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Bobby spoke, the rank smell of beer filling up my head. I could tell there was some urgency to what he was saying, if unable to make sense of the phrases themselves. I was vaguely aware of some words dripping out of my mouth too, words like cold maple syrup. Then Bobby disappeared, and so did I.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Some days it just ain’t worth opening your eyes and no matter how fast you shut them again, it’s too late. So it was for me … way too late. Last night’s slush was gone. Now my head was filled with wool, my mouth with cotton. Apparently someone had shoved a harpoon through my right shoulder while I slept. Other than that, I was ready for action.
Put me in, Coach. I’m your boy
. Fuck that! I was nobody’s boy. I forced my eyes open again and time-traveled into the present. The air no longer smelled of beer breath or fake pine trees, but of Woolite linens and burnt coffee. The comforting clank and rumble, the
ka
-
ching
,
ka
-
ching
of subway wheels on rails, had replaced the slapping of wiper blades as the backbeat to my life. I was still in my clothes, my Chuck Taylors still on my feet. Not that I remembered how, but I’d managed to get from Bobby’s front seat into my bed. And there was something else. Unclenching my left fist, I found five one-hundred-dollar bills folded neatly in my palm — the bail money.
    When I sat up, Ahab stuck the harpoon in a little deeper.
The white whale tasks me
. That those were the words that came to mind only proved I was screwed. See, that was the thing about Bobby and my brother: they knew where they were going. I didn’t know anything, or how to do anything except quote dead writers and shoot a fifteen-foot fadeaway jumper. Not much of a job market for the former, nor for the latter when the shooter is a six-foot-tall, slow-footed white boy. There were days I wished I woke up with a hunger for adding machines and ledger books. I wanted to know where I was going, or even where I wasn’t. I guess that’s completely understandable when you’re on the verge of choosing a major and minor subject from the mootsville trinity of English, philosophy, and psychology. I hobbled to the bathroom as if on a wooden leg, and thought I was very badly in need of my own white whale. I needed to chase something in my life other than Mindy’s ass.
    Christ, I looked like shit, but at least no one was home to see but me. When I peeled back my shirt, I got weak at the sight of my shoulder. I was black, blue, yellow, brown, and orange from my right nipple across my chest, around my back, and halfway down my arm. My skin looked like a box of melted crayons. Though puffed and swollen, I could just about raise my arm without losing consciousness. No bones seemed to be broken or sticking out where they didn’t belong. I figured I’d live. I swallowed way too many aspirins, finished undressing, showered, and brushed my teeth. It improved my aroma, if not my appearance.
    I called Mindy’s number and got no answer. That was odd. I knew she was probably at school, but her mom was almost always home. For some reason I couldn’t quite explain, I got a sick feeling in my gut. Maybe it was the paranoid afterglow of whatever narcotic Bobby had given me. Yeah, I thought, that was it. Because of my shoulder pain and the drug hangover, getting dressed went about as smoothly as a thumbless man tying his shoes. Still, I managed to do it in less than a week. Of course, the aspirin didn’t kick in until I was done. There was the newspaper and a note for me on the kitchen table. I was confident the note was from Aaron, probably lambasting me for coming home drunk, for being a lazy, aimless piece of shit with no ambition and no future. I was getting a little tired of his notes and lectures, so I didn’t look at the note until I’d fortified myself with some of my mom’s coffee. Fortified being the key word, because if you could survive the over-percolated and burnt black goo that passed for coffee in the