Already Gone

by Bridget E. Baker

  "You won sweetheart, right?" my mom asked. "That gives you how many points now?"

  I shrugged nonchalantly and said, "Twelve."

  "Doesn't that mean you're qualified?" she asked. "You're going to TFA state again this year?"

  I shook my head. "I need a partnership with twelve. So far, I have fourteen, but six are with Drew and eight are with Mason."

  My mom pursed her lips. "I hope you can get another four with Mason then. Or are you going to debate with Drew again?"

  I thought about Drew and how hard it was to debate with her, how impossible it was to even talk to her right now. Things were so easy with Mason and so natural. And he had so much raw talent. "I think I'll stick with Mason, but..."

  My mom's eyes told me she understood. "Drew must be pretty disappointed. She’s never missed an awards ceremony. Where is she now?"

  I sighed. If I told my mom Drew had ditched the debate awards to hang out with a spoiled rich drug dealer from school, Mom would call Drew’s dad so fast that watching her pull out her phone would give me whiplash. I might be mad at Drew for ditching me and being so rude, but I couldn’t bail on her, chew her out, and rat her out in the same day. “She left right after we found out we won."

  “She’s not taking the bus back?” Mom narrows her eyes at me, clearly combining her engineering analysis capabilities with her motherly intuition to sniff out my weak cover lie.

  I wanted to give more details, but I’d learned the hard way that the more I talk, the more she uncovers. I shook my head.

  My mom pointed. "Is that Mason right there?"

  Mason saw her and waved, like a drowning man lunging for a floatie. When she waved back, he snatched the opportunity to stand up and make his excuses. He walked over to where we were sitting and pulled up a chair on my left side. Before he sat down, he held out his hand. "I'm Mason Montcellier. Nice to meet you."

  "I'm Angelica's mom."

  He put his hand down in mock confusion. "Wait, who's Angelica?" He turned to me. "I thought your name was Lacy."

  My mom tuts. "No, not really. Lacy’s only a nickname. Her father wanted us to name her Lacy, and he insisted on calling her that. The nickname kind of stuck. She's always gone by that, but I insist on calling her by her given name. It's so much more elegant, don't you think?"

  Mason nodded. "I do. Angelica sounds much more sophisticated."

  My mom gave me a pointed look. "See? Someone gets it." She turned back to Mason and practically purred. My mom liked to be right. "Nice to meet you, Mason. I hear you're quite the debater. It's great for my daughter to finally have a partner equal to her in skill."

  Mason leaned forward, his elbows on his knees so he could see my mom around me. "I wouldn't say I’m equal to her skill, but she dragged me along with grace."

  The Katy Coach stood up on stage and started to announce the awards. There aren't ever very many kids who have hung around for the final awards ceremony at the end of a long two-day tournament. You're usually cheered on by the other students who are receiving awards. And maybe a handful of kids who came by bus from another city and are consequently too far to drive back home themselves. Tonight was no different, but it felt good, really good, to walk up to the stage and take a big old first place trophy. After the awards had all been handed out, Coach Whitrock surprised me by calling us both back up.

  "This doesn't happen often, ladies and gentlemen, but I'm going to invite our first place winners back up to the stage, because we have another award for them. Both of them. As you know, we offer five speaker awards for policy debate. Tonight, whether we dropped the high and low speaker scores or not, two debaters still tied for first place. They just so happen to be teammates. Please hold your applause until the end, in the interest of time, but I'd like to congratulate Mason Montcellier and Lacy Shelton on their first place win. You are tied for best speaker in the policy debate arena."

  He handed us two trophies and then said, "I know this is a first and second place trophy, but we didn't anticipate a tie. You two can duke it out when you get to your bus to determine who takes which trophy home."

  When we reached the seats next to my mom again, the awards concluded, I tried to give the first place trophy to Mason. "It's your first tournament. You have to take it home."

  "It's yours," he said. "You earned it. The only reason I even had anything to say was because of your hard work crafting the unique plan, and your excellent explanations."

