain link fence that surrounded the track area and watched eight girls running on the far side of the track. They weren’t in lanes so I thought it might be the mile. Other girls were doing the high jump at the far end of the field. I stayed put, knowing the runners would pass near me in thirty seconds.

It was the mile. The girls were all in one group so I thought they must be on the second lap, still early in the race. I saw the beautiful tall girl in garnet in gray, staying close to the leader. Kim’s hair was up in a ponytail that swayed back and forth as she ran. She had a longer stride than the girl in front of her, and she looked graceful. She looked strong. But her running form wasn’t what it should have been.

“EYES UP, BABY!” I hollered when she was close enough to hear me. Her head had been down but it came up as soon as she heard me. Sweet. As they turned the corner, I could see her going through the checklist of form issues we’d talked about. Her fists relaxed and her shoulders lifted a bit. Good.

I quickly moved into the front row of the bleachers and near the finish line in time to watch them cross at the end of the third lap. It would be close to four minutes with one lap to go, which was on track for Kim’s personal best. “Stretch it out, Baby. Take this thing. It’s yours,” I hollered as they went by.

She waited until after the turn and moved to the front on the backstretch. For a moment, she was alone in front. Then another girl from Porter-Gaud joined her and together, they started easing away from the pack. On the last turn, it was pretty obvious we would go one, two. The question was, who would win? With two hundred yards to go, the other girl put it into a gear I didn’t think Kim had. Kim tried to stay with her but it seemed like the other girl kept accelerating.

Kim finished with a new personal best in five-sixteen, six seconds behind the winner. Her eyes found me in the stands but there wasn’t much of an expression on them. There were plenty of non-participants on the infield so I jumped the fence and crossed the track to where she was laying on her back.

“Hey, Baby. Nice job.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m really proud of you,” I said, sitting next to her. “You should get up and start walking or lactic acid is going to clobber your legs.”

“No.”

“Come on, Baby. You’ll regret it if you don’t,” I said, standing, grabbing her hands and trying to pull her to her feet.

“I hate you,” she said and stood to walk with me. “I hate Joy.”

“Well, you certainly don’t have any joy right now. Let’s walk.”

“Joy is who beat me,” she said, starting to walk. “Joy Perspicano. Who named her Joy, anyway? They should have named her Antijoy.”

“Where did she go?” I asked, looking around. “Normally the winner congratulates everyone on their race.”

“Not Antijoy. She’s a bitch.” Wow. I’d never heard Kim call anyone a name before. Actually, I’d heard her call people a poo-poo head and she called me a dufus, but this was different.

“Not pleasant, huh?”

“No. There’s not a lot of teamwork on this team and it’s mostly her fault.”

I had about a hundred ideas on the subject but I didn’t think Kim was in the mood to hear them.

“What’s left? This is your only event, right?”

“Yeah. This is it. She’s a senior and been running for four years but screw everyone else on the team. It’s all about her.”

Kim was close to tears. I didn’t want to TELL her anything but I did want to tell her something. “Baby, I’m really new to team sports. As in, just this year. Did I tell you that Gizmo tried to light my shoe on fire?”

“What?”

I explained what happened and how everyone laughed. “It was contagious. Even Coach Hamilton laughed. When I hit a home run, I get high fives from everyone. You just walk the length of the dugout and everyone gives you a high five. The other day, I walked, stole second, and then scored on a deep fly to right field. I got the same high fives.”

“Okay. Where is this going?”

“I read the rules when you signed up for this. Antijoy gets ten points for winning the mile. You get eight points for coming in second. If you had won and she had come in second, Porter-Gaud would still have eighteen points. Right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You don’t like it that she’s a butt. I get it. But you can still give everyone high fives for the points they earned, right?”

She huffed. She knew I was right but she didn’t much like it. “Can I light her shoes on fire?” she asked. I laughed and we turned back to where Coach Szczypien was getting ready to talk to the team.

“I don’t know if you’re supposed to ride back in the bus or not.”

