Win Some, Lose Some

  Win Some, Lose Some

  Shay Savage

  Copyright © 2016 Shay Savage

  All Rights Reserved

  Editing : Chayasara

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without the express permission of the author, Shay Savage —except in the case of brief excerpts or quotations embodied in review or critical writings.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover art by Jada D'Lee Designs

  Dedication

  For those whose lives have been touched by a child with autism.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1—My Life is a Mess

  Chapter 2—Rainy Day Haircuts

  Chapter 3—All the Reasons I’m a Disaster

  Chapter 4—Ask Me No Questions

  Chapter 5—What I Will Do for Cake

  Chapter 6—It’s a Family Thing

  Chapter 7—Let’s See How I Can Embarrass Myself Further

  Chapter 8—Sometimes You Just Have to Go for It

  Chapter 9—Almost the First Date

  Chapter 10—Follow the Cake

  Chapter 11—Conflict Isn’t My Thing

  Chapter 12—Maybe Dating is a Bad Idea

  Chapter 13—From Freak to Hero

  Chapter 14—A Watch is a Bad Substitute for a Ring

  Chapter 15—Dive Straight In

  Chapter 16—Poke the Fish

  Chapter 17—Cookies Aren’t the Only Things That Start with “C”

  Chapter 18—Sex is Better than Cake

  Chapter 19—You Have What in Your Kitchen Drawer?

  Chapter 20—If It’s Ignored Long Enough, It’s Still There

  Epilogue—The Biggest Win of All

  Author’s Notes

  More Books by Shay Savage

  Kindle Unlimited—Read for Free!

  About the Author

  Chapter 1—My Life is a Mess

  “Oh shit, shit, shit.”

  The impact of the car behind me slamming into my bumper was brief but intense. Even after the shaking stopped, I could still feel the vibrations running through my body. Every muscle was tensed, and my brain was on overload.

  A car accident. I’ve been in a car accident.

  Bile crept up the back of my throat. My hands slid down the steering wheel slowly, leaving cold sweat from my palms on the faux leather wrapping. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, wondering if there was any way I could possibly get through this without having a major panic attack.

  Unlikely.

  I had a hard enough time when something was slightly out of my normal routine. For that reason, my uncle had gone over possible crisis situations with me in the past, and a car accident was one of them. I just needed to remind myself what to do.

  Make sure everyone is okay, and call 911 if someone is hurt.

  Was I hurt? Was the person behind me hurt?

  Taking mental note of my body, I realized I was physically fine—shaken up, but fine. I didn’t know about the person or people behind me. I would have to get out of the car to figure that out. The problem was, I couldn’t move.

  Did the car still work? The engine hummed beneath the hood, and I figured the car was probably still drivable, so that answered that question. The impact hadn’t been that hard. Since I didn’t appear to be hurt, the person or people behind me might also be all right. Maybe there wasn’t any damage to the car. Maybe I would survive this after all.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I reached over my lap and unbuckled my seatbelt. I wrapped my fingers around the door handle and focused on tensing my fingers enough to release the latch. I pushed the door open. My body remained tense as I slowly forced myself out of the car.

  Make sure everyone is okay. Check for damage. You can do this.

  “Dude, what the fuck?”

  Startling at the sound, I glanced toward a blond guy with a ratty mullet pulled back into a ponytail. His lips were curled up into a snarl.

  “Yellow doesn’t mean stop, you idiot!” He crossed his arms and puffed out his chest.

  The man’s obvious aggravation at the situation should have sent me into a curled-up ball, but the absurdity of his claim grabbed my attention. For a moment, I forgot his belligerent manner and remembered the words in the driving manual I was given to study for my test.

  “Illumination of the yellow or amber light denotes, if safe to do so, prepare to stop short of the intersection.” My chin quivered and my eyes remained on the ground as I spoke the memorized words as if I were on autopilot. “I had time to stop. I can’t afford to get a citation.”

  “Citation?” The blond guy threw his hands up into the air and leaned toward me. “You mean a ticket? You don’t get a fucking ticket for going.”

  His words didn’t make any sense at all. There was nothing in the law that said he couldn’t be cited for such an offense. He could. I studied thoroughly for the written portion of my driving test. If the light had been red, surely he would have thought running it was reason for a ticket. I continued to stare at the ground near his feet, trying to will myself to make eye contact, but I only managed to blink rapidly.

  The guy tapped his foot as I looked over at the rear bumper of my car. The damage wasn’t all that bad, but it was dented on one side, and now it was completely asymmetrical. In my chest, I could feel the panic rising again. I tried to swallow it down.

  I needed to keep myself together. The man wasn’t hurt. There was no one else in his car, and the damage was minimal.

  I can do this.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t dent up my car,” the man said as he stood right next to me. I could feel his glare on my tingling skin. From his stature and demeanor, I got the idea he was used to being taller than most guys, but we met nearly eye-to-eye. He had at least forty pounds on me, though, so the effect was similar.

