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Perry confides in me about his nose and mouth. He says he was born with a cleft palate. He says it’s made him deeply self-conscious and painfully shy with girls. He’s had surgeries to fix it, and faces one more surgery at least. I tell him it’s not that noticeable. He gets tears in his eyes. He mumbles something about his father blaming him.

Most conversations with Perry eventually lead to fathers, and from fathers it’s a quick segue to the future. We talk about the men we’re going to be once we’re rid of our fathers. We promise each other that we’ll be different, not just from our fathers but from all the men we know, even the ones we see in movies. We make a pact that we’ll never do drugs or drink alcohol. And when we’re rich, we vow, we’ll do what we can to help the world. We shake on it. A secret handshake.

Perry has a long way to go to get rich. He never has a dime. Everything we do is my treat. I don’t have much—a modest allowance, plus what I hustle from guests at the casinos and hotels. But I don’t care; what’s mine is Perry’s, because I’ve decided that Perry is my new
best
friend. My father gives me five dollars every day for food, and I freely spend half on Perry.

We meet every afternoon at Cambridge. After goofing off, hitting a few balls around, we go for a snack. We slip out the back door, hop the wall, and race across the vacant lot to 7-Eleven, where we play video games and eat Chipwiches, paid for by me, until it’s time to go home.

A Chipwich is a new ice cream sandwich Perry recently discovered. Vanilla ice cream pressed between two doughy chocolate chip cookies—it’s the greatest food in the world, according to Perry, who’s a raging addict. He loves Chipwiches more than talking. He can talk for an hour about the beauty of the Chipwich—and yet a Chipwich is one of the few things that can get him to stop talking. I buy him Chipwiches by the dozens, and I feel sorry for him that he doesn’t have enough money to feed his habit.

We’re at 7-Eleven one day when Perry stops chewing his Chipwich and looks up at the wall clock.

Shit, Andre, we better get back to Cambridge, my mother’s coming early to get me.

Your mother?

Yeah. She said to be ready and waiting out front.

We haul ass across the vacant lot.

Uh-oh, Perry shouts, there she is!

I look up the street and see two cars cruising toward Cambridge—a Volkswagen bug and a convertible Rolls-Royce. I see the bug keep going past Cambridge, and I tell Perry to relax, we have time. She missed the turn.

No, Perry says, come on, come on.

He turns on the jets, sprinting after the Rolls.

Hey! What the—? Perry, are you kidding? Your mom drives a Rolls? Are you
—rich?

I guess so.

Why didn’t you tell me?

You never asked.

For me, that’s the definition of being rich: it doesn’t cross your mind to mention it to your best friend. And money is such a given you don’t care how you come by it.

Perry, however, is more than rich. Perry is super-rich. Perry is Richie Rich. His father, a senior partner at a major law firm, owns a local TV station. He sells
air
, Perry says. Imagine.
Selling air
. When you can sell air, man, you’ve got it made. (Presumably his father gives him air for an allowance.)

My father finally lets me visit Perry’s house, and I discover that he doesn’t live in a house, in fact, but a mega-mansion. His mother drives us there in the Rolls, and my eyes get big as we pass slowly up a massive front drive, around green rolling hills, then under enormous shade trees. We stop outside a place that looks like Bruce Wayne’s stately manor. One
entire wing is set aside for Perry, including a teenager’s dream room, featuring a ping-pong table, pool table, poker table, big-screen TV, mini fridge, and drum set. Down a long hallway lies Perry’s bedroom, the walls of which are covered with dozens and dozens of
Sports Illustrated
covers.

My head rotating on a swivel, I look at all the portraits of great athletes and I can only say one word: Whoa.

Did this all myself, Perry says.

The next time I’m at the dentist I tear off the covers of all the
Sports Illustrateds
in the waiting room and stash them under my jacket. When I hand them to Perry, he shakes his head.

No, I have this one. And this one. I have them all, Andre. I have a subscription.

Oh. OK. Sorry.

It’s not just that I’ve never met a rich kid. I’ve also never met a kid with a subscription.

