Chapter 10

The football game on Friday night did not go well. The Marlins won it, but they wound up winning it ugly; about the only thing that could be said was that they made somewhat fewer mistakes than Frontier, but only somewhat, since there were a lot of them made.

In truth, while it was the fourth win for the football team that year, bringing it to a 4-0 record and tying for the best season in a decade with still four games to go, it was not pretty football. Since the core of the team was made up of freshmen and sophomores, experience was pretty thin, and the freshmen and sophomores just didn’t have the size of the juniors and seniors of some of the other schools they played. Both the Marlin offense and defense were based on luring the opponents into making mistakes, rather than just outplaying them. It usually worked, except when the inexperienced Marlins made enough mistakes of their own.

The Spearfish Lake Marlins did have a few good things going for them. One of them was their coaching staff. The head coach was Rick “The Rock” Kulwicki, a long-time pro for the Green Bay Packers, who now owned a sports bar in Spearfish Lake. Coach Kulwicki also served as defensive coordinator, and while the line didn’t have a lot of size or experience, they had the benefit of some tricks that usually don’t get taught to high school players.

The offensive coordinator was Mitch Reardon, a former pro halfback for the Rams. His approach had been to devise an offense that kept the opposing defense guessing about what was coming next, and for the most part it worked, although it carried with it the problem that the Marlins often weren’t sure what was coming next, either.

The only reason the Marlins managed to pull it out was the biggest and strongest player on the team, Lyle Angarrack. The senior had never played football before this season because of exercise-induced asthma, and the coaches knew right from the beginning they had to use him sparingly, so they only used him as a kicker and in offensive and defensive plays when his size could offer the prospect of dividends. Against Frontier, the dividends proved to be just enough. Lyle and his size and strength scored one TD against a Frontier goal-line stand, and he kicked three field goals. The last one, from 48 yards out, was a wonder indeed in a league where field goals were rarely attempted; its success nailed down a two-point margin of victory in the closing seconds.

Quarterback Howie Erikson was pretty disgusted with himself at the end of the game. He’d made more than his share of mistakes during the game, mostly due to lack of concentration. He knew damn well where the lack of concentration came from – it was the way Misty had been bugging him all week, in several different ways. While there had been plenty of mistakes to go around, and some of them Kulwicki and Reardon might not even have seen, Howie noticed them. He knew damn well that the Marlins had been lucky to edge their way past a historically weak team, but that jazz wasn’t going to work when they faced Rochester next weekend. Rochester was a considerably stronger team, and Howie knew they weren’t going to win it if he played that lousy again.

That meant the question seemed to come down to a choice between his girl and his team.

Frontier had been an away game. At away games, Howie usually rode the team bus back, and the last time they’d had an away game, at Walsenberg two weeks before, Howie had met up with Misty, who’d ridden the fan bus, and they’d hung out for a while before heading home. However, since there had been no plan made to meet up with Misty after this game, Howie had the option of going home with his folks, who’d come to the game, and he took it. It was probably just as well; he wasn’t in a mood to talk with Misty right then, anyway. If he did have to speak to her, he was sure he’d say something he shouldn’t.

Autumn slept in a little on the day after the game. It had been a heart-stopper, right up to the last seconds, but she was glad to see that maybe, in some little way, she’d been able to contribute to the win as a cheerleader. It had been awful close.

Since she was a cheerleader, she got to ride back on the team bus. As luck had it, she got a seat with Jared, chosen at least partly because she’d been having lunch with him all week. They talked about the game a little on the way back, but they spent more time talking about Vale of Kolombanara, which she’d been reading, and which Jared had read, too. They spent a lot of time talking about some of the alternative routes the story might take, and what might crop up in the next book in the series, due out next spring. Jared was cool, and she liked him; while she couldn’t call him a boyfriend, at least not yet, he was clearly becoming a friend, and that was worth a lot.

Both Autumn’s and Jared’s parents were waiting at the school for the team bus to come in, so they had to just say good night, and that they’d enjoyed talking with each other. Soon, Autumn was on her way home; as she walked to her parents’ car, she noticed Misty Frankovich standing around by herself, not looking very happy. She couldn’t understand that – the team had won, hadn’t it? It was a night to feel good!

“I’m really getting pretty pissed at Howie,” Misty told her mother just about the time Autumn was getting up. “He should have been waiting for me when the fan bus got in, but he was nowhere to be found.”

“Did you have plans set up?” her mother asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Misty admitted. “But he knew I was going to be on the fan bus, so he should have waited for me. He had to have ridden home with his folks, but if he did I didn’t hear anything about it.”