“You think I should, don’t you?” I didn’t have to answer. By the time we got to where Coach Szczypien was about to hold her meeting. Kim was ready. “Set the example, right?” I squeezed her hand.

“I’ll pick you up at school.”

I followed the bus out of the parking lot. Kim didn’t get angry often but when she did, look out. I’d pushed her buttons a couple of times earlier in the day but knew when to back off. Joy Perspicano, AKA, Antijoy had done more than push her buttons. She’d leaned on them with her whole body. I didn’t know Joy and wasn’t sure I wanted to. She was a senior in her last semester and then she’d be gone. If Kim was going to keep competing, especially in the same event, then I knew I hadn’t heard the last of it.

Sitting in the Porter-Gaud parking lot, I watched the girls’ track team get off the bus. I knew most of the girls. I thought nearly half of them were seniors. I paid special attention to Joy as she got off the bus. She wasn’t quite as tall as Kim but still pretty tall. She was thin as a rail and there is no way anyone would think she was pretty. On a good day, I thought she might be considered plain. With something just short of a snarl on her face, she wasn’t at all attractive.

When Kim got off the bus, she had obviously calmed down a lot, and had one of her almost smiles working. An almost smile is much better than a snarl. She waved to me and motioned that she was going into the locker room for five minutes.

“I’m going to run the four by four hundred relay next week,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat a few minutes later.

“Anything change?”

“I decided not to worry about the swimmer in the next lane.”

“I might have gotten that advice once or twice. And Joy?”

“She’s still a bitch. Do you remember when I said there wasn’t a lot of teamwork? I might have spoken too soon. Everyone else seems to be interested in being part of a team. AJ doesn’t and I’m not going to try to fix that.”

“AJ?”

“Antijoy.” Ah.

“Is AJ on that relay team?”

“I don’t know. Probably. She runs the two hundred, four hundred, and mile, so she’s probably on that relay team as well. I didn’t see that race today because I was watching the pole vault. I thought they would go higher.”

“There’s actually a lot of upper body strength required. I didn’t realize that until I tried it. Are we done with track for the day? You did great, by the way. You set a PR and that’s always good.”

“Personal record, right? Now I know what you meant, and maybe what you felt like when you were looking for that extra second, swimming.”

“You just started. AJ isn’t going to get any faster. She’s been at this for four years. Maybe, she’ll get faster but not by much. When you first started lifting, you increased how much you lifted practically every workout.”

“Yeah. I get it. She beat me today by six seconds. That was my best, today. I doubt that it was her best. It was enough to win. If I’d been faster, if I started to pass her, she would have picked up the pace and beat me anyway.”

“Maybe. In a mile swim, it’s not just speed that wins.”

“How’s that? Of course, it’s speed that wins.”

“Not always. If I think I have a better finishing speed than someone else, I might start off slow, to sort of lull my nearest competitor into swimming at that pace. But, if I think I have better endurance, I might start really fast. If they try to stay with me, they could run out of steam before me, and I sort of coast to the finish.”

I could see her thinking it through. “You have to have both to win, but if my stamina is better than hers, I might want to start faster, and if I think my speed is better than hers, I would start slow. Is that it?”

“Pretty much. Here’s the thing, though, how many times are you going to race against her this season?”

“Six, total.”

“If you settle on a strategy, you might beat her with it once but then she’ll know. It will be harder to beat her twice with the same strategy.”

“Well, crap.”

“I tried to beat Bobby at backstroke. I never did, but it made me better at it. He really caught up with me on freestyle. Not all the way, but he really improved. We helped each other a lot. It’s too bad AJ doesn’t want to help other people improve. Is Coach Szcypien helpful?”

“She is, but I don’t think she knows running the way Coach Miller knows swimming if that makes sense.”

“I don’t think too many people know swimming the way he does. What I can’t figure out is why he’s still at Porter-Gaud instead of a college. He seems to like it. My house or yours?”

“Drop me off at my house. I’m stinky and need a shower. Plus, I want to make dinner so Mom doesn’t have to.”

“It’s a quiet house at my place.”

“Ah. And you would like to make it a noisy house, I’ll bet,” she said, with a tiny little smile.

