Everybody Knows Your Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped me enough tonight already,” I told Cody. His ranting was only making things worse.
    Greggs slammed the door on us, then slid into the front seat, taking his time with checking out his mustache stubble in the mirror, just to piss off my brother.
    â€œListen, you dumb redneck! My brother has places to be!” Cody yelled through the metal grate.
    â€œBullshit,” Greggs said. “You Buckleys are trash, always have been. Only places y’all are going are to the state pen in Jacksonville or into the ground.”
    My brother kept trying to make eye contact with me on the way to the jail, but I didn’t want to look at him. I felt hot angry tears behind my eyes, and a terrible frustration. I couldn’t believe that I’d blown this chance. It seemed to me that Greggs must be right: failure was in my genes.
    It was just before dawn when I was bailed out by Leander, who was waiting for me when I stepped outside. In the end I was only charged with disturbing the peace. I guess my brother had managed to hide the evidence before they caught him, but making me miss the flight—they couldn’t have punished me any worse.
    During the night, part of me had almost felt relieved that the whole TV thing was over with. I told myself I’d probably just have made a fool of myself anyway. But when I saw Leander, the relief went away and then the guilt rushed in. Leander was the only person who’d ever really seen anything in me. He’d given me my job, he’d rented me my house for almost nothing, and he’d taught me a lot about music.
    â€œI missed my flight,” I said.
    Leander nodded. He’s a guy who looks like he should have a beard. It’s confusing that he doesn’t. “I noticed.”
    â€œThanks for bailing me out.”
    It felt bad to have him pick me up at jail. A few years before, Leander had caught me breaking into his store, but he’d ended up dropping the charges on the condition that I work for him to pay for the damage. Eventually it turned into a full-time job, helping around the store and teaching guitar lessons.
    I don’t know what he saw in me that no one else did. I mean, my teachers used to tell me I was smart and they’d point to my good scores when I happened to be in school on the day of one of those state aptitude tests, but they also said I didn’t apply myself. I did apply myself, but it was to screwing up. And trying to fit in at home. None of that mixed well with school, and I finally just dropped out sophomore year. That didn’t seem to matter much to anybody.
    Anyway, Leander sort of started looking out for me. He was more like a parent than my own parents ever were. He’d buy me meals at the diner, his way of making sure I was eating real food and not just living on cold Pop-Tarts and SpaghettiOs. He talked me into working toward getting my GED. It was when I started going to his AA meetings with him, when I first heard him talk about his family—how his kids don’t speak to him anymore—that I started thinking he was trying to make up for past mistakes by helping me out. At first I went to the meetings for the free doughnuts, but then because the people there knew where I was coming from. Most of them had things much worse.
    My family found my sobriety really irritating. They all thought I was judging them or something. I found out that if you’re going to be around tweakers all the time, you kind of need to be drunk. And I also found out that I really didn’t have much of a desire to get loaded once I broke off from the crowd. I stopped needing the meetings. But I just kept to myself more, kept my door closed during parties, and that was working out okay until someone almost blew my head off.
    I was sitting on my bed during yet another party when a bullet tore through my wall and whizzed by my ear like an angry wasp. It stopped in my little practice amplifier. Turns out, some idiot was