The Duke of Bannerman Prep

by Katie Nelson

  The bowling alley was busy, and while I didn’t know anyone there, Sam sure did. From the lady that gave us our shoes to the guy working the snack bar, everyone was excited to see him. And based on the way he strutted with his cane, and the Cartoon Network–watching grin on his face, I could tell he was loving this moment.

  I hadn’t been bowling with him in over a year, but Sam had been coming with Jesse, his new aide, for the last couple of months. It was weird to see him talking to people that I didn’t know, to realize that there was this huge part of his life that I wasn’t a part of. Before, everyone knew him as my little brother. Today, when I’d paid for the lane, the guy behind the counter had said that he never knew Sam had a brother.

  While Kelsey and Sarah searched for the perfect balls, I typed our names into the scoreboard. I hesitated when it asked if I wanted the bumpers up. First I hit yes, then as they were coming up, I changed my mind and hit no. I knew Sam always played with them, but this was his date, bowling in front of a “babe,” and I didn’t know what would be more embarrassing: using the bumpers and looking like a little kid, or going without and throwing gutter balls every time.

  Before I could ask, Kelsey appeared, carrying a bright orange ball in front of her. “Hey Sam,” she asked, “could you do me a favor?”

  He smiled and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Do you think we could play with the bumpers up? I don’t want Tanner to cry when he keeps getting gutter balls.”

  I shook my head, but smiled, as Sam laughed like a hyena, slapping his knee and then pointing at me, mock crying and rubbing his eyes. Kelsey put her arm around my shoulder, leaned in, and pushed the button to raise the bumpers. Her hair brushed my cheek, and sitting there, in that hard plastic seat, the sound of pins crashing all around us, I knew this was it. I was falling for her. Or maybe I already had.

  We bowled two games. For once, it wasn’t a competition. I didn’t feel like I needed to be better than anyone else. Or that she’d even notice or care. I couldn’t tell you who won or what our scores were. I just knew that for a few hours that afternoon everything felt right. I didn’t worry about saying the wrong thing. I didn’t analyze every gesture or facial expression, wondering what Kelsey was thinking. I was just me, and in that musty bowling alley a hundred miles away from Bannerman Prep School, it was enough.

  After bowling, we went back to my house and ordered pizza. Sam wouldn’t let the girls chip in, telling them we were old-fashioned guys who liked to take care of our dates. I wondered where he’d heard that one, and didn’t mention that my mom had left money. Instead, I watched him blush as Kelsey hugged him and said thanks. Crowded around the TV, we watched a marathon of Christmas cartoons, until I looked over and saw both Sam and Sarah had fallen asleep.

  I stood and began collecting paper plates, soda cans, and crumpled napkins, trying not to wake them. “I’ll help,” Kelsey whispered. Together we stuffed everything into a black garbage bag, then walked outside to the Dumpster. The lid came down hard, with a clatter, and Kelsey laughed when I jumped.

  “Nice one,” she said, zipping her hoodie up and pushing her hands into her pockets.

  “That’s me. An old-fashioned guy. Who’s apparently afraid of a Dumpster.”

  Kelsey walked over to the front step and sat down, patting the cement next to her. I sat, feeling the cold seep through my jeans, but not wanting to ruin the moment.

  “Thanks for coming today. And bringing Sarah. It was really cool of you.”

  “It was fun.”

  “Better than serving mimosas to women who can’t feel their faces?”

  “Definitely!” She smiled. “Although, the drunker the women get, the more they tip, and the better my Christmas is. I’m all for it.”

  “There’s your trickle-down economics in action.”

  “Exactly,” she said, staring up at the sky. The streetlight out front was bright, making it difficult to see the stars. Cars drove by, windows down and stereos blaring. It was hardly a romantic moment. Without being too obvious, I glanced at her, trying to guess what she was thinking, or expecting. She sat perfectly still, her hands in her pockets. I waited.

  “It’s cute, you know,” Kelsey said. “Watching you with him.”