  “I’m sorry—” I started to say, but he interrupted me.

  “I’d say you are!” His laugh was full of menace.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, “but you…”

  I stopped. His demeanor and harsh stare were throwing me off. If I could just remember how I’d practiced scenarios like this one, I would be fine, but I couldn’t focus enough to remember everything.

  Insurance. I need to ask him for insurance information.

  I took a deep breath and continued.

  “If you could just give me the name of your insurance company—”

  He took half a step forward and poked his finger into my chest—twice.

  “Fuck. You.”

  I swallowed hard. I knew how to defend myself, but every martial art I had ever studied demanded strict adherence to the rule: only use force if there is no other choice. I still had some choices left.

  I made a sweeping gesture toward my bumper, cringing at the sight. I wanted to say something about how he had rear-ended me and was at fault, but I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t stop staring at the lopsided dent in the bumper. I wouldn’t be able to drive it like this, not when I knew the bumper was back here, looking the way it did. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

  Would my insurance rates go up?

  A fresh wave of panic smacked into my chest.

  I was rarely angry at others. I usually reserved that type of emotion for self-loathing, but this guy was so obviously wrong. I pushed back another pending deluge of panic. I couldn’t let that happen here at the edge of the street and in front of this Neanderthal . I took a couple of deep breaths, wishing I had enough money
to go back to the therapist in town.

  “Call the police,” I whispered. I hadn’t really meant to say it out loud, but I knew this was the next course of action if there was a dispute. I had a prepaid phone in my glove compartment for emergencies.

  “Fuck that. You ain’t calling nobody.”

  My skin crawled at his grammar. I needed to get back in my car and use the emergency phone, but my feet wouldn’t move.

  “Call police,” I said again. My voice was monotone, and I was only dimly aware of what I was saying. I still couldn’t move, and I tried to find something on the ground to draw my attention away from the situation. “Report the accident. Get insurance information.”

  I could feel the man’s hot glare on my face, but I couldn’t look at him. I was repeating “Call the police” over and over again. I couldn’t make myself stop.

  “Shut up!” The guy poked me in the chest once more. “Considering the piece of shit you’re driving, I’d consider it a mercy killing. Here”—he shoved a little piece of paper at my chest, and I watched as it fluttered to the ground—“consider us even.”

  He laughed again as he turned around, got back into his car, and drove away.

  I leaned down and picked up the bit of paper—I couldn’t stand having litter in the street—and saw that it was one of those Powerball lottery tickets. I shook my head slowly as I stared at the paper without really seeing it. I always thought the lottery was a tax on people with poor math skills, and that fit the stereotype of the guy perfectly.

  It didn’t matter. I saw his license plate, and I would just let the insurance company deal with it. Having an uncle in the insurance business had definitely been a blessing over the past six months. He made sure the car and the house were covered so I wouldn’t freak out. Travis was cool that way, like my dad.

  Like my dad was.

  I closed my eyes, took another couple of long breaths, and got back into the driver’s seat. I tried to wipe my mind clear of the image of the bumper, but of course, it didn’t work. I had to pull over twice to get myself back into driving condition before I completed the three-mile drive home.

  Home.

  The house was in a nice neighborhood, but there was nothing extravagant about it. Three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths—a typical suburban place with a small yard and a mailbox with a cedar post. The property backed onto a large wooded area, which was good for hiding out alone. More than anything, it was…quiet.

  I walked in and dropped my book bag on the little bench in the foyer before getting myself a glass of water. Mostly I ate stuff out of the freezer that I could heat up in the microwave. I hadn’t cooked any fresh food for three days, and I tried to force myself to make some real food at least a couple of times a week.

  All the recipes in my mother’s old recipe box were designed to feed four people. All of them, I swear.

  I put my glass in the spotless kitchen sink.

  I took the glass out again, filled the sink with sudsy water, washed the cup, and then washed out the sink and dried it off until there were no water marks. By that point, I had completely lost my appetite, so I went into the den to do my homework.

  Everything in the den was pretty much how my dad left it—papers, notes, and books all over the place. I couldn’t stand messes, never could, but I couldn’t bring myself to clean it up, either. Mom was more like me; she wouldn’t even walk in here.

  She had been.

  Had been.

  Past tense.

  Passed on.

  Passed away.

  Deceased.

  The words filled my mind, unbidden. I closed my eyes and hoped it would just stop, but of course, it didn’t. My mind rarely went in the direction I commanded. I had to get up and leave the den. I stopped in the family room, but even the name of the room still set me off into panic attacks sometimes. All I could think about was how I had argued with Mom over the cooking show she liked to watch all the time. I had wanted to watch Top Gear, and the shows were always on at the same time.

  I went back to the kitchen, thinking maybe I would cook something after all. I poked around in the cupboard filled with mostly packaged foods and ended up coming across a box of Thin Mints Mom had bought from a Girl Scout who lived down the street.

  I lost it.

  My dad had always said life was full of ups and downs.

