Second Down
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 36
I stumbled down the stairs still squinting from the sunlight that was just a little too bright. It was almost noon and I’d slept half the day away, but since this was the first day of vacation, that was fine by me. Football was done, and my weekends just got a lot less busy.
What I wanted more than anything at the moment was a glass of water. I’d gotten in super late from our celebration with the guys from varsity after their crushing 32-7 win in their first playoff game.
The fact that we’d even been invited along was amazing. While they had practically the same celebration ritual of going to the Silver Spoon that JV had, normally only varsity players and cheerleaders went after their games.
Kenneth had somehow noticed me in the stands and yelled at me to meet them at the ‘Spoon’ as he headed back to the field house after the game.
Mickey, Hanna, and Melanie had been sitting with me, so I brought them along, which turned out not to be a problem. Better yet, Melanie and Hanna had been pulled over by Tammy and the cheerleaders when we got there, while Mickey and I went to sit with some of the guys, and they spent the whole night flitting between our table and the varsity cheerleaders like hyperactive hummingbirds.
It was nice seeing her so happy, and it paid off for me. It was pretty late when Freddie chased us all out, so I’d walked her home. She spent the entire walk just chattering away about all the funny things Tammy had said, how great Tammy was, and just gushing about the whole night. As soon as we got to her door though, she was all over me.
We’d been keeping things pretty tame so far, but she took things up several notches. It wasn’t a full-on make-out session, considering we were standing in front of her house, but she definitely rewarded me for getting her a night with the varsity girls.
I’d been in such a good mood when I got home that I’d just lain in bed for an hour, staring at the ceiling, reliving the evening. And now I was paying the price for staying up so late.
My eyelids felt like they were lined with lead, and my brain still felt fuzzy. And it wasn’t just because I stayed up late. Josh was banging around just after the sun came up, either building furniture or just being loud to be an asshole.
I was pretty sure it was the latter.
I’d tried to block him out with some music, but I couldn’t find my headphones in my room and didn’t have enough energy to go hunting for them then. Thankfully, he didn’t do it for long. He’d been disappearing in the afternoons and on weekends, more and more, going who knows where, and coming back when it was dark. I know it bugged Dad, but Mom kept saying he was going to play with friends.
Like he had any friends.
But whatever. There wasn’t anything I could do to convince them to take his actions more seriously. Mom was ... I don’t even know why she put up with it, and Dad was more concerned with Mom’s health and didn’t want to fight with her about it.
Mostly, I just wanted to get some water, find my headphones, and head back upstairs to sleep a little longer.
I finished my water and headed into the entry hallway where I’d dropped my gym bag last night. I’d been so tired when I got home that I barely remembered throwing it down. I must have been really tired, because it was half unzipped. Although how I could have carried it around all day half open was beyond me. I knelt beside it, ignoring the heavy smell of old sweat that had soaked into the fabric.
It still had my clothes from gym the day before that I’d have to get to eventually. I dug past those, some random gear still in the bag, and a towel, and didn’t see them. I pushed everything around again, wondering how I could miss them in a bag that was only half full.
And my brain caught up. There was no way the bag had been open. I remembered that it was closed when I got home.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.
Mom and Dad would never have messed with it. If anything, they would have seen it and yelled at me to move it out of the hallway. Josh, on the other hand, would absolutely steal my shit. In a heartbeat.
Actually, he was more likely to do that now. Ever since Eduardo came over for dinner, he’d been even more of a pain than usual.
I shoved everything back into the bag and headed upstairs to his room. He was still out, doing whatever it was he did, and I went into his room.
The place was a pigsty. Stuff was everywhere. I knew Mom came in and picked up his dirty clothes, to do his laundry, something she hadn’t done for me in a long time. This wasn’t the first time he’d stolen stuff from me, and over the years, I’d worked out some of his most common hiding places.
I carefully moved his dresser away from the wall, but found nothing there except dust bunnies and a forgotten sock. I then checked under his bed. Getting on my hands and knees, I found two crumpled pieces of paper. Pulling them out, I recognized my old practice schedules from the start of the season. He’d torn them into pieces and then wadded them up.
