Chapter 1: Getting that far

It didn't take me a long time to become an adult. I'm talking about emotional maturity. Acting like an adult is a good deal different than being an adult. I ought to know.

My name is Steve Black. Stephen, actually. Stephen Oliver Black. Yeah, that's right, S.O.B. A dirty trick played on me by my parents. They claimed it was accidental, that they didn't realize it at the time. I wonder. For a while, in my teenage years, some people thought that acronym fit. I was deeply offended by that. I wasn't deliberately trying to be a jerk, it just came naturally to me.

My mother, Margaret, said I could be thoughtless and insensitive. She was right some of the time. My father, Matthew, said I was just taking up space and wondered more than once if I was really his progeny. I'm pretty sure he was kidding. My older brother, John, just tolerated me as he had virtually from birth. My younger sister, Pamela, looked up me for some strange reason. Go figure.

My theory, for what it's worth, is that I was afflicted with "middle child syndrome." I could see how John would get all the first run of things in the household. That's what everyone said about their older brother or sister. And Pam was a bit of an afterthought and was worshiped by both my mother and father. She could do no wrong. So there I was, stuck I the middle, sometimes ignored, sometimes picked on, sometimes left to wonder what the hell would I ever become in this life.

My Dad was a self-made man. He could never gather together enough money to go to college even though he was smart enough by far. He started out working for the government in radio services, mostly working around the local airports. As time and technology progressed, he became part of management and was sent to various places to upgrade radio and guidance equipment. I was really impressed when I realized just how much he had achieved without a college degree. It also got me to thinking wrong-headedly about the need for a college education.

Dad was a slim five-foot-eight and weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds. Like me, blond hair, but he had a moustache his whole life as far as I know. Maybe he was born with it. He was a pretty neat guy all around and treated me okay, considering what a jerk I could be. He had a high threshold of pain, I guess.

My mom was completely different. She was a housewife, born and bred. That's what life cut her out for and that's what she was. She was "bigger boned" as she liked to say. Not fat ... no sir, but sturdy I'd call it. She wasn't anywhere near as smart as Dad, but they loved each other and there was no doubt about that.

The thing I remember most about my parents is how many real friends they had. My mom was an outgoing person to start with, and Dad was very cool, with a quirky kind of humour. People just naturally liked to be around them. Hardly a week would go by that they weren't visiting some friends or having them over to our place to play cards or whatever.

My older brother, John, was kind of built like Mom; sturdy that is. Both of them had dark brown hair while Dad, Pam and I had blond hair. John was about five-ten and one-eighty, pretty solid and kept himself that way. He played halfback on the school football team and he was good. He was even invited to a development camp with our local pro team, the Lions. That's when he figured out just what the odds were of him making it. When high school ball was over, his football career would be over. Like Dad, he never went to college. They said he just wasn't cut out for it. I often wondered who "they" were.

Pam was four years younger than me. She was slim and tall, like me. Everyone in the family had blue eyes. Well, maybe Mom's were hazel, whatever that is. I had a growth spurt just before my sixteenth birthday and the next thing I knew I was six-foot-one and a hundred-and-sixty-pounds, soaking wet.

About the same time, I was afflicted with acne, and that set back my plans to plunder the female population of Panorama High School in West Vancouver. Every morning I would look in the mirror and get depressed. At least one new zit per day to replace the ones that had died out. Mom said it was because I didn't wash my face properly, but she was full of it. I washed and washed until my face was red from the scrubbing I gave it and it didn't make a damn bit of difference.

I think that had a lot to do with my attitude toward school. I hated to be seen in public because of my "poxy" look. Yeah, sure, my friends had zits too, but so what. I tried to hide them using some of Mom's makeup, but you could see that stuff a mile away and I figure it just drew attention to my face. Who needs that? I'd had a few dates, but nothing special. Pickings were slim since I wasn't the hot shot football hero and didn't exactly have movie star looks. Didn't those movie stars ever get zits?

The school used to test us for I.Q. every four years, and I hated it. Not the test, but the results. See, John would score somewhere in the average category, while Pam and I scored a lot higher. Why did I hate that? Because now everyone thought I should be a straight-A student like Pam, that's why. So the pressure was on from grade ten onward. Why aren't you doing better? Why aren't you near the top of your class? Like I said, I hated the damn test.

It didn't bother Pam. She was a genuine straight-A student and just cemented her place in the Black Family Hall of Fame. Now don't get me wrong. Pam and I got along really well. She looked up to me as a kind of guardian. Damned if I know why, but she did. If she had a problem with homework, she would come to see me. If she was trying to figure out something about life in general, she would ask me. When I look back on it, I never treated Pam like a bothersome sister. I never complained when she came to me with her problems. I just didn't.

