Will leans in and looks where I am pointing. “I dunno.”
“Then why are you typing it under this girl’s picture? If you don’t even know what it means?”
He shrugs again. It’s an epidemic with the guys in my world, this shrugging. None of them know. Or want to know. Or maybe they do know and just want me off their backs. “I just saw it on a bunch of tweets about . . .” He doesn’t finish.
“Dooney’s party?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t know what it means?”
He shakes his head. “No. A bunch of the varsity guys have been using it.”
“Which ones?”
He huffs a huge breath and rubs his hands on his face. “Why do you care so much?”
“Why don’t you care at all?”
He chews his cheek and drops his head. “Dooney, Deacon, Greg, Randy—”
“So basically, everyone who was arrested this week.”
He nods, miserably. “But more, like LeRon and Reggie. Kyle, too.”
I lean over him and delete the words he almost posted. “You do know you’re not the only person who can see what you comment online, right? You may recall that whole thing about the police collecting people’s phones?”
He groans. “Jeez. Fine. Okay, Mom.”
“If you want, we can certainly talk to Mom about it.” This gets his attention. “Those pictures that girl posted? What’s her name? Emily? They’re not for you. They’re not your property. You aren’t entitled to use them however you please. How many other pictures did you rank?”
He grunts and plugs his earbuds back into the computer. “Why are you so hysterical about this?”
Something in me snaps. I grab the neck of his T-shirt and yank it toward me, almost pulling him out of his chair. My voice is a low, steady whisper. “I am not hysterical about anything. I am concerned that my brother is turning into an asshole.” I push him back into the chair. “Delete every rank you posted on a picture this morning.”
“Or what?” he counters. “You’ll tell Mom?”
“Nope.” I walk across his room and step over a pair of boxer shorts into the hallway. “You’ll deal directly with Dad on this one.”
As I close the door to my own room I hear what sounds like a shoe hitting the wall. I grab my phone and text Rachel.
I need to move my legs before I start using my fists.
twenty-five
BY THE TIME Lindsey joins me on the soccer field at school, I’m already in the middle of my first full line drill. Rachel and Christy are stretching and waiting by the goal nearest to the parking lot. I push buttons to clear and start the stopwatch on my wrist, then put my hands on top of my head to keep from folding in half.
Deep breaths.
Walking in circles.
Christy, bitching.
“Line drills? On a Saturday? How the hell did you let her talk you into this?” she asks Rachel.
“You’ll be glad we did it come Monday.” Rachel jumps up and grabs her own ankle, pulling it from behind to stretch her quads.
“Might as well get the puking out of the way while Coach Lewis isn’t watching,” teases Lindsey. Christy doesn’t even retort, just leans over in a hurdler’s stretch and moans softly into her own kneecap.
“Forty-five seconds, ladies, then we go again.” My breathing slows, but my pulse is still racing. I can’t get the image of Will typing hashtags out of my head.
Line drills consist of running the length of the field from one end to the other in increasing distances: from the goal line to the penalty box and back, then out to the middle of the field and back, and so on, bending down to touch each line with a hand as the trips across the field grow successively longer. By the time Christy touches the goal line at the far end of the field the first time, she is doubled over with cramps and drops to her knees. Rachel, Lindsey, and I tap the near goal line as this happens, and Rachel yells no as loudly as she can. If Coach Lewis sees anyone stop, she adds another drill.
I am already exhausted from two full rounds, but I turn and follow Rachel and Lindsey down to where Christy is kneeling and heaving. Lindsey and I both take an arm and pull her to her feet, dragging her toward the goal while Rachel shouts threats and encouragements, alternating stick and carrot:
You’re almost finished!
Can’t do that Monday, or Coach will make you run it again!
Don’t give up! Go, go, GO!
Christy collapses on her back, and I clear my stopwatch again. “Four more to go. We’ve got forty-five seconds on the clock.”
“I . . . can’t . . . ,” Christy says, panting.
