Author's Note: I would like to thank bobafettsgirl for the wonderful and thoughtful reviews. They really put a smile on my face and encouraged me to continue on with posting this story here.

Chapter 4 – Tread carefully

Sunday. Homework crunch time. Unfortunately, it also seemed to be Homecoming fallout time as well. Throughout the entire day I kept receiving calls from friends and, more so, former teammates. Apparently, my fallout with Brett wasn't intriguing enough to warrant any calls from the group, but news from Homecoming certainly was. Vicki had made quick work of spreading the word, evidently. Donovan Matsen was now addicted to pot and was so high at the dance he didn't even know how to talk right... or so I was told, at least. I wasn't sure who to be more pissed with- Vicki for being the predicable gossip girl she was or Kim for feeding the, as she would put it, shit-stirrer. I did my best to pour oil on the troubled waters during every call, but after a while it just felt like I was trying to fight a riptide and losing, badly. If I was hearing about it this much in less than twenty-four hours, it would burn through the school population like a wildfire on Monday.

My dad was somewhat excited by all of the attention I had been getting again. I think he was under the impression that my team was calling because I was going to get back into football, not because I was the subject of some juicy chatter. I didn't want to squelch his mood, as it was a nice change of pace to see him smiling when he answered the phone and handed it off to me. By the same standards though, if he even thought about bringing the matter up, I would really have had no problem turning back into a disappointment for him by continuing to denounce the sport.

My mother, on the other hand, was simply annoyed by the nonstop interruptions to her daily routine. When she started acting like that, behaving oddly or becoming irrationally angry at the drop of a hat, it truly worried me because I was never sure if she was just having a bad day or if she was getting sick again. For as long as she could remember, she had always had periods of time where she felt completely horrible, both physically and mentally. When it happened, she... well, she changed. It was kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There was really no other way I could think of to explain it. She simply wouldn't act like herself. She would become mean and spiteful, act incoherent in both her words and her actions, and become altogether unpredictable. There was a strong physical reaction as well. Her whole body would swell, as if she had been stung by a bee and it was affecting her all over, especially her arms and legs. Once the changes took over, every movement was pure agony for her. She had been diagnosed with everything under the sun, and when her current doctor became frustrated with the lack of progress on whatever they thought she had, they would drop her. Each new doctor disregarded the previous one's conclusion and came up with one of their own. It was an endless cycle of nothing. Her most recent physician, Dr. Hudson, decided upon a radical prognosis and proclaimed my mother had Lupus. Actually, he said a long, medical name that I was incapable of remembering, but Lupus was the short term for it. It was complicated and, as far as I could tell, fairly mysterious to most medical professionals. Usually a doctor will hand out a little pamphlet for whatever conclusion they had made for their patient's medical condition, containing information on what the condition is, symptoms, how it will affect you, treatments, etc, but when my mother left Dr. Hudson's office after he diagnosed her with Lupus, she walked out with nearly twenty different pamphlets on lupus and the various other ailments it could cause. There would have been more, but the receptionist kindly informed us that there were a number of leaflets that the office simply didn't carry. Dr. Hudson had put my mother on a new plethora of medication, but warned that until we truly knew what was wrong, it may not help matters much. Even with a new doctor and a new diagnosis, we were still left in the dark as to what to expect or how to make it any better.

The beginning of the school week had, at long last, finally arrived. It wasn't like I was really looking forward to it, but better to get it out of the way than continue to dread the inevitable. I made my way out to the patio before the first bell of the day rang to see who I could spot. I quickly identified Daniel sitting at our normal spot on one of the metal tier benches of the bleachers, getting in a little nicotine fix before the school day started.

As I began to walk to him he lifted his head and nodded to me.

"I heard you caved and dropped by the dance to keep Kim company. Even shared a dance with her."

There was a moment of hesitation (I even stuttered in my steps) as I tried to read Daniel's face, but he was wearing that smile of his and the tone went right alongside it.

"That was pretty nice of you, man. Pretty nice."

I felt a bit of relief wash over me. I never would have pegged Daniel as the jealous type, especially given his laid-back personality, but people did act differently when their significant other was the subject.

"So," he continued, throwing me a quick glance, "you danced with my girl, when do I get to dance with yours?"

I took his question literally and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what he meant. I wasn't dating anyone. Was he talking about Vicki? That would be weird. Besides, I thought he said Desarios don't dance.

"What?" I finally blurted out, sounding just as stumped as I actually was.

Daniel began to laugh. "Your car, ya lamebrain. When do I get to take the Challenger for a spin? You know I'm kind of in love with it, right?"

"Mine?" I asked, quite perplexed. "Your Trans Am is an upgrade in every way possible."