“Maybe his folks made him do it,” Linda observed.

“Even if they did he should have taken the time to tell me, so I didn’t have to stand out in the cold like an idiot looking for him.”

“Well, you’re right on that,” Misty’s mother said. “That’s how you did it before, after all, so he should have been expecting it.”

“He’s really been yanking my chain lately,” Misty complained. “It’s like this deal tonight. I don’t want to go to it. It’s stupid. I’d rather be playing Nintendo instead, but he says it’s a family thing he can’t get out of.”

“So don’t go,” her mother suggested. “When he gets here tonight, tell him you’ve changed your mind and you’re not going. After all, he’s your boyfriend. He should be doing what you want him to do, not you doing what he wants to do. Force him into a choice between you and this deal. You really need to be getting a better handle on him, Misty.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I’ve thought about pushing him to give up football, but as you’ve told me any number of times there’s a certain status among the girls about dating the quarterback, so I guess I won’t push him about it right now. It’s not that long till the football season is over with, and then it won’t be an issue. But I shouldn’t have to waste my precious time tonight sitting around playing that stupid game with a bunch of his brother’s friends.”

“So, like I said, don’t go, and make sure it’s his choice to stay with you,” she said. “I mean, this might be the time to break out a nice short skirt and a low-cut top, just to give him a little bait, if you know what I mean. You can still lead him on without it having to mean anything.”

“Yeah, that’s probably not a bad way to do it,” Misty said. “Give him a hint of what he might be getting, at least someday, maybe.”

“That’s it,” Linda laughed. “You know the rule. Sometimes the carrot . . .”

“. . . and sometimes the stick,” Misty smiled. “I’ve been giving him the stick pretty good this week. Maybe it’s time to give him a little sniff of the carrot.”

“Just a little sniff,” her mother said. “You always want to keep him reaching but never quite grasping. That means the carrot has to always be just out of his reach.”

“I really hate to say this,” Jack said after supper that evening, “but I think it’s getting to be about time to put the top back on the Jeep.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Howie agreed. “It’s going to be a little cool riding around tonight without it.”

“At least we don’t have to go far,” Jack told him. “All we have to do is pick up Vixen and Misty, then go over to Alan’s. That won’t take long and I don’t have to go fast.”

“Sure will be nice to see the time come when the top comes off again,” Howie smiled. By then he’d have his driver’s license, and he knew that Jack was expecting new wheels when he graduated and had to go to college. That meant when the top came off the Jeep again it would more or less be his. That would loosen his life up a lot!

Of course, there was still a winter to get through before that happened, and Spearfish Lake winters were not short. Summer seemed a long time off. Last summer wasn’t far in the past, and the sights of Misty in her bikini were still strong in his mind. They’d had some pretty good times while she’d been wearing it; it was too bad it seemed like a long time before he’d be seeing it again.

The two of them got into the old camouflage-painted Jeep. Howie thought it looked pretty tacky that way, but it had been their father’s doing; he used the Jeep for deer hunting, after all. Jack thought the camouflage looked just fine, but he used the Jeep for bird watching. While Howie thought he’d like to have it some other color, he realized it wasn’t going to happen. The bottom line was it didn’t matter; it beat hell out of having to get around on his BMX. Pretty soon it would be too cold to ride the bike much, and when it got warm again, it mostly wouldn’t matter.

Misty’s house was farther away than Vixen’s, so it made sense to go there first, then pick Vixen up on the way over to Alan’s. Howie knew Misty wasn’t real happy about having to do this tonight; she probably wanted to do something else, probably more Nintendo. There sure wouldn’t be any hanging around the Frostee Freeze with it closed for the winter. Another big loss, he thought.

Even with it being cool with no top on the Jeep, it didn’t take long to get over to Misty’s house; Spearfish Lake is not a big town. “I’ll run up and get her,” Howie said, and hopped out of the Jeep, went up to the house, and rang the doorbell.

When Misty came to the door Howie’s tongue all but dropped out of his head. She was wearing a very short skirt and a thin white camisole top that was almost see-through; it was no trick to see she wasn’t wearing a bra. “You ready to go?” he asked, realizing he was going to have trouble looking at that all evening.

“No, Howie,” she said flatly. “I’m not going.”

“But you promised you’d go.”

“So I changed my mind. I don’t want to have to spend the evening hanging around with your brother and his loser friends. We can stay here and have some fun.”