  “Um, thanks, I guess.” Cute. So apparently I was in the same league as kittens, kindergartners with lisps, and cupcakes.

  “That’s a compliment,” she said, bumping my knee with her own. “Makes me wish I had a brother. Or a sister.”

  I leaned back a little, careful not to move my knee, keeping it resting against hers. A dog was barking in the distance and my butt was getting cold, but I didn’t want this day to end. “I wonder sometimes. What it would be like. If he was, you know, normal.”

  My throat constricted as soon as I’d said the words. It was something I thought about all the time. But saying the words out loud, did that make me a bad person?

  Kelsey looked over at me. “Yeah, but then he wouldn’t be Sam. He’d be some scrawny, know-it-all middle schooler.”

  I pressed my lips into a thin smile. “True. But you know, he wasn’t born like this. I mean, he was born with cerebral palsy. Not the intellectual disability.”

  She waited for more. I’d never talked about it with anyone before. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was telling her now. I took a deep breath.

  “When he was a baby, he cried a lot. My mom was going to school at night. And I guess things were pretty crazy, with me running around, and Sam screaming, and my dad trying to watch us after a long day of work. Anyway, my dad drank. A lot. And when he couldn’t get Sam to stop crying, he shook him. One day, my mom saw him do it. That was the last day I ever saw my father. But it was too late for Sam.”

  Kelsey took her hand out of her pocket, rested it on my knee, and with her index finger, drew imaginary little swirls and patterns in the denim. Her light touch, just a little gesture, sent a shiver through my whole body.

  She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  I leaned a little against her, smelling her apple-scented shampoo. “Yeah. It does. But that’s life, right?”

  Sam’s shrill scream cut through the night. My head jerked up, and Kelsey tensed, not recognizing the sound. I stood up. “Nightmare,” I said, opening the screen door. “He gets them sometimes.”

  We hurried back into the house where Sam was thrashing on the sofa, Sarah still asleep on the loveseat. I could smell it before I even got close. Sam had wet the bed. Or, in this case, the couch.

  Kelsey noticed, too, and I was grateful that I didn’t need to explain it to her. “We should go. I told Sarah’s parents we’d be back before midnight.”

  “I need to get him into the tub. Can you wait until he’s in the bathroom to wake up Sarah?”

  She nodded. I bent down and picked up Sam, straining to carry him like this. Kelsey walked ahead of me down the hall and opened the bathroom door. I sat Sam down on the toilet seat, still half asleep, and took off his shoes and socks.

  “I’ll call you,” Kelsey said, her purse slung over her shoulder, watching from the hall.

  “Yeah. Text me when you get home so I know you made it.”

  She fluttered her fingers goodbye and shut the bathroom door. I turned on the tub and watched it fill, wondering what could have happened out on the porch if we’d had a little more time. The steam began to fill the room, moistening my skin and making it harder to breathe. Sam’s body slumped against mine, and I felt every ounce of his eighty-seven pounds.

  I shook my head, pushing the thoughts of Kelsey to the back of my mind, and helped Sam undress and get into the tub.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WE HAD ONE MORE TOURNAMENT before Christmas break. And it was a big one.

  The Long Beach invitational drew schools from all over the country. Sure, some liked to come because it was California and they could justify a day at the beach or amusement parks if nobody made it to finals. But for others, this invitational was more than a proving gr
ound for Nationals. It was where colleges coaches came and decisions were made. Decisions that literally changed lives. Performance at this tournament could determine who got accepted to the powerhouse schools, who got scholarship offers, and who got a ticket to community college. It was important. And we all knew it.

  Watterson’s pep talk before this tournament had been different. Instead of his usual, you’re-better-than-everyone-else-now-prove-it speech, he had just talked to us. He explained that even though some of us were juniors, we would be watched. He told us that we were bright, one of the best teams he’d coached, but that it might not be enough. We couldn’t take chances. We had to be on every minute of this tournament.

  On the bus ride the next day, it was clear that his words were still on all our minds. We rumbled down the highway, oblivious to the scenery. Though we knew there was a world that existed outside of the bus, it didn’t matter, not at that moment.

