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  “I’ll show you when we get home,” he said.

  He came up fast behind the car ahead. It seemed like he was always in a hurry, always distracted. I imagined work stuff and home projects and ideas fluttering in his head like leaves in a tornado. He palmed the steering wheel to the left, gassed the engine, and roared around the car like it was sitting still. Whenever I was alone with him I wondered what he thought about me, if he thought about me much at all. I felt like something he just hauled around with him and tried to like. Like something he just had to attend to out of a sense of duty. Like church.

  Dad stopped at a gas station to fill up. I stayed in the car as he got out, slid his credit card, and began fueling the Tahoe. Only a few seconds had gone by before I heard some commotion to my right. I looked over just in time to see a big man in flip-flops running across the parking lot. A woman appeared at the door of the convenience store, yelling something at him that I couldn’t understand. Then suddenly I heard the pump nozzle clatter to the ground. Dad jumped into the Tahoe and started the engine. He reached over and pressed me back against the seat with his hand.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  He punched the accelerator and the tires squealed on the pavement. I saw the man in the distance, running across an overgrown field. Dad took his hand off me and reached for his radio.

  “Three-One requesting backup. Pursuit in progress at 7204 Martin Bluff Road.”

  “Copy that, Thirty-One,” the station dispatcher replied. “Backup en route.”

  Dad dropped the radio on the seat again and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. We slammed into a small ditch, then bounced out of it and tore across the grassy field in pursuit of the runner. Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t have time to be afraid. I just gripped the armrest tightly and stared ahead.

  “Dispatch to Thirty-One,” the radio said.

  Dad didn’t answer. He had all of his attention focused on the runner. When we were about ten yards behind the man, Dad spun the steering wheel and the Tahoe fishtailed, kicking up grass and mud and coming within a few feet of mowing the man down. The runner kept going as we came to a stop, and Dad threw the Tahoe into park.

  “Stay here!” he shouted to me.

  Dad leaped out and gave chase. I realized since he was in plainclothes he didn’t have his pistol on him. He tackled the man, and I watched them both fall and disappear into the tall field grass.

  “Dispatch to Thirty-One,” I heard again.

  I looked at the radio on Dad’s seat, then back up at the grass. I saw the big man sitting up and punching down. Then he was out of sight again, and I saw Dad start to stand. Suddenly he was falling, and then he was gone and the big man was punching again. I knew something was going wrong. I grabbed the radio.

  “This is Sam Ford!” I yelled into the receiver. “My dad’s in trouble!”

  “Please identify yourself,” the dispatcher said calmly.

  “Sam Ford! Thirty-One!”

  I dropped the radio onto the floor and leaped out of the cruiser and started running toward them.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  8

  Before I reached the struggle Dad appeared out of the grass with the suspect, whose arm he’d wrenched behind his back. They were both breathing hard, their faces red and grass hanging from their hair. Then two police cruisers came skidding up next to me and three officers leaped out. They took the suspect from Dad and dragged him away.

  Dad watched them for a moment, then walked over to me and grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the Tahoe. Once we were at the car again he let go and turned and leaned against the hood. He was still breathing hard. He swiped his face with the back of his hand and looked at a streak of blood on it.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “Dad?” I said.

  He looked over at me. He took a deep breath through his nose. “I told you to stay put,” he said.

  I looked at my feet.

  “Get back in the car,” he said firmly. “And stay there.”

  I watched from the passenger seat while Dad stood outside and cleaned his face with a hand towel that one of the other policemen brought him. They talked for a while; then the policeman turned to go, and Dad came and got back in the Tahoe. He wiped his face once more and dropped the bloody towel onto the floor.

  “Do you need to go to the hospital, Dad?” I asked.

  He started the car.

  “Dad?”

  He looked over at me. “What the hell were you thinking, Sam?”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I thought he was going to…”

  Dad shook his head and looked away and put the Tahoe in drive. The other policemen were gone now, and we pulled out of the field and onto the highway.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off his messed-up face. “You’re still bleeding,” I said.

  “I’ll be okay,” he said.

  “You didn’t have your gun. I thought he was going to kill you.”

  Dad wiped his cheek with his shirtsleeve and looked over at me. “Exactly how did you think you were gonna help that situation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either,” he finally said.

  He didn’t say anything to me the rest of the way home. I stared out the window feeling small and confused.

  * * *

  When we stepped through the front door of our house, Mom took one look at Dad and walked away toward the bathroom without a word. He leaned against the kitchen counter, and she reappeared with alcohol and bandages and cotton swabs.

  “Got into a scuffle at the gas station,” he told her.

  “I see,” she said.

  “Some guy tried to rob it. Acted like he had a gun.”

  She put some alcohol on a swab and started dabbing at his face.

  “He almost got the best of me before my backup got there.” Dad glanced at me.

  “Stay still,” Mom said.

  “Sam decided he was gonna try and help out.”

  Mom stopped and looked me over. “What?”

  “I told him to stay in the car,” Dad said.

