I relent and pull out a red-and-green worm, then bite its head off. “I’m not a scientist,” I say between chews. “I’m a soccer player.”
“Oh yes. Yes, of course”—she gives me her mom version of side-eye—“I suppose that’s why you’ve covered every horizontal surface in your bedroom with old rocks.”
“Fossils, Mom. Those are corals.”
She hands me another gummy worm, which I accept. Ice cream, French fries, and candy have helped my hangover immensely. “All I’m saying is, you can be both, you know. A soccer-playing scientist sounds fine to me.”
She studies me for a moment as I watch Ben squatting low on defense. “Your powers of observation seem especially well tuned today.”
I whirl to face her, and see a tiny smile and raised eyebrow. Before I can protest, she jumps up and cheers for Will, who has stolen the ball from Ben. He presses in a wide arc to the top of the driveway, trying to shake Ben, then abruptly pulls up for a jump shot. Ben is a split second late, and the ball barely clears the tips of his fingers as he leaps for the block. There is a thwfft, and then Will’s unbridled hoot of joy.
“No way, dude!” Ben is as excited as Will. “Where the hell did that shot come from?” He holds up a hand and Will leaps to high-five him, both of them yelping. Ben turns to me. “Your bro is a freakin’ pistol.”
Will looks more like a balloon on the verge of exploding, his whole body puffed to the bursting point by Ben’s praise. I know how much it means to him that Ben thinks he’s got skills. He pushes his skinny chest out a little farther as he runs to get the ball.
“Don’t brag on him too much,” I warn. “His head gets any bigger, he’ll float away.”
Ben grabs my brother in a headlock and rubs his knuckles across Will’s hair. “Nah, we’ll keep Pistol humble.”
Will laughs and struggles free with a smile that’s lit from within. He’s in heaven. I’ve seen him aping what Ben and the rest of the guys on the varsity team do: haircuts, high-tops, slim shorts, baggy tank tops, Ben’s side-swept bangs, a wristband pushed up by his elbow like Dooney, striped socks to his knees like Deacon. Now he’s been handed the highest honor an upperclassman can bestow upon a humble frosh: the Nickname.
In an instant, I can see it all: Will’s efforts to persuade me to bring him along to the next party will double. He followed me around for two weeks begging to go to Dooney’s last night. Now I’ll never hear the end of it. Still, there’s something about the look on his face that pleases me. In this town basketball is king, and Will has just been made a squire to one of the knights at the round table.
Mom tosses me the bag of gummy worms with a grin and starts up the stairs to the front door. “Well, ‘Pistol,’ you can shoot right into the kitchen and help me set the table. Staying for dinner, Ben?”
“Sure.”
She nods. “Nice having you around again. Put your shirt on and help Carl get the grill going.”
If it were anyone else, I’d die a thousand deaths, but this is Ben and he knows my mom. She’s a general in search of an army. As she disappears inside, she yells for my dad to get the charcoal out of the garage. He hollers something back, but we can only make out one word before the storm door snaps closed:
“. . . yahoos . . .”
Ben grins and pops his arms into his T-shirt before he whips it over his head. In that split second, I feel the comfort of his presence. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t come to dinner for a long time. Now he’s back—only new and improved.
It’s as if no time has passed at all.
My phone buzzes as I climb into bed that night.
“Oh my god,” groans Rachel. “I left you three voice mails.”
I smile as I reach over and switch off the lamp. “You know I never check voice mail. You might as well write me a message, put it in a bottle, and throw it into the creek behind your house.”
“Clearly,” she says with a sigh. “One day, someone important is going to call you, and you’re going to be sorry.”
“Rachel, you are important. You’re also the only person in the twenty-first century who still leaves voice mails.”
“I sent texts and Facebook messages, too. Lindsey and Christy are on high alert.”
“For what?”
“A search party.”
“For whom?”
Rachel sighs. “For you, and your flawless pronoun usage. Where were you all day that you couldn’t check your phone?”
While I was hanging out with Ben, I didn’t think about reading texts or checking Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. Not at all. Not even once.
