~Blake~
“What are you doing here?”
All the boys who sat outside the high school gym waited with anticipation to see what would happen next.
Blake Young was angry. He was angry a lot, and it was always fun to see what his anger would lead to… unless you were the one facing his anger on your own.
Stupid Ben Sanders didn’t seem to know this as the rest of the boys stared at him, looking between him and Blake, waiting for the explosion that was sure to come and the fight that would erupt between the two boys. Ben Sanders didn’t seem to know much, though, as he drifted through their high school like he always had, dressed in dark colors, always brooding and scowling at everything around him, except for those times that he was loud and eerily laughing about everything. Highs and lows all the time with that kid, so much so that the word was that Ben was “disturbed” and “not right in the head.” The teachers probably had kinder words about it all, but with the students who had spent all of their lives around him in the small school, it was all talk about how Ben was a psycho.
He would have to be psychotic to hang out around the gym after two a days. The varsity football team was spending the last few weeks of summer with two workouts a day, an exhausting routine that prepared them for the season but that left them all but depleted during the hottest part of the Texas summer. Not too depleted that Blake didn’t direct his attention and ire right at Ben Sanders as he skulked past the boys who were his classmates but who didn’t socialize with him at all.
No, they just made fun of him.
Honestly, Ben brought it on himself. Blake always thought this, and it made him despise Ben a little more for being so weak. That was part of why he couldn’t stop himself from the harsh words that he spat out as Ben tried to go past them all as they sat on the grass, waiting until the coach released them for their mid-day break.
“What are you doing here?”
He said the words and felt a sense of pride as all the boys around him glanced his way, respecting him for being so tough, so assured, so confident.
It’s who he was. Life had made him this way.
Ben should have just kept on walking. That’s what other boys that Blake was forever challenging did, their heads lowered, their gazes not meeting his. But not Ben. No, Ben looked up and scowled at Blake.
They knew one another, after all. Blake made a regular practice of tormenting Ben.
“Picking up my brother,” Ben spat out. “What’s it to you?”
His insolence almost justified what was coming to him in Blake’s mind.
“You’re walking in our space.” Blake gestured at the grass around them, at the gym behind him, and the football field not too far away, as though it all belonged to him.
He felt like the school belonged to him. Here, he was someone. Home was crappy, to put it mildly, with his old man reminding him at every point along the way and in every conversation that he was worthless, so it meant something that he had respect at school, at least.
Even with that, though, he felt worthless sometimes. Maybe that was why he acted the way he did. But he didn’t feel worthless just then, as the other boys watched him with smiles and bated breath, waiting for him to lay into Ben Sanders, to follow up all the cruel things he’d said to him during all the years of school with action.
He’d done it before. Fought Ben a few times, spitting on him afterwards, after saying the worst words he could manage, all to the cheers of the other boys.
Ben was likely recalling it as he looked around the space as well.
And then, Ben Sanders did something he never did.
“Shut up,” he said to Blake, as though he had nothing to lose.
Blake was momentarily stunned. He stood to his feet, intending to act on this, but a couple of the other boys held him back.
“Too many people around,” they said, nodding to the school just a parking lot away.
And there were. Teachers, heading out from the high school and towards their cars, retrieving things for the next round of meetings. A few other students, mainly the kiss up types who were doing projects for advanced classes –
And speaking of, there was one of them, rushing over to where the boys all stood, where Ben continued glaring at Blake.
Blake just grinned, knowing that he could bide his time. Ben would be around. He backed away, as though he hadn’t been prepared to punch the psycho in the face, just as another boy approached him, a backpack on his shoulder and a stack of books in his arms.
“Hey,” he said breathlessly, assessing the situation warily, just before his eyes settled on one of Blake’s football buddies. “Hey, Chase.”
Chase MacGregor. Not the brightest bulb in the box but good for a laugh or two. And his parents were rich and always out of town on the weekends, so he was regularly able to get his friends some good stuff for their parties.
