Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move

by Nancy N. Rue

  I had to take a deep breath, during which Rafe folded his arms and looked at me. No eyebrows wiggling. No smart-mouth retorts. I took it as a yes.

  “Rafe-man, you gonna let her diss you like that?” Lizard said.

  Tank grunted—a most attractive sound. “You’re whipped, man. You see that, Uma?”

  “You could take some lessons from this woman,” Lizard said to her. He was by now sitting on the back of his desk chair, feet on the seat. I could almost hear the scratching of Ms. Edel-stein’s red pencil across the calculus papers.

  Uma let go of the knot she had her lips in. “What’s ‘cubism’?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rafe said. “We’re not doin’ it.”

  “We have to do something,” I said. “It was the only thing I could think of.”

  “You ever think about askin’ me?” Rafe bounced the heel of his hand off his forehead. “Gee, what a concept.”

  “Like you would so come up with something.”

  “I did.”

  “What?”

  “Graffiti art.”

  My eyes rolled completely up into my head. “You are not serious. You want to do the history of tagging? We might as well just take the F right now.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Tank punched Rafe on the shoulder like he’d just scored two points. He kind of had.

  “Okay, look,” I said. “We have to find a ‘movement,’ not some gang thing—”

  “First of all, I’m not a tagger. Second of all, what I do is art. And third of all, true billboard liberation is not a ‘gang thing.’” Rafe twitched his fingers in quotation marks, but the light in his eyes wasn’t sarcastic. “It’s a statement against the culture.”

  “It’s a crime!”

  “It’s the reverse side of a culture that is itself criminal.”

  The words sounded like he was reading them out of a book, but even that was enough to make me stumble over the ones lining up in my mind.

  “Pierre Klossowski,” he said. “1871.”

  I shook my head.

  “French painter. Gustave Courbet. He saw vandalism as an artistic expression of contempt and creativity.” Rafe shrugged. “We trace ‘the history of graffiti art’—or we take the F.”

  “Oooo—”

  “Shut up, Lizard,” Rafe said. But his eyes were on me.

  “So what are we going to do?” I said. “Find a railroad car and spray paint it?”

  “Knock yourself out. I don’t do that.”

  I tightened my ponytail with a yank. “Okay, since you’ve got the whole thing mapped out—”

  “We do a legal wall.”

  “A legal wall.”

  “Yeah. A wall where it isn’t a ‘crime’ to make your art.”

  “And we’re going to find that where?”

  “We’re not gonna find it. We’re gonna make it. Out of something.”

  “So we do that. And what? We tell P-W we made a wall?”

  “No, Honors English. Then we paint on it, showing, like, how the movement’s progressed. Only we do it in graffiti art.”

  “Oh,” I said. And then I said nothing. Because it actually was a pretty good idea.

  Except for the part where we were going to have to work on it together outside of class. Where was I going to feel safe meeting Rafe any place besides school? It wasn’t even that safe in here—

  I stumbled over my thoughts again, but they were still there when I turned to Rafe.

  “Okay, say P-W approves our idea.”

  Rafe was back to working his eyebrows. “She will.”

  “We’re gonna have to work on it on our own time, and most of mine’s booked. So”—I leaned in and lowered my voice—“what if I ask Ms. Edelstein if we can work on it in here—you know, planning it out and stuff. I’ll—”

  “Hey, Miss Frankenstein,” he said over my head.

  “Hey, Rafe,” she droned back. She didn’t even look up.

  “Can me and the Roid work on our art project in here?”

  “As long as you don’t spill anything.”

  I stared at her and then at Rafe. “How is it that one minute you can sound like an art professor, and the next minute you’re talking like you never saw a grammar book?”

  “I never have.”

  “I believe that.”

  I got up to go back to my seat for some paper, but something snagged at me. It was the look on Uma’s face.

  She’d drawn everything tight: rosebud mouth, made-up eyes … even her cheeks were sucked in like she was pulling the juice out of something. It was obviously me she had in mind.

  Problem? I wanted to say. But I didn’t. She wrapped both arms around Rafe’s right bicep, and I got the message.

  Don’t worry about it, honey, I thought as I turned away. He is so not my type.

  *

  My “type,” if I even had one, was Ben. Not Ben as a guy, obviously. Ben as the coolest physical therapist that ever lived. Not like I’d ever had one before, but the point was, he was fabulous.

  In the first place, his entire face opened into a smile when he measured my range of motion and when I weighed in at 122.

  “Your discipline is off the charts, Boss,” he said, eyes sparkling their flecks of gold. “You’re this intense in everything you do, aren’t ya?”

  “I have to be,” I said.

  “Which is why I’m going to say this.” His face went serious. “Anything in the extreme has the potential to be damaging. Remember how you got here.”

  “Am I doing it wrong?” I said.

  “You’re doing it great. It’s just something we’re going to work on.”

  “I’m working on as much as I can!”

  Ben cocked his head in that way he had. “You want to tell me about that?”

  “No.”

