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  Thirty-two

  July 14, Before Senior Year

  “Where’s Dad?”

  It’s the question I’ve been posing all weekend, but Mom refuses to give me a straight answer. She sent Robin over to Cameron’s trailer, but from the tired look in her eyes, she hasn’t sent herself to bed. Now it’s late Monday afternoon, and he’s nowhere to be seen.

  “I don’t know Bret, I don’t know,” she says, regaining her composure long enough to express her confusion. She keeps her hands in her pockets, trying to hide the nervous tremble.

  “He’s coming to this, right?” I ask as we sit outside of Morgan’s office. Mr. Walker is inside already, conferring with Morgan. Bob Hitchings’s father is late.

  “Bret, I fear the worst,” Mom says, unable to look at me. “It’s been almost seventeen years since he’s disappeared like this. It was the weekend before you were born.”

  I look up at my mom, wondering what she’s trying to tell me.

  “He went on a three-day drunk, showing up at the hospital barely able to stand. I told him that was it. He either quit drinking or he’d lose his family, including you, his newborn son. Your grandfather drove him home, and I don’t know what he said, but your father never drank again after that. Your grandfather was a real hard man. A bastard, really, but you know, that weekend I’m glad he was. Sometimes you’ve got to be hard to make life easier for someone else.”

  Her words—”You’ve got to be hard to make life easier for someone else”—explode in my ears.

  “I’m afraid that he’s drinking again,” she continues. “You don’t know how stressful this has been for us. I know you’ve had a hard year, but you have no idea what we’ve gone through.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “I’m really scared.” She looks at her watch. Both fathers are missing in action. Funny, how I’ve been missing my father for a long time, when he’s been there in front of me all along.

  “He’ll be here,” I say, trying now to be an empathy machine for her.

  “We had a fight on Friday night,” she says.

  “I didn’t hear—”

  “It was in the garage. I told him things I should have told him long ago, about how he treats you, and the things you’ve been going through. He doesn’t know about you, Bret, and it hurts him. He used to think that you hated him, just like he hated his dad.”

  “But—”

  Mom interrupts me. “He didn’t know how close you were to getting expelled from school. I finally told him. I couldn’t protect him or you any longer. He didn’t know how—”

  “Hard it’s been for me?” I butt in, recalling past years, not past months. “He made it harder.”

  “Should he have asked you? How? For so long, you didn’t talk to him. Bret, he’s so proud of you, and he’s so ashamed of himself.” She looks at her watch, as if she could will my father there.All those years of holding back, no wonder he ran off into the night.

  “Mrs. Hendricks, Bret, please come inside,” Mr. Walker says, motioning us into the very conference room I’d once vowed never to enter again. We sit down, but I notice that Morgan is staying in his office, door closed. “Mr. Hitchings won’t be joining us today.”

  “What?” Mom asks with mild surprise.

  “It seems your husband and Mr. Hitchings agreed this morning to settle this matter between themselves,” Walker says as I try to imagine Dad fighting Mr. Hitchings in a father’s prom rematch.

  “What do you mean?” my mom asks, equally confused.

  “Your husband said he’d explain when he got here.”

  “And what about me?” I ask.

  “Again, I’ll let your father explain when he arrives.”

  My mom and Mr. Walker small talk for a while until Dad finally knocks on the door. He enters but it doesn’t look like him—I’ve never seen him in a suit before—and he’s not alone. Standing next to him is a man in an expensive charcoal gray suit. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He ignores the question and asks impatiently, “Are we set here? What do we sign?”

  Walker pushes some papers across the table but keeps a copy for himself. I look for the word transfer, but I can’t see it. “Bret, you’ll be going to school here next year,” Walker says.

  If I didn’t have a broken mouth, I would scream for joy. Gray Suit Guy hands the papers to Dad. “I don’t understand,” Mom says, looking over at Dad.

  “Explain it to them,” Dad replies, sitting down next to me, while Walker reads aloud.