Chase looked a little guilty as he met the newcomer’s eyes. “Hey, Jordan.”
Jordan Sanders. Blake remembered his name a second later. Smart kid. Responsible kid. Nice kid. So much so that no one could believe that he and Ben were even remotely related, much less brothers.
“I saw your grade for that summer session of history,” Jordan said, smiling at Chase now. “Great job. I told you that you could do it if you worked hard.”
Summer session, which was the nice way of saying summer school. Chase had failed that history class last spring, but it didn’t affect his eligibility for football. The coaches, however, had insisted he take it in summer school anyway so as to not risk taking it in the fall and failing it again, when they needed him getting hit out there on the field. They’d even assigned him a tutor to make sure that he’d get it done and out of the way.
Jordan had been that tutor, apparently.
“Yeah, thanks,” Chase said, nodding. “Coach said you’d signed on to help me next semester, too. With biology.”
Jordan nodded. “Yeah, I did. I’m thinking you’ll make the honor roll this year.”
Jordan was a tutor and a miracle worker, then.
“Come on, loser,” Ben muttered at his brother, shooting one last dark look over at Blake. “I want to go home.”
“I have work,” Jordan said, his attention turning away from the football players, his features tightening slightly. “Travis texted while I was finishing up with my last student thirty minutes ago and told me I could get in some hours this afternoon. I need you to take me to the new construction site over by the middle school, and –”
And he didn’t get the words out because Ben reached out and pushed him right to the ground, clearly with the intent to hurt him worse than he had.
Blake felt himself tighten up in response. Not from the exhilaration that he felt when he himself was the one fighting but in surprise, seeing how Jordan allowed the abuse. Jordan was bigger than Ben, should have been able to take him down harder and faster than Ben had attempted to do to him, as evidenced by how he was able to get up quickly as though he’d never been pushed at all.
Why would he put up with that, instead of punching his brother right in the face?
“We’re going home,” Ben said darkly.
Then, he was storming off, and Jordan simply followed, picking his books back up and slipping the backpack back onto his shoulders.
“Psycho,” one of the other boys muttered. They were talking about Ben, of course, not Jordan, who even as he made his way across the parking lot attempted to stop and help a girl grab something out of her car. He was a good guy, clearly. The girl who waved him off with a smile as she gathered a giant box out of her backseat seemed to know it. All the boys watched as she opened the box, pulled out two cupcakes, and handed them to him.
“What in the world?” Chase murmured as they all stared, watching Jordan balance those cupcakes in one hand, saluting the girl with them, then making his way to his brother and handing one to him.
Ben didn’t even look at him as he took it.
Jerk. Blake wished he had hit him when he had the chance, no matter who had seen or what the consequences –
“Leslie Collins,” another one of the guys said, whistling low. Almost as an afterthought, Blake remembered the girl at the car.
He turned his attention towards her, watching as she walked through the parking lot, pointed towards the school, with no clue that all of his boys were watching her with interest now.
Leslie Collins. He knew of her. He didn’t know her. She wasn’t the type of girl he ran around with at school or out of school. No, she was a good girl who made good grades, who sucked up to the teachers, and who was always at church.
Blake didn’t do any of those things.
But he was thinking it might be worth doing at least some of them if it got him closer to Leslie Collins. The summer seemed to have done her some favors. She was looking tan, like she’d spent the summer in the sun. She was wearing her long hair loose, letting it fall in waves around the tank top she wore with a cute pair of cutoff jeans and flip flops.
Summer casual but cute. And well put together. Because she was rich. Or at least her brother was. Everyone in town knew about that, but Blake knew it better than most because just a couple of months ago his father, who’d never been able to consistently hold down a job, had somehow miraculously gotten the best one yet working for Leslie’s brother. He was on a construction crew, and it looked like he might finally last more than a season at this job.
“She looks hot,” Chase said as they all watched Leslie continue to make her way into the building. “And not just because she’s got a giant box of cupcakes with her. She looks good even without the food –”
“That’s all you think about,” Blake had muttered, bending down to pick up his bag. “Food.”