"Nah. My car ain't exactly up to standards anymore. It still needs a lot of help; I just don't have the cash... yet. That Challenger is a beast to look at though, and I really want to see how fast it can go from zero to sixty."

When he was right, he was right... and he was certainly right about the Challenger; it was a gorgeous car. That was part of the appeal of buying it in the first place, just how perfect it still looked after being out and about for all those years. It was undoubtedly the best use of my summer job money (I would never work in the restaurant industry again, though. I promised myself that), that's why I had no problem handing over almost all of it to my cousin when he gave a price to my inquiry. Then again, also knowing that he would never screw me over and sell me a lemon helped a great deal as well.

There was a moment of silence as I contemplated bringing up a question that had been floating around in my head ever since I first witnessed Daniel drive his car into the school parking lot. After taking a seat next to him, I finally decided just to go for it and asked, "How did you get that car anyway?" I took a seat on the first tier of the bleachers as I asked, straddling the seat so I could somewhat face him.

It was a nosy question, and truly none of my business, but his Trans Am was a special tenth anniversary '79 model and it blew my mind how he could afford something like that when it was just two years old. Even though I didn't really know cars before Daniel took me under his wing, I certainly had a fascination with them that far predated my introduction to him.

He snubbed out his cigarette and laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back into the next tier of the metal benches. It looked as if it was uncomfortably poking into the small of his back, but a slight smirk appeared on his face. "You know about Ace Auto up on 9th?"

I simply nodded. It was one of the slicker car dealerships in town. It wasn't overly large, but they always had nice-looking vehicles on display.

"Yeah, well, my brother used to be friends with the owner, whose name isn't Ace by the way. Long story short, I still talk to him from time to time and he showed me the Trans Am sitting behind his place, covered in a tarp and completely neglected. Apparently he was one of the first in line to buy it when they hit the market and the idiot treated it like crap. Rode it hard, never took it in for maintenance or check-ups, let it sit outside in the elements all year round. I tell ya, for a guy who owns a dealership, he sure knows how to treat a car like shit." He paused and stretched slightly, and I could hear a vertebrae or two pop in the process. The smirk that spread across his face led me to believe that that was exactly what he was aiming for. It only took a moment for him to continue. "Only favor he ever did for that car besides sell it to me was wash it damn near religiously, but the moron would use regular old dish soap! That and the weather are why the poor thing looks so bleached out. Anyway, it stopped running and all the local mechanics, includin' his own, wanted to charge him an arm and a leg to fix it. Nobody wanted to buy it off him, neither, not til I came around. I pretty much got it for a steal, but I know he really just wanted to get rid of it. Been workin' on it ever since."

Suddenly, we heard Ken and Nick bickering back and forth about something as they made their way to the patio.

"You're such a liar," Ken remarked, somewhat naggingly.

I caught a glimpse of Nick's face as I peered over at the two, he seemed a little stung and annoyed as he looked over at our friend.

"No, I'm not, man. Look, just ask Daniel when we run into him. He was there, too. He heard the exact same thing I did."

Ken finally veered his head in our direction and pointed towards us. "Better yet, why don't we just ask the man himself?"

Daniel nudged my shoulder with his hand, his face showing the earmarks of a smile his mouth was attempting to hide. "If they're talkin' about what I think they're talkin' about, you got some 'splainin' to do."

I laughed, somewhat nervously, at Daniel's imitation of Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy. His improvised Cuban accent actually wasn't half-bad.

"Fellas," Ken greeted as he approached us. "So, Donovan, Nick tells me he heard something very interesting about you Saturday night. Is it true that you and Vicki Appleby were, uh... you know, doin' it..." He lewdly made a circle with the thumb and index finger, sticking the forefinger of his left hand through the hole a few times, "...before you started hanging out with degenerates like us?"

Forward and crass are two words I would easily affiliate with Ken, but even his directness with this was a bit shocking to me.

Nick quickly smacked his arm with the back of his hand, causing Ken to wince. "Come on, man, knock it off. That's not what I said at all, anyway. She told us they were going out!"

I heard that. 'She' told us...

"OW!" Ken grimaced, far too late after the fact, yet still dropping his sexual innuendo display and rubbing his arm. "Does it matter? What's the point of dating a hot cheerleader if you're not gonna have sex?"

"And how many hot cheerleaders have you had sex with, Ken?" I was trying to divert the question and continue to push us far off course of the matter. Sometimes it worked...

He snorted. "Apparently not as many as you have. Come on, man, level with us here. This is something about you that might actually be interesting. Just a little."

...this time it didn't.

Daniel was cracking up behind me and it must have been contagious because I found myself beginning to laugh as well.