  Someone had put the latest Superman movie into the DVD player, but it was hard to tell if anyone was watching. Despite the “stay seated” rule, we moved up and down the aisle, giving the driver sheepish grins when he reprimanded us over the mic. In one row, the slapping of a deck of cards barely drowned out someone’s rant about the powerlessness of the UN. Farther down, voices swelled as Sadie Chambers flipped through a copy of People, trying to convince those around her that actors over thirty-five were sexier than musicians under thirty. Every so often, she would stand, flashing a page for all to see, saying crap like, “I defy anyone to find a hotter man on the planet.” Most of us ignored her. A few threw trash.

  A couple rows from the back, I was slumped in an aisle seat next to Kelsey, who sat balancing her AP history textbook on her knees, her feet resting against the seat in front of her. Across from me, Garrett was showing us YouTube videos on his iPad, mostly clips of people wiping out. Like every bus I’d ridden, there was a hierarchy to the seating arrangement. Here, instead of popularity or most obnoxious personality, your seat was based on your success in competition. For once, I was on the right side of that line.

  “You know that’s not due until Wednesday, right?”

  The Duke stood behind me, arms resting on the back of my seat and Garrett’s, staring down at the lab book I was writing in.

  “This is last week’s lab,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Surprised you’re not over here writing up more briefs. Thought you were worried about that transitional-housing case.”

  I kept writing, but the bus hit a bump and the lead in my mechanical pencil broke. “I did that last night. They’re in the Neg file box if you want to look them over.”

  He laughed, a short exhale of breath that always sounded more annoyed than amused. “Of course you did.”

  “If we break, the Stanford coach is going to observe one of our rounds. Watterson told me.”

  I looked up to see if the Duke got it, if he knew how important this was. His hair was hanging in his eyes, and as he tossed his head, he gave me one of his plastic smiles. “Don’t worry, mate. I’ve got it under control. You’ll see.”

  “IF YOU DON’T SIT DOWN, I’M PULLING OVER AND YOU CAN ALL WALK TO LONG BEACH!” The driver was pissed, and even from the back of the bus, we could see him glaring in his mirror. The Duke raised his hand to his temple, saluted, and walked back to his seat.

  I turned to Kelsey, hoping that she, at least, would back me up. She was asleep, her head hanging down, history book about to fall to the floor. Her mouth was open a little, and when she breathed, each exhale sounded like the purr of a kitten. I took the book from her and closed it, setting it and my lab book beneath the seat in front of me. The bus hit a bump, and Kelsey’s head bobbed for a second, then rested against my shoulder.

  I knew I had homework to catch up on. I knew there were new issues of Time and Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report that I should at least skim. I also knew that this moment here with Kelsey might not come again. I’d always made the responsible choice, but this time, I didn’t want to.

  I settled back into my seat and closed my eyes. I wouldn’t sleep—never could on any road trip—but I let my mind wander. For one moment, I tried to forget about homework and the tournament and college and scholarships and taking care of my mom and Sam and how I couldn’t let everyone down. I sat there, eyes closed, listening to Kelsey breathe.

  Friends. We were friends. It was weird, because I’d never been friends like this with a girl. And she was gorgeous and had this amazing body. I wasn’t going to deny that. But at the same time, it scared the crap out of me to think that I could mess this up and that I could lose what we had. That we wouldn’t even be friends anymore. I didn’t want to lose her.

  I thought about it as she slept. After a few minutes, I got out my tablet and went back to my American lit reading. I didn’t have the luxury of wasting a couple of hours. Before I’d left, I’d gotten a lecture from Ms. Wallace, who threatened to pull my eligibility if I didn’t get my grades up. I had to work harder. I’d never been pushed like this in school before, and I needed to do better. I’d already put in twice as many hours studying as everyone else, but it wasn’t enough. I read Leaves of Grass and Walden and wrote answers to free response questions about transcendentalism all the way to Long Beach.

