Despite the admittedly loose connection Gabby had with Lily, she couldn’t help feeling affected by her murder, hoping for justice for such a nice person. She read every article she could about the case, and by this point she’d heard every theory out there. Did Lily’s murder have something to do with Steven Chapman, who wanted to buy her land to build a commercial development? Or was she the victim of a transient — some kind of serial killer popping in and out of towns targeting single women? Or was the murderer someone homegrown, a Cedar Springs resident, now eager for his next victim? It was the latter option that was freaking out most of the town, Gabby included. Everyone’s parents had been vigilant lately, buying high-tech alarm systems, instituting neighborhood watches and new curfews. Not that Gabby needed to worry about that. It had been years since she had anywhere to be after school, returning straight home at exactly 3:47 each day. Her memories of long practices at the ice rink and slumber parties with friends had mostly faded away.
The final bell rang.
Gabby willed herself to stay calm. She couldn’t let the stress of the bell get to her. If she could just make it to the hallway quickly, she might have a shot at getting to class on time. But the maze of complicated cracks near the entrance of the locker room formed a particularly challenging gauntlet for her.
Luckily, the outer corridor floor was covered with wide black-and-white linoleum squares that required fewer acrobatic feats than the locker room did.
As she leaped between the white squares, she could almost taste the relief in her mouth, the gym door just feet away. Then several members of the football team emerged from the boys’ locker room in workout gear, including Justin, the brawny guy who had stormed out of that therapy group.
As they spilled into the hall, they jostled Gabby, knocking her firmly into a black square.
This couldn’t be happening.
But if any of the guys realized the disaster they’d caused, they didn’t let on. Not one of them looked back as Gabby began her retreat to the locker room.
* * *
Justin Diaz was having a crappy day.
First, some idiot took forever to load his bike on the bus, which made him get a tardy demerit first period. If that wasn’t bad enough, while he was rushing to get to class, he bumped into Mr. Wincott, who spilled hot coffee all over Justin’s shirt. If hitting a teacher wasn’t an offense that would get him expelled, Justin would’ve punched that half-assed apology right off Wincott’s face.
Then he’d had to deal with that dumb therapy meeting. In what world was it supposed to be surprising to Justin that his mother had given up on him? He’d known that since before kindergarten.
And now he was late for weight training, thanks to his half-deaf English teacher who kept droning on about Tender Is the Night because she didn’t hear the bell ring.
But his irritation peaked when he entered the stale-aired weight room and saw that tight end Adam Dodson had beaten him to the leg-curl machine. Everyone knew Justin liked to start on that machine.
With clenched fists, Justin maneuvered past his other teammates and approached the rack of dumbbells instead. He effortlessly picked up some heavy weights and began a series of bicep curls, his annoyance fueling every rep.
“Hey, man,” his buddy Greg Hindenberg — Hindy — groaned as he struggled through a curl, his shaggy blond hair plastered to his face.
Hindy was a foot shorter than Justin, like most players on the team. Justin had always been the tallest and strongest in his grade, the kind of kid other parents thought was a sixth-grader when he was just in third grade. His size was intimidating as hell on the football field and one of the reasons he made such a kick-ass tackle.
Justin nodded at Hindy, then looked back at Adam, who was still hogging the leg-curl machine. Finally, after an agonizingly long ten minutes, Adam rose and Justin quickly turned to rerack his weights.
But he wasn’t fast enough. Their quarterback, Mike Silvestri, slipped onto the machine and was already adjusting the settings. The heat rose in Justin’s cheeks as he approached Silvestri and stood over him aggressively.
“I was getting ready to use that,” Justin said.
Silvestri shrugged. “Too bad, man. You can go after me.”
Silvestri might be quarterback, but everyone knew this team wouldn’t be undefeated without Justin.
“I don’t think so,” Justin snapped. He didn’t move.
Silvestri stood to look at him.
“What’s your problem?” he asked. “Can’t you just wait your turn?”
Fury funneled through Justin’s body and he drew back his fist, connecting it with Silvestri’s jaw. It was only one hit, but the release made his entire body feel lighter. For a brief moment, he was taken back to the meeting earlier that day. Sociopathic proclivity to violence, they’d said.
More like constantly surrounded by idiots who need to be taught a lesson.
He raised his fist again, to throw an extra punch for good measure, but he felt two bear-size hands on his shoulders, pulling him away.
“Justin! That’s enough!” Coach Brandt, the team’s defensive coordinator, ordered. With a muscular lumberjack build, Coach Brandt was probably the only guy in the room with the pure strength to take him on.
He dragged Justin toward the small office attached to the weight room and closed the door once they were both inside.
“Sit down,” Coach Brandt said calmly. Unlike the other coaches, he never lost his temper. “What was that about?”
Justin shrugged noncommittally. “Silvestri’s been drunk with power ever since he became starting QB.”
“So you punched him in the face? Come on, you know you can’t lose it like that,” Coach Brandt responded evenly. “Even if it’s true.”
Justin allowed himself a hint of a smile.
Coach Brandt settled into the tattered black leather chair across from Justin, his forehead creased in concern. “Anything else on your mind? Everything okay at home?”
He asked it casually, but Justin knew what he was getting at. Coach Brandt had just come on staff over the summer, but the tale of Justin’s crappy life had already made its way to him.
