So I took my meds. And played like a guy on meds, slow on the uptake. Coach didn’t say anything, but he saw, and directed the play towards faster legs and less buttered fingers. That hurt me more than my leg, honestly. I tried cutting back, less butter on the bread. Just a hair, stretching to five or six hours on the Lortabs or the Percocets, a day and a half on the oxys. I was supposed to alternate or sometimes double up, as per written instructions. Doc had me well doped for practice, tapering off for game nights, giving me some of my marbles back to play with. Counting on me to play through the pain. Lord, I did. Hard enough to tear up whatever that knee had left to its name. Pain wasn’t even the main event anymore, I was numb some way, enough to try easing back on the meds. But if I stretched it out too far, especially between oxys, I’d wind up feeling tackled before I even dressed out. Bone ache, gut ache, puking in the locker-room head. And worse things, hard to discuss. I was shitting myself. This would come on hard and fast, chills and shakes and everything inside turned full-blast to running water. Which is so weird, because for the most part oxy constipates you like a motherfucker. Till you’re in withdrawals, and it doesn’t. So far I’d only gotten the runs at the house, before I left for practice. Scary as hell though. I might get them just from worrying about it. Homecoming was coming up. Not just the game, which is a big scramble anyway of mud, grass stains, piss, guys peeing in cups or towels or behind the benches, sorry if you didn’t already know that. I was thinking more of the halftime thing, homecoming court. Parading around the field with a girl on my arm in front of the entire Friday-night congregation. Home game, obviously. White uniforms.

  I went back to taking the oxys on the clock.

  Homecoming was a whole ridiculous thing. Yes, I would be crowned. So it was a lot of pressure as regards asking a date: the queen is mandatory. Girls laid it on thick. Food left in my locker, cookies, fine all that. But then came photos. Pouty lips and stiff nipples, thumb hooked in the unzipped jeans, and all I could think was: Who the hell took this picture? You’re halfway there already, go to homecoming with them. Maybe I’m a fool. But I liked the idea of starting from the top of the chase scene, not jumping in last second before the vehicle explodes.

  My locker was easy to access. Angus, Maggot, various teammates and weed connections all had the combination, for practical purposes. So if these valentines turned up anonymous, which most did not, I only had to ask around. Sorry to say, I didn’t. Just not that into it. Who was into it was Turp Trussell. He had the locker beside mine and scored a lot of free snacks, since I didn’t feel right eating the cookies of a girl I wasn’t going to ask out. I don’t like owing anybody. Turp felt by the same line of reason, he should take possession of the photos. But I drew the line.

  Then comes the day where Turp is waiting by my locker like a big red balloon fixing to pop. Kid was blessed with the pimply, boiled-meat type skin that gives you nowhere to hide. He’s dying here, busting a gut, saying “Open it, man! Open it!” Like it’s my damn birthday. He saw something go in, obviously. I felt like telling him to take it, whatever it is, just eat it. But now I was curious. Scrolled the lock, opened, and saw no cookies. No envelope with girl writing. Just a black scrap of something thrown in haste, hooked on the wire of a spiral notebook. I took a second to untwine it, and then I about shit. Underwear. A thong. I’d not ever seen one of those without the person inside. Nothing to it, lacy front, absentee the rest. Meanwhile Turp is doing something halfway between end-zone dance and asthma attack, like he’s not seen panties before, or no, evidently because he has. He keeps asking me if the safety seal is broken.

  “Do what?”

  We’ve got an audience now, watching Demon being a full fledge idiot. What Turp is asking me is: Clean, or did she wear them first? How the hell I’m supposed to know this, no idea. He snatches them from me, all scornful. “Dude,” he says. “Inhale!”

  He pushes the crotch onto my face, and I get it. Full pussy, right between the eyes. And after this I’m supposed to go learn civics. The back of my locker is lipstick-signed, this is Vicki Strout. From that day forward to be known as Scratch-n-Sniff.

  I feel bad for Vicki. This was a gamble on her part. To this very day, her kids’ nasty little friends might be calling her Scratch-n-Sniff behind her back, and that’s on me. If these ladies had caught me sooner, I would have been the dog on the bone. But now I was wrecked for anything but the best. If I went to homecoming at all, I’d have one queen only. Not Vicki Strout.