  “Dad didn’t have his gun,” I said. “I thought the man was gonna kill him.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “It was just for a few seconds. Then the other policemen got there.”

  Mom grabbed a small bandage off the counter and tore it open. I could see she was getting angry. “Seriously, Roger,” she said. “Did you have to get involved in that? On your day off.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Margie?”

  “When our son’s in the car?”

  Dad turned to her. “I wouldn’t have—”

  Mom forced his chin away from her. “Stay still,” she said again.

  “I had it under control,” he said.

  “It doesn’t sound like it.”

  “I’m okay, Mom,” I said.

  She turned to me. Mom doesn’t get angry often, but when she does, she’s got a hard look that bores right through a person. “Sam, I’m not happy with you either. When your father tells you to do something, you do it. Understand?”

  I looked down and nodded. Mom looked at Dad again and pressed the bandage to his cheek.

  “Go and get cleaned up for lunch, Sam,” she muttered.

  I walked back to my room feeling even worse.

  * * *

  No one said anything at the table. I felt the weight of Mom’s anger hanging over me, and it was hard to eat. Even Dad seems to get uneasy when Mom’s not happy. He picked at his food and shifted in his chair and sighed a couple of times. I was relieved when he finally stood and broke the silence.

  “Come on, Sam,” he said. “I’ll show you about the shear pin.”

  He showed me where the extra pin was kept in a small plastic bag under the engine cowling. It was a metal pin about half the size of a matchstick. Then he got into the Bream Chaser, pulled out his Leatherman multitool, and showed me how to remove the cotter key on
the prop and slide it off. He pointed to the drive shaft, where I saw another one of those pins sitting crossways in it.

  “It’s designed to break if you hit something,” he said. “So the prop will free-spin instead of losing a blade. You just slip a new pin in there, and you’re good. You can even use a nail or a stick in an emergency.”

  Learning about the shear pin only made me wonder just how many more things there were that he hadn’t thought to show me.

  “But you shouldn’t have to worry too much about hitting things in the bayou,” he said. “Just stick to the middle of the waterway and you’ll be fine.”

  I looked up at him and nodded that I understood, but mostly I was looking at the bruises starting on his cheeks and the trace of dried blood around the rim of his nostril.

  I can never be as good as him, I thought. And he knows it.

  9

  I drove the Bream Chaser to Grover’s that afternoon and tied it to his dock. His and his dad’s boats hung in the lifts, freshly waxed, all the ropes coiled precisely and the engines covered with canvas slips like they’d just been delivered. The lawn sloped down the creek bank, as neatly cut as a golf course. Leading up to their multilevel house was a stone walk, edged with monkey grass. The place was like a country club ready for a party that never seemed to happen.

  Dr. Middleton worked even more than Dad, and Mrs. Middleton traveled a lot. In addition to cleaning the house, Natalia cooked and drove Grover to school. It felt to me like he was a prince in his own mansion. Except he didn’t seem to notice all the expensive things around him. All he did was stay holed up in the basement. I imagined if that one cinder-block room were transported to the middle of a desert, as long as the electricity worked and he didn’t have to go outside, he’d be fine.

  I shouldered my backpack and walked up the lawn. The French doors leading into the lower level of their house were always unlocked. I slipped inside and crossed through a sitting room I’d never seen them use and then through another door into the basement that I thought of as Grover’s lair.

  “Still at level six,” he mumbled without looking up.

  I thought about telling Grover of Dad’s scuffle that morning, but then I figured he wouldn’t understand or even care. I crossed the room to a bunk bed and threw my backpack onto the top bunk. Grover’s official bedroom was upstairs, but he never slept in it. He showered, dressed, ate, and slept in the lair. It seemed he only used his real room as storage for clean clothes. His dirty clothes were usually strewn across the basement floor until Natalia picked them up, washed them, and took them upstairs again. Along one wall of the lair were his refrigerator and a counter with a sink and a microwave. There were also a pool table and a foosball table that I’d never seen him use. Littered across the tops of them were soda cans and empty cartons of instant macaroni and cheese and crumpled bags of microwave popcorn. Blankets were tossed on the floor in front of the television and over the sofa like he’d been nesting in them.

  I dug through one of the blankets until I found the extra game controller. Then I brushed some popcorn kernels off the sofa cushions and plopped down next to him. I stared at the television and tried to get my head back into Demon Quest.

  “All right,” I said. “What do I do?”

  It didn’t take long before Grover caught me up to where he was in the game and I was sucked into his furious world of monster fighting.

  After three mind-numbing hours, we’d destroyed the demon at level six and our muscled warriors stood on the precipice of a high cliff, staring over a fresh battleground swarming with new breeds of nightmarish beasts and presenting a challenge that seemed more impossible than ever.

  Grover dropped his controller to the floor. “Done,” he said, like it had been easy. Another life milestone for him. “Next up, level seven.”

  I set my controller beside me, mentally exhausted.

  Grover got up and crossed to his refrigerator and pulled out a Coke. He popped it open and took two big gulps like he needed it.