Annoying, and he probably thought it was a “gotcha” to me, but we got these all the time as the practices changed. The fact that I hadn’t even noticed they’d gone missing said that they weren’t all that important.
I got up and looked around the room. Those were the two places he’d tended to hide stuff. Something tickled at the back of my mind. A few months ago, Mom had found something of mine in the garage and was annoyed that I’d leave something there. I hadn’t known what she was talking about at the time, but now...
I headed down to the garage, which was a mess of boxes and old junk, too full to actually put a car into. Dad kept talking about cleaning it out, but we never did.
I made my way to where the Christmas decorations were stacked against the back wall, which was about where Mom had mentioned finding my stuff. I hadn’t actually checked at the time, just taken my stuff from her, and now I was kicking myself for not paying more attention.
I started digging behind the boxes. He wouldn’t just leave them in the open. He liked to hide stuff under and behind things. After a few minutes, I thought maybe I’d misread the situation, and they weren’t there, until a section of drywall caught my eye. Moving closer, I could see it had been cut open and then pushed back into place.
I pulled it out carefully. It was still partially attached, so I couldn’t move it all the way out of the way, but I opened it enough to see a shoebox sitting there, with my headphones resting on top.
Little bastard.
I grabbed my headphones and started to put the drywall back when something stopped me. I saw the shoebox and wondered just what else of mine he’d squirreled away. I picked up the shoebox and was surprised when it was heavier than I expected. Something inside shifted when I moved it.
I pulled off the lid and felt my stomach drop. It was filled with a collection of random stuff, but not just random knickknacks someone else might have in a shoebox. Hair ties in different colors, several tubes of lipstick and lip gloss, pieces from charm bracelets and necklaces, and, if that wasn’t worrying enough, two small clumps of hair, clearly from different girls.
They didn’t feel like mementos. They felt like trophies.
And then I noticed one of the pieces from a charm bracelet. It was a tiny silver megaphone, and I knew exactly where it came from. Melanie had complained about losing hers a few weeks ago. She hadn’t specifically said she’d lost it here, since I think she didn’t notice right away when it disappeared, but it was around the time she’d come over to study with me.
I was nearly certain these were all connected to different girls, and couldn’t help but think of how he’d looked at Melanie that day.
I needed to show this to Dad. But even as I had that thought, I could predict how it would go. Mom would make excuses; he’s just collecting things he finds, he doesn’t mean anything by it. And Dad would defer to her like always, not wanting to upset her when she was already dealing with these headaches.
The sound of a car door slamming made me jump. I quickly shoved the drywall piece back into place, tucking the box under my arm. I needed time to think about how to handle this, but I wasn’t going to let him keep his creepy ass trophies.
I ended up giving the box to Dad later that night, and he said he’d take care of it. I didn’t hear anything else about it, but admittedly, I tried to stay away from the house as much as I could during the week. Mom was in a mood because of her headaches and when Josh was home, he was being a pain in the ass.
Since Dad had to work and wasn’t around to mediate, I thought the best thing to do was to be gone. I hung out at Eduardo’s a bunch, with Melanie several times, and even at Li’s once, although her mom disapproved of us hanging out and watching TV, so we were put to work in the store instead. It was still fun. The more I hung out with her, the more her sense of humor emerged. She was slightly sarcastic, very dry, and could give burns with the best of them.
By Tuesday morning, it looked like Mom would feel good enough to cook Thanksgiving dinner, so Dad went and got all the stuff, including a big ham, which we always had instead of turkey. Thanksgiving morning, though, Mom had another of her headaches and couldn’t get out of bed. Dad looked a little frazzled, so I volunteered to help him in the kitchen, not that I actually knew what I was doing.
“I think we need to cut it in half,” Dad said, looking at the ham propped halfway in the pan, much too off-kilter to actually fit in our small oven.
“Mom never does,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I have no idea how she makes it fit.”
“Is there another pan?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe once it cooks a bit, it’ll shrink and fit in the pan.”
“I’m not sure that’s how this works,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring at the offending meat as if it were a perp giving him trouble. “I’m hearing you don’t think we should cut it in half.”