“I was . . . busy.”
Rachel knows I’m hedging. “With who?”
“Whom,” I correct.
She yells aaaaaaaaaargh into the phone, prompting me to pull it a few inches from my face and laugh. “Lindsey says she saw you hanging out at the park with Ben.”
My pulse speeds up. Who else saw us? I want to keep whatever this is between us for myself—at least until I know if we’re more than friends.
“So if Lindsey saw me there, why are you calling to ask me where I was?”
Rachel is quiet for a moment. “Kate?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t. Make. Me. Come. Over. There.”
“What? We were just hanging out,” I say matter-of-factly. “From time to time, we hang out. As is our custom. Since we were five years old.”
“With his head in your lap?”
This is what we do, Rachel and I. It’s why we’re best friends. If it were up to her, even state secrets would be shared, thus causing disaster on a global level. If it were up to me, during said disaster we’d all die alone in the dark from lack of communication and basic resources. The simple fact of the matter is, we need each other. Still, I find a strange delight in making her pry the details out of me.
“I’m waiting,” she reminds me.
“For what?”
She’s all business. “Confirmation of head in lap.”
“I will not stand for these wild allegations.”
“Oh my god,” she groans. “This isn’t even the biggest story of the day, and you’re making me work my butt off for it. You and Ben hanging out is like a blip on the scrolling ticker under the anchor’s face on CNN.”
“Fine,” I relent. “I walked over to his house to say thank you for bringing me back home last night.”
“Aaaaaand?”
“And we went to get ice cream and sat in the park.”
“Kate, this will go faster if you just tell me all of the details at once.”
I smile. “But I like hearing you beg.”
“Okay,” she says. “Then I have no choice. You’re forcing me to do this.”
“Do what?”
“If you don’t spill it this instant, I will tell everyone in school that you are a National Merit Semifinalist, and then whatever this is that you have with Ben will be doomed because your secret genius will be known to all.”
I start to giggle. Rachel is the only person who a) gives me ultimatums, and b) makes me laugh like a sixth-grader.
“Okay, okay! Uncle.” I crack. “Ben put his head in my lap while we were talking, and then he fell asleep for a few minutes.”
“That’s it?” she asks.
“That’s it.”
“You didn’t bore him to death with all your smarty-pants-ness, did you? Is that why he fell asleep?”
“No, Rach. Ben has a secret, too.”
“Narcolepsy? I knew it. He could never stay awake in geometry last year.”
“No.” I laugh, and take a deep breath. “He’s also a total brainiac.”
“Get. Out. He didn’t—”
“He did. Semifinalist. But don’t tell anyone. I’m sure he wants to break the news to Dooney and Deacon in whatever way will cause him the least”—I struggle for the right word—“hassle.”
“Dooney and Deacon?”
“Promise me you won’t tell them—or anybody who knows them.”
Rachel pauses. “Um, I’m pretty sure they have other stuff to worry about besides Ben Cody being too smart.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Only the biggest story of today,” she says.
“You mean the party?”
“I just can’t with you right now,” says Rachel. “You haven’t looked at your phone since you walked over to Ben’s, have you?”
“Just now,” I admit. “You’re my first contact with the media that is social.”
“This is why I love you, Kate Weston.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing I can’t catch you up on tomorrow,” she says. “Sleep tight.”
“Wait—how do you know I’m already in bed?” I ask her.
“Are you in bed?”
I fluff my pillow and assume my British accent. “I might be. Or I might be about to sneak out for a clandestine rendezvous with a mysterious stranger.”
“Uh-huh,” says Rachel. “And I might be crowned Miss Nebraska next month. See you tomorrow, Katherine the Great.”
eight
“SHE WAS SO wasted.”
I can hear Christy long before I see her walk around the corner with Lindsey. It’s one of the things that makes her an excellent goalie: Her voice carries clear across the field. Also, she’s built like a tank: solid muscle.