I
F WE
’
RE NOT HANGING OUT AT
C
AMBRIDGE
, or at his mansion, Perry and I are talking on the phone. We’re inseparable. He’s crushed, therefore, when I tell him that I’m going away for a month, to play a series of tournaments in Australia. McDonald’s is putting together a team of America’s elite juniors, sending us to play Australia’s best.

A whole month?

I know. But I have no choice. My father.

I’m not being entirely truthful. I’m one of only two twelve-year-olds selected, so I’m honored, excited, if slightly on edge about traveling so far from home—the plane ride is fourteen hours. For Perry’s sake I downplay the trip. I tell him not to worry, I’ll be back in no time, and we’ll have a Chipwich feast.

I fly alone to Los Angeles, and upon landing I want to go straight back to Vegas. I’m scared. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go or how to find my way through the airport. I feel as if I stick out in my warm-up suit with the McDonald’s Golden Arches on the back and my name on the chest. Now, off in the distance I see a group of kids wearing the same warm-up suit. My team. I approach the one adult in the group and introduce myself.

He flashes a big smile. He’s the coach. My first real coach.

Agassi, he says. The hotshot from Vegas? Hey, glad to have you aboard!

During the flight to Australia, Coach stands in the aisle, telling us how the trip is going to work. We’re going to play five tournaments in five different cities. The most important tournament, however, will be the third, in Sydney. That’s where we’ll pit our best against the best Australians.

There should be five thousand fans in the arena, he says, plus it’s going to be televised throughout Australia.

Talk about pressure.

But here’s the good news, Coach says. Every time you win a tournament, I’ll let you have one cold beer.

I win my first tournament, in Adelaide, no problem, and on the bus Coach hands me an ice-cold Foster’s Lager. I think of Perry and our pact. I think of how strange it is that I’m twelve and being served booze. But the beer can looks so frosty cold, and my teammates are watching. Also, I’m thousands of miles from home—fuck it. I take a sip. Delicious. I drain it in four gulps, then wrestle with my guilty conscience the rest of the afternoon. I stare out the window as the outback crawls by and I wonder how Perry will take the news, if he’ll stop being my friend.

I win three of the next four tournaments. Three more beers. Each more delicious than the last. But with every sip, I taste the bitter dregs of guilt.

P
ERRY AND
I
FALL
right back into our old routine. Horror movies. Long talks. Cambridge. 7-Eleven. Chipwiches. Every now and then, however, I look at him and feel the weight of my betrayal.

We’re walking from Cambridge to 7-Eleven and I can’t hold it in any longer. The guilt is eating away at me. We’re each wearing headphones plugged into Perry’s Walkman, listening to Prince.
Purple Rain
. I tap Perry on the shoulder and tell him to take off his headphones.

What’s up?

I don’t know how to say this.

He stares.

What is it?

Perry. I broke our pact.

No.

I had a beer in Australia.

Just one?

Four.

Four!

I look down.

He thinks. He stares off at the mountains. Well, he says, we make choices in life, Andre, and you’ve made yours. I guess that leaves me on my own.

But a few minutes later, he’s curious. He asks how the beers tasted, and again I can’t lie. I tell him they were great. I apologize again, but there’s no point in pretending to be remorseful. Perry’s right—I had a choice, for once, and I made it. Sure, I wish I hadn’t broken our pact, but I can’t feel bad about finally exercising free will.

Perry frowns like a father. Not like my father, or his father, but like a TV father. He looks as if he should be wearing a cardigan sweater and smoking a pipe. I realize that the pact Perry and I made, at its root, was a promise to become each other’s fathers. To raise each other. I apologize once more, and I realize how much I missed Perry while I was gone. I make another pact, with myself, that I won’t leave home again.

M
Y FATHER ACCOSTS ME IN THE KITCHEN
. He says we need to talk. I wonder if he heard about the beer.

He tells me to sit at the table. He sits across from me. An unfinished Norman Rockwell separates us. He describes a story he caught recently on
60 Minutes
. It was all about a tennis boarding school on the west coast of Florida, near Tampa Bay. The first school of its kind, my father says. A boot camp for young tennis players, it’s run by a former paratrooper named Nick Bollettieri.

So?

So—you’re going there.

What!

