Free Savage Lane by Jason Starr Page B

then he texted her, just to make sure everything was still cool and shit, and she didn’t text back.
    Now memories of Melanie, how shitty and helpless she’d made him feel when she wanted to break up, were rushing back. Why was Deb acting this way? What did he do wrong ?
    He looked for her in the hallway and near the bathroom and then checked outside. Once in a while she smoked cigarettes, so she could have gone out to smoke, but more likely she’d gone to have a drink. She’d been drinking a lot lately, getting tanked at the club, and sometimes when they met in the backseat of his car in the back of the John Jay High parking lot, her breath smelled like alcohol. He’d ask her if she was drinking and she was like, “No,” but that was bullshit. She was probably an alcoholic, just like his stupid asshole stepdad.
    He headed toward her car in the lot—in the back of his mind, thinking, maybe if she was there she’d give him a quick BJ. He needed to know that everything was cool, that she wasn’t angry with him, and that she hadn’t actually changed the way Melanie had.
    But she wasn’t in her car. He was going to head back into the school when he decided to go behind the building, to the area where kids sometimes hung out, and sure enough Deb was there. He tried to act natural, get things back to normal, but then she got all paranoid about them being seen together and told him to get back inside.
    So he went back into the school to wait for Kyle to finish practice, figuring he’d deal with the Deb situation the next time he saw her, when they were alone. But then he started panicking all over again, thinking, What if there isn’t a next time ? What if she didn’t want to see him again and told him what Melanie had told him: I need a clean break. Now Owen was sweating; how had everything gone to hell so fast? Something must’ve happened with Mark. After all, Deb had had freak-outs about Mark before. A bunch of times over the past two years she’d told Owen that what they were doing was wrong, that they had to stop—shit like that. It had never seemed like any big deal, though, because she never wanted to stop fucking hooking up.
    But this time felt different. She’d never seemed so distant; something had definitely changed. He didn’t get why she’d want to stay with Mark, though. She was so unhappy with that guy, and she said they’d been living like roommates for years, and that they didn’t even really like each other anymore. There was no way she could possibly pick Mark over him. Besides, everybody knew that Mark was screwing Karen Daily. Well, maybe everybody except Deb.
    After swim practice he was hoping he’d see Deb down by the lockers, but she wasn’t there and had probably already left. A few minutes later, driving home, Owen looked in the rearview and noticed that Kyle’s eyes were red and glassy. At first he thought he had gotten chlorine in his eyes, then realized he was crying.
    “What’s wrong?” Owen asked.
    Kyle wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and turned away.
    “Hey, look at me.” Owen was concerned. “I said look at me.”
    Kyle turned back, tears gushing.
    “What happened?” Owen asked. “Come on, tell me.”
    “The coach…”
    “The coach? What happened with the coach?”
    “He said… He said I’m too fat.”
    “He said that?”
    “He said that’s why I got tired in the race last week. He said I have to stop going to McDonald’s.”
    “How does he know you go to McDonald’s?”
    “He said he saw us there last week.”
    “Yeah? Well, if he saw us there, then what was he doing there?”
    Kyle almost smiled.
    “Seriously,” Owen said, “that shit’s totally inappropriate. First of all, you’re a good weight, a healthy weight. You’ve got muscle, more muscle than me. Second of all, if the coach has a problem with something, he should talk to me about it. He shouldn’t be telling a little kid what to eat, especially when he’s wolfing down a double