“You can,” I say, offering her a hand. “Get up. Walk. Breathe. You’re the best goalie in our conference, but not if you can’t turn on the speed.”
Reluctantly, she gives me her hand, and I pull her up. “We’re running in twenty,” I say.
“I hate you,” gasps Christy.
“You’ll love her on Monday,” Rachel says grimly. “We all will.”
Then I count down from ten and we go again.
Miraculously, we all finish another four complete drills without seeing what Christy ate for breakfast, then collapse next to the goal breathing hard.
Christy pulls a handful of grass and tosses it in my hair. “What brought this on, Weston?”
I take a deep breath and blow it out through puffed cheeks at the sky above us. “My brother was driving me crazy.”
Rachel laughs. “Send your brother to my house. He can deal with my sisters and I’ll move in with you.”
“Deal. He can be such a moron.”
“He’ll fit right in,” she says.
“What’d he do?” Christy wants to know. “Don’t you two usually get along?”
The breeze is chilly, but it feels good blowing across the sweat on my forehead. I can smell the dirt in the bare spots around the field. This poor grass. We’ll rip it to shreds starting Monday, no matter how much they fertilize it.
I roll over on my side, propped up on an elbow, and run my fingers through the tufts of green. “He was posting stupid crap on Facebook.”
“Like what?” asks Lindsey.
“He and his friend on the JV team were ranking the girls in their class.”
Christy sits up fast, the gleam of nearby gossip in her eyes. “Who’d they say was the hottest?”
“Not the girl they were giving a seven to when I stopped him,” I say.
Christy laughs, and I shoot her a look. “What?” she says. “Boys will be boys.”
“That’s bullshit.” All three of us turn to look at Lindsey.
“Lighten up,” says Rachel.
Lindsey isn’t having it. “‘Boys will be boys’ is what people say to excuse guys when they do something awful.”
“What are you so upset about?” Christy asks. “They didn’t rank you.”
Lindsey faces Christy full on, sitting up on her knees. “Can you honestly tell me you’d find it funny if someone posted a rank on your profile picture?”
Christy just looks away and picks another handful of grass. “Depends on my rank.”
“Bring it,” says Rachel. “I’d be a ten.” She tries to make this a cute joke, flipping her ponytail.
Only Christy laughs. “C’mon. Don’t you remember when Dooney was doing that last fall? He and Deacon would sit at lunch and scribble a score for every girl that picked up a tray in the cafeteria line?”
A small jolt of memory. It was the very first week of school. I was paying so much attention to Ben I’d barely noticed Dooney and Deacon scribbling big numbers with Sharpies in spiral notebooks, holding them up in the air. I hadn’t even realized they were rating girls. What did they rate me? No wonder Ms. Speck marched over on her high heels and told them to knock it off. I’d forgotten all about it.
“That’s just the way guys are,” says Christy.
“Is it?” asks Rachel quietly. “Or is that just the way these guys are?”
“Y
eah,” says Lindsey. “I can’t imagine my dad doing stuff like that with his buddies.”
“Ben would never act like that.” But as the words leave my lips, the tiny voice whispering questions clicks up one more notch on the volume dial.
Christy groans. “Yes, your knight in shining armor is practically perfect in every way.” She lies on her back, both hands on her right calf, pulling her knee toward her chest. “Also, we’re not talking about our dads. We’re talking about a bunch of high school goofballs.”
“Dooney and his gang aren’t ‘goofballs,’” Lindsey says. “They’re creeps.”
I frown. “Ben isn’t a creep.” It comes out defensive.
“Sorry.” Lindsey means it. “I just think you should tell Will to be careful. He clearly thinks Ben and Dooney are the bee’s knees.”
Christy and Rachel giggle when she says this. I can’t help but laugh myself. “The what?” I ask.
Lindsey laughs with us. “The bee’s knees?”
“Oh my god,” chortles Christy. “Who are you right now? My grandpa?”