Howie was tempted . . . damn tempted, and he was aware that thin top was having some effect on his thinking. On one hand, he’d promised Jack he’d go to this deal, even though he wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea either. After all, he really did owe Jack a couple big ones. On the other hand, that top . . . it was about all the argument it needed to be.

But on the third hand, he remembered how badly he’d played the night before, and that a lot of it was the direct result of Misty jerking him around all week with her moodiness and her petulance. He knew girls got a little, well, moody when they got on their periods and he’d pretty well written a lot of it off to that, but this had gone on long enough. He couldn’t take another week of it, and what was worse, the team couldn’t, either.

“No,” he said, summoning it up from deep within him. If that was what it took . . . “You promised you were going to go, and now you’re changing your mind at the last minute. If you want to come along, you’re welcome. If you don’t, well, I guess it’s your choice. But I made a promise and I’m keeping it. If you don’t want to keep your promises, I guess that’s you. Jack’s waiting. Are you going?”

“Howie! If you’re so damn good at keeping your promises, where were you when the fan bus got in last night? I all but froze my ass off standing out there waiting for you.”

“I don’t remember any promises to meet you after the game last night,” he said. “In fact, I don’t even remember talking to you about it, but I think I told you I was planning on riding home with my folks since it was so far and we’d be getting back late.”

“But Howie!” she whined in a grating voice. You knew I was riding the fan bus! You should have thought about me!”

“You should have said something about it,” he told her bluntly. “I can’t read your mind, Misty. You seem to think I can, but every time I seem to think I’ve done the right thing you find something wrong with it. Now, are you coming or what?”

“I’m not going, and that’s final. And if you know what’s good for you, you’re staying here with me, or you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

“Fine with me,” he said. “I can do with a little less goddamn drama in my life anyway.” He turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the doorway looking at him.

“Howie!” she called. “You know what it’s going to mean if you walk away from me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it means I’ll have my life back again,” he said, not slowing his pace toward the Jeep. “See you around sometime, Misty.”

Howie hopped in the Jeep and told his brother, “Let’s go.”

“She’s not going?”

“No. Let’s get out of here.”

Jack got the message and came as close to burning rubber away from the curb as the old Jeep could manage, which wasn’t very close. He turned the nearest corner, slowed down, and said, “Well, what happened?”

“What happened is that I think I just lost my girlfriend,” Howie sighed, visions of Misty in her bikini having grown wings and flown away. “She was dressed as hot as I’ve ever seen her, and she said she wasn’t going, she’d changed her mind. She’s pulled that shit on me once too often. Shit, I hate to lose her, but she’s caused me a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“I’ve got the impression the last few days things weren’t exactly rosy,” Jack observed.

“Shit no,” Howie spat. “She’s jerked me this way and that all week long. Nothing I do is right, and everything has to be about her. Hell, I played lousy last night because I was thinking about her instead of the game. I fucked up, and when you get right down to it, it’s her fault. I don’t know if I should have done that, but she’s got to learn to give a little some time, too.”

“Maybe you’re lucky,” Jack said, looking for a place to pull off and talk.

“What do you mean?”“

Jack was out on Lakeshore now, getting close to the Frostee Freeze. Even though the place was closed, there were several cars sitting in there, and kids out talking and grab-assing, just out of habit. Not the place for this discussion, for sure. Passing the Frostee Freeze, he continued, “Look, Howie I have to give you a little background on this. You don’t tell Mom and Dad about it, OK?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Howie said glumly. The effects of what he’d done were starting to turn into realism, and he didn’t like it very much.

“Just to make this quick, you know that Vixen, Alan, Summer, and I are more or less all planning on going to Southern Michigan University next fall, right?”

“I know you were talking about it, but I didn’t think it was a done deal.”

“It’s not a done deal, not all the way, but about ninety percent,” Jack told him, spotting the parking lot of Spearfish Lake Furniture and Appliance. That would do, and this probably wouldn’t take long anyway. “Now, I don’t know what you know about the place, but they don’t have a lot of dorm space and what’s there is expensive, so we’ve been talking about getting a place of our own. You remember Cody and Jan Archer, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Howie said. “They bailed my ass out of trouble big time last summer.” They had indeed. One of the town bullies had gotten into a yelling match with Misty, and Howie had gotten in the middle to protect her. He’d come out of it with a couple bruises, a mild concussion, and a red-haired girlfriend. “I still don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Patience, grasshopper,” Jack smiled. “Cody and Jan own an apartment building down there. It’s a deal their folks set up for them. They’ve got a two-bedroom apartment that’ll be opening up in the spring, and the four of us are thinking about renting it.”

