Varsity Rulebreaker

by Ginger Scott

  Tory’s the first to see us walk in, and his arrogant grin brings me out of my angry euphoria enough to interact with humans like something other than a Neanderthal.

  “Look at you heeding my advice,” he says, grabbing my hand and bringing me in for a bro-hug. Hollis slips into a seat between Lola and June, who quickly checks the size of her shoes, then rushes to the counter to swap them out for larger ones.

  Hollis Taylor does not walk on dainty feet.

  “Are you actually going to take full credit for me and Hollis?”

  I quirk a brow at Tory, testing him. A breathy laugh shakes his chest while he pops a pretzel into his mouth. After chewing for a second, he says, “I sure am,” then winks before punching my arm.

  “Oh, I see how this is.” I chuckle, sliding into the seat across from him and slipping off my shoes. He kicks over the pair he grabbed for me when I texted him from Hollis’s driveway, then tosses a pretzel about a foot in the air, leaning his head back and catching it in his mouth.

  I know his weak spot, though. Tory and I have hung out a lot, and he’s told me enough that I have pieced together his secret.

  “So, when are we all going to see Abby again?” He kicks the plastic of the chair between my legs with enough force that it cracks. My only response is laughter because I’ve hit a nerve. He’s dating a soon-to-be mega star, and he’s keeping it on the down-low because one, they aren’t in the same country right now, and two, he’s still terrified that something’ll mess it up.

  I get it, because I’m a little worried about that too.

  The month is ending soon, thirty days that I’ve known Hollis. We’re too new for something to mess us up so soon, but it’s hard not to feel the threat when our biggest obstacle is cutting lasers into my chest with his eyes across the alley.

  Zack was finishing up a pool game with Lucas when we walked in. I’m not sure whether Hollis saw him, but I did, catching his glare in my periphery. He stopped lining up his shot and straightened to watch us pass like some bully who thinks he owns a biker bar. Zack doesn’t own shit. In fact, he hardly owns a car now, thanks to me and my short-wick temper.

  The air gets cooler somehow when my cousin joins us. I feel him before I see him, and the ice in his stare is as frosty as I expected.

  “Nice shiner,” I say, my quip earning me a warning glance from my girl a few seats away.

  I promised not to say anything about what he did to deserve it. Doesn’t mean I can’t comment on the obvious.

  “Hardly feel it,” he says back. That means it smarts like hell.

  “I bet. You don’t feel much.” I yawn my words out and turn my body to create a physical barrier to end our conversation. Despite my literal cold shoulder, I feel him watching.

  “There’s too many of us, so who wants lane seven?” June asks, tapping her fingers on the computer.

  Hollis stands, volunteering, and takes June by the hand, picking her alliance and moving to the chairs that give her the most distance from my cousin.

  “But I wanted to make a little wager, Hollis,” Zack teases. He must know she shared everything with me, because even though his taunting is directed at her, his eyes are on me.

  “She’ll just embarrass you,” I say, unable to stop myself from defending her.

  My retort must have crossed a line in our unwritten contract, though, because before I can make it worse, Hollis steps over my lap, letting her hand drag across my chest possessively as she passes.

  “Oh, we can wager, Zack. I’m not afraid of you.” Arms folded over her chest, she stops right in front of him, and I realize she isn’t afraid of him at all; she hates how he made her feel. That he has the power to do that, period.

  “Winner buys loser’s beer at the party next weekend.”

  I open my mouth in protest—she’s Coach’s daughter and that’s not a cool ask—but Hollis flashes an open palm behind her back to stop me.

  “Fine.” She pushes her hip out with an extra flair, her exposed thigh popping through her ripped up jeans. I never got this style before, but seeing it on her gives me a new perspective.

  Zack is a decent bowler, so I’m a little conflicted about this wager. With everything that’s happened, my mind immediately unravels his motive. Somehow, Hollis having alcohol will turn into a scandal.

  She’s already locked herself into this battle, one of many in her exhausting war. My only option without being that boyfriend is to stand by her side, so I hold my palms up and back away. I’ll let this play out fair and square, and watch from over here on good ole lane seven.