“Cupcakes?” one of the other guys asked. “Why is she bringing cupcakes to the school?”
“For the new teachers’ luncheon,” Chase answered. “She was hired to make some of her cupcakes for the meal.” When all the other boys looked to him, wondering why he would know this information, he shrugged. “My mom is president of the PTA. She hired Leslie.”
“So you might be able to help me get to know her better, huh?” one of the other guys asked, elbowing Chase, his attention back on Leslie.
“You don’t want to get to know her better,” Chase shook his head.
“Oh, why not?”
“Because she’s a nice girl,” Chase said. “And by that, I mean she’s stuck up and a total prude.”
Could be. Blake looked over at her again.
“A prude,” one of the other guys said. “And that means?”
“She won’t put out,” Blake said succinctly.
“That’s a shame,” one of the other guys sighed. “Waste of time, then.”
Blake continued watching her, thinking about this. She looked great. And a challenge? Well, that was always fun.
“I’ll bet,” he said, leaning over to whisper it to his friends, “that I could get her to put out.”
The other guys turned to him with smiles. They appreciated this almost as much as they had appreciated his readiness to beat Ben Sanders into a bloody pulp. Respect. He could always get it here.
“I’ll bet you couldn’t,” Chase said, scoffing at this.
“School starts next week,” Blake said. “Just watch.”
And he left the school that day with them taunting on, feeling like he was quite the man.
At home, it was a different story.
The Young home was, to put it plainly, not much of a home. Blake credited this entirely to his father, whose unpredictable moods and looming presence made for tension that pervaded every square foot of the tiny trailer they lived in.
Tim Young was like Ben Sanders in some ways. Maybe that was part of the reason that Blake hated them both as much as he did, transferring feelings about one to the other, then back and forth again and again, until he wasn’t sure who exactly he was yearning to hit and why.
Blake would have put it out of his mind entirely, just as he’d been doing most of the summer. He’d spent the majority of those months working a night job waiting tables at a twenty-four hour diner in the next town, which was great for two reasons. He got paid better because he was on the night shift, making for a simple increase in wages that had been enough for him to buy a beat up truck that would give him some freedom his senior year to go where he wanted when he wanted. The second reason the night job was great was because it kept him away when his father was at home. The two were on entirely different schedules, with Blake working all night then coming home during the daylight and his father doing the exact opposite.
Now that Blake was transitioning to a different schedule, picking up a different shift for the job (weekends mainly, because school would start soon), he still wasn’t seeing his father all that often. He’d stay out late then get up early for football practice, coming home only halfway through the day for lunch before heading out to practice again and then onto whatever he had planned with friends for the evening.
He would have liked to continue on like this indefinitely, not seeing his father at all, not even when senior year was over, he graduated, and he finally moved on with his life. Working somewhere, doing something, maybe. Anywhere and anything, just as long as it was far enough away that he could finally breathe.
He pulled his car into the gravel driveway outside the Young’s trailer and felt his chest tighten.
His father’s truck was sitting there.
So much for not seeing the old man. He’d probably swung by on a lunch break.
Or… maybe he’d lost his job. Again.
Blake closed his eyes, thinking of all the drama that was sure to come if this was the case. Familiar, old drama that happened again and again, all throughout his childhood, almost as predictable as the mood swings and the tears his mother would cry afterwards, once the fighting and the yelling was done.
Another lost job. Blake knew what had happened without even having it confirmed.
There was no reason that Tim Young should have failed so spectacularly at every job he attempted to do. He wasn’t a drunk, he didn’t do drugs, and he had no medical condition that would prevent him from keeping an honest job and making a decent living. He’d been married to the same woman for eighteen years and had made a family of three with her, so there was something to be said for his level of commitment and his fidelity and his ability to at least put some money on the table.
But his attitude stunk.
Blake had never known any different at home, but he compared his father and his demeanor to the other men that had been in his life. Coaches, teachers, and even the dads of other friends – none of them seemed to carry the chip on their shoulders that Tim Young did.
