Read Reality Check (2010) for Free Online

moods; they just seemed to happen sometimes.
    "Not much."
"Want a bevo?" Bevo was a word his father used for beer, but only at good-mood times. Offering one to Cody? Maybe once or twice before. Cody said what he'd said on those occasions.
"I'm good, thanks."
"Suit yourself." His father snapped one open, came over to the computer. "What's this?" he said, maybe not even noticing how fast the computer was running now; his father didn't seem to have any interest in online things.
"College football."
"Yeah?" His father leaned over Cody's shoulder. "Don't recognize the teams."
"Williams versus Amherst," Cody said. "Williams is in purple."
"Never heard of neither of them," his father said. He watched for a minute or so. "Can't play for shit," he said. "What's so interesting?"
Cody had no intention of giving anything like a real answer, but at that moment something happened that hadn't happened in a long, long time. His father touched Cody's shoulder. A light touch, almost shy, if that made any sense, and then gone.
"I want to go to college," Cody said.
"Yeah? That's a long way off. Don't want to get ahead of yourself--see how this season goes first. Junior year's the biggie." His father watched a little more of the YouTube highlight. "And you wouldn't want to end up playin' with a bunch of plumbers like them guys."
"I don't know," Cody said. "There's more to college than football."
"Maybe for some," said his father.
For me, Dad. For me. But Cody didn't say that. Instead, to his own surprise and embarrassment, out came: "Clea's leaving."
"Huh?"
Cody went silent. His father knew he and Clea were going out, had made an astonished kind of face on first learning the news, and Cody had divulged just about nothing since.
"What do you mean--she's leaving?"
Cody shrugged.
"Leaving for where? The Westons are moving?"
Cody shook his head, took a deep breath, blew it out. "Just her. They're sending her to boarding school in Vermont."
"So you broke up?"
Cody turned to his father. "No," he said.
His father's good mood started slipping away; Cody could see it on his face, like clouds moving in. "Gotta be realistic in life," his father said. "Life like ours, verse the Weston types."
Versus, not verse: Why did his father, and so many other people Cody knew, always get that wrong? The little detail maddened him almost more than his father's whole statement. "What the hell are you talking about?" he said.
His father didn't like that tone, got a mean look in his eye, but no hitting would happen now: Those days were over, on account of this fairly recent size difference. Instead, his father backed away, toward the counter where the case of beer sat waiting. "Girl like her," he said, reaching for a fresh one, "where she's going you can't follow. Best to make a clean break, best for the both of you." His father went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Cody went online, found the Dover website, looked at pictures of the kind of kid who went there.
    Tuesday Cody went to work. No reason not to: Fran was taking Clea shopping in Denver and they wouldn't be back till after supper. Or dinner, as the Westons called it. What was that expression from science? Fault line? Was there a fault line between supper people and dinner people? Fault lines, Cody remembered, were where earthquakes happened.
"Quiet today," said Frank Pruitt, as they drove up to a mall under construction in the middle of nowhere, a half ton of twoby-fours in back. "Somethin' on your mind?"
"Just, um, a little tired," Cody said.
"Okeydoke," said Frank.
     
    It was close to sunset when Clea called. "I'm back," she said. Cody drove over. Clea was waiting in the driveway. Cody parked and got out of the car.
    "I have to get up at three thirty," she said.
"Yeah, I know." The sky was blazing in the west, a blaze reflected in Cottonwood's many windows, as though the house were on fire.
Clea leaned forward, nuzzled her head against his shoulder. "Good-byes suck," she said.
Cody could foresee a whole