Going the Distance Read Online Free PDF Page A

cracked as I responded with “Who’s scared?”
    His eyes grew concerned, and I knew I had failed. He could tell I was silently screaming. “Danny, why would you be scared of high school?” I didn’t have an answer to that, but after a few seconds he amended it with “Well, no, I can see why, but you have to know you’ll be fine, right?” I looked at him as if he had started babbling in Latin. He smiled and explained. “Danny, look at you. You are taller than me, for Christ’s sake. You are in fantastic shape. Hell, I had a friend ask me the other day what unit you were with. Trust me when I say that you’ll be beating girls off with a stick, and there is no way you don’t make the basketball team. And do you know what that means?” I shook my head. “It means that you’re a jock, and trust me, jocks do not get picked on.”
    “I don’t feel like a jock,” I said honestly, and I didn’t. Jocks seemed full of themselves and their abilities in a way I was never comfortable with. Sure, I was good at basketball, but there was always going to be someone better, which meant I needed to try harder. Just because I could dribble a ball didn’t mean I was better than anyone. I mean, who the hell would care? No one on base had seemed to, and if anyone was impressed in town, it had never gotten back to me. I suddenly realized I didn’t want to be a jock. I didn’t want people to like me for the sport I played or how tall I was. If people were going to like me, I wanted them to like me, not my abilities. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to beat girls off with a stick, but I do know I didn’t want them running toward me just because of basketball.
    “Danny, you’re a worrier; you always have been.” He smiled, and his eyes seemed to focus on something far away. “Your mother was like that. She could get herself worked into a frenzy over almost nothing.” He looked back at me. “And I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. Things work out the way they want to. We can push and pull and fight every second of our lives, but there will always be things that are out of our hands. All you can do is the best you can and let the chips fall where they fall.”
    “What did Mom say?” I asked, marveling at even this little bit of information. I tried to stay away from broaching the subject of Mom with him in fear I might open an old wound that would then refuse to close. For him to offer her up as an example was noteworthy in itself.
    “She’d say ‘fuck off, John,’ but she calmed down most of the time.”
    I burst out laughing. The thought of my mom telling my dad to fuck off made her seem that much more real to me for a moment. We sat there aching for the hole she had left in our lives, both of us happier than words could express that the other one was there with him. “You think it’ll be okay?” I asked.
    He nodded. “Trust me, you’ll be fine.”
    I didn’t believe him, but I did feel better afterward.
    When we landed, I found myself more than underwhelmed by the airport.
    You have to understand when you move around as much as we did, the only first impression some places got to make was their airport. For example, O’Hare is a city unto itself. There is a mini mall in the center of it with a bookstore and a toy store, which had always entranced me as a kid. Because it’s so big, it’s ridiculously organized and has about fourteen different ways to get around in. San Diego International has a pace all its own. It’s clean, friendly, and overall a pleasure to visit, in my opinion. Even DFW is a nice place with about two dozen different little carts to buy magazines and munchies on the way to each terminal.
    Corpus’s airport looked like they were still building it.
    There was a main terminal that we entered through, and as we walked by to get our luggage, there was another side terminal that seemed to be just tacked on as an afterthought. The walls made the entire place look like a doctor’s office, and