I alternate between watching my friends and yelling stuff, wrestling my own matches and checking my phone for Hope. Coach was right. Before I know it, I blow through my first two opponents, and I’m in the semis. If I win, I get a shot at being a champion. This season has been huge for me. I’m down to two doses of meds a day, and my doctor said I can push the morning one to the afternoon on match days. And yeah, I was hoping to wean myself off entirely, but my tics just got too intense. It’s cool, though. The pre-bedtime dose never bothered me anyway, and two doses a day is way easier to deal with than four. I’m not as groggy, which is definitely helpful when you’re locked in a death match with another dude. Plus, I read some articles recently about how the differences in Tourette’s brains might lead to more than just tics—that kids with Tourette’s syndrome might have faster cognitive processing and response times, maybe even faster motor function. And now when I wrestle, I can’t help but wonder if my Tourette’s syndrome is giving me an edge. I feel like I have superpowers or something.
Fifteen minutes before my semifinal match, I start my warm-up protocol. I run in circles, do jumping jacks and somersaults. I gotta keep a sweat going because if you go into a match cold, you’re done. I scan the stands while I do a few more jumping jacks. Mimi waves at me. She, Pam, and Dad are all here. Dean had to go back to school already (though he did stop by Jayla’s first to grovel/see if there’s a snowflake’s chance in hell that she might be willing to go on a date with him the next time he’s home). I kind of thought Hope would be here by now. If she was coming. I finally allow the thought to enter my mind—maybe she’s not.
Whatever. I can’t think about that right now. Can’t let anything psyche me out.
The match ahead of mine finishes. I’ll be up next, wrestling against a guy from one of the bigger schools in Warner Robins. Country boy versus city slicker, and the hometown crowd is loving it. I pull off my sweat suit so I’m just wearing my singlet. Get my headgear and mouthpiece into place. And just as I step onto the mat, I see a flash of white hair in the audience. I think Hope is sitting next to Mimi, unless she’s some kind of mirage, but I can’t think about it. I have to focus. The ref hands us our anklets, calls us to the center of the mat, and it’s time.
The referee lowers his hand as he blows his whistle, and my body kicks into wrestling-robot mode, and I know I’m sinking an underhook and he’s clamping down over it, but it’s hard to really be aware of anything until it’s all over, and we’re standing side by side, and the ref raises my hand.
I could cry. I almost do. I am going to the finals. And Hope was there to see it.
My head whips back toward the stands, but the seat beside Mimi is empty. I look all around the crowd. All around the floor, too. But she’s not here.
As soon as I sign the match sheet and take it to the head scorer’s table, I make my way up to where my family is sitting. Pam wraps me in a hug.
“You were great, Spencer. Here, let me get you a Powerade.”
She riffles through her cooler while my dad looks down at me like he’s never been prouder. It all feels great, but I need to know if I was hallucinating. My eyes are question marks, but thankfully Mimi doesn’t make me ask.
“Hope was here, but she had to run,” she says. “Something about going to Ashley’s.”
Oh, right. Ashley Gray’s. I remember Hope saying she and a few other girls go over there sometimes on Saturdays to hang out or something.
Mimi looks about as pleased and smug as it gets. “I’m supposed to give you this.”
She hands me a folded-up sheet of paper. I open it.
I’m all in.
I want to do something dorky like clutch it to my heart, but Mimi is still eyeing me. My smile kind of takes over my face, though.
“I knew it!” she says.
“It’s nothing. This could be absolutely nothing.” I say it like I believe it, because jinxes are real, and you have to be careful.
“Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s rain, Spencer Barton. I saw the way your face lit up just now.” Mimi is nothing if not subtle.
The finals matches are starting now. Unlike the other matches, they’ll be taking place on one mat in the center of the gym. No split focus this time. No one wants to miss a second. Except me. I want to run out of here and get to Hope as fast as I can because Lord knows what’s going to happen if I delay by even a minute. She’ll change her mind. A hot guy will materialize at Ashley Gray’s and ask her to marry him and live on his island in South America. A tornado will whisk Ashley’s entire house to an alternate universe.
I’m edgier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and I just want this tournament to be over already, and I hate that by luck of the draw 138 is wrestling last. I need to get it together. Winning this would be major for me. Our team even has people on the sidelines videoing everything so we can put the best parts in our highlight reels to send to colleges.
None of my teammates are in the finals until Traven, and I sit up and pay attention. He and his guy are pretty evenly matched, but late in the second period Traven finally scores the first points of the match with a slick reversal. In the third, his opponent escapes, and Traven gives up a takedown in the final seconds. He looks wrecked, but he shouldn’t be. The guy did awesome, especially for a sophomore. If he keeps it up, he’ll win state when he’s a senior.
The next two matches pass in a blur, and then I’m on deck. I’m dressed in my Peach Valley sweat suit. I’ve practiced for weeks. I am a lean, toned, certified lethal weapon. (At least, that’s what I tell myself in the mirror every morning.) I am so hungry for a win I can taste it. I stuff my sweat suit in my gym bag and hop around so I can stay warm. It feels strange this time. Like the real battle is something that happens when this is over, and this is just something I have to get through. I shake hands with the other guy. I know he can’t weigh more than 138, but I swear, he’s huge. I hear Paul and the rest of my team screaming my name. And then I go for it. Because everything about this day is about going for it. There is no more holding back. There is no more being scared. There is only action and where it leads you.
