Matchit

Chapter One

it is eight o'clock in the morning.

I'm standing at the bathroom door, hoping and trying to change my daddy's mind. He leans across the sink in his new black Wranglers. His brand-new Garth Brooks shirt sits on the toilet seat, still folded in the package.

I've been thinking about what to say, and now it's time. I take a deep breath, and my words march out of my mouth like they think they're the Pledge of Allegiance.

"If you let me go with you, I promise to mind you. I promise I won't complain. I'll do whatever you say. And I'll be nice to Jewel. I promise."

He don't say nothing.

Jewel is my daddy's girlfriend. She's what made him lose every crumb of sense he ever had.

I watch him squeeze a blob of gel on his palm, rub his hands together, then wipe it through his hair, making the black even shinier. He combs it straight back. It's like somebody on TV, but I forget who.

"I won't talk back, neither."

Still, nothing.

"If we have a flat, I'll change it. I'll check the oil and change it, too. I'm the one who knew we needed an alternator. Remember when the truck wouldn't start smooth and it was making that zrrrrr . . . zrrr . . . zrrrrrr sound every time you turned the ignition? I said I bet it's the alternator, and Jake thought it was the starter. Remember, I was right?"

He sets his comb down on the edge of the sink and talks to my reflection in the mirror.

"Match, you can't go and that's that." He turns on the faucet and washes his hands and dries them on a towel. "You'll just have to stay at Babe's a couple of days. When Jake gets back, you can go tohis place."

"I'll run away you make me stay with Jake. I mean it."

Jake is Daddy's first cousin, which makes him my second, but I don't claim him as any kind of kin. I call him Jake the Jerk. He stomps around in his alligator boots trying to make the ground think he's important. Jake is grown, but he thinks it's fun to tease kids, scare them, too.

He's got this fish-boning knife. It's so sharp it can cut a hair in half. One night real late when I had to stay with him, he snuck into the kitchen where I sleep at his place. I was on my cot inside my sleeping bag, not thinking about nothing. All the sudden, he zipped me up, head and all. Then he poked me with that knife. Scared the pee out of me. Jake, he loves jokes as long as they're not on him.

"I want to go with you," I beg Daddy.

"Don't be stubborn, Matchit," Daddy says. He's holding his razor at the edge of one of his sideburns again, trying to make a perfect straight line across the bottom.

"School's out, I won't be getting into no fights. I won't get in trouble. Please, Daddy."

"It's not the fights. You know why you can't go." He puts his face up close to the mirror. "These look even to you, Match?"

I don't answer that question, and he gives me a look that says Jewel comes first. That I'll always be around, but she might not be.

The way I figure it is I had dibs on him before she did. I know he won't listen, though.

He says, "Look, your birthday's coming up. I'll be back way before then. If for some reason I'm not back, I'll send for you. Tell you what, you can ride on an airplane. First class. I'll tell them to bring you all the peanuts and Cokes you want, pizza, too, if you want. Maybe I could talk to the captain, see if you could go in the cockpit and watch him fly the plane. How would you like that?"

My daddy adds on promises like somebody laying bricks without any cement. He keeps on going like he don't know when to stop.

"I'll get you that bike you wanted," he says. "One of those color electronic pocket games, too, if you want. You know I wouldn't miss your birthday for a million dollars."

He picks up his shirt from the top of the toilet seat, takes it out of the package, unfolds it, and slides his arms in real careful like he's afraid to touch anything. He unzips his pants and tucks the shirttail in smooth all the way around on top of his underwear. He wants to look good for Jewel.

"Start getting ready," he tells me.

I have to look good, too, not for Jewel, but for Babe, a woman I don't even know, a woman my daddy is hoping like crazy will want me to stay.

First I have to take a bath with Lifebuoy deodorant soap and splash Old Spice on my neck. I have to clip my fingernails and put on new underwear, new jeans, a new button shirt, and never-been-worn socks. When I get finished, I feel too new and too stiff. I feel like I'm wrapped in a Band-Aid.

Daddy slaps water on top of my hair and parts it on the side. He steps back and gives me the once-over.

"You're looking good, boy."

I don't say nothing.

My heart is squeezing up tight against my new shirt. It's making a whole lot of noise.

The only thing is, nobody can hear it but me.


From the Hardcover edition.