Not Without Hope Read Online Free Page A

the ball straighter,” he would say.
    We always ended up having a few drinks when we played. I always got better after a few beers—at least, I thought I did.
    We went camping quite a few times, up north toward Ocala. We’d hike and go canoeing. We hunted armadillos, gophers, and raccoons. Everything became a contest. We invented drinking games. We’d see who could make the cleanest, most difficult dive into the springs where we camped. Or who could make the cleanest and best-looking hobo pie—a combination of grilled cheese sandwich and pizza, made on two pieces of white bread with butter, cheese, sauce, and pepperoni, cooked over a fire. I always won.
    At Easter 2007, we stayed in Tampa and turned that into a game, too. We had a weigh-in before dinner. Then for an hour, a few of us ate as much as we could to see who could put on the most pounds. I drank an entire gallon of milk to try to beat Will. I filled myself with ham, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, dinner rolls, and salad. I gained 5.9 pounds, but Will gained 6. I was so pissed. It was his first meal ofthe day and my third. “That’s bullshit,” I kept saying. We were so uncomfortably full. Then we slept for an hour, woke up, and ate homemade ice-cream cake.
    We played on a couple of rec softball teams together, and we won every year. Will would go four for five with four home runs. In high school, he once hit a four-hundred-foot grand slam in a playoff game. The ball lodged in a pine tree and they started calling it Bleakley’s Tree. “He didn’t get named Will for nothing,” Brent Hall, his high school coach, said. “He had the most will out of anybody I’ve ever met.”
    We played in a couple of volleyball leagues together and won a title in one of those, too. We got big into tailgating after football was done. We’d get to the stadium at eleven in the morning for a night game and play this game called cornhole, tossing bean bags through a hole cut into rectangular boxes—sort of like parking lot horseshoes. Will was unbeatable at that, too.
    Friday night, as we got ready for the fishing trip, Will was like a kid on Christmas Eve. We made a dozen peanut-butter-and-jelly and turkey-and-cheese sandwiches on white bread, and wrapped them in foil. We had peanuts, pretzels, chips, water, thirty beers each for me, Will, and Marquis.
    I had texted Marquis on Friday: “It’s your last weekend. Don’t worry. Corey doesn’t drink. If worse comes to worst, he can drive the boat. We’re bringing it all. We’re gonna get rowdy.”
    “Make sure you buy me at least six Coronas,” he replied.
    I guess it was something about Corona and bottles and the beach and the water. He also wanted six crustless peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
    “We’ll see,” Marquis said about letting Corey drive the boat. He didn’t sound too convinced that it was a good idea.
    Friday night, Will sat on his couch in my living room, making his sandwiches on the coffee table.
    “Who do Marquis and Corey play for?” he wanted to know. “What positions do they play? Are they cool?”
    Sure, I told him.
    “How far out we going?”
    This was really our first time fishing together.
    “Seventy miles,” I said.
    “I’ve never been out that far.”
    “It’s great,” I told him. “You literally drop the hook and yank it a couple of times and you catch a fish.”
    Will had fished mostly inland or near the coastline. As he told stories about what he had caught, he seemed to Paula to be speaking a different language.
    She kept joking with him.
    “It’s going to be so boring, so cold,” she told Will.
    He wasn’t buying it.
    “Paula, you just don’t get it,” he said. “I haven’t done this in such a long time.”
    I went to bed at ten. Will still had the TV on. He was too geared up to turn in. He drank a rum and Coke and thought that might help him shut his eyes.
    My sister, Kristen, also stayed at my house Friday night. She was