I take a deep shot and go for a fireman’s carry. He tries to drop his weight for a sprawl, but I pull him over me by his arm. He’s fighting—off of his back, onto his belly—and I immediately sink a deep half nelson before he can clamp his arm down on mine. I drive my head into the back of his, pushing him forward with all my leverage. Reach around and grab his wrist with my hand. Good grief, his forearm is like an anaconda. I go for a knee whip and . . . he’s on his back! I lock a Gable grip behind his head and squeeze. He flops with all his strength, and we’re so close to the edge of the mat that I’m afraid he’ll work his way out of bounds. I’m not sure I can beat this guy if he makes it off his back. I squeeze harder and drive my forehead right into his temple. And then I hear the whistle and the slap of the mat, and I know it’s a pin.
My team floods the mat, and a dozen hands are pushing me into the air, and there’s a note under my phone that says I’m all in, and today is shaping up to be one of the best of my life. It’s weird when you know that, but sometimes you do. Sometimes you have a day that is so epic that you know, even before it’s over, that it’s going to be one of a dozen that you remember forever.
There’s yelling and congratulations, and I want to leave and I want to soak it all in. I’m on a stand, getting a medal, getting my picture taken, and then I just can’t wait anymore.
I run over to Coach.
“Atta boy! You ready to celebrate?”
“Coach, I’m sorry, but I gotta go.” I sure hope my face is showing how important this is.
His eyebrows snap together. “Well, sure. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just. I really need to go now.”
I run over and grab my bag and phone and keys and stuff. I start to tell my family where I’m going, but Mimi waves me off. “I’ve already explained everything.”
“You don’t even know what I’m
doing.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Are you going to Ashley Gray’s to get together with Hope?”
How does she do that? “Maybe.”
“I want a full report later!” she yells as I run away.
I push through the double doors and into the December air. I’m still wearing my singlet, but whatever, I can change in the car. Love doesn’t have time for things like locker rooms.
I crank up the truck, and drive in the direction of Ashley’s house. Luckily, I went to her sixteenth birthday party, so I know how to get there. Hope is going to be there. I am going to make it there before anything horrible can tear us apart. We are going to be okay.
It is only when I hit my first red light that this plan develops a hiccup. I open my gym bag so I can pull some clothes on over my singlet, only my clothes are not in there. Because it’s not my gym bag. I was in such a hurry, I must have grabbed someone else’s. The worst part—there are no clothes of any kind in this gym bag, unless you count a very large, very sweaty singlet. The guy must have already changed.
I weigh my options. Go back to the school and get my bag? Yeah . . . no. That’s not happening. That is exactly the kind of thing the anti-Hope-and-Spencer fates want me to do right now. Go to Ashley Gray’s wearing nothing but my singlet? I mean, I don’t want to, but screw it. I’m doing this.
Ashley’s house appears by degrees as I coax my truck up the hill on Moccasin Lake Road. They call it that because there’s a lake at the end of the road where the water moccasins lay their eggs. In spring, you can almost see the water wriggling with all the baby snakes underneath. So, swimming there is probably not a good idea.
But today, nothing—not a lake filled with venomous snakes or a wrestling uniform that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination—is going to keep me from telling Hope everything I’ve ever thought about us.
I knock on the door with maybe too much force, I can’t help it. A thin woman with short blonde hair and translucent eyelids answers. “Can I help you?”
She must be Ashley Gray’s mom. I was kind of imagining Hope would answer the door, but hey, that’s okay. As long as she’s here. “Is Hope here?” And then because she looks so utterly flummoxed, I add, “Hope Birdsong?”
She frowns. “Yes.”
The door doesn’t budge.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I need to see her.”
Mrs. Gray glances behind her into a room I can’t see. Winces at me. “This really isn’t the best—”
“Please. It’s important.”
I don’t know if she can read everything on my face, but she sees enough to sway her into opening the door a few more inches. “I’ll get her for you,” she says.
But then she leaves the door open like I’m supposed to follow her. So I do. There’s a short hallway, and I hear girls’ voices coming from the other side of it. And then I’m standing in a dining room, only I can already see the girls in the living room because the house is one of those open floor plans, and really it’s all kind of the same room.
“Hope,” calls Mrs. Gray.
And now all the girls can see me. I wasn’t expecting this many of them. There’s, like, seven (eight?) tucked into chairs, perched on couches and ottomans, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Hope’s eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. “Spencer?”
I weave closer, tripping over a stone statue of a bulldog wearing a Georgia jersey in the process. Their eyes zigzag right along with me, following my every move, and I become suddenly and uncomfortably aware of two things:
1) I am still wearing my wrestling singlet (and only my wrestling singlet). Normally, being on display in skin-tight green polyurethane in a room full of girls would throw me into worries about cold weather and shrinkage, except that,
2) They are all crying.