Rachel stands up. “Well, thanks for the memories, you guys. See you on Monday.” She has to drop Christy off and pick up her sisters from a birthday party. Lindsey and I watch them pull out of the parking lot, driving past the news vans that still linger by the front entrance.
“Will acted like I was a huge wet blanket because I didn’t want him ranking the girls in his class. It was like I was this big . . .” I search for the right word.
“Bitch?” Lindsey asks.
It stings even coming from her mouth. “Yeah,” I say. “I just want him to be a good guy, you know?”
Lindsey nods, but doesn’t say anything. Sometimes, I think most of friendship is knowing when to keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Lindsey is an expert where this is concerned. She flips onto her back and stretches her hamstring, waiting for me to continue.
“What bothered me most was how Will didn’t get it. He didn’t understand why I was upset that he was telling these girls they don’t measure up. He acts like he has some natural right to tell them they should look a certain way. Why? Because he’s a dude?”
“It’s not just your brother.” Lindsey stands up and stretches her arms above her head. “Seen a Hardee’s commercial lately? The whole planet is wired that way.”
We walk to our cars, and when I tell Lindsey I’ll see her on Monday, she hugs me. She’s not much of a hugger.
I smile. “What was that for?”
“For being somebody who cares about this stuff,” she says. “Not many people around here do.” She gives me a little wave, then gets in her navy-blue hatchback and drives away.
There are only two news vans here right now, which leaves me wondering where the other three are. Off getting coffee? On the curb at the courthouse, waiting for word on whether Greg and Randy will be tried as adults? The trailer park, staking out Stacey’s place again?
After I start the truck, I sit there for a second before I throw it in reverse. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, really, until I make the turn toward Walmart.
twenty-six
I DON’T MEAN to break in, exactly.
It’s just that when I reach out to ring the bell, I notice the door to Stacey’s trailer isn’t latched all the way. There’s no car parked out front. LeeAnne must be at work.
The Coral Creek Mobile Village looks shabbier without the benefit of an ethereal nighttime glow. In the stark light of a Saturday afternoon, Stacey’s trailer is still the tidiest, but it looks tired, too—as if it takes a tremendous amount of energy just to stay upright; that it might, at any moment, give up altogether and collapse in a great wheeze of dust and fiberglass.
An elderly black man sits by a stack of the tires in the yard next door, leaning back in a green plastic lawn chair. He’s reading a book while the Doberman snoozes, draped over his feet. When I walk up to the little white gate, the man smiles and waves a howdy in my direction. The dog stays silent and still, but I see his eyes open and follow me, like a painting in a haunted castle. The closer you look, the more you see. I smile back at him, then quickly open the white picket gate and close it again, as if these flimsy slats could protect me from a motivated Doberman.
I can hear a shower running as I climb the stairs of the redwood deck. Whatever possessed me to come here again must still have me firmly in hand. When I see the unlatched door, I push it open without hesitation, then walk in like I own the place, my hand held back to keep the storm door from banging behind me.
I find myself standing on a linoleum island right inside the door, surrounded by sculpted shag carpet the color of Mom’s two-alarm chili. I don’t know what I expected the inside of a trailer home to look like, but this one is as well kept on the inside as it is on the outside. It isn’t covered in old take-out containers and doesn’t reek of cigarette smoke. No one is standing in the kitchen to my right cooking meth.
I hear music coming from down the hall where the water is running. It must be Stacey in the shower. I make a decision then and there. I will wait for her. I will convince her that I’m not one of them. I just want to find out what really happened. I don’t need her to be my best friend. I don’t even need her to believe me.
I only need the truth.
Emboldened by my plan, a strange urgency takes hold. I walk around the living room like a detective in search of evidence. I quietly pull open the drawer of an oak end table next to an overstuffed couch, covered in a quilt. Remote controls. Loose change. A pack of peppermint chewing gum. I slide the drawer closed. It sends up a loud squeak, and I freeze for a moment, my heart pounding. I glance at the bathroom door. Still closed. Water still running. Music still playing.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently.