  “Zack’s a prick, bro. How are you two related?” Tory asks, flipping the top shut on the pizza box and carrying it to the open seat near me. June went back to join Hollis, leaving my cousin surrounded by the girls while Lucas, Tory, Hayden and I take turns daring one another to find the most embarrassing way possible to push the ball down the lane. I have it in the bag with my repeat of Magic Mike, but then Lucas actually gets down on all fours and pushes the ball with nothing more than his nose, somehow rolling that sucker dead-center with enough speed that it knocks down every freaking pin.

  We slap hands and celebrate his mini-victory, but while nothing is serious on lane seven, it’s intense over on lane eight.

  I keep tabs on Hollis’s game, glad she’s up with each consecutive frame but wishing that gap between her and my cousin would widen a little more. By the time it’s down to the tenth frame, I’m too invested to care about finishing my own, and let Tory throw my last two balls. He earns me a whopping seven to bring my score to a non-brag-worthy ninety-six. If I were over on the other lane, I’d be battling Lola for last place. June is clearly wiping the floor with everyone, but those two scores in the middle—they are neck and neck.

  Zack holds his hand over the blower on the ball return, his eyes flitting up to the scoreboard then back to the pins lined up in front of him. I can envision his brain working the math. If he bowls a strike, he can make things pretty tough.

  I might not be able to help Hollis with her tenth frame, but I can do something to tilt this environment in her favor. While my cousin brings his ball into his hands, I reach forward and hook my finger in the belt loop of Hollis’s jeans. She yelps with surprise, but lets me tug her toward me until she falls into my lap. I catch Zack’s glare, so I push Hollis’s hair over her shoulder and kiss the curve of her neck.

  Most people would chalk up the look on his face to jealousy, but I know better. He feels betrayed. I picked her over him. He never thought I would sell him out like that, but then, I never imagined he’d assault a girl and demoralize her in front of two other teammates, so I guess touché. We ain’t even, though. Not by a long shot.

  That little wedge I drove into Zack’s head works. His shoulders scrunch while he lines up his ball, and his footwork is sloppy from the start. When he ends up only knocking down four, he lets his emotions boil over, screaming, “Fuck!” so loud that families turn to look from several lanes away.

  He’s already blown it; he knows he has. He doesn’t even wait for his ball to return but grabs the first one available and chucks it down the lane before the pins are reset. Hollis doesn’t even need her turn, but she takes it, maybe a little to make my cousin watch and suffer while she finishes with a one-sixty-three, bettering him by twenty.

  Zack pretends not to care while he pulls a slice of pizza from the box, tipping his head back and biting off the end. Hollis brushes her hands together, gloating because she earned it, and she stops on the other side of the high top that Zack is sitting at, pretending as if he isn’t there.

  “I like the hard lemonade shit,” she says, peeking in the box but scrunching her nose at the pizza inside. My cousin doesn’t react to her. He takes large bites of his slice, chewing methodically, his eyes focused on some commercial playing on the TV mounted on the wall. After a full minute of being ignored, Hollis slaps her hand down on the table. That gets his attention.

  “I said I like hard lemonade,” she repeats.


  My cousin tosses his crust on top of the box, then brushes the grease from his fingers with a crumpled napkin. I expect him to walk away without responding. He doesn’t necessarily need the last word in things, he just needs to leave a mark. I’ve been in enough arguments with the guy to know how he fights, and sometimes it’s his refusal to engage, period, that drives me to my maddest. He’s doing that to Hollis.

  I’m not ready for his next move. Nobody is. That’s why he makes it, casually flipping the full pitcher over so the bulk of the liquid splashes on Hollis’s pants and onto her feet. I want to blacken his other eye so badly that I lunge at him. The only thing stopping me is the touch of my girl’s wet, sticky hand gripping my forearm.

  “Ooops,” Zack says, no sign of the cousin I used to make future plans with in his dead eyes. He’s let this animosity take over his soul. I mourn him.

