March, 1987
This was always a weird month for who knows why. Maybe the weather changing every ten minutes, everyone's either sick or getting over sickness or coming down with sickness, spring is not yet her and winter is dead. On its back. Tits up. Dead.
Nick had lasted 4 days of varsity track, Coach is a great guy but runs his team as John Wayne's General Sherman. One of the student helpers had told him that Coach wanted to talk to him about why he'd stopped showing up but Nick can't find the time or the words and just ducks it out. He hadn't really connected with anyone on the team, not many freshmen went out, he's not a fast sprinter and doesn't have the poop for distance, so much for that.
Plus, there had been a revival series at church and it was convenient to duck for cover in the meetings. These always seem to attract the latest loose-ends to show up on the teen row, including one Tommy Delano. He's a tall, dark featured bloke, and done time in the joovie joint, evidently smooth with the ladies, sports a thick mullet, probably from a less advantaged background than most church folk yet has a way of transcending whatever he wears. For a couple of nights Delano sat on the other side of Miss Jenny Pratt and got most of her attention as Nick was just glad to lean back against the edge of the pew instead of running across some field in cloudy wind.
So a couple weeks later Nick signs out of the school cafeteria to hit the head, and is almost there when he turns around to find Delano about five feet behind and switching his expression from cunning to smile. At the urinals Delano brings up how he'd gotten with Jenny on some youth trip that Nick had been able to miss, sounded like second base was involved. Nick doesn't know what to say and gets squirreled by the tune in his head, from the VHS of Headbanger's Ball that his brother had scored, and asked Delano if he'd heard of them.
"Yeah I heard a couple of theirs, they're OK. You need to come over sometime we can jam, find some chicks."
"We'll see."
They go back to their respective tables, and in about a week Delano's mom moves them out of the Jameson district.