What are you doing?
What am I looking for? A filing cabinet with folders full of secret documents? A handwritten account of events labeled, “Dooney’s Party: One Week Ago”? I take a moment to imagine Stacey, fresh from a shower, finding me in her living room, unannounced. I picture her wrapped in a towel, hair wet, screaming, the friendly old man next door and his Doberman racing to her aid. Me, on a gurney, explaining to the police, my parents, and Ben how I came to be mauled by a dog outside Stacey Stallard’s trailer, and Sloane Keating’s smug little smirk, floating above us all as her cameraman captures every moment.
This is crazy.
I turn to go.
As I do, I glance through a door on the other side of the living room and come to a dead stop. This is a bedroom—Stacey’s it seems. There’s a purple comforter she must have gotten when she was just a little girl, covered in stars and clouds. But it isn’t the bed that catches my eye. It’s the walls. The afternoon sun streams through sheer white curtains, bathing the room in a soft glow. I walk to the door and step inside.
Every vertical surface is covered with birds. Each one is a pencil sketch in the center of a page. Delicate, detailed, every one of them seems to be in motion. A beak digs into down or carries a twig, wings spread, tail feathers flutter. Not a single one of them is still. The very walls seem to ripple with the pulse of a thousand tiny heartbeats, as if at any moment, the entire flock might startle and take to the skies, carrying the whole room—this perfect aviary of art—and me away with it.
My mouth hangs slightly open. Turning slowly, I take in owls and orioles, jaspers and jays, sparrows and starlings. Hundreds of intricate, finely hatched feathers, dappled wings, and shining eyes somehow lit from within.
My gaze settles on one drawing centered over the bed. This is the sketch I saw from the living room. It’s larger than the others and I recognize the subject immediately. This is the hawk from the trees behind the school. The details are so deftly rendered it looks like a black-and-white snapshot of the bird I saw through the geology classroom window. I can almost feel the rush of the air from her wings.
Stacey has captured it perfectly.
This drawing is more than painstaking precisio
n. Her pencil strokes somehow show the raw power of the wings. It holds something else, too: the longing I heard in her voice all those years ago when I asked her why she liked birds so much.
Because they can fly.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Stacey has found me exactly as I’d feared she would. I turn to see her in the doorway, holding a dusty-blue towel around herself, her hair dripping onto her shoulders. There was something dreamy about the Stacey who watched birds out my window when we were kids, her head in the clouds. This Stacey has both feet rooted in trailer park carpet. No clouds. All spikes.
“I’m sorry. I just—the door—it was open, and I—” I sputter, flailing for an explanation.
“Get out!” She steps backward into the living room, making space for me to pass.
“Stacey, please. I just want to know about the party.”
She gives a short, bitter laugh. “Know what, Kate? You were there.”
“But I don’t—I wasn’t—there the whole time.”
Her eyes flash fire. “Oh really?” She scoffs and shakes her head.
“Yes.” I choke. “I was . . . I was too drunk to stay.”
“Ben sure wasn’t.” She flings these words like acid, and every inch of me is singed.
“You’re wrong.” My heart pounds. Stacey gives her head a quick shake. She leans against the doorway. Her arms are so thin, reeds crossed against her chest, pinning the towel in place.
“I was too drunk to stay, too,” she sneers. “Didn’t even know what happened when I woke up. Saw it all online. Sure you can find it, too.”
My stomach lurches. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re an idiot.” She points at the front door again. “Get out.”
twenty-seven
MY EYES FLOOD as I roar away from Stacey’s trailer. I can barely see the gravel road that leads out of Coral Creek. When I reach the Walmart blacktop, I pull in beside a leafless sapling sticking out of a planter that separates parking lanes. It is wired to stakes that are thicker than its own trunk—a stunned captive, surrounded by asphalt, doomed to struggle for breath in the haze of a thousand tailpipes.
What We Saw Page 14