  “The school district regrets the injuries that Bret Hendricks suffered while at an official school function, albeit one off-site.” Walker starts talking in lawyerese, but this time I don’t tune him out. “In addition, we have learned through students Alex Shelton, Will Kennedy, and Sean Dupont that Bret informed a teacher, a school counselor, and Principal Morgan that Bob Hitchings continually harassed both Bret and Alex, which led to the unfortunate incident at the prom, where Mr. Hitchings assaulted Mr. Hendricks.”

  I’m almost too stunned to speak. “What does—”

  “Finish it,” Dad says, cutting me off, while Gray Suit Guy stands behind him, unsmiling.

  “Thus, Bret will not be expelled; in return, his family agree not to sue the district.”

  “Sue?” I mouth the words. Gray Suit Guy is a bloodsucker, and Morgan is his prey.

  Walker isn’t finished. “But since fighting at a school function is a serious and suspendable offense, Bret agrees to the following: first, that he will attend a weekly conference with Mrs. Pfeil.”

  I nod in agreement.

  “Second, Mr. Douglas will act as Bret’s official mentor.”

  “What does that mean?” I mumble.

  “It’s blackmail, but we’ll take it,” my father says, acknowledging Gray Suit Guy. “The deal is if you screw up one more time, then Mr. Douglas is going to take the hit. His fate is kind of in your hands. That’s a lot of responsibility, but I figure you are up to it, right, Son?”

  I again nod in agreement.

  “Third, Bret will do fifty hours of community service at the North End Food Bank.”

  “Why … ?” I start.

  “Just because you’re not guilty doesn’t mean you’re not responsible,” Dad says.

  “Finally, Bret, the school district takes no official position in the forthcoming litigation between your father and Mr. Barton Hitchings.”

  “What?” I ask my dad, but his eyes reveal nothing but stress and strain.

  My father says nothing; he just nods at Gray Suit Guy. “We’re done, right?”

  “Right,” Walker says, as my parents sign some papers. I walk out of the office, bewildered. Gray Suit Guy stays behind to chat with Walker, vampire to vampire.

  “What was that about?” Mom asks as the three us finally walk toward the parking lot.

  “At the hospital, Alex shared with me how Sean once told you the best way to get back at Hitchings was to let him beat you up and then sue him. I know that’s not what you were thinking, but you take the hand you’re dealt, right?” Dad says, opening the door.

  “Riiiiiiiiiiight.” I throw in a little Dr. Evil to comment on Dad’s good deed, but he doesn’t smile. The somber look on his face is as dark as the ill-fitting suit he’s wearing.

  “Alex told me how you stood up for him, and how in your speech you stood up for what you believed in,” Dad adds. “You got knocked down, but you got back up. Good job, Son.”

  “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” I say, looking only at the hard ground below.

  “You should have come to me,” Dad says, but we both know that used to be impossible. “I should have been there for you.

  “You were there when I needed you,” I manage to say, thinking back to the night in the garage after I lost Kylee, the day in his truck when he tried to warn me not to go back with her, and just now in the principal’s office. “And you even used a lawyer to help. You hate lawyers.”

  “I do,” Dad replies, p
ulling out his NASCAR key chain.

  “I thought we didn’t have any money to hire a lawyer,” Mom says.

  “Or to pay the hospital bills,” Dad says, opening the Metro’s passenger door for Mom.

  “How can you sue Barton Hitchings without a lawyer?” Mom asks as her hands shake.

  “Well, I hate lawyers, but everything has a place in this world,” Dad admits.

  My mother is concerned. “But how can we afford a lawyer and pay the hospital?”

  “We should be able to pay some of the hospital bills and use this lawyer to sue that son of a bitch Bob Hitchings’s father for the rest,” Dad replies, his voice barely audible, like he’s shrinking away. “We have enough money now.”

  “How?” I ask a split second before my mother.

  Dad looks hard at the ground, then softly at me. “I sold the Camaro.”

  Thirty-three

  July 25, Before Senior Year

  “Bret, hand me a nail.”

