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

“Aw, Mom, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll throw a few fastballs and he’ll forget all about it.”

Her eyes dart back to mine. “Sam,” she whispers, “it’s not that simple. You know how he is about these games, about Vanderbilt. The only thing that has kept him from exploding this whole time is the thought of you dead in a ditch somewhere.”

She’s not making any sense. “I’ll play fine, Mom. Really. One home run, and the scout won’t even know the difference.”

She looks at me, and all the muscles of her face seem to slacken at once. “Oh, sweetie,” she says, and takes my hands in hers. “Don’t you know? The game was yesterday. You’ve been gone for two days.”

I stumble backwards. "Two days?"

She doesn't even nod. She just watches me.

"How is that even possible?" I shake my head.

I've never missed a game before. My dad—I imagine his reaction at the field when I'm not there. I can see the veins pounding on his forehead in my imagination. My teammates—what did they think?

I turn to my mom. "How did the game go? Without me there?"

Her mouth bunches up and I know an apology is coming even before she opens her mouth. "They didn't do well," she says, and I know it's an understatement.

I bet they didn't. My dad was probably distracted the entire time, screaming and throwing a fit. How were they supposed to play with that? And the scout—I missed the scout. I won't get into Vanderbilt now. I've failed. I slept in and I failed.

I start running my fingers through my hair and breathing harder. My mom reaches out a hand to rub my back, but I pull away. I can't stand to be comforted now. How will I go to school? How will I show my face again?

"I can't go to school," I say. "I—I should stay home today. You have to call in sick for me."

My mom is quiet another moment. Then she starts to cry. I look up at her, and her mouth is moving, trying to talk. But before she can say anything, the front door of the house slams and we both look up. My father is storming across the lawn, a look of absolute rage on his face. He's storming up to me like I've just killed his mother.

In a moment, he's screaming in my face. "Where the hell have you been?" he barks. His spittle mists my face, and I look down in shame. "We lost the game. You made the team lose the game. Where were you? Huh?" He pushes me in the chest. "Explain yourself. Where?"

I can't say anything. I hear my mom whisper, "Calm down, Henry."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" he yells. Some of our neighbors are coming out now, watching from their porches. My dad either doesn't notice or doesn't care. He pushes me backward, and I almost fall off the curb. "Where have you been?"

"I—I don't know," I say, and I look up at him. He looks like he wants to kill me. Not just in a metaphorical kind of way. He really wants to hurt me. "I was out with the guys, and we—" I contemplate cleaning up the story, but chances are he's already grilled the rest of the guys and knows already "—we were drinking at the Johnson place. I had too much and pulled over to sober up. That's all. I don't know why it took so long for me to wake up."

"He was drugged," my mother says to my father. "Roofies."

I consider this. Who would do that to me? Duko?

"Did anyone mix drinks for you?" my dad asks.

I remember back. I only drank from cans that I got myself from the cooler. "No," I whisper.

My father throws up his hands. "He did it on purpose." Then he turns to me, pushing his finger into my chest. "Do you know how much that truck cost me?"

I shake my head.

"We had to take out a second mortgage on the house to get you that truck. That was your college fund, mister. We thought you'd get a scholarship, no question. Looks like we were wrong about that."

"I didn't ask you to get me a truck," I say.

My dad's lips curl back. "You ungrateful little—" He raises his hand. My mother gasps, and I look up to see his fist coming toward my face. It's only a few inches away when I see it, but somehow I manage to react in time. My hand shoots up to catch his fist in my palm, and I hold it there in front of my face. The anger in his expression morphs into dumb shock as he looks at it, and then his eyes meet mine.

I let go immediately.

"Give me your keys," he says quietly.

My mother is silent, watching, as I pull my keys from my pocket and hand them over to him. He snatches them away.

"Go to your room. You're grounded. No more truck. No more friends. No more
anything
until you win a game. Is that understood?"

I think about not answering, but I catch my mother's eyes. She's nodding for me, encouraging me to just let this one go. "Yes, sir," I say. I walk around him and into the house, leaving both of them standing by the curb. My father calls out to me.

"And I don't want to see you leave your room for the rest of the night."

I shut the door, and something about the light makes me pause.

It’s too dark. It’s darker now than when I woke up, and I realize what my mom meant by two days. I spent through yesterday, and then today, waking up as the sun went down.

How did I do that? How could I have slept through two days?

* * *

I spend the night in my room, sitting on my bed over the covers. I listen to my mother call the sheriff and a long list of people from town, letting them know that I was safe and at home, and that nothing had apparently happened. She repeats the story that I had been overworked and probably sleeping off some sort of bug, and that the important thing was that I was safe.

Around eleven that night my mom knocks on the door to my room.

"Come in."

She closes the door behind her, and then sits down next to me on my bed. I had been throwing a baseball into the air and catching it, and I set it down in my lap to let her talk.

She's wearing curlers now, and has on her silk night robe. I feel bad when I imagine her worrying all last night, calling the cops and crying. Her eyes are still red from it.

"You're going to have to go to school tomorrow," she says. "I talked with your father, and he won't have you missing another day."

I grip the baseball harder. "Why does dad have to be like that?" I ask. "He can never cut me any slack."

"He only wants the best for you."

I've heard my mother repeat this mantra since I was a toddler. She'll excuse any of my dad's faulty behavior by declaring he's acting from a good place.

"He's a good man, honey," she continues. "You have to try to understand this from his side. We were all worried sick about you. And your dad, he felt really—he felt powerless. That's a horrible way to feel for a man like him."

I don't really care about how he felt. He deserves to feel bad sometimes too.