  I stood up and shook my head, leaving the trophy on the seat.

  "Oh come on," Mason whined. "Just take it."

  My mom picked it up. "Well if neither of you want it, I'll take it." She sounded exasperated, but she was smiling.

  Before we could argue further, our first judge walked up to us. I had no idea any of the judges who weren’t coaches had stuck around. He held his hand out to me and I took it.

  "Mr. Langston, right?" I asked.

  He nodded before he shook Mason's hand. "I wanted to say congratulations to the two of you. Did I hear the rumors right?"

  "What rumors?" I asked.

  He stared Mason in the eye. "Was this your first time debating? I saw your very first round?"

  Mason grinned. "I was just explaining that Lacy's an excellent teacher."

  Mr. Langston whistled. "You better not give up after this tournament. I didn't mention this earlier, but the college I debated for was Yale." He turned so that we could both see his face. "My good friend and former team captain is their recruiter now, and he was lamenting the sorry group of debaters they wound up with this year. He's looking to aggressively recruit some new blood for next year's team. I'd love to send him your information. I bet he'd like to come out and watch the two of you debate, if you're interested."

  Uh, heck yeah I was interested. I hastily scribbled down my information and then Mason did, too. After that we had to rush to catch the bus. I could’ve gone home with my mom, but Mason was riding the bus, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. My mom widened her eyes at me knowingly when I told her my bag was on the bus already.

  But also, I wanted to check on Drew. I told my mom she wasn’t riding the bus so Mom wouldn’t press me about where she was, but I thought she’d be there.

  Only when the bus pulled out, she wasn’t on it. I texted her. WHERE ARE YOU?

  She texted back right away. JACK’S TAKING ME HOME.

  I sighed. PLEASE BE SAFE. I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE WHILE WE’RE FIGHTING.

  She texted back. WHATEVER, I’M OVER IT.

  I gritted my teeth, but everything I thought to say back seemed like it would just make things worse, so I finally put my phone away.

  I fell asleep on Mason's shoulder on the way home. I was horrified when I realized upon waking that I'd drooled. I wiped it away quickly and hoped he didn't notice. If he did, he didn't say anything about it. He just gave me a hug goodnight and headed for his dad's car. I walked to my mom's, thinking I'd never had such a great weekend in my life.

  * * *

  I stand up and pass the pages to Dr. Brasher, massaging my cramping hand as I do. I doubt I've ever physically written that many words in my life. He takes his time reading them, and he doesn't offer me a Chick Lit novel, or an iPad, or anything to look at while he does. I sit down on the chaise lounge while he reads and lean backward, closing my eyes. It's not bad in here when no one is pelting you with questions. My reprieve ends too soon.

  "What you wrote was fine, but I don't see any problems in any of this," he says. "I thought you were starting with the root of the problem. At some point we’ll need to talk about why she died, and your perceived role in that."

  "You don't see a problem in those pages?" I ask, wondering again at his intelligence.

  "You mention Drew briefly, and this Jack person, but other than that, no, I don't see any problems."

  I sigh. "I didn't see a problem yet either, Dr. Brasher, and let me tell you, that's how the worst ones creep up. It's the problems you don't see that whack you right between the e
yes."

  Chapter Six

  Hope

  Dear Diary:

  It's the second Monday since winter break, which means I got my report card today. This might not sound so great to you, but I'm delighted. Straight Cs, which means not a single D!! My mom won't be as happy as me, but then what's new? We can't all be Lacy.

  Sometimes I think they should have named me after my dad instead of her. Lacy got his name, but from what Mom says I'm the one who's just like him. I wish he hadn't died in that car crash. It would’ve been nice not to be the odd one out in our family all the time. Mom’s a genius just like Lacy. With Dad gone, I’m the only dumb one. Half the time I have no idea what they’re talking about.