The four of us got lucky this year; we were assigned spots just across from the senior stairwell where the lockers of the graduating class begin. Dooney and Deacon Mills shuffle down the steps above us. Some people claim the basketball players at our school have an arrogant strut, but Ben says they’re all walking that slowly because they’re in pain. Coach Sanders kills them with squats in the weight room.
Today, their lope is slowed further because they’ve got their noses about an inch from the screen of Dooney’s phone. I hope they don’t break their necks text-walking on the stairs. We need them both for the state tournament.
Christy’s laugh thunders over the noise in the hall as she gets closer. “Like, blackout drunk.”
“Is she here today?” Lindsey wants to know.
I wait behind my locker door, pretending to dig through books. Are they talking about me?
“Of course not,” Christy says. She tucks a corkscrew of her blond bob behind her ear, spins the combo on her locker, and pops it open as Rachel sails around the corner. “Wait, what? Who’s not here today?”
I grab my geology book and turn around. “I’m here, I’m here. And, yes, I may have been the slightest bit inebriated Saturday night.”
“Not you.” Christy rolls her eyes. “We all knew you’d be here today. You wouldn’t miss school if the building was on fire.”
“So who were you talking about?” I’m confused. Also, possibly, still a little hungover.
“Stacey,” says Rachel. “No way she’s showing up today.”
“Maybe she’s just running late.” Lindsey slips a sparkly barrette into her straight black hair to hold it out of her face, then checks her lip gloss in her locker mirror. She’s the only varsity defender I know who bothers with lip color or hair accessories.
“‘Running late’?” Christy scoffs. “Did you see that picture? I don’t think she was drunk, I think she was dead.”
At the mention of a picture of Stacey, my eyes go wide. Rachel sees the stricken look on my face and holds up both hands. “I deleted it, I promise. This is a different pic.”
“Wait, there are more?” Christy asks. “I need to see them. Now.”
“Ugh. I don’t.” Lindsey sighs and closes her locker.
Rachel shakes her head. “There was one of Stacey with our precious Kate here. I took it early in the evening. Upstairs. In the kitchen.”
“It has been officially redacted.” I grab my purse and look pointedly at Rachel. “I better not be in any others.”
“I swear. You’re not.”
“Don’t worry.” Christy drapes her arm around my shoulders. “You left before the party got moved to the basement.”
“The basement?”
Rachel turns the phone toward me. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen this yet.”
Greg Watts’s Instagram feed. A shot of Deacon with a girl slung over one of his shoulders. I remember my dad hauling me around like this when I was a kid, playing in the backyard. Oh, look! I found a sack of potatoes. Mmmm! These’ll be good eatin’ . . . I’d giggle and squeal as he tromped around, his arm wrapped firmly behind my knees, the blood rushing to my face.
The girl in this picture is Stacey, and she is clearly not giggling. She’s only wearing a bra and her tiny black skirt, and she doesn’t even look conscious. Her mouth lolls open, eyes closed, arms hang limp. She’s bent at the waist, tossed over Deacon’s shoulder, his chin resting on her butt, his arm clamped across her upper thighs.
Dooney is in the picture, too, squatting down behind Deacon, holding Stacey’s hair out of her face, making a goofy look meant to mimic hers: tongue stuck out, eyes rolled back in his head. And over it all, Deacon’s bright grin, a smile on the verge of a laugh: inviting, warm, funny—just like him, usually—but somehow that smile doesn’t seem to match this picture.
“Where’s her top?” I ask.
“Still in the corner of Dooney’s rec room, I’m guessing,” says Rachel.
“Along with her dignity,” agrees Lindsey.
Rachel grabs my shoulder and turns me to face her. “Speaking of tops, is that new?”
“Oh yeah. It was a birthday present.”
Grandma Clark sent it to me last month along with a card that had a unicorn on it. It’s just a cotton blouse from the Gap—probably the clearance rack at the outlet near her condo. She doesn’t always get it right, but this one fits perfectly, and the deep emerald green brings out the slightest hint of red in my hair.
“You saved it since your birthday?” Lindsey is incredulous. “But it’s so cute.”