“I would like it to be so loud, the police are called and news crews are camped in our driveway.”

“My, my, my. Aren’t you ambitious?”

“No. I’m horny. Take care of your dinner,” I said, pulling into her driveway. “You can shower if you want but you’re just going to get all sweaty again, so it’s up to you.”

“You’re a mess. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Go home and play with yourself, dufus.”

Ouch. Her suggestion had merit but I cooked a meatloaf, then pulled a Boston Butt out of the freezer to make pulled pork. If I planned it right, I would only have to cook three or four times for the two weeks they were gone. I don’t know why Mom had made a tuna casserole for me to throw in the oven. She knew I hated tuna casserole. That would be my I’m-too-lazy-to-cook-but-starving backup meal.

I had just put the meatloaf in the oven when the phone rang. “Pierce residence. State your business,” I said.

“State your business? State your business? I’m your mom and I want to know how you’re doing. State your business, my eye.”

“I’m doing fine. I won’t ask how you are. Good, presumably.”

“We’re both fine. It’s beautiful here. We went to the rainforest today. It’s different than the one in Puerto Rico. The gondola ride was amazing and our guide was super sweet. Pierce residence. I didn’t even think about that. You’re still a Pierce. Plan on staying a Pierce?”

“We were actually talking about that the other day at school. I haven’t been a Strzok since you married Ronnie. You and Ronnie didn’t have any kids. I think I’ll stay a Pierce, though.”

“You’re old enough to decide for yourself, I guess. Happy with Pierce, though, huh?”

“I got to thinking about it and I don’t want people to think the only thing he left behind was money.” I’d been thinking along those lines but it felt funny coming out of my mouth. True, but they were words I never would have guessed I’d say.

It was quiet for a moment or two. “I think that’s nice, Buddy. I really do.”

“It just seems right. Besides, all my friends know me as Jack Pierce.”

“All your friends know you as Aquaman. Pierce suits you, though.”

“I guess I feel kind of bad that I got you a Yankee from the boat launch so I wouldn’t want to take a Yankee name.”

“I bet you think you’re funny. Did you see the casserole I left you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic. In case you’re wondering, it’s sheepshead casserole from one of the big ones you guys caught.”

“Not tuna?”

“No. You hate tuna casserole. Please tell me you didn’t think it was tuna casserole and toss it.”

“No, ma’am. I was just about to heat some up.” Whew. I’d thought about it.

“I hope it’s good. If you haven’t already, give Franklin a call and let him know you’re okay and just trade schedules.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m fine, okay? Just have fun. Mrs. McTighe is getting around fine and I have a long list of people I can call if I need anything. I’m really enjoying using your credit card.”

“You are not. You haven’t even looked in the cookie jar. If you had, we’d be talking about something different.”

I stretched the phone cord across the kitchen to the cookie jar and pulled the whole thing down. I popped the top and pulled her card and an envelope out of it. There was cash inside.

“What’s this?”

“I assume you mean the cash. I told you, that if you could keep Dane’s family occupied and happy, I’d refill your coffers. Consider your coffers refilled.”

“Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say, ‘Thanks, Mom. I’ll continue to be responsible.’ School has been your full-time job and you’ve done great. You don’t have to put up Christmas lights, or perform hurricane cleanup to earn extra money. You’re willing. You’re able. I don’t mind if you do, but you don’t have to. Fair enough?”

“Thank you. I think I might need to make a trip to Musicland.”

“Have fun, Buddy. You’ve earned it.” We talked for a couple more minutes, I promised to call Franklin, and hung up.

I made a salad and pulled some black-eyed peas out of the fridge to reheat, checked the timer on the meatloaf, and sat down to wait. I pulled the cash out of the envelope and counted it. She must have been keeping track of my spending because her contribution to the Jackson Michael Pierce fund for whatever I wanted was back up to five grand. Not exactly, but it was pretty close. Sweet. Franklin had given me ten grand almost two years prior and I’d been pretty frugal with it. My biggest expenses were the gym and Kim’s trailer.