You’re not getting any better here in Las Vegas. You’ve beaten all the local boys. You’ve beaten all the boys in the West.
Andre, you’ve beaten all the players at the local college!
I have nothing left to teach you.

My father doesn’t say the words, but it’s obvious: he’s determined to do things differently with me. He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes he made with my siblings. He ruined their games by holding on too long, too tight, and in the process he ruined his relationship with them. Things got so bad with Rita that she’s recently run off with Pancho Gonzalez, the tennis legend, who’s at least thirty years her senior. My father doesn’t want to limit me, or break me, or ruin me. So he’s banishing me. He’s sending me away, partly to protect me from himself.

Andre, he says, you’ve got to eat, sleep, and drink tennis. It’s the only way you’re going to be number one.

I already eat, sleep, and drink tennis.

But he wants me to do my eating, sleeping, and drinking elsewhere.

How much does this tennis academy cost?

About $12,000 a year.

We can’t afford that.

You’re only going for three months. That’s $3,000.

We can’t afford that either.

It’s an investment. In you. We’ll find a way.

I don’t want to go.

I can see from my father’s face it’s settled. End of story.

I try to look on the bright side. It’s only three months. I can take anything for three months. Also, how bad could it be? Maybe it will be like Australia. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe there will be unforeseen benefits. Maybe it will feel like playing for a team.

What about school? I ask. I’m in the middle of seventh grade.

There’s a school in the next town, my father says. You’ll go in the morning, for half a day, then play tennis all afternoon and into the night.

Sounds grueling. A short time later my mother tells me that the
60 Minutes
report was actually an exposé on this Bollettieri character, who was in essence running a tennis sweatshop that employed child labor.

T
HEY GIVE A GOODBYE PARTY
for me at Cambridge. Mr. Fong looks glum, Perry looks suicidal, my father looks uncertain. We stand around eating cake. We play tennis with the balloons, then pop them with pins. Everyone pats me on the back and says what a blast I’m going to have.

I know, I say. Can’t wait to mix it up with those Florida kids.

The lie sounds like a deliberate miss, like a ball off the wooden rim of my racket.

As the day of my departure draws closer, I don’t sleep well. I wake up thrashing, sweating, twisted up in the sheets. I can’t eat. All at once the concept of homesickness makes perfect sense. I don’t want to leave my home, my siblings, my mother, my best friend. Despite the tension of my home, the occasional terror, I’d give anything to stay. For all the pain my father has caused me, the one constant has been his presence. He’s always been there, at my back, and now he won’t be. I feel abandoned. I thought the one thing I wanted was to be free of him, and now that he’s sending me away, I’m heartbroken.

I spend my last days at home hoping that my mother will come to my
rescue. I look at her imploringly, but she looks back with a face that says: I’ve seen him break three kids. You’re lucky to be getting out while you’re whole.

My father drives me to the airport. My mother wants to go but can’t miss a day of work. Perry takes her place. He doesn’t stop talking the whole way. I can’t decide if he’s trying to cheer me up or himself. It’s only three months, he says. We’ll write letters, postcards. You’ll see, it’s going to be fine. You’re going to learn so much. Maybe I’ll even come visit.

I think about
Visiting Hours
, the cheesy horror movie we saw the night our friendship was born. Perry is acting now the way he acted then, the way he always reacts to fear—twitching, jumping out of his seat. And I’m reacting in my typical way. A cat thrown into a room full of dogs.

T
HE AIRPORT SHUTTLE
pulls into the compound just after sunset. The Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, built on an old tomato farm, is nothing fancy, just a few outbuildings that look like cell blocks. They’re named like cell blocks too: B Building, C Building. I look around, half expecting to find a guard tower and razor wire. More ominously, stretching off into the distance I see row after row of tennis courts.

As the sun sinks beyond the inky black marshes, the temperature plummets. I huddle into my T-shirt. I thought Florida was supposed to be hot. A staff member greets me as I step out of the van and marches me straight to my barracks, which are empty and eerily quiet.

Where is everyone?

Study hall, he says. In a few minutes it’ll be free hour. That’s the hour between study hall and bedtime. Why don’t you go down to the rec center and introduce yourself to the others?