"Okay, okay. Yes, Vicki and I dated for a little while. Less than two weeks, actually. We got together just before school started, but the majority of time we were together, I was obsessing over football and she was bossing around the other cheerleaders. We made out a few times, but that was it. No sex."

Well, that technically wasn't it. I had made it to second base several times while we made out, but Vicki was very reluctant to go any further. She said we should spend more time together and get to know one another better before we took things that far. That was understandable and respectable, the problem was that our 'relationship' was just for show as far as she was concerned. There were ample opportunities where we could have spent time together and got to know each other on a more personal level, but she was never interested and always made some excuse to not be with me. If we went to a party where we would be seen by a lot of friends, she was all over me, but if it was just going to be the two of us hanging out, she wasn't even interested. Remembering our short time together actually left a bad taste in my mouth.

Both Nick and Ken looked utterly disappointed at my answer.

"You could have at least lied to us, man. We wouldn't have known the difference and you would have come off as way cooler," Ken lamented.

"Who's to say that wasn't a lie?"

He stopped and thought about it before finally smirking. "Touché, my friend."

"Wha- what the hell does 'touché' mean?" Nick asked as we all walked back into the school building.

The week seemed to fly by, thankfully. There were times when I wanted to nag Kim about how she was so eager to spill the beans when it came to my past relationship with Vicki, but she always seemed to be in a bad mood. Her and Daniel were still having their issues, it seemed. By the time Thursday rolled around, Kim near-gleefully admitted that she had 'dumped Daniel's loser ass!' and, in the process of continuing to antagonize Lindsay, she had unintentionally made the girl agree to throwing a keg party at her house the next night. It had been a little while since I last went to a kegger and this one would be a brand new experience as I could only imagine a select few of my former cronies would show up there. As sad as it may have sounded, I was actually a little excited.

An hour into the party and my expectations of 'new' and 'exciting' went swirling down the drain. Not that I should have been surprised, but it was pretty much just more of the same as any jock kegger I had been to, just with different company. Whether jocks or burnouts, we all just wanted to get drunk, have fun and maybe get into a little mischief before the night was over.

I spotted Kim on the couch and took a seat next to her. Millie had arrived at some point and was playing a song on the piano that Nick was singing along to with her. I think it was some Doobie Brothers song about Jesus, which was honestly funny in and of itself considering how religious and anti-drugs Millie was and the band had the word 'Doobie' in their name. Millie was kinda on key, blaring out lyrics with a passion, but Nick was all over the place and simply butchering any resemblance their version had to the original.

"Hey," Kim said as I plopped down. She sounded approachable enough, but her attention seemed to be on the horror show in front of us.

"Hey. So, I don't know if you heard or not, but word around school is that I am a bonafied stoner. You should see the way Coach Fredricks looks at me now," I began to laugh. In reality, the last part really wasn't that funny when I thought about it. Coach was almost like a father figure to me at school, and he was just as disappointed, if not more so, as my actual father when I quit the team. When he looked at me in the hall on Friday, I could just tell that he had heard the rumor about me becoming a stoner. It was almost plain as day on his face, and the expression he wore was nothing less than pure grief. It bummed me out to see how hard he had taken a simple rumor.

When Kim turned to me with that sour look on her face, I could tell I had misjudged her mood. Treading carefully was a talent I was going to have to master around Blondie.

"Did you really come over here just to give me crap about that? So I may have started a rumor about you smoking some pot. Big whoop. You'd have to take a drug test to go back to your precious little sport. Like you've ever done anything more than get drunk anyway."

A smirk crossed my face. Ohhh, if only you knew...

"Holy shit! No way!" she said, suddenly sitting up. She was staring at me rather intensely. I don't think I had ever run across anyone who could read my face so quickly... or accurately. It was a tad disturbing just how guarded I had to be around her.

"Is our Donovan really just a huge pothead or something?" she laughed.

My smirk grew wider and I figured that would be answer enough. I wouldn't classify myself as a pothead per se, but I certainly enjoyed a toke every now and then. I always figured that if worse came to worse and I did have to take a drug test, there were more than enough straight kids around the school who would donate a clean sample for my cause... especially with a little monetary encouragement.

We continued to watch the freak-show musical in front of us, looking at one another towards the end and beginning to laugh like mad. After it was over and Nick's attention was grabbed by a passing Mark, the local pot dealer, Kim slapped my knee and loudly announced that she had to go pee before she vanished down the hall.

Daniel had invited his cousin and a couple of his friends and I was actually taken aback when I saw them. He had told me they were older, but I wasn't expecting a group of thirty-year-old burnouts trotting along with another guy who was at least fifteen years older than them and showing more gray hairs than Quaker's got oats. The geriatric alcoholic even went as far as to try to pick a fight with Ken when the two bumped into one another. It was a bit sad, really. Was that what Daniel, Kim, Ken, Nick and I had to look forward to if we kept along the same path? Spending all of our time looking for teenage keggers to leech off of? Lindsay was too smart to walk into the same pitfall, but could the rest of us see far enough ahead to sidestep it?