  When the bus pulled into the hotel parking lot, I shook Kelsey’s shoulder gently to wake her up. I still didn’t know what to do about her. But we were here, and I still had problem sets for pre-calc and a list of verbs to conjugate for Spanish, not to mention the usual prep work before our rounds tomorrow. There was too much at stake. I needed to focus on what was really important.

  I gathered my stuff and got off the bus, determined that I wouldn’t think about her until this weekend was over.

  They were late posting the schedule for finals. Big surprise. After the day we’d had—in rounds that were so close it was hard to pick a winner—I was anxious. More than anxious. I couldn’t sit still or stay in one place or even carry on a conversation.

  I kept thinking, if there was a God somewhere in heaven, he’d make them post the results soon, before I lost my mind.

  Watterson had checked in once, telling us that it would be a while and suggesting we all go grab dinner in the meantime. The Duke had announced that he was in the mood for salmon. His minions had followed, but Kelsey and I held back.

  We’d finished our dinner—a sandwich for me, salad for her—and headed back to the campus of Cal State Long Beach, where the tournament was being held. We rounded a corner and saw a huge mob gathered around the postings.

  “I guess they’re up,” Kelsey said.

  “I’m sure you made it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right. Out of 250 entries, I’m sure I’m in the top eight.”

  I was dying to go check, but at the same time, I couldn’t look. If we hadn’t made it, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  I grabbed Kelsey’s arm, waited until she faced me, trying to draw the moment out—holding on to the brief seconds when we were together, still waiting, and everything was still possible. “Wanna put some money on it?” I asked. She laughed. And her laugh, combined with the adrenaline coursing through me, was the biggest rush I’d ever felt.

  “You’re suddenly wealthy? Remind me again why we had dinner at Subway?”

  “Fine. We won’t bet money. If you qualified, you’re wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Tanner McKay is a God.’”

  “And if you qualify”—she smiled—“you’re tattooing my name on your forearm. In prison script.”

  I shook my head. “No way. That’s not even close to equal.”

  “Fine. If you qualify, you’re taking me to dinner. At a real restaurant. With menus and cloth napkins. And a movie. I don’t care if you have to sell your sperm to afford it.”

  I laughed even as I blushed. “Deal.”

  As we walked over to the student union, I couldn’t quit thinking about what she’d said. It sounded like a date to me. What did that mean? Had she finally given up her stupid ru
le about not dating anyone on the team? Did she know how badly I wanted more? Was this her way of admitting she did, too? Before I could obsess any more, we were there, pushing our way through the crowd. I went straight to the Lincoln/Douglas posting. Sure enough, BP 16. She’d qualified.

  I turned around to tell her, but she wasn’t there. Searching the crowd, I found her a few feet away, her finger pressed against the paper under the Policy Debate posting.

  I walked over to her, smiling.

  “You’d better get working on that T-shirt,” I said.

  “You owe me a date.”

  Then we both screamed, and she ran into my arms, hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe.

  It was a little after two in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep.

  After going over our case in the hotel room and filing all of the evidence that we’d used earlier in the day, I’d forced myself to get in bed. The Duke had crashed while I was working, the lights still on, TV blaring. I’d shut everything off and finally crawled into bed, but sleep hadn’t come. The LED light on the alarm clock teased me. Even with my back to the clock I could feel the minutes slowly passing, my chance to sleep melting away.

  I wasn’t sure what I was hearing at first. I thought the Duke was rolling over, moving in his sleep. When I heard his step on the floor, I sat up. He was fully dressed, still wearing the clothes that he’d fallen asleep in, but he’d added a hoodie and a Yankees baseball cap. And he was wearing glasses, thick black-rimmed frames that made him look completely different.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Downstairs. I’ll be right back. Go back to sleep.”

  “You can not do this,” I said, half pleading, half demanding. “Not tonight. Go party all you want tomorrow night after the tournament is over.”

  “Relax, mate.” He didn’t face me, but emptied most everything out of his backpack into a pile in the corner of the room. He picked his phone up, unplugged it from the charger, and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. He didn’t stay to listen, undoing the deadbolt and walking out of the room.