I mean, they aren’t all full-on sobbing (though the one rocking back and forth on the ottoman is), but every last one of them has red eyes, and here and there I see a tear-streaked face or a fist clenched around a bunch of tissues. The last time I walked in on a group of women crying like this was when I caught Hope and Janie watching Les Mis with Mimi and their mom and a coffee table full of Girl Scout Cookies. I am as woefully unprepared now as I was then.
“Um, hi,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just needed to talk to Hope, and . . .”
Everything I want to say is starting to feel like things that could wait, and I find myself wishing I could go back in time and wipe out this whole plan, or at least the part of it where I dash out of the tournament without putting on actual clothes. Lesson learned. Calling ahead is a good idea. So is asking permission. How come the guys in the movies don’t come off looking like creepy stalkers because that is definitely what I feel like right now.
Hope jumps up from her place on the loveseat. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” I feel ridiculous. “Um, is there somewhere we could talk?”
“Sure. Um.” Hope glances around and seems to realize what I’ve already figured out—they’ll be watching us almost anywhere we go. She leads me back to the hallway by the front door. At least there’s a wall. “Is this okay?”
“Uh-huh.” I rub the back of my neck. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize. I mean, I thought this was a sleepover.”
“Oh.” It’s Hope’s turn to get red-faced. “Yeah, I didn’t tell anyone because I guess I was embarrassed. Not that it’s anything to be embarrassed about—it’s not.” She takes a deep breath like she’s trying to get her thoughts together. “It’s a grief support group. With other girls who are going through the same stuff as me.”
So, really, the worst possible thing I could have burst in on. “Well, that’s great. I’m so glad you’re doing that.”
The smile that spreads across her face is shy/proud/genuine/relieved. “Thanks. It’s been a really good thing for me. I’ve been . . . Well, it’s really helping.”
“That’s so great.” My smile back is giddy/dopey/oblivious.
“So . . . you’re here.”
“Oh, right. I just wanted to—well, I wanted—” I didn’t think I could feel any more like an idiot, but barging in here to declare my undying love for her is starting to seem like the worst idea ever. My thumb traces shapes on the folded-up piece of paper I’m holding. I’m still going to take the flying leap. “I wanted to talk to you about the voicemail I left you. And about this.”
I unfold the paper so we can both see the words. So I can remind myself that they’re real. Hope smiles, and this time it is sheepish/eager/knowing/sexy. My stomach flips. I could spend the rest of my life classifying her smiles.
“I want to talk to you about that, too,” she says. “But maybe somewhere that’s not here.”
I glance back at Ashley’s living room. “Yes, please.”
I wave to the girls and apologize about eighty-five times, and then Hope hangs back to give some sort of explanation speech. I go outside and wait by my truck and rub my arms to keep warm. Hope stays in there a really long time. Long enough for me to make up stories in my head about how they’re all inside laughing at me, and she’s never coming out.
Ashley’s front door finally opens.
“Hey,” I say. “What all did you tell them?”
Hope shrugs coyly. “Let’s just say, I think you have your own fan club now.”
“Oh.” I can barely get one girl to like me, let alone a whole room full of them. I stand a little taller. Puff out my chest a bit. “Well, that’s pretty cool.”
She rolls her eyes. “Stop it.”
And then she goes to push my shoulder, but it’s like her bare skin against my bare skin is too much because her hand kind of gets stuck there. We’re frozen for a second, and then like an idiot, I look down at her hand because I want to see it touching me. She comes to her senses and pulls it away. But now that we’ve touched, I don’t want to be not touching, so I reach out my hand and hold my breath and trace my finger down the back of
her hand where it rests by her side. She lets me. Actually, she makes this little gasping noise that makes me very concerned about the fact that I’m wearing a singlet. I lace my fingers through hers, slowly. It’s different from that time we held hands in the tree stand. Because that time I was trying to figure out if we were friends, and this time I know we’re not.
“Should we go?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Hope. But she doesn’t move to get into the truck. “I drove here, so I should probably drive home, too.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why this disappoints me so much. “Well, we’ll see each other in a little while, then.”
“Yeah,” she says. She doesn’t move to get into her car, either. “At my house?”
“Sure.”
I stand there.
She stands there.
Neither one of us wants to let go of the other’s hand. It finally occurs to me that the sooner we leave, the sooner we get started.
I squeeze her hand. “Soon.”
“Soon,” she echoes. She gives me another smile to catalogue, and we let our arms stretch as she walks away, our fingers tearing apart at the last possible second. Then we both laugh because we realize how ridiculous we’re being.
“Bye, Spence.” Hope laughs again and shakes her head and then she’s gone.
I should have kissed her. Or done something to make this feel more final. It’s all too fragile, and we’ve had too many close calls. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, but we had to get home somehow. Maybe she feels the same way because her silver Civic tails my car like we’re in a bad spy movie, and every time we hit a red light, I glance at the mirror to find her grinning at me.
Part of me wants to go right over to her house when I get home, but a bigger part of me wants to race inside so I can change clothes (and, if I’m really being honest, put on deodorant). The brakes screech when I park, and I take the stairs two at a time.
A Taxonomy of Love Page 23