It was always someone else’s fault, too. Everything that happened to Tim Young was someone else’s fault. No matter what the reasons were, no matter what had happened, and no matter what the truth was. It was always someone else who was to blame.
Blake took a breath and prepared himself for more of the same as he got out of his car, swearing that he’d just go in, grab some lunch, and head back out. He could sit in his car at the high school and eat there. It’s not like the coaches gave them a long lunch break anyway. No one would think it was strange that Blake was there earlier than he had to be. He could make some excuse if anyone asked, since he didn’t want them to know what the truth was, what he was hiding at home.
Just get in, grab some lunch, and get back out.
He was chanting it in his head like a mantra as his steps carried him to the house, through the rickety door that made far too much noise as it swung open.
Far, far too much noise, as it alerted his father, who was sitting in the living room watching television, of his presence.
“Blake?”
Blake suppressed a groan, even as he heard his father get up out of his chair and make his way into the kitchen.
This wouldn’t be a quick in and out then.
Blake raised his eyes to his father’s, startled like he always was by how much looking at the old man was like seeing himself in a mirror. Or at least he assumed that’s just how he’d look if he’d been aged by twenty years and had a hard time of it.
Tim had a beer in one hand, the other in his pocket, as he casually leaned against the counter, watching his son as if sizing him up.
The usual, then.
“Hey,” Blake said in a non-committal tone, turning to the fridge and casting his eyes away from his father’s gaze.
“Football practice, huh?” his dad asked, filling the silence.
Blake nodded wearily. “Yeah.”
“Team any good this year?”
Did it really matter if they were? They wouldn’t be good enough for Tim Young. Nothing ever was. And football was one of those things that he did care about, miraculously enough.
“We’re okay,” Blake said, knowing what was coming.
“Won’t make it to the state championship,” Tim said, falling into the old, familiar triumphant tone so easily, veering towards the same old story he told again and again, even as he took a drink. “Haven’t done that since my senior year.”
They hadn’t. The team had never been as good as they were that year, which was fitting, since Tim himself had never been as good as he had been his senior year of high school. The glory days of that era didn’t have to be the best days of Tim’s life, but he’d made it so, making bad choices ever since and choosing to linger in a past he’d felt he had to give up.
He’d had to give it up, no doubt. There was a very good reason for that. And that reason pulled out some sandwich meat from the fridge, along with a jar of mayo, just as Tim sat at the table.
Tim had become a father at eighteen. Any plans he might have had to go on to college were thwarted by the news his girlfriend had given him at the end of that triumphant football season. She’d forced him into marriage, Tim would say later, and the fact that he had a healthy son nine months after that football season was little consolation as Tim had to work the first of many jobs that he hated as his friends went on with the next season of their lives, all of which required far less responsibility than that of a family man.
He could’ve gone to college eventually, though. Instead, he married Blake’s mother and started putting the blame on her, then on Blake, for all the reasons why he couldn’t. But he could have. He could have even still married her, worked his job, done school at night. Blake’s mother was a hard worker herself, doing a hodge podge of various jobs that she could fit around a mother’s schedule – cleaning houses for money, babysitting jobs here and there, and working from home, using her computer to help people book vacations that she herself would never be able to afford to go on. She would have done plenty to contribute to the family income so that he could have gone onto college, so that she could have as well…
But as it was, Tim felt it was easier to blame and resent everyone than to actually do something about his life.
And Blake’s mother didn’t argue with him about it.
Blake wanted to. He wanted to scream at his father every time Tim said a harsh word to either of them, to tell him to be a man and do something, then. He’d done it before, and it hadn’t ended well. So now, he was just biding his time, waiting until he could get out and stop being the reason for someone else’s constant angst and irritation.
“Team hasn’t been any good since then,” Tim mused, dropping into a chair and kicking his feet up on the table. “Those coaches don’t know what they’re doing. Or maybe there’s just no real talent.”