  “Son, you win some days; you lose others. That’s just how it works.”

  Today was a lose day.

  ~oOo~

  The next day, I walked through the large double doors of Talawanda High School in Oxford, Ohio.

  Oxford was a small university town, divided into areas mostly devoted to the locals, the Miami University campus grounds, and Uptown Oxford, where everyone shopped and went out to eat. The shops mostly catered to the students, and most of the buildings even had student apartments on the second story, on top of the storefronts. First-year students lived in campus housing, but upperclassmen lived in apartments and rented houses within a few blocks of Uptown.

  Most of the kids in my class had at least one parent who worked for Miami University. My mother had taught math in the school of education. Growing up here was all right. I enjoyed summers the most when all of the students would leave Oxford to the townies, and I could find a parking space Uptown when I needed one.

  I headed to my first class—AP Ecology. I’d managed to drive to school by repeating to myself over and over again: I have an appointment with the body shop right after school lets out, and Travis is going to arrange for a loaner car until my bumper is fixed.

  A loaner.

  Who knew what had been done in it?

  I opened my locker and carefully placed the folders from my book bag into their proper places on the little metal shelf. The corresponding textbook was placed next to the folders in order of my class schedule, my meager lunch placed on the top shelf, and the empty backpack on the hook. Then I pulled out the ecology textbook and green folder to take to class.

  I checked my watch and quickly headed to the classroom. I should get there with about ten seconds to spare. I couldn’t stand being late, but I also didn’t want to be there early. I walked inside Mr. Jones’ lab and turned down the aisle toward my desk.

  There was already someone in my seat.

  He was a really big, wide-shouldered guy with a dark complexion. I hadn’t seen him before, but he could have been one of the kids who transferred from Riley schools. I wasn’t concerned about where he came from though. The problem was he was in my seat.

  Maybe I should have been a few second earlier.

  I stopped between desks—right between Aimee Schultz and Scott O’Malley—and just stared at the floor for a minute. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. That was the seat where I was supposed to be sitting. I had been in that seat all year, and it was spring. This was a two-semester course, so I had been in that same seat each and every school day for over a hundred days.

  One hundred and twelve.

  “Matthew, take a seat, please,” Mr. Jones said from the front of the room. “It’s time to start, and I’ve got a lot of material to cover before you break into groups.”

  Someone in my seat and group work. Double whammy.

  I looked at the guy in the chair, then up at Mr. Jones. My pulse was beginning to pound in my temples, and I was having a hard time keeping my breathing in check. I kicked the toe of one foot with the heel of the other—trying to snap myself out of it—but it didn’t work. I turned around and went up to the front of the class.

  “Mr. Jones,” I said, “there’s someone in my seat.”

  “There aren’t any assigned seats, Matthew,” Mr. Jones said.

  I stared at the papers on his desk. All of my teachers were supposed to know the ins and outs of my education plan, including some of my triggers such as unexpected change. Most of them were great about sticking to the plan, but Mr. Jones didn’t seem to understand how much it could impact me.

  “But…my seat…” I could bare
ly hear my own voice.

  “Devin just transferred here,” Mr. Jones said. “There’s an open seat behind Mayra.”

  Mayra.

  Mayra Trevino.

  I glanced over at the brunette with the long, wavy hair as she leaned forward with a smile on her face and chatted with Justin Lords. She had large brown eyes and full lips. She was trendy, popular, beautiful, and she was the co-captain of the girls’ soccer team along with Aimee Schultz.

  It could be worse. She was usually pretty nice to me. Justin, the American football king, was a whole other story. He’d given me a hard time since kindergarten. He was a classic bully, right down to the overbearing, overachieving father, who was also the football coach.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to get my bearings. My entire body was tense—poised for fight or flight. There was nothing to fight against, though, and flight would mean not graduating. I could have gotten my GED already if I wanted to go that route. I didn’t want that. I wanted the diploma. I wanted to get into a good school so I could manage a decent career and be able to pay my sister’s medical bills.

  You can do this.

  I tried grinding my teeth to see if that would help my feet move, but it didn’t. I realized it was because my eyes were still closed, and I’d probably trip over my feet if I tried. I opened my eyes again and took a couple of shuffling steps to the other side of the room.

  The other side.

  Far from the door.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  With a shudder, I managed to sit down in the seat behind Mayra Trevino. She glanced back at me.

  “Hey, Matthew!”

  I crossed my arms on the desk and stared at the little hairs on my wrist. I took another long breath and closed my eyes, trying to imagine myself in my regular seat and that Mayra had just decided to sit in front of me. It didn’t help much because if she were there, where would Joe sit? I shuddered a little.

  “Hey,” I managed to say quietly. Thankfully, Mr. Jones started his lecture then. What he had to say didn’t help at all, though—group work.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “Everyone will be divided into pairs, choose a potential risk to our biosphere Earth, explore the causes and potential implications of that risk, and then present your findings to the class.”