Catch Twenty-Two (Westover Prep 2)

I hate them all for trying to control another aspect of my destiny. My life is my own, and it’s about damn time everyone realizes it. Too many things have been taken from me recently, and it’s left me bitter and filled with anger. Until Frances Young arrived, I had no outlet for my building aggression.

Football is no longer an option this year because Dad needs help on the Jacobson Ranch. Even the handful of hours required for practice and games each week is too much to take away from the hours I could be working. No football means no real chance at a scholarship, and no scholarship means no college. Working a ranch is all I’ll ever know and swallowing that reality is one jagged little pill.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they tell me I need to drop out to work full time. Many of my friends have been forced to do just that. We all help our families, and we do so without complaint, but that doesn’t keep the bitterness from seeping into my skin late at night when I try to wrap my head around the fact that what I’m doing now will be exactly what I’ll be doing in twenty years, only I’ll have a bad back and leather-rough skin.

“Tell me about her,” Mom urges.

My mother is the last person that should be pushing me toward a girl I don’t know. Her parents tried to do the same thing to her, and when she fell in love with my dad rather than agreeing to marry the man her father thought she should, she was shunned, cast out and treated as if she no longer existed. She didn’t marry a man of the church, which led to her being exiled and disowned by her family. I haven’t met a single person from my mother’s side of the family, and I don’t imagine I ever will.

Hope flickers in Mom’s eyes as she takes a seat at the tiny kitchen table. She wants me to like Frances Young because I want to like her, not because Dad needs me to. I love her even more for that.

“Let me get to know her first, Mom.” I kiss her temple and she pats my hand. “I’ll be able to answer those questions better when I do.”

Dad grunts when I tell him goodnight as I walk through the living room to go to my bedroom, but he doesn’t pull his eyes from the TV. He’s a man of few words. He always has been, but the weight of the last couple of years is weighing him down. He’s thinner, his gaunt cheeks sinking further in as time passes. He’s not as fast or able to lift as much as he used to. Ranching takes a toll on the body, and Dad has been working all his life. He dropped out when he was in middle school to help his own father, and he’s always told me to dream bigger, to reach for the stars, but then the bank foreclosed on our land and sold our cattle to the highest bidder at the county auction.

He hasn’t mentioned my dreams since the day his were taken away.

He was my hero growing up, the man I looked to when I didn’t know how to do something. He was the man I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to emulate the relationship he had with my mother, always doting on her no matter how long his day was or how tired his eyes were when he finally made it home. He worshipped the ground she walked on. Every day he was able to wake up beside her was a blessing. That’s what he used to tell me as a child. Now he can’t hardly look at her, and I know that has more to do with his own sense of failure than anything, but I also see the way she reaches for him when he isn’t looking. She misses him even though they’re in the same room together.

Although my room is more like a closet, I’m not bothered by the lack of space. Even a huge room would close in on me and stomp out my hopes and dreams. Frances Young is just another way to keep me here in Utah, as if my obligations to my family aren’t enough.

My shower is quick and economical. I don’t waste water even though the heat of a long shower would work wonders on my sore muscles. I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again. Just the prospect of seeing her again makes me punch my pillow when I finally lie down.

Being mean to her makes me feel like a complete ass. I’ve never treated a girl the way I treated her tonight. My mother would slap my face if she saw how I acted earlier in Mrs. Jacobson’s driveway. My dad would tan my hide with a thick switch if he caught wind of what I said to her.