  “Whenever you’re ready. Okay, let’s—”

  “I’m already trying to get my grades up and my knee working and my faith stronger. I haven’t even started on getting my friends back. And now you’re saying I have to work on not working so hard?” I put up both hands and tried to rub it all out. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it. I just have to …”

  “You just have to what?” Ben sat on the table beside me and swung his legs.

  “I just have to figure out how that fits into my plan,” I said.

  It sounded lame, now that it was out there, but Ben didn’t laugh. He nodded at me like I’d actually said something that made sense.

  “A plan is a good thing to have,” he said. “You mentioned God the other day, and you said just now you’re trying to bulk up your faith some.”

  “Yeah. Am I not supposed to talk about religion in here?”

  He grinned. “If that were the case, they’d kick me out. Here’s the thing, though, about faith—” He pressed a hand to his chest. “As I understand it. You can’t grow it yourself. You can feed it, you can exercise it, but you can’t actually ‘make’ it stronger.” He tapped my knee. “It’s like what you’re doing here. You can put in the work, but you aren’t the one building the muscles and getting your joint operating.”

  “But if I didn’t do the work, it wouldn’t happen.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “You pray—you study the Word—you live it—and God builds up your faith.” He made a grimace face. “Am I preaching?”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t like any preaching I’d ever heard, anyway. This I could actually understand. He was talking like—

  “I don’t try to figure it all out,” Ben said. “When I’m in trouble, I just say, ‘Please, God.’ And when He shows up, I just say, ‘Thank you.’”

  Yeah. He was talking like RL.

  *

  During the hour of mini squats and mini lunges—neither of which felt very “mini” to me—and “small” step-ups and “easy” leg presses on one of those torture machines, I was definitely saying, “Please, please, please!” And when we stopped, I said a major “Thank you.”<
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  “Oh, you need chocolate,” Mom said when I dragged myself into the Hangout Area.

  “Ya think?” I said.

  We got our table at Pike’s Perk, and I was shoveling in the whipped cream when Mom looked past me to the doorway, an odd expression on her face—like she was surprised, but not necessarily in a good way.

  “What?” I said. “Is Dad here?”

  “No. It’s your brother.”

  “Maybe he won’t see us,” I whispered.

  Mom gave a half laugh. “Too late.”

  She obviously hadn’t invited him, but from the way she was tucking her hair, I was pretty sure she had let it slip to him or Dad that we had come here last week after therapy. I also got that from the way Aaron marched right over to the table and sat himself down.

  “Hey, guy,” Mom said as she reached over to rub his arm.

  “Hey.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek that made me glad we had never been affectionate with each other. I wondered if as a mother you had to love your kid even if you couldn’t stand him. If so, I was never going to gestate.

  Aaron peered into my cup. “Now that looks healthy.”

  “Doctor’s orders,” I said, and I gave my hot chocolate a loud slurp.

  “They keeping you busy at school?” Mom said. “You haven’t been by the house in—”

  Two and a half weeks. Thank you, God.

  “I was just there last week,” Aaron said. “Nobody was home.”

  “I changed my work schedule,” Mom said.

  “Let me guess—Cassidy needs to be taken to physical therapy. And school. And drug rehab.”

  “Aaron, stop it.”

  Both of us looked at Mom. Hopefully my face didn’t match my brother’s, but if it did, my eyes were popping from my head.

  “Stop,” she said again. “You’re better than that.”

  That I couldn’t agree with, but I was still too stunned to say anything. She was actually reprimanding her precious firstborn Aaron? All right, Mom.

  “Sorry,” he said to her, not me. “I’m a little bitter.”

  Mom nodded. “I know. Losing Gretchen was huge. But seriously, you don’t need to take it out on your sister. You want a coffee?”

  Okay, who was this woman and what had she done with my mother?

  Aaron shook his head and looked at a Danish that we hadn’t started on yet.

  “Go ahead,” Mom said.

  That was fine with me. I’d lost my appetite when he sat down. What was he doing there if I was the reason for him being “bitter”?

  “I just want to know something,” he said. He was looking at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Did you ask Gretchen for the drugs or did she offer them to you?”

  “I already said it about five thousand times. She approached me, and she didn’t tell me—”

  “That’s what you said when you got caught, but seriously, now that you’re ‘clean and sober,’ are you still sticking to that story?”

  “Aaron—” Mom said.

  But I shook my head at her. “It’s okay. I’m getting used to people calling me a liar.”

  “Hey,” Aaron said. “I can completely see why you’d want to put the best spin possible on this for yourself.”

  “Why?” I said. “Because that’s what you would do?”

  “I’m not like you—at all.”

  Thank you, Lord, for that, I started to say. But then I stopped. Thank, you. RL said it. Ben said it. Just say thank you.

  Why that made sense now, of course, I had no idea. My relationship with my brother was not one of the things I was working on. What would be the point? But it came out of my mouth anyway.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Aaron blinked. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. For whatever it is you’re trying to do, I guess.”

  Oh my gosh, what was I doing?

  “What I’m trying to do,” he said, “is get my life back.”

  “Wow,” I said. There was no sarcasm biting through my voice. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. How’s that going for you?”

  “Cass—”

  “No, I’m not being smart, Mom. I totally know what it’s like to feel like you’ve lost everything.”