  And I didn’t even have the guts to call her. Because I knew about life. As long as you haven’t yet asked, you can still have another day with some answer in your head other than “Go fuck yourself.” So it happened the way it probably had to. Dori came to me.

  This was a Monday. I’d been laying low at home a lot, which maybe she knew from asking around. I was in bed, trying to go over plays in my head, winding up someplace between sleep, not sleep, Dori dream lap dance. Not that it was all sexual thoughts, you don’t just bang a fairy nymph. Or if yes, I’d not seen that particular manga. Anyway I was dead spooked to roll over and see her looking at me from the doorway. Zoo wee mama, standing there on her lace-up sandal feet like she’d flown in on my brain waves.

  “Hey,” she said. That deep, running-water voice.

  I sat up too fast, bunched the sheets around for adequate coverage. Shit. “Hey,” I said. “Where do you know me, I mean. Where I live?” Shitshitshitshit.

  “How many other Coach Winfield mansions do you think I tried, before this one?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Weird time to be asleep. They’ve got me on stuff that kind of licks me.”

  She came around the end of the bed to where all my crap was on the night table. Picked up the pill bottles one by one and checked the labels. Then sat down on the bed facing me, with one knee and foot hitched up, the other leg dangling. Not really dressed for winter, it must have been warm out. She had little silver rings on two of her toes. “So. How bad are you broken?”

  “Most of me still works. The rest I reckon will come around.”

  She grinned at me. Lord, that face, like scoops of vanilla, all rounded cheeks and creamy skin. Little pixie nose. Shiny eyes, like the black middle had swallowed the rest. Her pink dress was made of something soft, a second skin, with a low, round neck smiling at me above the double scoop of her tits. I was afraid of crying if I couldn’t touch her.

  “I brought you something.” She slipped the strap of her purse off her shoulder.

  “You needn’t to have.”

  “Oh, I did. You have no idea. It was life and death.”

  I felt cottony in the mouth and brain as I sorted through my many regrets. I’d gotten lazy about showers: that was one among the many. Her dark eyes were shimmying with a question.

  “What? Am I supposed to guess?”

  “You’d never.”

  “But if I do,” I said. “I get to ask you out.”

  Help me Jesus, her smile. A tiny dent in each cheek, and her bottom lip held out a little way out from her teeth, like the juiciest smile possible. Inviting you in.

  I rifled the messy mental locker. Not underwear, surely. “Is it something I need?”

  “Definitely not.” She looked tickled. The dangling foot bounced.

  “Okay. So not a forty of Mickey’s or my geometry homework.”

  She shook her head, solemn as church.

  “Am I getting close though?”

  “Very.”

  “A jar of pickled eggs. No, wait. A Furby.”

  Her laugh bubbled up. Like a glove box popping open and candy spilling out. I said a bunch more ridiculous things, just to watch that happen. Finally she gave me a hint.

  “It’s the one thing I knew you’d love. Because you told me.”

  No clue. I’d barely talked to her before this, in actual life.

  “That time we first met at the feed store,” she teased. “‘Cute as buttons’ . . .”

  “Oh shit. No way you remembered that. Baby chickens?”

  She reached in her purse and pulled out a pink Tampax box. The second she opened it the little guy started peeping. I took it from her, surprised by the strong little claws digging in. This one had real feathers, not like the day-old fuzzballs I’d handled at the store, both living and dead. I tried to calm him down, petting his walnut head. Dori watched us with that juicy smile. The foot still bouncing. Some part of her was always moving.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Your dad’s store? In November? That makes no sense.”

  “Right? Somebody special-ordered them and never picked them up. Donnamarie was shitting bricks over these dozen chicks, calling us at the house every day, so I had to go get them.”

  I could feel the heartbeat through the feathers. “Won’t he miss the rest of his friends?”

  “Okay, so. I told you this was life and death? This is the alive one. Sad story.”

  “The rest are dead? How?”

