Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp Page B

live after her dad's accident, almost tore the family apart, she said, but now they was stronger for getting through it.
    “How'd it happen?” I asked. “The accident.”
    “Drunk driver. Seven years ago. Dad had a flat tire on the interstate and pulled over on the shoulder. He'd just shut off the engine when this drunk girl—I think she was only about twenty-two or twenty-three—plowed into the back of his car and spun it back out into traffic. A semi hit him then, flipped his little Honda right over the guardrail. He was lucky to be alive. That's how he looked at it right from the start. The rest of us didn't deal with it half as well as he did. Especially me. I was just pure trouble there for a while.”
    “You? That's kind of hard to picture.”
    “Well, I don't mean I joined a motorcycle gang or anything. I was just ten. But I wasn't doing my homework, and I was always fighting with my sister and my mom and my teachers. Never my dad but everyone else. I basically hated everything. The sidewalk, the mailbox. Set a glass of milk down in front of me, and I hated that.”
    “What happened? I mean, you sure ain't like that now.”
    Her eyebrows slanted up, like maybe she thought she could still be that way a little sometimes. “Well, but every once in a while, when I see my dad struggling with something simple like putting his shoes on, it still makes me mad.”
    “I don't blame you.” I was starting to see how she got that sad-for-the-world look in her eyes.
    “I guess the turning point for me came one day when I was with my dad at the hospital. There were all these doctors in white coats walking by like ghosts, and the rooms filled up with people who'd gone wrong in some way, and it just hit me. Maybe I should try to do something to make them rightagain. And to be honest, I think I was so mad about what happened, at how unfair it seemed, that I figured if I helped fix people it would be like getting even with whatever hurt my dad. Sort of like getting revenge, almost. That's when I made up my mind to go to medical school. From then on, I always felt like I was doing something about what happened, making something out of it.”
    “Wow,” I said.
    “I didn't mean to get so serious like that.”
    “No,” I said. “I'm glad you told me.” I studied the salt-shaker for a moment. I knew I had to tell her about my dad after all. It would've been selfish somehow if I didn't after what all she just told me. “My dad run off on us,” I said, just like that. “I don't even see him anymore.”
    “How old were you?”
    “Eight. I guess it was like its own kind of car wreck in a way. My mom sure didn't come out the same afterwards. But I don't guess either one of us had one of them hospital moments when we realized what to do about it.”
    I could feel her looking at me, but I couldn't do nothing but stare an extra set of holes in that saltshaker. I was afraid if I looked up in them brown eyes right then, I might have to realize who I really was after all, and I didn't think I was ready for that.
    “I'm sure you'll figure it out one of these days,” she said.
    “Maybe.”
    “Have you thought about what you're going to do after high school?”
    I knew what she was doing—trying to get the conversation back on something lighter. It was one more thing to like her for.
    “I'll play college ball,” I said, shifting in my seat. “See howthat goes. If pros don't work out after that, I guess I'll go into coaching. I don't know what kind of coach I'd make—I ain't that great at telling folks what to do—but that's pretty much the only other thing there is if you don't go pro.”
    “There's other things besides sports,” she suggested.
    “I know, but I ain't much good at anything else. Blaine's dad told us if we want to succeed at something, we have to set our sights on that one thing and go after it, and for me that one thing is pretty much football.”
    “You don't have to do it just because he said so, you