Howie’s ears perked up. “I’ll bet you’re not thinking about a boys’ room and a girls’ room, either,” he smiled.

“That’s not settled,” Jack said, “and it may not get settled for a while, but that’s not here or there. What’s important is this afternoon I called down there and talked to Cody about it, to try to, well, get our names on it. And, well, we got to talking about other things. You knew his older brother Shay used to go out with Misty’s older sister, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Howie replied, beginning to see where this was going. “I don’t know much about it, though.”

“To get right down to it, Cody didn’t know too much about it at the time, but he sure learned a lot about it afterward. Look, to cut right down to the nitty-gritty, Bethany pulled just exactly the same shit on Shay that Misty has been pulling on you, except that it went on a couple years.”

“Well, I guess I can believe it. I mean, sisters and all.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Except that Shay told Cody he thinks now it was all planned. They didn’t have a romance going. At least, Bethany apparently didn’t think that way. She was using him as a practice dummy.”

“A practice dummy?” Howie shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”

“Practice in how to jerk a guy around to get him under her thumb and keep him there,” Jack said. “Granted, all this is third hand but it sounds like it makes sense to me. Anyway, she really did a number on Shay, had him all ready to propose, then dropped him like a hot potato. She later found some guy with money to use her tricks on. Cody says Shay doesn’t know a lot about it, but she apparently really has this guy pussy-whipped.”

“You’re sure about this?” Howie frowned.

“I may not be telling it right,” Jack shrugged, “but I did get Shay’s phone number. He’s at Lake State, and Cody said Shay would probably be ready to give you chapter and verse on it.”

“Well, God damn,” Howie shook his head. “She was jerking me around because she could.”

“Or at least wanted to learn to do it right,” Jack said. “I mean, if she’s going to make mistakes, she might as well make them when they don’t mean anything. Like I said, a practice dummy.”

“Why the hell would she do that?”

“Because she can, I guess,” Jack shrugged. “Cody says that Shay thinks Bethany’s mother was coaching Bethany, so I’d guess she was doing the same thing with Misty. Anyway, Cody also said Shay told him her mother really has her father under her thumb, so I guess she must be trying to pass on what she learned.”

“Yeah,” Howie said thoughtfully. “He sure doesn’t seem to wear the pants in the family. Her mother really runs things. I haven’t seen a whole lot of her, thank God.”

“Look, Howie. I don’t want to try to tell you how to do things, but now that you’re out from under it a little, maybe you’d better be real careful about getting back together with her. God knows I’m no expert on women, but if you do get back together with her, you’d better damn well make sure she knows she’s going to be playing the game by your rules at least some of the time.”

“Yeah. Shit.” Howie shook his head. “This story you got from Cody sort of makes sense, but maybe I’d better talk to Shay to make sure I’ve got it straight. Do you think he’d be around his dorm or wherever it is?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Jack smiled. “It’s Saturday night, and he’s in Sault Ste. Marie, where you can buy beer at age nineteen right across the river.”

“Yeah,” Howie nodded. “I don’t think I’d be hanging around my dorm room like that, either. Maybe I’ll give him a call tomorrow. And Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. I mean, thanks a bunch! It’s too bad I didn’t know this sooner.”

“Just count yourself lucky I managed to find out about it at all.”

“Well, damn,” Misty told her mother about the same time as the brothers were having their discussion. “That didn’t work. That didn’t work at all!”

“It just hasn’t worked yet,” her mother counseled. “Give him a few days to worry about it and see how much he misses you. You might even remind him of it a little. I mean, find some guy he really doesn’t like and start trying to draw him in a little, at least where Howie can see it. You’re still developing things with Howie. Sometimes you don’t break a horse the first time you get on him.”

“I thought I had things going pretty good,” Misty protested.

“Nothing is certain in this,” Linda Frankovich smiled. “You were doing fairly well, I have to admit that, but even Bethany didn’t get Shay under control without a few problems. Remember, Misty, Howie was supposed to be a practice boyfriend. That means practice. You have to learn from your mistakes so you’ll know what to do when the time really comes to use it, and you probably won’t have me around for guidance then. Maybe you pushed him a little too hard, but when you get him back and get into the same situation again, you’ll be able to push a whole lot harder.”

“You’re saying get him a little jealous by hanging around with someone he doesn’t like?”

“That’s one way to do it. Just a hint or two, nothing too serious. Get him realizing what he’s missing, and then lay on the honey a little. Soon you’ll have him buzzing around you like flies around sugar. Then you can really get him under control.”

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