  “So. I have this dog, Jip? He’s the sweetest little thing.”

  “So sweet, he offs chickens?”

  “I don’t even know how it happened. I was outside letting them run around, and Dad lets Jip out the back and next thing I know he’s just hoovering the little fellas out of the grass.”

  Her smile turned upside down, the saddest of sad. I wanted to kiss her more than I wanted to live. “Survivor,” I said to my little friend, giving his chest a tiny fist bump. “You and me.”

  Was I giving a thought to no pets allowed, the whole ridiculousness of a chicken in the house, any of that? What do you think? The bird was in the hand.

  I went nuts, and spent too much money. Got her flowers not from Walmart but the true flower place in Bristol where they had one the exact color of her hair. Orchid. A new suit jacket, not from Goodwill. The homecoming rigamarole at halftime would be in uniform, but after that was the dance plus all other postgame action. It killed me that I couldn’t drive over and pick her up, but my option was U-Haul’s Mustang, himself supervising. I’d sooner take the riding mower. I tried to talk Angus into letting me use her Jeep, flying solo on my learner’s permit just this once, because what cop in Lee County is going to ticket a General on game night? No dice. Angus was still teasing me about flavor of the week. All I could say was you wait and see. Dori’s the one.

  Angus called the baby chicken Dori’s and my “love child.” Like many a bastard, he ended up in a back room in a cardboard box. Dori brought him a waterer and scratch feed from the store. She came over every day that week, being pretty lonely, all on her own with her dad that turned out to be a lot sicker than just his heart. She said it’s a losing battle trying to get in to see doctors. Only after the heart attack did they find the cancer in him that by that point was eating him up, lungs and bones. One day she closed my door and asked if she could lie down and cry a little bit, while I held her. Everything in me, my whole insides, turned over for this girl.

  She was the one that took me shopping for our homecoming date and talked me into the new jacket, never even worn before. I told her I was not a wealthy man, but she laughed and said I had three hundred at least in my bedroom. Lortabs sold for ten bucks a pill, oxys for eighty. I wasn’t about to part with those pills, but we bought the jacket. She lined up a neighbor to sit with her dad overnight on Friday. I was counting down minutes.

  The ride problem turned out not an issue. Coach made us come out two hours ahead of kickoff for last-minute drills. I was wound so tight over so many things, getting the thunderous trots in public for one, I took every pill I was supposed to. Stood on the sidelines watching the hole in our game that should have been me. I was there and not there, the crowd noise and stadium lights melting into a long grasshopper whine in my ears. Feeling my heart thumping in the backs of my knees and my teeth. One sorry son of a bitch. Only one thing could save me.

  She’d turned up looking like a wet dream. The purple-hair waterfall down one side of her face, the shiny blue dress also like water running down her perfect body. I wanted to drink it off of her. Before kickoff we’d met up in the parking lot so I could give her the flower thing. But really just to see her. I didn’t fully believe she’d come. I fetched the clear box out of U-Haul’s car and slipped it on her wrist and she was like a kid on Christmas morning. Holding it up to her hair. Perfect match. She’d not seen an orchid before, let alone anybody giving her one. It killed me to leave her. I told her to find the pep squad and they’d tell her where to line up for the halftime court. I’d already caused no small amount of drama, signing up a date that was not enrolled as a student. Seriously ticking off the cheerleaders and locker-cookies chicks. But Dori would never know about that, I’d make sure. I felt fifty years older than these kids in high school.

  “See you on the field,” she said. That open-lip smile. “My liege.” She reached up and kissed me, surprise attack, and I got hard. What that feels like inside a jock and cup, oh man. Like a V8 under a Yugo hood. I couldn’t help wondering what I had to look forward to later.

  I got some idea at halftime. We did the whole pony show, homecoming court, marching band, walking out, our names over the loudspeakers. The runner-up guys with their cheerleader dates in red hair bows and mickeymouse skirts. Me, the king, with my mermaid queen, as proud as it’s possible to feel in shoulder pads and a plastic crown from Halloween Express. They honored the graduating seniors while the rest of us stood out there smiling like our shoes were too tight. All but Dori, that was sexy hot and lemonade chill. In the middle of all that, she whispers she’s got a surprise for me later. Something she’s been saving up, because you only get one first time. Jesus.