  “One second,” I tell Mr. Douglas, wondering how he can hear me over the swirling sounds of my fellow thespians finishing the sets for the summer play. Will is out front as the lead, while I’m in back, giving me a whole new perspective. It’ll be strange not to be the star of the show, but it feels good to be out of bed, back with friends, being part of something.

  “Hey, stage manager, hurry up,” Will says as he walks past. “I bet Becca’s waiting for you!” I swallow another laugh thinking about taking over as stage manager after Kylee, and how my life’s now about that very thing: taking over after Kylee.

  “Okay, but I’ll see you later,” I tell Will, knowing I’ll see him and Alex at band practice tonight. I shoot him a wave, then open up the bag of nails. I look through the nails to find one that’s a little bent, a little different from the others. No doubt, it’s been used before. I put it in my pocket as my last souvenir of Kylee.

  “Here you go,” I say, handing Mr. Douglas another nail, then helping him finish with the flat so I can exit the stage. I have to balance my time here with working my Chili’s job, my hours at the Food Bank, recording the first Radio-Free Flint CD, and time with Becca.

  “Thanks, Bret,” Mr. Douglas says. We both seem to know that I’m almost Bret again.

  “Ok, Mr. D.,” I say with a smile, even if smiling still hurts sometimes. But I do it to remind myself that even months after Kylee betrayed me, I sometimes fear that I’ll never laugh, love, or live again. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It’s going to take a little bit of time and a whole lot of Becca’s understanding. We’re different on the outside, but deep down I think we believe in the same things. She knows who she is, while I’m still learning who I am and who I want to be.

  “We’re done!” Mr. Douglas says after a few more minutes of hard work, then lets out a satisfied sigh as he walks off the stage. As I connect the final pieces by hammering in the last nail, just a little off center, I think how life is better because we’re connected to each other. I recall what Tom Joad said in The Grapes of Wrath, about how we’re all part of something bigger. I think about how Mr. Douglas risked his job so I could finish out at Southwestern, but mostly I think about how Dad sold his precious Camaro to help me. Others have given to me, now I’ve got to find a way to give back.

  “See you tomorrow, Mr. D.,” I say as I give the nail a last gentle tap. My work is done here, at least for now. I’ll drive myself home in Mom’s Metro, its oil and my outlook freshly changed, stopping on the way to look at the words Bret Lives still staining Grand Trunk concrete. I’ll sit there in my car, think about Becca, my senior year, Radio-Free Flint’s new lineup, and my father, and I’ll know those words are the fuel I’ll use to make my own way on this human highway.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the folks who read early version of Nailed and whose comments helped me construct a better book: Amy Alessio, Brent Chartier, Sarah Cornish, Kristin Dziczek, Paula Hoffman, Rosemary Honnold, David Lane, Renée Vaillancourt McGrath, Angela Pfeil, Jessica Mize, Patricia Taylor, and Tricia Suellentrop. Thanks to Sara Swenson and the teens in the manuscript discussion group she organized at Edina (MN) High School. Special thanks to teen readers Ashley, Nikki, Kaitlin, and Amber who read the manuscript and provided me with invaluable suggestions. Thanks to Larry O. Dean (www. larryodean.com) who allowed me to use his song titles. Kudos to Ken Rasak for his important contribution to this book, and to Erica Klein for her important contribution to this book, and my life. Finally, with belated thanks to Doug Dixon, my high school drama teacher, for everything he did for me and other students.

  ALSO BY PATRICK JONES

  Things Change

  Copyright © 2006 by Patrick Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  The book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used

  fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and

  any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in the United States of America in April 2006

  by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  E-book edition published in April 2011

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Jones, Patrick.

  Nailed / Patrick Jones.

  p. cm.

  Summary: An outcast in a school full of jocks, sixteen-year-old Bret struggles to keep his individuality

  through his interest in drama and music, while trying to reconnect with his father.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-8077-5 (hardcover)

  [1. Self-perception—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J7242Nai 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005027447

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2384-0 (e-book)