"And he wasn't the only one. The whole town was looking for you. The guys on the team, the Sherriff, everyone. Your picture was on the news."

I sit up. "The news? Really?"

She smiles. "The town's star player goes missing. What do you expect?"

"I'm sure it didn't hurt that Dad's drinking buddies with the Sherriff." I think about this for a minute. This is going to make it much worse when I go back without a proper cover story. "I can't go back to school," I say again. "I can't face them, Mom."

She runs a hand through my hair. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. The town will be back to normal after the next game." She kisses me on the forehead, and then gets up for the door.

"You think so?" I ask.

"I
know
it," she says. "You're still our star. Just—" She pauses, changing her mind.

"What?" I ask.

She tries to pass it off as a joke. "Just make sure to show up next time."

I sit in silence after she closes the door, the ball in my lap. I can’t throw it anymore.

* * *

I don't sleep at all that night. Maybe it was the two days of sleep previously, or the worrying about everyone's reactions, but by the time the sun comes up the next morning, I am utterly exhausted. What's worse is that exactly when I'm supposed to wake up, that's when I finally get tired and can barely stay awake. But I don't get much choice in the matter. My dad bangs on my door at 7:01 a.m. and screams for me to get ready. He's taking me to school this morning.

I shower and change into fresh clothes. I force myself to eat some breakfast. My mom is already gone. She works down at the diner by the highway, and her shift starts when the sun rises. I eat some toast and microwave sausage, and then get my backpack and wait for my dad to dress and shave.

He doesn't talk to me. He's not that talkative to begin with, but I can tell he's still furious. He's also dealing with his own nerves in his head, and I know he's going to get teased about not being able to keep his own son in line by everyone in town. It's as much his fault as mine that I wasn't at the game.

He sips on his coffee on the drive, and I hear his stomach gurgling worse than usual. I normally don't drink caffeine, but I'm so sleepy this morning that I feel I might need the additional energy. It's all I can do to keep my eyes open on the drive to school, with nothing but the fear of my dad yelling at me to keep me going.

He drops me off and I stand on the steps of the school. Our school is a cluster of large buildings, and most students hang out in the center of the cluster before classes start. I don't want to go in. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say when people ask me where I've been.

Part of me wishes that I knew how long I'd slept when I first woke up. I might have not come back home so fast. I would have taken the time to think up a good story. But as it stands, I've got nothing to protect me now. My mom doesn’t know when to lie, and she told everyone in town that I missed the game because I was sleeping. I'm sure everyone in school knows that now, from the teachers to the students to the janitorial staff.

I'm forced to go into the school or risk another lecture when I get home. I walk into the center of the buildings, and try to keep my head down on the way to first period. It's not cool to wait in class before the bell rings, but today, I'm willing to sacrifice my image a bit. I barely make it a few steps before I hear people calling my name.

"There he is."

"Heard he slept."

"What a loser."

"Didn't think he was anything special."

It sounds like they're whispering into my ears, but when I look up, I am surprised to see that there's still a distance between me and the other students. The acoustics must be odd within this part of the campus. It's like there's an echo all around me, amplifying everyone's conversations. I pretend not to hear them, and walk on.

"Hey, Cohen," I hear a familiar voice shout. It's Aaron Johnson from the team. I look up and see he's with the other guys, huddled together in their normal spot near the south side of the school. I nod my head hello, and force a casual grin on my face. Maybe I can play this off as simple boys-being-boys reckless behavior. I've started stranger trends.

"What the hell are you smiling about?" Duko snaps when I get close, and my smile falls.

None of the other guys are smiling either.

"We lost the game," says Clements, our first baseman. "Where were you?"

"I heard you were sleeping," says our outfielder.

I shrug a bit, my eyes darting away. I don't know how to play this. "You know how it is," I say, a nonsense reaction that normally gets a chuckle out of the guys no matter what the accusation.

But not today.

"No," says Duko. "We don't."

I swallow. All of their eyes are on me, and I want to do nothing more than have things go back to the way they were. "Come on," I say. "Things happen. We'll win the next one."

All their eyes are on me, but to my relief, Johnson switches the topic and the guys seem to move on. I don't manage to say anything to add to the conversation. I can't even keep my casual grin on my face this time. And for the first time, I'm terribly relieved to hear the bell ring. I say a quick "Later" before practically running to my first class.

But once I sit down I'm asleep. I don't even mean to. I even sort of like my first period, Sociology. We learn about cool things like serial killers and hoarders. But the second I'm off my feet, I feel the warm sun filtering in through the window, and Mr. Tosh's voice is like the sweetest lullaby.

I startle awake when he slams a book down on the desk in front of me. I gasp in air and hear the rest of the class laughing at me.

"You may be the school hero, Mr. Cohen," says Mr. Tosh, "but in my class, I'm the star, and I expect you to pay attention. Understand?"

"Uh huh," I mumble.

But as soon as he goes back to his lesson, my head slumps forward and I'm out again. He wakes me one more time, but I'm not sure if it's real or a dream, I'm that tired, and he gives up. It's not until the bell rings that I'm jolted awake enough to shuffle to my next period.

This, thankfully, is history, and old Mrs. Stuart doesn't give a damn who's asleep and who's awake. She's got tenure and spends most days "teaching" by playing a movie from the History Channel. I swear we've seen
Tora, Tora, Tora
at least ten times this year. She doesn't even bother keeping track of where we left off; she just lets it keep going from where it ended in her previous period. I put my head down on my desk, and dream about running through a grassy field that goes on and on and on, and I never have to go back home.