  Getting my report card wasn’t the only good thing that happened in first period. Today has been completely awesome in every way. I usually hate starting the day with science, but Mr. Archer was out sick and the substitute in Physics just turned on this old movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In some crazy twist of luck, my health teacher had a family emergency. I guess that sounds kind of bad as I write it. It wasn’t lucky for him obviously, but we ended up watching another old movie, What About Bob, which I loved so much. All in all, eligibility across the board, plus the first half of two different old movies instead of boring class equals a great day for me.

  I was in an awesome mood already when I walked out to the natatorium. We're pretty lucky for a crappy old school. We have a natatorium right next to our stadium, and it's actually pretty nice. There's a diving area for the team we currently don't have a coach for, and a ten lane Olympic sized pool. We share it with Brazoswood High School and they have a lot of jerks on their team, but that still gives us five practice lanes each day and we have all ten for half an hour or so, until their team arrives by bus.

  When I walked in the door to the natatorium, Dave, who had been a big baby since I broke up with him, was yelling at Coach. You said I needed to describe stuff better, and I noticed his nostrils were like really big and his face was all red.

  "That teacher is out to get me. It has nothing to do with my work and everything to do with-"

  Dave stopped talking when he saw me and grabbed his bag. He stormed past me, glaring the entire time.

  The words just shot out of my mouth. "What's your problem?"

  He didn't even pause, much less stop to answer me.

  As he left, other members of the team began trickling in. I walked over to Coach and asked, "What was that about?"

  "Dave’s failing English."

  I should've felt bad, and I kind of did. That could’ve been me. I only got a 71 in English. And also, Dave’s one of our best swimmers, his sorry performance last week notwithstanding. So that sucked, but I was also kind of relieved. Maybe by the time he got his grades back up, he'd be over his sulking about our break up. We weren't even really together before anyway. We'd just sort of been hanging out a lot, and then that kind of changed to making out. We hadn't had a discussion about it before he started throwing around words like boyfriend at last Wednesday's meet.

  "That's too bad," I said.

  Coach shrugged. "It means we have a Team Captain position open."

  Just then, someone I had been thinking about non-stop strolled through the doors from the boy's changing room. Broad shoulders, dark hair, light eyes, dark skin. My mind went blank.

  "Hope?"

  I turned back to face Coach Collins. "Yeah?"

  He grinned when he said, "Any ideas who might fill that spot?"

  I didn't want to, but I felt obligated to defend Dave at least a little. "He goes ineligible for one quarter and you give him the boot? Maybe we could just choose a temporary captain. A substitute until Dave gets his grades up."

  Moby grinned. "Did someone say they were looking for a new captain?"

  I kept my face serious. I couldn’t let him know I had been thinking about him daily. "We might be considering options for a fill-in."

  Coach Collins ignored me. "You up for it? Want to be the new co-captain, Moby?"

  Moby said, "Hell to the yeah," and then dove into the water. He swam an easy fifty fly while I rolled my eyes and walked to the girls’ locker room to change.

  "Temporary," I yelled to Coach before I ducked into the locker room.

  I barely heard him respond. "We'll see."

  I didn't know why I was trying to stand up for Dave, except that it seemed like the right thing to do. Or maybe I want to show Moby that I’m not sold on him so he stays interested. Honestly though, we don't even know anything about Moby, so we had no idea what kind of captain he'd make. Coach shouldn’t be so giddy to name him on his first day.

  While I changed, I admitted to myself that I was excited. My heart had begun beating faster the second Moby walked in the door. I knew he was coming, but not when he’d show up. I had no idea he’d be here today, or that we'd be working together to train and run the team.

  When I went back out for practice, Coach set the team to do a dozen freestyle sprints, but asked Moby and me to come talk to him first.

  "I'm going to leave Hope in charge of the sprinters," he said. "Moby, can you take over Dave's job and train the distance swimmers?"

  Moby nodded, surprisingly serious now that we were discussing the nitty gritty details. He continued to be focused and stay on track for the rest of practice, but I caught him looking at me several times. Each time he just smiled and shrugged. It occurred to me that I only caught him staring because I was turning to steal a glance at him. He didn’t seem super smart, but he’d probably worked out that much. So much for my plan to play hard to get.