  “Except in my case, I didn’t do anything to cause it.” Aaron’s voice wasn’t biting either. “I’m just trying to get to the truth.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I know—it hurts, right? Trust me, I feel that every time I tell the truth to myself.”

  Something flickered in Aaron’s pale blue eyes. But only for a second, before they came to a point and he turned into our father again.

  “If you think we’re going to bond over this, forget about it,” he said. He looked at Mom, who was looking hard right back at him. “You’re enabling her, Mom. That never works. She’s still playing the victim, because that’s what addicts do.” He stood up and tapped his knuckles on the table. “I hope you’re keeping up those random drug tests, because I guarantee you, once a user, always a user.”

  He wasn’t two steps away from the table before I was saying, “Mom, I’m not—”

  “I know, Cass,” she said. Her eyes followed him sadly to the door. “I know.”

  I pushed my hot chocolate away, but the Frenemy wouldn’t be moved. Her guilt quills stabbed me straight in the heart. Helping me was ruining what Mom had left with Dad, and now Aaron.

  I had to wonder how many more relationships I was going to mess up before I made it back.

  That wasn’t part of the plan.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Are you reading that book over again?” Ruthie said Thursday at lunch.

  I turned the opened Scarlet Letter onto its face on the table and glared at its spine. “I think I’m going to be reading it for the rest of my life.”

  I’d thought I was done with it when we took the multiple choice test and I got an A-. But then Mr. Josephson assigned a paper on it, which was guaranteed to send my average plummeting again. He had a problem with the way I wrote.

  I want to hear your voice, he’d written on my last essay.

  I was sure that didn’t mean he wanted me to come up to his desk and scream, What do you want from me?

  “Do you know that guy?” Ruthie said.

  She was pointing behind me, but I didn’t have a chance to turn around before Boz, from my English class, pulled out the chair next to me.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” he said.

  “Um, no,” I said. I looked at Ruthie. “Do you mind?”

  Her eyes widened. “Me?”

  “Yeah. Do you care if Boz sits with us?”

  She shook her head and lowered it, so that the strings of hair covered her face like a grass skirt. The latest fantasy novel came out of her bag.

  Boz stared at her for about a half a second and then nodded at The Scarlet Letter.

  “Working on your paper?” he said.

  “Trying to. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I watched him pull his copy out of his back pocket. “You probably have yours finished already.”

  “I’ve got a rough draft done. But, then, I basically have no life.”

  He blinked, rapidly, and pulled down an eyelid with his fingers.

  “Something in your eye?” I said.

  “Yeah. My contacts. It’s only my second day wearing them.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “You usually wear glasses, huh?” I hadn’t noticed the change, but now, come to think of it, he did look less geeky today. Not having glasses on definitely made his nose look smaller.

  Ugh. I hated it when I thought shallow stuff like that.

  “Need help thinking of a topic?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “For your paper. You said you don’t know what you’re doing yet. I could brainstorm with you.”

  “Oh.” I stared at the book, still facedown on the table like it was ashamed of itself. “Well—we’re supposed to relate it to our own life somehow, rig
ht? And I just don’t exactly see myself in Hester Prynne.”

  “You could write about gestation.”

  I whipped my head around to Ruthie. She was peeking out from behind the fairies and humanized dragonflies.

  “That’s what the book’s about, right?”

  “It’s not what I’m about!”

  “No, not like you’re pregnant.”

  “Hello!”

  “But the girl in the book’s taking all the blame. You could write about one time when you had to take all the blame and it wasn’t fair. Like my brother’s girlfriend.” Ruthie put the book down and pushed her hair out of her face. “She has like four sisters—okay, maybe five. There was, let’s see, Jenna, Jodie, Jade, Joanna—”

  “Ruthie,” I said, “do you have to go all the way back to Genesis every time you tell a story?”

  Boz laughed. I was surprised at how deep the sound was, like a radio announcer or something.

  “Sorry.” Ruthie started to duck behind the fairies.

  “No—tell it,” I said. “Just, like, skip ahead to Revelation.”

  She looked puzzled, but Boz laughed again.

  “What did your brother’s girlfriend take the blame for? The short version.”

  “But see, it doesn’t make sense if I don’t tell you the whole thing. You have to know about her sisters because they’re the ones who got away with murder—I mean, for real.”

  “They killed somebody?” I said.

  “Almost. See, when Josie was little … okay, so there were five sisters—”

  “What’s the protagonist’s name?” Boz said.

  “The what?”

  “The protagonist. The main character.”

  Ruthie’s eyebrows crumpled.

  “Your brother’s girlfriend,” I said.

  “Oh. Jeannette. Isn’t that pretty? I mean, it’s old-fashioned, but it’s pretty.”

  “Kind of like Ruth,” Boz said. “I mean, that’s kind of old but cool, right?”

  Ruthie smiled. I saw for the first time that her eyes were green. How had I missed that before? Probably because I was always watching her mouth.

  She took off again on the harangue about poor victimized Jeannette, and I got lost about halfway through. Boz, on the other hand, seemed captivated.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said when Ruthie finally brought it to a close. “What you’re saying is—”