  Second half, not a story worth telling. You hate to lose homecoming, hate worse to be the reason. Not that I was blamed, the locker room afterward was all just, Fuck it, next time we’ll own those bastards. But I knew the main event of the dance would be a consolation party behind the gym. Dori of course was all about the dancing and dress-up party, dying to see people she’d not talked to in forever, whereas I was more in need of the frontal assault of Mountain Dew and vodka. I wanted to be outside with the team, standing where I could hold her close in front of me, one arm across her shoulder and chest like a seat belt. All the guys looking at me like, Man, no yards, no possessions, and still you get one of God’s angels? Yes, I did.

  So we were in and out. The usual gym smell of armpit and Lysol had a frosting of girl perfume that seemed flimsy, like the trellis thing loaned by Tractor Supply with Kleenex flowers on it for taking your photo. Sourpuss teachers doing their time around the refreshments table. Speakers rattling an ear-killing mix of Thong Song, Destiny’s Child, Mariah Carey. Every so often, the shock of the whole gym falling into step for the Electric Slide. Dori tried to introduce me to her besties, but there was no talking over the din. It was plain to see she’d been popular, one of those that would have loved staying in high school if she could have. I begged off from dancing due to my knee, but really from not knowing how, my main dance partner so far being Mom that only knew the ridiculous ones: Robot, Worm, Macarena. Dori though. The first notes of every tune and she was a little bouncy ball, Yay, this one! Hopping all around in her shiny dress and smile, dancing with no one person, just all the moving bodies. Just once, a fast song trick-faded into “Beautiful Mess,” and this asshole Keg Barnes oozed her into a slow dance. Then before I could go put his lights out, it finished, and everybody’s flailing to “It’s Gonna Be Me.”

  We stayed as long as I could stand, then took off in her dad’s Impala SS. Seats like couches in that thing, front and back both. She said she had a place in mind for us to go parking, but first we had to stop by her house to check on Daddy. She had a neighbor staying over, so I didn’t see the point, but didn’t argue. The house was way out towards Blackwell. Deep country. She was talking a mile a minute, saying if her daddy was awake she would introduce us again because the time we’d met at the store didn’t count, he hadn’t paid any attention, not knowing I’d be taking out his daughter at some future time. I wondered if she was nervous like me but it didn’t seem so, just glittery, the way she was. Talkative. I listened.

  I ended up getting nowhere near Daddy. I opened the car door and this thing comes barreling off the porch straight at me like a heat-seeking dirty mop full of teeth. Dori just laughed, saying, “Jip you scamp, you are rotten,” scooping him up, kissing his nasty toothy face, telling me how Jip was a little old sweetie. Unbelievable. I waited in the car.

  The rest gets foggy. I hate this. Due to pills, booze, me being an idiot, all the above, that amazing night is a locked-up house I have to look into from outside, through the windows. I recall my arms around her, steering while she did the gas and brakes, Siamese drivers. Us laughing about that. And where we parked, some random place, a ridgetop gravel road that ended at a chain-link gate. Down below, a wrecked valley and stairstep tailings of an old mine with the reclamation trees planted the way they do, in rows, like the hair dots of a doll that’s been scalped. The moon was out bright and hard, hitting these bean-shaped acid ponds down there, making them pretty. I was keyed up, nerves being my home turf. But less so after Dori said it was first time for her too. That she’d saved up for me. I could live on that forever, even if she dumped me tomorrow. Or so I thought. Until her surprise. It’s the shocks that end up sticking with you, while all the rest melts away. I can still see her saying it, with her face lit by the moon.

  “Daddy gave us a present.”

  I said I’d thought he was asleep, and she said yes. That’s how come he gave it to us. He didn’t know. Twinkly eyes, holding up a flat foil package, teasing me with it before tearing it open. Me trying not to wonder about Dori’s dad having condoms. But it wasn’t a condom. It was something like a Band-Aid. Evidently made out of money, given how careful she was with it.