The Outside Groove Read Free Page B

money now.”
    â€œWell, I’ll tell you what,” Big Daddy said, wagging a beefy finger at his pride and joy. “I don’t know why a bank vice president would arrange a meeting right there in his own office just to tell a guy, no, he won’t up his sponsorship money. ” He set his lunch cooler down on the dining room table. “Granted, we shouldn’t be counting our chickens before they hatch. I do have a feeling, though, that this time next week”—he knocked his knuckles on a chair back—“we’ll be counting more than chickens.”
    Mom splayed the catalog on the table and slid it toward Big Daddy. “Take a look at these, hon,” she said, tucking another strand of hair behind her ear.
    Big Daddy took off his barn jacket and hung it on a chair, and Wade walked over so the three of them could hover together over the catalog, my father standing behind my mother, his hands resting on her shoulders as she discussed the merits of racing uniforms.
    I got up from the table and walked into the kitchen, where I took my Cray College acceptance letter out of my pocket and stuck it on the refrigerator under a V ALLEY S AVINGS & T RUST magnet. Standing back, I wondered how long the letter could hang there before someone noticed it. Hearing Mom say that she also found some “fun” shirts that Wade’s fans could wear, asking Wade and Big Daddy if they agreed that I—she was actually, honestly, sincerely referring to
me,
Casey—would look “just darling” in ... she flipped the pages...
“this,”
it hit me harder than it ever had just how little my family knew about me. I mean, I hadn’t gone to Demon’s Run even once over the two previous seasons, an attendance record I intended to maintain. Apparently, whether I went or not escaped their notice.
    Zoning in on that one key word in the letter—
Congratulations
—my heartbeat sped up. I looked over to the dining room table, where my family huddled around a stack of catalogs like soldiers around maps—maps of a land I’d been living in, completely lost, my whole life. I slid the letter from beneath the magnet and tucked it in my back pocket.
    Mom looked up as I opened the patio door and tossed my apple core onto the back lawn. “Biodegradable,” I said.
    â€œCasey, have a look,” she said. “Imagine your brother and his crew in these getups.”
    â€œMaybe later.” I headed for the stairs. “I’ve got a paper to write.”
    â€œYeah, imagine Fletcher Corwin in one of these,” Wade said, sliding the catalog away from Mom.
    â€œFletcher?” she said. “Fletcher’s Casey’s mystery man?”
    I didn’t even consider responding. Although it was my name being bandied about, they weren’t talking about me. They hardly knew me.
    ***
    Up in my room, I took out my Cray College acceptance letter and reread it, just to be absolutely sure. I was absolutely sure. I’d got in.
    I booted up my computer and hit the Cray website, where I spent a few minutes imagining myself wandering down tidy walkways flanked by old trees, backpack hitched over my shoulders. Or hanging out with other students on the lawns spread out before stately old buildings or on that stone fence that framed part of campus. Or collecting water samples and recording environmental data while knee-deep in the creek that ran behind the athletic fields.
    I’d only visited Cray once, in ninth grade, when the college hosted the state high school cross-country meet. But I remembered the visit as if I’d gone back there every day since then, which, in a way, I had, sitting at my desk, clicking around the Cray site. When our Flu High team bus passed through that iron gate at the east end of campus, I felt something I’d never felt before: that college could be the start of a new life, a life with trajectory, with direction, without the incessant