  “We going to eat supper?” I said.

  “Get anything you want,” he said. “There’s some Hot Pockets in the freezer.”

  “Is anybody else here?”

  Grover took another long swallow. “I think Natalia’s around,” he said. “Dad’ll probably be home later.”

  I got up and went to his refrigerator and opened the freezer. It was stacked full of pepperoni Hot Pockets.

  “Don’t you ever get sick of these things?”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “Well, I do. It’s just a lot of them.”

  “Just fuel, man,” he said.

  Hearing Grover say “man” like he was anything close to cool was annoying. But I didn’t respond; I just grabbed one of the frozen packages, unwrapped it, and stuck it in the microwave. I pressed start, then watched the food turn slowly on the platter. I felt Grover studying me like my parents.

  “There might be something else in the refrigerator upstairs,” he said.

  I didn’t want to look at him. I imagined a bowl on the floor and Natalia coming downstairs throughout the day and refilling it with dog food for Grover. His fuel.

  “I’m already cooking this,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  After a minute he said, “So you came in your boat?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I came in my boat. What’d you think?”

  “So what’s the big deal about it?”

  I felt myself getting shoved into a mental corner where I didn’t want to be.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I like it. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You don’t call me anymore. That’s what’s wrong.”

  That annoying Annie hair, I thought. That annoying face.

  I looked at him. “Geez, Grover. I’m over here now, aren’t I? You expect everybody to sit in your basement with you and play video games their whole life?”

  “It’s not your whole life,” he said flatly.

  I studied the digital timer on the microwave and didn’t answer.

  “You haven’t even shown me your boat,” he said.

  I turned to him again. I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Seriously?” I asked. “It’s right out there tied to your dock! You know that! If you really cared, you would’ve asked me about it earlier, but we had to sit here for three hours and get to stupid level seven!”

  Grover looked perplexed. “I told you that’s what we were going to do,” he said.

  “It’s always about what you want! Maybe I hate Demon Quest!”

  “No you don’t,” he said.

  The microwave began beeping, but I didn’t make a move toward it. I was shaking, and I was both mad and nervous. I’d never acted like that toward anyone.

  “Why are you yelling at me?” he said.

  I started breathing heavily through my nose, trying to calm down.

  “Your Hot Pocket’s ready,” he said.

  “I don’t care about the stupid Hot Pocket,” I muttered.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said.

  I shook my head. “You’re so clueless.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything!”

  He stared at me.

  I took another deep breath. “You don’t even think about it, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “Leroy. Gooch. The fight.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “In case I need to remind you, you got beat up in front of the entire school, Grover.”

  His face twitched the slightest bit. “So did you,” he said.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So?”

  Words came out of me like they’d forced their way through a door I’d been holding shut. “So maybe if I wasn’t hanging out with you, it wouldn’t have happened to me.”

  Grover started to reply, then stopped himself. Then he said, “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m tired of being a loser! I don’t want to be in this basement in this empty
house playing video games and eating Hot Pockets!”

  He kept watching me until I had to turn away. I happened to look at the microwave. I stared at it for a moment, words buzzing in my head like hornets. Finally I punched the button for the door and pulled out the Hot Pocket and tossed it on the counter.

  “We don’t have to play anymore,” he said.

  I struggled to calm the noise in my head. “I just want to go home,” I mumbled.

  “Okay,” he said in an empty way. It was like his brain had finally come up against something it couldn’t understand.

  “But it’s dark,” I said. “I can’t take out the boat in the dark.”

  “What do you want to do? We’ll do what you want to do.”

  “I want to go to bed.”

  Grover picked my Hot Pocket off the counter.

  “You eat it,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  I climbed onto Grover’s top bunk and lay there staring at the ceiling while he walked about the room and shut off the lights. Then I listened to him climb into bed below me. I felt sick over what I’d said to him, but I didn’t know how to fix any of it. I’d told him the truth about how I felt, and there was nothing I could think to say that would erase it.

  We both lay there in the dark room, neither of us talking. After a while I heard Grover get out of bed again. “I’m going to my room,” he said.

  I didn’t respond. I watched him walk to the staircase and heard him going up the stairs. Then I was alone in his lair, and I never thought the place could feel so sad. I wasn’t ready to feel as bad as I did. I’d never felt so lonely. I considered going after him and telling him I was sorry and suggesting that we stay up and play video games all night and act like nothing happened. Then I thought that if I did, I wouldn’t be solving anything. I’d still feel the same way about him. I just had to get through the night. I had to be like Davey, out there alone in the swamp like he wasn’t even a real boy but something in my imagination. I wished more than anything that I was out there with him. And I thought maybe Davey and his camp were the most real thing in my life.

  10

  The next morning I woke early, gathered my backpack, and slipped out of the Middletons’ basement. When I drove away from their dock I had the sense that I’d never see or hear from Grover again. It was a sick, reckless feeling that didn’t sit right with me at all. But I tried to put it behind me and concentrate on what lay ahead.