  He leaves his mess for us, backing away until he turns and pushes through the double doors that lead out into the lot. In about thirty seconds, he’s going to see the smashed back end of his car. About a minute after that, he’ll realize he can’t open that trunk. And when he drives away from this place, he’s going to see a whole lot of white paint on my massive rear bumper. Thing is, though, as spontaneous as it all was, I knew what I was doing.

  Between my father and me, we’ve backed into some pretty heinous things, including a horse trailer in Santa Fe and a cactus somewhere outside Albuquerque. There are so many colors, dents and dings on the back of my truck that it looks like a painter’s palette. The hitch also gives me a solid steel buffer that I’m sure punched a hole right through his sedan.

  Deep down, my cousin will know it was me who rammed his car. He won’t be able to prove it, and that will make him mad. That part is almost more satisfying than the impact was itself.

  No matter, though, because by the time I’m done telling Uncle Joel about the moral and ethical lines his son has crossed, a hit and run at a bowling alley is going to feel like tee ball.

  I’m the first to breakfast this morning. I’m never first on Saturdays, and already that has suspicions raised. I scared my Aunt Meg when I slid the stool across the tile floor, and she ended up turning around and throwing her spatula at me. She’s used to about twenty more minutes of alone time in here, something I just realized she cherishes. She always hums when she cooks, and hearing it this morning while sipping on coffee that’s mostly cream leaves me at peace with my decision.

  I’ve already finished a plate of pancakes by the time my cousin careens down the stairs. I stare at him over the steaming mug in my hands, but he doesn’t give me a single glance. I know I’m not transparent. It’s killing him to keep his anger bottled inside and to avoid gaslighting me in front of his mom. He’ll wait for Uncle Joel to join us. I’m waiting for Uncle Joel, too.

  “Have you heard from your parents yet?” Meg takes my dirty plate from in front of me and smiles. In all of the drama I forgot that my parents are already on the road, my dad’s second trip across country to get here.

  “Not yet, but if my dad’s driving, I’m sure they’ll get here ahead of schedule.” We both laugh at the truth. My dad has points on his license from speeding tickets, and I’m pretty sure he’s banned from ever taking traffic school again. If he hasn’t learned his lessons by now, he’s hopeless in the eyes of the law.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” She loops her arm with Zack’s, squeezing his bicep while he eats his breakfast at the counter, his back strategically to me. He stiffens at her touch, and the cold shoulder leads her to sag her arms and let her hand slip away.

  “Someone hit the car. Jay’s dad owns a garage though, so . . .” He turns his head enough to convey he knows exactly what happened.

  “Oh, no! Does your dad know? We have insurance. Did the person leave a note?” My aunt’s questions barrel out, and I take a longer than normal sip of my coffee in an effort to hide my smile. I feel a little guilty because in the heat of the moment I didn’t consider that my aunt and uncle would be the ones paying for the damage. My uncle does make Zack work in the summer to help pay for things, though. That’s my guilt loophole, and I take it.

  “No note. Fucking coward,” Zack says, shoveling the last of his pancake into his mouth. He rushed through breakfast to get out of here. Good.

  My aunt smacks him lightly on the back of the neck for his swear, and he halfheartedly apologizes while dumping his plate in the sink. My cousin won’t call me out for being his hit and run in front of my aunt. The information I have is a lot more damaging. And now that I let that notion simmer in my mind, I realize I’m going about this all wrong. It isn’t my uncle I need to talk to; it’s my aunt.

  I’m patient, waiting for Zack to guzzle down his juice and rush out the door to drag his cracked-up car to Jay’s house. When my uncle comes down and joins us for breakfast, I let him tell me what he knows about tryouts, what he’s heard is on the agenda for Monday and Tuesday. I play along while he makes his own predictions, noting the way he always puts Zack in the starting catcher’s job, reminding him of Hollis only once.

  “Yeah, she’ll make the team, I’m sure. I mean she has to, right?” He easily dismisses her talent, assuming daddy’s girl is only there for one reason. Fury builds in my chest because of how clearly I now see it all. Hollis lives with this, and now that I see that double standard, I realize it exists everywhere.