He watched, almost eagerly, for Blake to react.
But Blake wouldn’t take the bait. These snide comments were always being delivered, but Blake had jumped at them far too often in the past and knew that it was pointless to argue with the man or even defend himself.
Tim Young was a bully.
Blake didn’t fight back, though.
“Probably not,” he said, shrugging, even as he slapped together a sandwich, planning on going back to his room so that he wouldn’t have to continue on with this pointless conversation.
“Still, though,” his dad said, “I’ll be glad when the season starts up. Will give me something to do. Maybe I’ll come out and watch practices some days.”
Blake inwardly cringed at the thought of his father anywhere near the school, watching and tallying up more and more critical comments.
Then, a thought struck him.
“How will you be able to watch practice?” he asked. “Won’t you have work?”
There was a tightness around his father’s mouth now. Blake could see it happening, and without any explanation being given, he could figure out what had transpired for Tim at work.
“No, I won’t have work,” Tim said, phrasing it just so, as though the decision to be freed from the job had been all his.
Blake should have left it at that. He should have just left it, but he couldn’t. All the frustration he felt over the demeaning that took place in this sad home and the irritation he felt on his mother’s behalf for being the one to sustain their family, when there should be no reason that Tim couldn’t do it himself –
“You lost the job?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. He had really hoped it would be different this time with the job. He knew enough about Travis Collins, his father’s new boss, to know that the man was fair and that working for him should have led to some stability for their family.
Not so much, though.
“Only because Collins Construction is the worst company in town,” Tim said defiantly.
It wasn’t the worst company in town. It was the most profitable company in town. But Blake didn’t correct his father, knowing that it would do no good.
“And that Travis Collins,” his father sneered, “thinks he’s so much better than everyone else. Told me that he expects a certain level of professionalism with his workers. Like he even knows what he’s doing.”
“He must know something,” Blake said, almost regretful the moment the words left his mouth, knowing that they would do no good. But still, he kept on. “He’s the guy in charge, after all.”
“Doesn’t mean he should be telling the rest of us how to live our lives,” Tim muttered.
Why would he be doing that? Unless…
“Dad, why did you get fired?”
Tim met his son’s accusing eyes head on. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do it.”
This is exactly what someone who was guilty would say, of course. Blake had no doubt that his father was guilty of whatever it was that he was denying now, that he’d done just exactly what he’d been accused of and had lost his job because of it.
“What did they say you did?” Blake asked, not sure that he even wanted to know.
“Lied about my hours,” he said, with a shrug. “Added some in, trying to get overtime.”
It was wrong to do this, obviously, but a fireable offense on the first time?
“Was it the first time you’d been accused?” Blake asked, already knowing the answer.
“No,” Tim said, shrugging like none of it really mattered. “Had to sit through a bunch of talks with the boss about personal choices and integrity and… like that kid even knows half of what my life has been like.”
Blake felt humiliated hearing this, thinking of how everyone in town knew everyone else, and how his name would always be connected to his father, who had a well-deserved and richly earned reputation for being a complete and utter failure of a person.
Blake’s dirty little secret was common knowledge, as it turned out.
“Hey!”
Tim’s voice was raised now, and the ambivalence in his eyes had been replaced with thinly veiled anger. Had Blake let his disgust show? Did his father know what he was thinking?
“Yes?” he asked softly, not wanting to incite the rage that was just below the surface. Not that he was scared of the old man, but there were lost causes in life. Spending his anger and his effort on this one wasn’t worth it.
“You think you’re better than me, huh?” his dad asked, astutely judging the direction of his thoughts.
But Blake didn’t indulge him.
“I think I’m going to be late to football practice,” he mumbled, wrapping up what was left of his lunch, intending to head back to the school where life wasn’t nearly as hard.
Even as his father’s arguing followed him out of the house and over to his car, Blake’s mind was somewhere else, wishing and hoping for the day when he could make something better out of his life than the reality that he was stuck in.
He’d always be Blake Young, though. Stuck in this town, stuck being him.