Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move

by Nancy N. Rue

  “I was just wondering,” she said, and pulled her book in front of her face.

  “That’s actually a good question,” I said, before Lizard and Tank could go after her. Tank had already snatched her book from her hand and was leafing through it like he was looking for dirty passages.

  “We haven’t figured out how we’re doin’ that yet,” Rafe said.

  I didn’t remind him that “we” weren’t supposed to figure that out—“he” was.

  “Refrigerator boxes,” Tank said.

  “Huh?” several of us said in unison.

  “You could put a bunch of ‘em side by side and paint on ‘em.”

  “Sweet,” Rafe said.

  “Where are we gonna get, like, four refrigerator boxes?” I said.

  “My old man.”

  Our heads swiveled to Lizard.

  “He delivers refrigerators and washing machines and—stuff.” He glanced warily at Ms. Edelstein. “For Home Depot.”

  I looked at Rafe. “So we could paint one box at a time and then connect them all, right?”

  “Hey, Miss Frankenstein,” he said, still looking back at me.

  “Hey, Rafe.”

  “Can we set refrigerator boxes up in here?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Dude.”

  “But you can collapse one at a time and work on them on the floor like you’re doing now.” She adjusted her glasses. “Like I said, just don’t spill anything, and be out of here by four o’clock. That’s when I leave.”

  “Hey, Miss Frankenstein.”

  “Hey, Rafe.”

  “You rock. You wanna go out sometime?”

  “No, Rafe, I do not.”

  I grinned. At least Ms. Edelstein and I had that in common.

  “Psst—Rafe-man,” Lizard said. He rolled toward Rafe. “What’s wrong with your woman?”

  I glanced back at Uma, who, come to think of it, hadn’t said a word all period. She had stayed in her usual seat, and I’d thought I smelled nail polish at one point. Right now she was apparently casting an evil spell on somebody with her eyes.

  Me.

  “PMS,” Rafe said.

  I squinted at him. “Y’know, just because a female is ticked off about something doesn’t mean it’s hormonal. She might just have something to be ticked off about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I don’t know, she’s dating you?”

  “Ooooo!” Lizard said.

  “You scored, Roid,” Tank said.

  I looked back at Uma. I hadn’t scored any points with her.

  *

  Lizard was true to his word—amazingly—and he showed up sixth period on Monday with a refrigerator box, already nicely collapsed, with the assurance that it could be unfolded back into a big cube when we were ready.

  I’d brought in newspapers that Ruthie helped me spread out on the floor, and Rafe produced a set of paintbrushes that definitely hadn’t come from among the motley bunch Mrs. Petrocelli-Ward had us using.

  “Those look like some serious brushes,” I said.

  “I’m a serious artist,” he said. No eyebrows wiggled.

  I didn’t roll my eyes.

  The painting was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. Of course, how hard was it to do caveman drawings? But Rafe said it couldn’t look like some lowlife street kid did it, so I followed what he was doing and it actually looked—well, like professional cave artists had painted it.

  Lizard, Tank, and Ruthie were our art critics, although we ignored most of what Lizard and Tank said. Ruthie was actually more like a cheerleader. As for Uma, she watched from the back, looking like she wanted to go after the whole thing with a can of black spray paint.

  I got a little carried away with the sienna at one point and ended up with more on me than on the “cave wall.” I got a pass to the restroom and was in there washing it off my elbows when Uma’s face appeared in the mirror. Our eyes collided in the glass.

  “Hi, Uma,” I said.

  “It’s not gonna happen,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You and Rafe. It’s not gonna happen.”

  My laugh bounced off the tiled walls and the metal sides of the stalls.

  “I don’t see how this is funny,” she said.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me. In the first place, he’s yours.”

  “Yes. He is.”

  “Okay, and in the second place, I don’t want him. I mean, that might be hard for you to see because you’re into him, but seriously—can you even see us together?”

  “No,” she said, although she’d obviously envisioned that exact thing, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I should probably come up with a third reason fast. Please.

  “And besides, you’re always here when we’re working together,” I said, “and trust me, this is the only place we’re ever going to be together, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Oh, I know I don’t.” She was giving me the tight face. The one where I was sure her cheeks were going to meet in the middle of her head. “You’re the one who has something to worry about if you don’t watch yourself.”

  “Note to self,” I said. “Watch me.”

  Uma gave me one last tight-faced look and rocked her almost nonexistent hips out of the restroom. If there had been a door to slam, she might have dislocated a wall with it.

  I turned back to the sink and let all the air come out of me.

  “Are you okay, Cassidy?”

  My head jerked up. The face I saw in the mirror this time was Kara’s.

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping on purpose,” she said. “I was about to come out of the stall when I heard you and that girl talking.” She darted her blue eyes nervously toward the exit. “Who was that?”

  “Just a girl in Lo—in study hall.”

  “Oh.” Kara gave the exit another wary glance. “Was it just me, or was she, like, threatening you?”

