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wearing a baseball cap to cover his bald head and awindbreaker to hide his gut. “What’s going on here?” Simpson said.
    Rex looked at Brody, and then at the floor before he said, “Nothing, Coach.”
    â€œVery well, then. Let’s pump some iron,” Coach Simpson said as he unlocked the weight room door with one of the fifty keys on his chain. Turning that key was the highlight of his teaching efforts for the day.
    Like a leper, Brody walked by other ex-teammates to hit the bench press. Like everybody else on the football team, he had signed the Words of Honor oath not to drink or do drugs. He kept to it freshman year. He’d been a killer on the field, moved up from JV to varsity after three games. He was a running-back vacuum consuming any ball carrier that came his way. The team lost in the state semis, but Brody was a tackling machine in the tournament game.
    At the Labor Day party, Brody started the night in the basement shooting pool. He won game after game. Pretty soon, no one would play him, so I took on the tackling dummy task. After a while two senior teammates wanted the table. Brody told them to go to hell, but they pushed him away. Rex walked over and told Brody it was his house, his table, and his rules. I whispered to Brody it was time to go. He gave up the pool table but kept his cue. He let out a string of curses as he stomped to the other end of the basement. He looked at the locked glass liquor cabinet, then yelled across the crowded, noisy room at Rex. “Where’s the key?”
    â€œThe key to what?” Rex shouted back, but it was too late.
    Brody took the pool cue like a baseball bat and shattered the glass of the Wallaces’ liquor cabinet. He reached in so fast to grab the Bacardi bottle that he didn’t seem to notice the glass cutting his arm.
    â€œBrody, you asshole,” Rex shouted as he, and a few others, headed toward Brody.
    â€œI know, your house, your rules,” Brody shouted back, then with a mostly full bottle of Bacardi, we raced up the stairs, past the pool, and out into the woods. Less than an hour later, after I ruined my life with Roxanne, we were both back downstairs. Since no one could beat him at pool, he loudly challenged his fellow teammates to any other contest.
    â€œGo home, Brody,” Rex said, realizing Brody wasn’t leaving on his own.
    â€œMake me,” Brody shouted back.
    â€œGuys, help me out here,” Rex said, and finally there was strength in numbers as three or four soft-drink-breathing Dragons stalked toward Brody. Before they could lay a hand on him, Brody made a break, tearing up the stairs and out the front door this time. I was one step behind him. He headed for the street and jumped on the hood of a Grand Am parked in front of Rex’s house. He then leaped from car roof to car roof, leaving in his wake the smell of rum and the loud ringing of alarms that sounded like a tornado warning siren blaring into the night.
    Brody kicked me back into the present when he said, “Hey, 151, I need a little payback.”
    â€œWhat’s up?” I replied.
    â€œYour dick whenever Whitney’s in the room.”
    â€œSerious.”
    â€œThink you could help me out over lunch? I need help typing up Kirby’s stupid English paper,” Brody said as I added a few more pounds for his next lift. “I’ll owe you.”
    I nodded my agreement, but wondered why Brody had said, “I’ll owe you.” I wanted to reply,
Brody, we’re friends, we don’t owe each other anything other than friendship. You, me, and Aaron, that’s all that matters: not his money, your muscle, and whatever it is you guys see in me
. But I didn’t say anything; I just kept it all inside. As he pumped iron, I felt my frustration, with Rex, with Nicole, but mostly with myself, pump like poison through my veins.
    Do you remember when you met your best friend?
    I was five, almost six,