  My aunt clears the table and does the dishes all on her own. She works as an intake specialist for high end orders at a lumber yard six days a week, yet her weekend time is somehow not as sacred as my uncle’s. My mom was always the one to take off for everything when I was little—when I got sick, when I had appointments, when I needed to go somewhere for travel baseball. My dad got to show up for the big things, be there for game time. Often his chair was ready and waiting for his ass to sit in it. When my mom was finally promoted to IT director at the financial company she works for, it was a big deal that she was a woman—the first woman. It took her eighteen years to move up to a salary my father got to in five. My uncle, my dad—they don’t live the double standard on purpose. I don’t think they see it because it’s routine for them, but I bet there are times when my mom and my aunt do. I bet they’d like things to be easy just once.

  I wait for my uncle to leave the room before I broach the subject with my Aunt Meg.

  “What do you think of Hollis?” I’m not sure why this is how I break into this subject, but I know it’s the right choice by the way my aunt settles her gaze on me as she finally sits at the table to drink her own damn cup of coffee in peace.

  “She seems like a pretty strong girl.” She stares at me over the top of her cup while she sips. She knows more than she lets on, she just doesn’t dive head first into the drama. I can learn a lot from this woman.

  “Yeah,” I agree, hugging my now-empty cup between my hands while I lean forward across from her. I tap my fingers against the ceramic while I ride the mental teeter-totter of what to say next. Telling my aunt about her son’s behavior puts the burden on her, something else I realize about this situation.

  My struggle, though, is with what’s right. What Hollis is enduring isn’t. That much is certain, but am I taking the power away from her by starting this chain reaction? My aunt will confront my uncle. Together, they’ll confront Zack. My cousin will blame me, and the issue will get tied up in this ugly knot that never leaves this house.

  But I promised her I wouldn’t tell her dad.

  “You know, sometimes, Cannon . . .” My aunt busts into my circling thoughts and I glance up to find her knowing smile waiting, her tongue held between her teeth as she taps her own nails against her mug. “All a person needs is someone in their corner.”

  I breathe in her words and lean back, letting them settle around my busy mind. She doesn’t know the full breadth of what happened. She would be deeply disappointed in her husband and son. I have a feeling she’s heard enough of their bitching and complaining about what is and isn’t
fair to form a pretty solid picture, though. She’s in Hollis’s corner, and perhaps she’s said things to Uncle Joel and to my cousin that can only truly be understood and relayed by a woman. I am in Hollis’s corner, too. She is strong. And if the circumstances are right, she’ll expose everyone for being who they are simply by being who she is. Maybe my job is to support her the way a man should. Lead by example, and let her shine.

  I give my aunt a tight-lipped smile and stand from my seat, leaning forward to check the level of her coffee. I rinse my mug out and leave it on the counter, then grab the pot and top her off, kissing the top of her head while she gives my arm a squeeze.

  I put the pot back and grab my keys from the counter, grabbing the hoodie I left hanging on the hook by the door.

  “I got a corner to get to,” I say over my shoulder. My aunt raises her cup and I smile. I text Hollis that I’m on my way to her house, and I tell her to bundle up. We’ve got some ziplines to explore.

  20

  Hollis

  This abandoned park is definitely a different experience during the day. Unlike our trips across the canyon at dawn, this afternoon adventure offers clear views of exactly how far the drop is. I never thought I was afraid of heights, but maybe I just needed to meet the right circumstances.

  I cling to Cannon for the first trip across, and barely loosen my grip on the way back. But now, on our fifth ride, I’m able to scope out everything below, including the icy stream that trickles across some gnarly logs and rocks.

  “What’s on this side?” I ask while Cannon unhooks us in preparation for our climb up the eastern pedestal.

  He squints from the bright sun and clouds, scanning the thick woods, then shrugs.

  “Don’t know. Zack and I didn’t explore this stuff.”

  “We should check it out.” I clutch the front of his hoodie with my hand. I wore my knit gloves with the fingers cut out so I could grip better when I climbed.