Chapter 11

“I know.”

Another long silence. Stacy frowned at the envelope in his hands and thought of Cal sitting in his recliner by the tv, going on and on about how that boy wouldn’t ever amount to shit. Fuck him. Stacy’s hands curled into involuntary fists, crumpling the envelope in their anger. He’d show that bastard. Ange was right, he wasn’t dumb. Smoothing out the envelope, Stacy asked, “So when’s this thing start?” 3

Lamar didn’t like the idea of Stacy going back to school, no surprise there. The fact that Stacy didn’t tell him about it until a week before registration didn’t help much, either. To be honest he didn’t want to tell him at all—the only person who knew right from the start was Ange. At work Stacy read him the brochure that had accompanied the enrollment letter, the two of them leaning beneath the open hood of a battered Jeep under the pretense of fixing a busted radiator. “So what do you think?” Stacy asked, folding up the brochure.