  I leaned against the sink. Of course Kara wouldn’t know what a threat sounded like. And she wouldn’t know who Uma was, or Rafe Diego, or Ruthie. They had all come into my life since she had gone out of it.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “She’s just insecure. I’ve got it handled.”

  “Cassie—”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Really.”

  She nodded her head of curlier-than-curly blonde hair. She’d had it cut. It made her look older, more sophisticated, like some part of her had moved on.

  “Well, okay,” she said. “I’ll see you, then.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I left out the part where she couldn’t “see me” because her parents wouldn’t let her and because I couldn’t trust her.

  She left and I stayed, looking in the mirror, until I was sure she wasn’t coming back.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I thought I’d had about all the surprises one person could expect to have in a single day until my father tapped on my door that night, just as I was opening RL.

  “Come in,” I said—calmly—even though the Frenemy was stirring from sleep somewhere deep in my backbone. It was the first time I’d heard from her all day.

  Dad came in and looked around like he expected that I would’ve completely redecorated. I took that opportunity to slide RL back under the beanbag. I had no doubt my brother had already shared his version of our little scene with Dad, and I didn’t want a reenactment of it.

  But my father didn’t seem to be in search of evidence. He just leaned on the edge of my desk and folded his arms. We were about to go into lecture mode, without the car. No wonder he looked like something didn’t fit him.

  “How’s therapy going?” he said.

  “Great. Ben—that’s my therapist—he says I’m doing great.”

  Could I sound any lamer?

  “How long before you can play again, does he say?”

  “Uh, six months, minimum. I’m thinking about a club team.”

  He dismissed that with his
hand. “A club team won’t get you a scholarship. I’ve been working this from another angle.”

  I gripped the sides of the beanbag, just to make sure I wasn’t being taken back in time by some invisible hand.

  “Don’t schedule any therapy for April fifteenth. That’s three weeks from now.”

  “What happens on April fifteenth?”

  “Your appeal.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There’s a school district appeals board that meets once a month. We already missed it for March, but I wasn’t ready anyway.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  The trench between his eyebrows deepened. “I’m trying to tell you. They hear appeals on disputes individuals have with a school administration. We’ve filed against LaSalle. I’m going to get this thing overturned—this ruling about you not being able to play.”

  “Are you serious?” I said. “I’m sorry—I know you are. This is just …” I shrugged my shoulders up to my earlobes. “Thank you, Dad.”

  “It’s what I do. I’m staying out of the therapy issue. Apparently your mother has that handled.” He pulled away from the desk and looked down at me. “I’m sticking my neck out on this, Cass.”

  I was still trying to figure out how to respond to that when he closed the door behind him.

  *

  It was good news. It was great news. Too bad I couldn’t share it with Ben, since he didn’t know about the steroids, and I didn’t ever want him to. At first I thought that was why I had to fend off the nudges of the Frenemy. But once I was there with him on Tuesday, I knew it was something else.

  “What’s this I’m seeing?” he said when we were having our usual how-was-your-week conversation.

  “What?” I said.

  “This.” Ben hugged his arms around himself so his shoulders almost met at his chest.

  “Am I doing that?”

  “Ever since you came in the door.”

  I looked down at my legs, swinging over the side of the table. “My dad is talking to me again. He wants to help me.”

  “I take it he didn’t before.”

  I shook my head.

  “So is this a bad thing?”

  “No,” I said. “Only I feel like I’m going backward.”

  “Back to where?”

  I couldn’t give him an answer right away, but Ben’s eyes waited, like it was only a matter of time before I’d come up with the right one.

  “Okay, it’s like I’m back to stuff I used to do. Like I feel like I should ask you if we can step up my therapy—you know, give me more reps or more weight, and let me come in twice a day instead of once.”

  “Not happening.”

  “And I’m glad, because I don’t really want to do that, but it’s like I should want to.”

  “Didn’t we decide there weren’t going to be any ‘shoulds’?”

  “Yes! Only now …”

  “What’s different now?”

  “It’s like my father’s in here,” I said, waving my hand across the workout area. “And he wasn’t before. And I don’t want him here.”

  “Then he’s banned,” Ben said.

  “So you don’t think I need to work harder?”

  “Is that what your dad said you needed to do?”

  “He didn’t say it, but it was like it was there. That’s the way it always was.”

  Ben nodded. “Well, I gotta tell you, you already do a little more than I ask you to, every time. You’re my poster girl for ACL recovery, and we’ve only been working together for what, ten days?”

  “Eleven,” I said.

  “But who’s counting, right?” He grinned. “Look, Boss, my only concern right now is that you don’t reinjure yourself by doing too much with that knee. I don’t want you to be a girl who used to play a sport she loved. But if you take off running, that graft is going to fail and you’ll be right back where you started.” He looked at me closely with his gray-and-gold eyes. “And we’ve already decided we’re not going backward, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “So—you want to take another step forward?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then why are you sitting there, girl? Let’s do this thing.”

  *

  By Friday, Rafe and I had done all the pieces of the wall. When he put the final brushstroke on the last box, Ruthie whipped out a bag of Three Musketeers miniatures and went around to all of us, distributing them.

