Stupid Fast

Felton begins taking food and an iPod he bought with his paper route money with him when he goes to the Mound, which feels like a home. He stays there for hours, running, relaxing, and not thinking. He continues to get stronger and bigger. He feels like an adult. Aleah takes some evenings off from her practicing and rides around Bluffton with Felton and Karpinski. Aleah, surprisingly, likes Karpinski and thinks he is funny.

It is 5am and Felton worries that Grandma will find him still awake, but he is ebullient and cannot sleep. He is proud of his strength and how hard he worked. He continues his story.

Felton not only runs up the Mound, or “big M,” but also runs football patterns with Cody and lifts weights. Felton is closing in on Ken Johnson’s records. He now has lots of muscles, his shirts are too small, and he feels like a “Barbarian.” Coach Johnson weighs Felton again and excitedly discovers that Felton has put on 14 or 15 pounds of all muscle. Karpinski cracks a joke, and Felton teases him back, talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Felton feels he needs to be as strong as a warrior to deal with Andrew and Jerri. Andrew tries to get Felton to help him talk to and understand Jerri. Andrew comes into Felton’s room one night while Felton is sleeping and wakes him up. Andrew calls Jerri a “liar” and believes that Felton is the cause of her mental health crisis, but Jerri will not explain why Felton “freak[s] her out” (188). Andrew wants Felton to talk to Jerri. Felton refuses, not wanting to get dragged into their fight. Andrew does not understand why Felton will not help him. Felton kicks Andrew out of his room.

Even though he will soon go to college, Ken Johnson continues to criticize and ridicule Felton. Ken makes fun of Felton while the team is lifting weights, though not as many people laugh at his derogatory jokes. Ken suggests that the team is wrong to rely on Felton in the fall and will be disappointed in his performance. Felton does not engage with Ken, but sometimes at night, his barbarian persona slips, and he thinks Ken is right. Felton fears that he will fumble the ball and spawn embarrassing headlines in the newspaper. Felton knows he must fight his fear-based reaction—his racing heart and dry mouth—caused by these thoughts.

Despite anxiety and problems at home, Felton says that during the daytime, the barbarian side of him is happy. He now has lots of friends, including Abby Sauter and Jess Withrow. They exchange texts, and think he is funny. Felton has Aleah, who loves him for being both kind and odd. Felton also knows that he is almost as big as Ken Johnson, and that he is faster than Ken. He knows he could “beat [Ken’s] ass” on the field (191). At nighttime, however, Felton is afraid of Ken, Andrew, and Jerri.

Late in July, Andrew locks himself in the bathroom for hours. Felton needs his running shorts from the bathroom to go to the Mound. He asks Andrew for them, but Andrew just sings a song. Yelling, Felton bangs on the door, but Andrew stays put. Felton takes a time out and emails some friends—not Gus, they have stopped communicating—and tries to find a funny side about the situation. Felton, angrier, asks again for his shorts, but Andrew tells Felton he is “working.” Felton screams that he will kill Andrew. Felton’s barbarian side takes control. He kicks the doorframe, breaking it, rattling the house, shattering a framed picture upstairs, and breaking the bathroom light. Felton is scared. He apologizes to Andrew, who is crying.

Felton does not know what to do. He runs upstairs. A goofy family caricature from last summer’s Strawberry Festival has fallen, and glass covers the kitchen floor. Felton wonders why Jerri has not intervened. He wants her guidance. Felton goes to her room but hears Jerri crying and leaves. He realizes he should have called his Grandma Berba at this point. Felton bikes to the Mound, strips to his boxers and runs, crying and swearing. When Felton returns home, Andrew is not around. The broken glass is shoved towards the edges of the room, and the picture is in the trash. Felton wants to run away, but also wants to keep his friends and Aleah. He decides he needs his barbarian persona.

Felton is practicing with the team when Ken Johnson shows up with older college football players. The older boys laugh at Ken’s jokes about Felton but admire Felton’s speed. Ken offers to “cover” Felton in a running pattern and knocks Felton down before Felton can take two steps. Felton falls and hits his head, crying out in surprise. Ken and the older players laugh. Ken says he will have to do better than this “pussy stuff” or a tough player, like Jay Landry, will destroy him (197). Ken lines up to do the pattern again.

Felton, furious, resists fighting Ken, then thinks he may as well. When Cody says to go, and Ken is ready to launch into him, Felton slaps Ken’s shoulder and pushes, sending Ken to the ground. Felton runs and catches the ball. Everyone is impressed. Ken stands up and gestures for Felton to throw him the ball. Felton tosses it to him, and Ken pegs it hard at Felton’s face. Felton catches it one-handed, then slams it to the ground. The two glare at each other, ready to fight, but Cody calls an end to practice. Felton bikes to the Mound.

Cody and Aleah notice that Felton is uncommunicative, and they worry about him. Felton tells Cody he is quiet because Aleah is leaving for Chicago soon and tells Aleah he is quiet because he is focusing on football. Felton reassures Aleah that he is not angry at her. Felton is angry at Andrew and Jerri. He attempts to clean the house when he hears screaming upstairs.

Andrew opened boxes from the attic onto the living room floor, enraging Jerri who yells at Andrew to leave her stuff alone and cusses cruelly at him. Crying, Jerri tries to pick up her things. Andrew cusses at her and storms out. Felton gives up on cleaning and goes for a bike ride. He feels older than 16 and is still amazed that Cody is throwing him a birthday party.

Most of the football team and many other “honkies” are waiting for Felton and Cody at the Walmart deli. They cheer when they see Felton because he got the best of Ken Johnson in practice. Karpinski thinks Ken fears Felton, or he would have fought him. The group chants that “Kennedy’s scared of a squirrel nut,” and the nickname is no longer offensive to Felton (201). Although these are happy times, Felton feels tired.

Sometimes, Felton feels like an older version of himself, observing himself experiencing happy memories from an outside perspective. He felt this way at the Strawberry Festival, when he, Jerri, and Andrew laughed and joked as the caricature artist drew their picture—the one that smashed when Felton kicked in the bathroom door. Felton thinks part of him knew then that his happy relationship with his family was about to end.

He feels the same way on the Mound the night after his conflict with Ken Johnson. Felton, Cody, Reese, and Karpinski drive out to the Mound to see if they can throw a rock all the way to the bottom. From the top of the Mound, Bluffton looks suddenly idyllic. Karpinski can catch but not throw. Felton gets his rock halfway down and remembers throwing away his crystals. Reese almost falls, but Felton saves him. Cody makes a beautiful throw to the bottom—and hits his truck. The boys laugh and talk about girls and football. Felton’s older self tells him that 16 is a wonderful age. He feels bittersweet.