“Totally,” agrees Rachel. “Really shows off your rack. But not in a slutty sort of way.”
Dooney and Deacon have their faces buried in separate phones now, thumbs tapping like mad. Above us, Ben catches my eye as he starts down the stairs. He flips his chin up once in my direction and winks. I smile back.
Lindsey catches the whole thing. “Oh, I get it,” she says. “You just needed someone to wear it for.”
Rachel looks over her shoulder and sees Ben at his locker. “Right? Hey, Kate, Ben talking to anybody lately?”
“Stop it, you guys.”
Christy catches on and her eyes narrow. “Heard about your little walk in the park yesterday. Or was it a nap?”
“We are just friends.”
The warning bell rings: two minutes before first period starts. Actually, I should say the “tone sounds.” Over winter break, Principal Hargrove replaced the aging standard metal bells and clappers at Coral Sands High with a new system that plays a bizarre electronic beep to signal the beginning and end of each class period. Rachel says it’s a perfect concert B-flat. She can tune her flute to it at the beginning of band. Regardless, it’s been three months and it still makes me jump every time.
“I will never get used to that,” I groan.
“Me neither,” says Lindsey.
“Why can’t it be a nice prerecorded voice?” Rachel demonstrates, sounding like one of those golf commentators on TV: “Ladies and gentlemen, first period will begin in two minutes. Please proceed to your homeroom.”
The four of us are laughing as we walk into geology. Ben slides into the desk behind mine as the tone beeps the beginning of class.
“Hey,” he whispers. “You look great.”
I try not to blush, but fail. Thankfully, Ben can’t see the grin spreading across my face. Rachel can, though. She tries to catch my eye, but I refuse to look at her because she’ll start laughing at me, and then my cheeks will never cool down. I will die the color of a flamingo.
Mr. Johnston starts taking attendance, and I smile the whole time he’s
calling names, until he gets to “Stallard, Stacey.” There’s complete silence for a split second before Randy Coontz does a loud fake cough: “Whore.”
The word floats across the classroom, batted aloft by a laugh here or there. I glance at Christy, who chortles once before Rachel glares at her, and she bites her lip.
“That’s a detention for you, Randy.” Mr. Johnston tosses a pad of pink slips onto his desk, and scribbles across the top copy. “Anybody else want to join him?”
“What? I just coughed!” Randy squeaks, trying to sound cool. His freckles are popping out on his neck. His ears, which normally stick out like jug handles seem even bigger—blazing red.
Mr. Johnston holds up a hand. “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Coontz. I was doing the cough put-down before you were born.”
“But if I miss practice tonight, Coach won’t let me suit up next weekend.”
“Haven’t ever seen you leave the bench. Don’t think Coach Sanders will care.”
Ben huffs a silent laugh behind me, and I steal a glance over my shoulder. He is hiding a grin, staring straight down at his desk. My smile returns. Ben is so much smarter than the average doofus on the basketball team.
Mr. Johnston flips on a projector and opens his laptop to a series of slides showing different strata of sedimentary rock found in Iowa. He is talking about how these layers are usually only visible in vertical surfaces around our state, like boulders, or road cuts where dynamite was used to blast through hillsides so a highway could be built without curves.
I start to take notes, but I can’t focus on these pictures. The only image I can see is the one of Deacon with Stacey tossed over his shoulder. It’s burned into my brain. I glance over at the empty desk near the window where Stacey usually sits. We don’t have assigned seats in geology, but it’s funny how we all settle into a routine, static and predictable. I sit in the same desk almost every day in this class. Since September, Ben has sat behind me. Lindsey on my left, Rachel to my right, and Christy in front of her.
Stacey sits over by the window and usually spends the class period staring into the trees at the back edge of the parking lot. The light from the window makes her a silhouette, a shadow of the girl I used to know. Sometimes Mr. Johnston calls on us at random to answer a question—to see if we’re following along. Each time he calls on Stacey, she startles and gives him a blank stare from eyes ringed in too much black liner.
What We Saw Page 4