  Me and my three lanes of sprinters finished first, and I lifted my hand to him as we left the pool. He pulled up at the edge and waved me over, forcing the other swimmers to do kick turns on the far left of the lane.

  "Yeah?" I walked over to him, but lifted my eyebrow so he’d know I was annoyed about being summoned.

  "Can you wait around until we're done?" he asked. "I wanted to go over some stuff with you."

  "Captain stuff?"

  He shrugged.

  I rolled my eyes. "Fine, I’ll hang around a few minutes, but hurry up."

  “You can’t rush perfection.” He winked and dove back in the water.

  I went to the changing room and took a quick shower. I figured I had time. And if I ran a comb through my hair and swiped on some mascara before I went out, well, you would've done the same thing Mrs. Littleton, I swear it’s true. I saw him the second I came out of the locker room, lounging in a chair by the pool.

  "Your tan won't last very long in here," I said.

  He sits up straight and looks at my arms pointedly. "You're tan."

  "That's because I live on the beach."

  "You do?" he asked.

  "Yep. My mom works for Dow Chemical. She took the job when I was a baby, because she wanted to live somewhere she could afford a beach house. She said the waves and sun make her happy. Which is kind of funny, because she like never ever gets in the water."

  "You live in Surfside, then?"

  "Yep." I glanced at the chair next to him, but pointedly didn’t sit. "So what did you want?"

  "I'm in Surfside, too," he said. "And other pleasantries, blah, blah, blah.” He stretches. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to welcome me to the team?"

  I suppressed a smile and didn’t even glance at his perfectly sculpted abs. Well, maybe a little bit, but he didn’t notice it. "Welcome to the team."

  I checked out the oversized clock on the wall. It was almost five-thirty, and my mom was a nut about eating at six. Cs might be great in my book, but I didn’t want to be late on the same day Mom was going to compare my Cs in basic classes to Lacy’s straight As in all AP classes.

  I cleared my throat. "I need to get home, okay. My mom expects me for dinner, so let's talk about whatever it is we need to talk about so I can go."

  "Geez," he said. "You're kind of a drag, huh? Course, I'd be a drag too if my boyfriend was failing out and had to b
e replaced."

  "He's not my boyfriend. It's debatable whether he ever really was, but we broke up last week."

  "Uh oh, lover boy’s bitter.” He raises one eyebrow. “Should I watch my back?"

  "I'm here because you said you wanted to talk to me." I put my hand on my hip. "What do you want?"

  "A date, mermaid. I wanted to ask you out."

  I wanted to grin ear to ear, but I forced a frown instead. "That’s not captain stuff. I waited around because I thought you wanted to talk about the team."

  "The team is a team. We can give them sprints, dry land exercises, and work on sculling, but it's not going to make a very big difference. One of the reasons I love swimming is that ultimately it's an individual sport. You don't need to rely on anyone else, and no one can really let you down."

  "What about relays?"

  He shrugs. "I do one or two relays because Coach always badgers me to pull the other guys along. I can usually yank the whole group into first place, but what I love are my individual events. That's where I shine. I refuse to stress about the rest."

  "You aren't upset about leaving Friendswood and coming here? We're smaller and don't have the perfect track record they do."

  "It's swimming, not track."

  "Funny," I said. "You know what I mean. We don't win as much."

  He shrugged. "Like I said, I’m not much of a team player."

  "Wow, we’re lucky to have you as our new team captain, huh?" I stood up. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  "Is that a no to the date, then?"

  I arched one eyebrow. "Actually, I didn’t answer at all."

  He stood up and took a step toward me. "You have dinner with your family tonight I guess, so how about we go out tomorrow?"

  I shook my head. "I can't. I go out with my mom and sister for dinner every Tuesday night. It's like, a thing we do."

  "I like going out."