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vodka bottles, then started making out.
    â€œGet a room!”
    I didn’t actually say that. I wished I was with someone making out.
    ***
    Northwestern Visit
    Okay, there’s a kind of older football coach who isn’t like the big-head, slick-haired coaches. This older coach talks fast and mumbles and says weird stuff like, “Get me a bottle of that Gatorade, you boob. Who am I? Your old forgotten granny? Show a little class.” Totally incomprehensible but kind of funny. I tend to like these coaches better than the younger ones. My track coach, Coach Knautz, is sort of like this.
    So was Northwestern’s coach.
    When I got to campus, the weird old dude flat out told me, mumbling fast, “You aren’t going to come here, Mr. Fancy Pants Big League Reinstein. I appreciate you making a visit to our humble little backwater school though.” When he said that, I thought, Oh yeah? Then I will come here!
    I think he was using reverse psychology on me. When I was a kid, Jerri would get me to eat fish by serving it to Andrew and telling me I wasn’t allowed to have any, which made me beg her for fish, even though I hate fish. Then I’d eat it, gagging and choking.
    Nice try, Northwestern coach. I will not eat your fish. Recruiter people are tricky.
    It’s not because I didn’t like him though. I did.
    And I liked visiting Northwestern.
    Within ten minutes of me being dropped off at the hotel, Aleah was in my room. She did stay overnight. Good times in the hotel.
    The host football dude, Antwan Jackson (another Wisconsin product but a Northwestern player), invited us to a party. He walked Aleah and me there, talking about how cool the football players are at Northwestern, what good students most of them are. “It’s a different kind of thing here. A different kind of culture.” That’s what he said.
    Aleah nodded and smiled. (Normal football culture confuses her.)
    While he talked, I stared at Antwan’s ear because it looked like it had been torn half off by a tiger or something.
    Not so different…
    We were at the party for like ten minutes when two large dudes who smelled like the body spray car wash started shoving each other, crushing into people, beer spilling, everybody screaming, and Aleah said, “Get me out.”
    We walked back down this street across from the campus. Aleah said, “I thought Northwestern was a smart school.”
    â€œAre football players everywhere just assholes?” I asked.
    â€œMaybe,” Aleah said. “You’re not really a football player though.”
    I stopped. “No,” I said. “I really am. I play football.”
    â€œYes. But you’re not the same as those boys, right?”
    I didn’t answer.
    We walked to the hotel in silence. We ordered room service twice. We messed around in bed in between. There were some awesome french fries at this place.
    At 7 a.m., she was gone because she had to play with some ensemble at a park downtown. “Bye, Felton. Bye. I love you. Okay? Bye,” she said. She put her hand on the side of my head and stared at me hard. “Remember I love you, okay? Remember this?”
    I nodded. My heart sank. She got on a bus and was gone, and I was alone.
    I didn’t hate touring the campus. Not exactly.
    Northwestern is nice. (College campuses are often nice, I guess.) Unfortunately, it hit me about halfway through the tour, while passing a set of dorms, that I’d seen a picture of that very place in a photo album at Grandpa’s house, that Dad lived in those dorms, that Dad had friends who lived in those dorms, that Dad stayed up all night in those dorms talking or studying or eating pizzas or something.
    I don’t know my dad at all. What did he do? I pictured him with his ghostly Jewfro head (like mine when my hair’s not super short) walking on those sidewalks, laughing, carrying a backpack, thinking about poetry. (He was a