"Hey, hey..." I nudged Ken, trying to break the concentrated stare he was giving the old man from across the room. Even though Daniel had quickly interjected himself between the two and broken up any possible fight before it could even begin, Ken probably still wanted to knock the guy's block off. "Is it just me or does this beer really suck? I don't- I don't feel drunk at all!"

"That's because it's non-alcoholic," he replied back dryly, still not breaking his glare.

"It's what?" I looked at the liquid sloshing around the clear, plastic cup in my hand, as if this new-found information would somehow reveal itself to my blind eye. "How do you know?"

"Because I've had non-alcoholic beer before and this is exactly what it tasted like."

I was going to try to engage him more on the matter, but two girls walked by and we instantly turned into a pair of gawking jackals. One of them was a cheerleader or something, as I noticed her hanging out with Vicki quite a bit, but the other girl was a new piece of eye-candy. The fact that she had a rather large bust was more than enough to catch our attention. I heard Ken utter 'Good God' and turned to see he was following her with his gaze. At least he was no longer worried about settling a score with some old guy.

I gave him a pat on the shoulder and took my leave from the Weir house, ready to call it a night and head home. It was an interesting evening, even if the lack of actual alcohol robbed me of at least a pleasant buzz. I took note of Nick standing outside, but he didn't even see me drift by as his eyes studied the dead leaf in his hand like it was one of the most interesting things he had ever discovered in his life. Someone else came out as I unlocked my car door and I heard Lindsay's disappointed voice float down the driveway.

"Daniel and Kim are makin' out on my bed."

Jesus! Already? They spent more time breaking up than broken up.

I felt somewhat sorry for her as I started the engine and pulled onto the road. She obviously had some sort of attraction to Daniel and was hoping to take advantage of his sudden single status, but she moved too slowly for such a small window of opportunity. I had to wonder if that was the real reason why Kim was so venomous towards the newcomer. Then again, I had to feel bad for Nick too, as it was quite clear to Ken, Daniel and I (I was certain that Kim noticed to, but I doubted she cared) that he was crushing on our newcomer pretty hard. There wasn't an opportunity that came by that he didn't try to talk with her about, well, anything, and we often caught him giving her a quick survey every now and then and smiling like a madman after. With the introduction of Lindsay, our group suddenly became a strange mix of teenage lust and confusion to add to all the other shit we dealt with on a daily basis.

I reached under my car seat as I slowly made my way home.

Where is it?

My fingers finally fumbled across the hard, bulky cartridge and I shakily grasped it between my index and middle fingers. I flipped it over in my hand and popped Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album into my 8-track player (it was my only solo post-buy modification and I was quite pleased with myself for installing it. Then again, I simply memorized how I uninstalled it from the dud at the junkyard and worked backwards). The amount of ridicule I would receive if Kim, Daniel, Ken or Nick found out I enjoyed a bit of soul music would be out of this world, but hey, I couldn't deny who I was (though I could hide it rather well).

Mercy Mercy Me started playing and I couldn't help but start to tap along on the steering wheel and echo the musician's verses. Even though he was talking about the deterioration of the environment in the song, I could easily apply the repeated chorus, 'Ah, things ain't what they used to be, no, no,' to my current lot in life. Things were different, there was no denying that. My love affair with football was over; dead and buried for all I cared, and I had become an outcast to my former teammates not only by my own actions, but the rumors that had spread as well. I was no longer a jock, just one of the boys, and that took some adjusting to. By the same token though, my life wasn't over... not by a long shot. I was getting by on my own merit without being in the shadow of sports, maintaining acceptable grades (even if we were barely into the school-year) and mostly staying out of trouble. The biggest change though, was that while I may have been viewed as a 'burnout' now, I had a truly amazing core group of friends that I wouldn't trade for the world.

When the song ended, I spun the tape all the way to the end of the last program, just so I could listen to the very first track, the title of the album, and proceeded to once again tap away on and sing into the steering wheel. They were my two favorite tracks from the release and, while I could relate one to myself to a certain degree, I realized I could also hear the similarities between What's Going On and how I now viewed my cluster of merry madmen. Before I hung out with them, there was no love or understanding between us. We judged each other based on looks and social standings, but when it came down to it, we had more in common than we would have ever given each other credit for beforehand. It was amazing to me how music could open your eyes up to the details about your own circumstances, even if they differed greatly from what the song was actually about.

"Talk to me, so you can see, oh, what's going on," I belted out blandly, continuing down the road.