“It’s all in the wrist,” he’d tell me as he excused himself for another funeral or doctor’s appointment with a flourish of his mother’s name. I kept waiting for him to get caught. But it never happened.

He didn’t seem to have a curfew; all I knew about his mom was that she didn’t dot her is. I didn’t even know where he lived. Macon was wild, different, and when I was with him, caught up in it all, I could play along like I was, too. He told me about parties where the cops always came, or road trips he up and took in the middle of the night, no planning, to the beach or D.C., just because he felt like it. He showed up on Mondays with wild stories, T-shirts of bands I’d never heard of, smeared entry stamps from one club or another on the back of his hands. He dropped names and places I’d never heard, but I nodded, committing them to memory and repeating them back to Scarlett as if I knew them all myself, had been there or seen that. Something in him, about him, with his easy loping walk and sly smile, his past secret and mysterious while mine was all laid out and clear, actually documented, intrigued me beyond belief.

Scarlett, of course, just shook her head and smiled as she listened to me prattle on, detailing every word and gesture of our inane sock-and-volleyball conversations. And she sat by without saying anything whenever he didn’t show up and I sulked at lunch, picking at my sandwich and saying it wasn’t like I liked him anyway. And sometimes, I’d look up at her and see that same sad look on her face, as if Michael Sherwood had suddenly reared up from wherever she’d carefully placed him, reminding her of the beginning of summer when she was the one with all the stories to tell.

Meanwhile, all through September, things were happening. My father’s radio show on T104 had gotten an overhaul and format change over the summer and was suddenly The Station to Listen To. In the morning I heard his voice coming from cars in the parking lot or at traffic lights or even at the Zip Mart where Scarlett and I stopped before school for Cokes and gas. My father, making jokes and razzing callers and playing all the music I listened to, the soundtrack to every move I made. Brian in the Morning! the billboard out by the mall said; He’s better than Wheaties! My father thought this was hysterical, even better than A Neighborhood of Fiends, and my mother accused him of always taking the long way home just to look at it. His was the voice I heard no matter where I went, inseparable from my life away from our house. It was somewhat unsettling that listening to my father was suddenly cool.

The worst was when he talked about me. I was in the Zip Mart before school one day, and of course they had T104 on; people were calling in sharing their most embarrassing moments. About half my school was buying cigarettes and cookies and candy bars, that early morning sugar and nicotine rush. I was at the head of the line when I heard my name.

“Yeah, I remember when my daughter Halley was about five,” my father said. “Man, this is like the funniest thing I ever saw. We were at this neighborhood cookout, and my wife and I...”

Already my face was turning red. I could feel my temperature jump about ten degrees with each word he said. The clerk, of course, picked this moment to change the register tape. I was stuck.

“So we’re standing there talking to some neighbors, right next to this huge mud puddle; it had been raining for a few days and everything was still kind of squishy, you know? Anyway, Halley yells out to me, ‘Hey, Dad, look!’ So my wife and I look over and here she comes, running like little kids do, all crooked and sideways, you know?”

“Damn,” the clerk said, hitting the register tape with his fist. It wasn’t going in. I was in hell.

“And I swear,” my father went on, now chuckling, “I was thinking as she got closer and closer to that mud puddle, Man, she’s going in. I could see it coming.”

Behind me somebody tittered. My stomach turned in on itself.

“And she hits the edge of that puddle, still running, and her feet just—they just flew out from under her.” Now my father dissolved in laughter, along with, oh, about a thousand commuters and office workers all over the tri-county area. “I mean, she skidded on her butt, all the way across that puddle, bumping along with this completely shocked look on her face, until she, like, landed right at out feet. Covered in mud. And we’re all trying not to laugh, God help us. It was the funniest thing I think I have ever seen. Ever.”

“That’ll be one-oh-nine,” the clerk said to me suddenly. I threw my dollar and some change at him, pushing past all the grinning faces out to the car, where Scarlett was waiting.

“Oh, man,” she said as I slid in. “How embarrassed are you right now?”

“Shut up,” I said. All day I had to listen to the mud jokes and have people nudge me and giggle. Macon christened me Muddy Britches. It was the worst.

“I’m sorry,” my father said to me, first thing that night. I ignored him, walking up the stairs. “I really, really am. It just kind of came out, Halley. Really.”

“Brian,” my mother said. “I think you should just keep Halley’s life off limits. Okay?”

This from the woman who wrote about me in two books. My parents both made their livings humiliating me.

“I know, I know,” he said, but he was smiling. “It was just so funny, though. Wasn’t it?” He giggled, then tried to straighten up. “Right?”

“Real funny,” I said. “Hysterical.”

This was just one example of how my parents were suddenly, that fall, making me crazy. It wasn’t just the statewide shame on the radio, either. It was something I couldn’t put my finger on or define clearly, but a whole mishmash of words and incidents, all rolling quickly and building, like a snowball down a hill, to gather strength and bulk to flatten me. It wasn’t what they said, or even just the looks they exchanged when they asked me how school was that day and I just mumbled fine with my mouth full, glancing wistfully over at Scarlett’s, where I was sure she was eating alone, in front of the TV, without having to answer to anyone. There had been a time, once, when my mother would have been the first I’d tell about Macon Faulkner, and what P.E. had become to me. But now I only saw her rigid neck, the tight, thin line of her lips as she sat across from me, reminding me to do my homework, no I couldn’t go to Scarlett’s it was a school night, don’t forget to do the dishes and take the trash out. All things she’d said to me for years. Only now they all seemed loaded with something else, something that fell between us on the table, blocking any further conversation.