First off, my dad had thrown away the case and a half of beer in the garage refrigerator. We hadn’t spoken about it since he’d told me he was going to AA, but things were different. He slept in his bed every night, instead of the recliner, and he was on edge. Nervous. Almost jumpy. He didn’t talk a lot, but I could tell he was struggling. I cooked dinner both nights, we sat in the living room eating crappy food and watching TV, and I accepted the silence, knowing that his demons were considerably more demonic than mine. Not a single word was spoken about football, which I thanked God for. Now that I was passing math, the only thing I had to worry about was not getting beaten to a pulp by half the Saxon team. And a small second thing. The second thing was that Preston was cornered in the bathroom by Tilly and Killinger at lunch on Thursday. They’d stripped him naked and stolen his clothes, leaving him shivering in a bathroom stall. Instead of cowering in there until he could be rescued, he’d blithely left the bathroom, walking down the halls naked among the laughter and shock of everybody until a teacher dragged him into a room.
