Season of Gene by Dallas Hudgens

Author:Dallas Hudgens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2007-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Louis and I never got around to working on the blue crab project. Nickelodeon was running the SpongeBob episode where he had the rancid breath, and then Comedy Central had the South Park where Jimmy takes steroids. We figured what are the chances of two great episodes like that airing back to back, and so we bagged the report, which would have been a pain in the ass anyway, because Louis would have sat there not doing shit while I Googled everything.

I took the last couple of Vikes from Gene’s stash, drank a Jack and Coke in a Solo cup, and fell asleep in my recliner. Louis slept on the couch. I’d found this to be the best arrangement when he stayed with me, seeing how he was afraid to sleep in a room by himself. The first time he came over, I set him up on the sofa and went to bed. I got up to take a leak in the middle of the night and nearly stepped on Louis’s head. He’d snuck in my bedroom and made a pallet on the floor beside me. Theresa only told me later that he did this every night at home.

Neither of us remembered to set the alarm, so we overslept. There were no eggs in the refrigerator, and I was out of cereal, so I stopped at 7-Eleven and let Louis buy a box of Froot Loops and a Dr Pepper for breakfast. I grabbed a Red Bull for myself, and we dined in the car.

“If Theresa asks, I cooked eggs.”

Louis nodded. He was a different kid when I took him to school in the mornings. Never said a word, just wore this long expression like he was being hauled off to do a ten-year stint at Rikers.

“And you took your vitamin, too,” I said.

By the time we got to the middle school, Louis was thirty minutes late, so I had to walk him into the office and sign him in. He stayed about ten yards behind me the whole way, delaying the prospect of entry, like maybe if he hung back a chunk of space debris might fall out of the sky and kill him so he wouldn’t have to go in the building. I hated school enough in my own day, skipped enough classes when I was working with my uncle Phil that I ended up not graduating. But I’d never seen anything like Louis. His feelings for this place ran right down to the bone.

The office had that school smell going on, like dust and yeast rolls and desperation, the smell that reminds you of shit you don’t want to remember. I picked up a late slip for Louis and handed it to him. He just stood there, silent, backpack weighing him down. When he wasn’t running his mouth, I realized how skinny he was and how young he looked, young even for his age.

School is a good prep course for incarceration: the feeling and the hope

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