  “We should celebrate,” she said.

  I was ready to smack any one of them if they gave her the slightest bit of grief, but evidently chocolate could sweeten anybody up. I made a mental note to ask Mom if she’d tried it on my father.

  “Now we have to put it all together,” I said to Rafe.

  “Hey, Miss Frankenstein.”

  “Absolutely not.” Ms. Edelstein pointed the red pencil at him without looking up. “It’s too big. Where are they now?”

  “The other boxes?” I said. “They’re collapsed in my garage.” When each one was dry, Mom and I had transported it in the back of her Jeep. “Portable graffiti,” she called it.

  “Sounds like a no-brainer to me,” Ms. Edelstein said.

  Then I must not have a brain, because I didn’t see where she was going. Not until Rafe wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  “You’re saying we should set it up at my house and finish it?” I said.

  “I bet you got a real nice place, Roid.”

  I gave him the customary eye roll, but it actually made sense. And my house was definitely safe—as in, I could throw him out when I couldn’t stand him anymore.

  “What about tomorrow, then?” I said.

  “Ooooo—ren-dez-vous.”

  The second Lizard said it, I turned to Uma, who was, as usual, in the back of the room with ice cubes for eyes.

  “You should come too,” I said to her. “Seriously.”

  Tank looked at Lizard. “Dude, if we’re gonna party—”

  “We’re not,” I said.

  I could just see a meeting of the local graffiti artists’ union taking place in my family room. There wasn’t enough chocolate in the world to make that work.

  “I’m just inviting Uma,” I said.

  “I won’t be there.”

  She frosted the room so fast I shivered. Her eyes pointed at Rafe.

  “Guess you won’t either, dude,” Lizard said.

  Rafe let his own eyes smolder under the hood for a moment before he turned to me.

  “What time?” he said.

  I didn’t look back at Uma again. I didn’t want to have my eyeballs frozen.

  *

  Ruthie hadn’t said a word through any of it. But when Rafe and the entourage left and Ms. Edelstein stepped out to go to the Coke machine, she came out from behind the fairies, her eyes round as nickels.

  “Did you see the way Uma was looking at you?”

  “Yeah. She wants to slit my throat.”

  “Totally. She’s scary.”

  “She thinks I’m after Rafe,” I said.

  “You mean like as a boyfriend?” Ruthie actually shuddered.

  “I guess if you like somebody, you can’t see why everybody else wouldn’t like him too.”

  “Love is blind,” she said.

  She was so serious I forced myself not to laugh.

  “I hope she doesn’t call you out,” she went on. “That happened to my cousin—”

  “What do you mean, ‘call me out’? You mean, like, challenge me to fight her?”

  Ruthie’s nod was solemn, but I did laugh this time.

  “In the first place, I’m like three times bigger than she is, and in the second place, I don’t do junk like that.”

  “I know,” Ruthie said. “You’re way too nice.”

  I almost laughed again, except that her eyes were so sincere she could have sold used cars.

  “You think I’m nice?” I said.

  “You’re, like, the nicest person I know.”

  “
You must not know that many people.”

  “I don’t know any people like you,” she said.

  All I could do was stare at her while a lump formed in my throat. If she knew how many times I’d wanted to press her mute button …

  “What are you gonna do about Uma?” she said.

  I swallowed. “What do you think I should do?”

  She looked down at the novel she still had her finger in, marking her place, and I thought for a second she was going to consult it for an answer. But she lifted her chin and said, “You should just be you.”

  *

  Rafe was alone when he pulled up to my house at noon the next day in an ancient pickup truck. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or start worrying about another face-to-face with Uma in the restroom.

  “He’s more attractive than I expected him to be,” Mom said as we watched him swagger up the driveway with enough attitude for about five of his kind.

  “Attractive?” I said. “Mom, are you serious?”

  “Well, yes. In a bad boy kind of way. You know, the dark, haunted look and all that.”

  “Okay, Mom, stop—please.”

  She laughed and headed toward the hall. “You two have fun.”

  The doorbell was ringing by then. When I let Rafe in, I found myself checking for signs of a “dark, haunted look.”

  “What’s up, Roid?” he said. “Do I have lettuce in my teeth?”

  Okay, so much for that.

  We went out to the garage, which Mom’s Jeep had vacated. Dad, of course, had gone to the office, which was good because I wasn’t sure he would have moved the Inquisition Mobile out to make room for my art project.

  I stopped in the doorway and shook off a few quills. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that the only time the Frenemy was showing up lately was when I thought about my father. Ruthie wouldn’t think those thoughts were “nice.”

  Huh. Maybe they weren’t even me.

  “Good space,” Rafe said.

  I pulled my focus back to him and stepped down into the garage. He was moving around in it, gazing up at the ceiling and measuring the walls with his gaze. I would have thought he was casing it for grand theft auto if there hadn’t been something softer than the usual gonna-getcha glint in his eyes.

  “You could make some major art in here,” he said.

  “Does my father waxing his car count?”

  “You could do big pieces.”