I really wanted to play football like my brother, but I was way too skinny. The coach wouldn't take me seriously, and I couldn't blame him. When I looked in the mirror, I was all rib cage and elbows. John suggested I get on a weight training program and after ignoring him for a while, I decided to give it a try.

"Jesus, John, when does this get easier? Every muscle in my body hurts." I had just finished a tough workout about three weeks into the program.

"It never does," he laughed. "When it gets easier you aren't working hard enough."

Words of encouragement they weren't. John had a bar bell set in the basement and Dad had built him a long, padded bench to sit or lie on when doing some of the lifts. He took the time to show me what to do and how to do it so that I wouldn't hurt myself. I took over from Dad as John's spotter when he wanted to do some heavy lifting.

John showed me the diet that the coach had given him and that Mom had agreed to follow. It didn't look too bad, so I went and saw Mom.

"Hey, Mom. You know that special diet that John is having? Can you put me on that too? That way, you'd be doing it for two instead of just one."

She looked at me curiously.

"Why do you want to do that?"

"I'm going to try out for the football team next fall and I want to build up my strength so I've got a chance to make it. John's helping me with the weights and he says the diet is working pretty good too."

She looked at me like I was from Mars before, "Okay. I guess it won't hurt. Less work for me," she said. I never did figure out how that would be so.

When I tried out for the team in my last year, I weighed one-eighty and I was in pretty good shape. I still wasn't the biggest kid for my age, but I figured I at least had a shot. I learned in a hurry that there was more to playing football than being big enough. The wind sprints convinced me of that.

I really only had one thing going for me. I could catch the ball. I could catch high, hard ones, low shoe-top ones, over the shoulder, jump balls, the whole enchilada. I wasn't terribly fast, I was a lousy blocker, and couldn't tackle to save my life, but I could catch the ball. That was apparently enough for the coach. I made the team.

It took me three games to show the coach that he had made a good choice. Roger "the Dodger" Somerville, our quarterback, destined for a football scholarship I was sure, noticed I wasn't dropping anything even remotely within reach. In fact, a one-handed stab on a fourth-and-eight desperation pass brought me instant fame and accolades from both the coach and Roger, not to mention several cheerleaders.

So, like my brother before me, I was now a key member of the first squad, and I was loving it. I was getting a lot of attention from girls who would otherwise not have even noticed me, much less stopped to talk to me. I got my picture in the local paper a couple of times, along with Roger and a couple of other team members. It was all new to me, and for the first time in my life, I was a "somebody." Naturally, I let it go straight to my head.

High school seniors who star on the football field don't just get noticed by the students, they get noticed by the teachers, too. If you want to terrorize a high school athlete, just tell him that if his grades don't improve he won't be playing football any more. It was a cold feeling when I looked at my mid-semester math scores and saw I was in imminent danger of dropping off the squad.

I was desperate and I needed someone to help me. It was a long-shot, but I decided to ask the smartest girl in my math class for help. I knew where to find her. She'd be alone in the cafeteria, just like she always was at lunch hour.

I would seek help from Doryanna Paulson.

"Uhhm, Dory, uhhm ... can I talk to you for a moment?" I asked as I approached her table with my tray in hand.

She looked up at me in surprise, her forehead a series of wrinkled lines.

"I guess. What about?"

I put my tray down and sat across from her.

"Uhhm ... I was wondering ... uhhm ... if I could ask you to help me?"

"Help you what?"

"I need some help in math. I'm having trouble keeping up."

"Keeping up in what?"

She wasn't cutting me any slack.

"Statistics and Probability. I just don't get it."

"Oh ... so why are you asking me?"

"You're the smartest person in class. You're always the top of the list. I was figuring ... I mean ... hoping ... I could ask you for some help. A tutor, like."

"What's in it for me?" she asked without hesitation.

"I don't know. I haven't got much money. I'm like saving for a computer right now."

"I'll think about it," she said, turning away from me.

"Look, maybe this isn't a good idea," I said, somewhat defeated. I didn't really want to go looking for someone else, but she wasn't giving me any signals that she might be interested.

Dory, as we all called her, was a really smart girl. She was not ugly, but she was a bit overweight, I guess you'd say. Not really fat or anything, but she was never going to be a cheerleader. On top of that, she wore fashions by Salvation Army that kind of hid her body from view. To tell the truth, you couldn't really tell what her whole body was like because of those clothes she wore. But when I looked at her face, she seemed kind of pretty.

She was about five-foot-six and had curly brown hair cut short. Brown eyes too. Nice, but not really special. Pretty good teeth I figured. Nice little nose, and clear skin with only some freckles, the lucky girl. Yeah, sort of pretty if that was the right word.

"Look, Stevie, if this is some kind of prank, don't waste your time. I'm not falling for it."