“Yeah,” Justin mumbled quickly.
“You know, I didn’t have a great relationship with my parents. My dad left, traded us in for a new family and never even bothered to —”
“Everything’s fine,” Justin interrupted. Though he was mildly intrigued by the revelation that Coach Brandt had grown up without his dad around either, Justin was aware that he’d be expected to reciprocate and share his own feelings. And that wasn’t going to happen. “Can I go now?”
CHAPTER FOUR
On Monday morning Z awoke in the oversize four-poster canopy bed (chosen by her mother) with a shrill ringing in her ears.
Then, in an instant, it all went clear and silent.
I wonder if I could convince Mom and Dad to buy me a yacht.
Z shook her head forcefully and everything went back to normal. Her eyes darted around the room as she wondered what had just happened. Why had that question crossed her mind? She hadn’t asked her parents to buy her anything since she was nine and they’d denied her request for a boa constrictor. And a yacht? It was a symbol of exactly the kind of bourgeois consumerist culture she detested.
It was still bothering her as she slipped into her usual all-black ensemble, her only jewelry an armful of wristbands from the music clubs she’d been to with Jared. She topped it off with a frayed black hoodie she’d had for years, so broken-in and comfortable that it was like wearing a favorite blanket. She still wasn’t used to the chilly mornings in Colorado — their last house had been in southern Florida, where the temperature rarely dipped below seventy.
Once she’d laced up her black combat boots, she stepped into the long, arched hallway that ran across the second story of their massive, ornate Fre
nch Baroque–inspired home, filled with antiques her mother had sourced from Europe. Every time Z’s family moved, her mother decided on a new theme for the next house.
Z took a right at the fork in the hallway, toward the back staircase. Though this route was a longer path to the kitchen, it allowed her to avoid passing Scott’s room. The fact that they shared a womb for nine months did not provide the sort of tight bond one might expect. Scott and Z were opposites on every level. For years, Z’s father loved to tell the story about when he’d gotten her and Scott matching mini-BMW convertibles for their third birthday. Scott had jumped into the car right away, zooming around the manicured lawns of their historic home in Connecticut. Z had given the car a withering look and proceeded to play with the box it came in, pretending it was a house. “One of them already loves the finer things in life and the other wants to live like a hobo in a box on the freeway,” her father would tell everyone who came over. Z often wondered if she and Scott really had been born polar opposites or if comments like those had set up their differences for life, each playing the expected part. Not that it mattered. The damage had been done and Z could barely stand to be in the same room with him.
When she stepped into the cafeteria-size stone-gray kitchen, though, she realized that Scott was already there. He was lounging on one of the kitchen stools, his feet propped up on the enormous granite center island as if house rules didn’t apply to him.
Their father sat at the large round breakfast table, the Wall Street Journal in his hands, devouring a ham and cheese omelet that Louise, their housekeeper, had made for him.
“Good morning, Zelda,” he said, his voice booming. Usually, by this point in the morning he was already at the construction site of whatever shopping mall complex he was currently developing. But the mess of red tape resulting from Lily Carpenter’s murder was forcing him to be idle, something completely foreign to him. Z had heard him screaming on the phone at his lawyers just the night before, though you couldn’t tell he had a care in the world this morning. That was the thing about her father. He could be affable, charismatic, even gregarious. But he could also change on a dime.
Z made her way over to the espresso machine (perhaps the one extravagance she appreciated) and began grinding beans, only half tuning in to the conversation her father and brother were having.
“It doesn’t make sense this year, Scott,” her dad said.
“But, Dad, you could probably use it as a write-off somehow. At least the fuel could be.”
Something about what he said jolted Z’s subconscious. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Scott’s trying to talk me into buying a yacht,” her father responded, opening up the business section.
The hairs on the back of Z’s neck suddenly shot up. The thought she’d had earlier wasn’t hers at all.
It was Scott’s.
* * *
Andrew approached the door to math class later that day, almost overcome by nausea. He had a feeling it wasn’t a flu bug or intestinal virus causing his queasiness, though. In fact, he’d been remarkably pain-free this morning. His leg had stopped throbbing in the middle of the night, and the chest palpitations that plagued him yesterday were gone. At least for now.
He was pretty sure the nausea was all due to his trepidation at entering Mr. Greenly’s classroom. What barbs would Mr. Greenly publicly hurl his way today? Each day, Andrew told himself that it wasn’t possible for Greenly to shame him any more than he already had. And every day, he was proven wrong. Because Mr. Greenly, like everyone else apparently, had already given up on Andrew.
Andrew could still remember the year, even the month, when everything fell apart. Fourth grade, April. Of course, he’d been sick before then. There had been the four-week itching spell in second grade that left his skin pink and raw. In third grade, he’d caught a record five cold viruses, each of them blending into the next, leaving him bedridden for most of the winter. But he’d always been able to catch up with the other kids in his class. Maybe it was because they weren’t learning anything too challenging in second grade, or maybe his teachers just felt sorry for him, the kid whose father died of a heart attack when he was just three years old.
But in fourth grade, it all changed. Andrew had taken a fall off a playground swing, which developed into chronic lower back pain that made it impossible for him to sit or concentrate. During his hiatus from school, Ms. Strandquist, a sweet teacher who looked like Snow White come to life, had begun teaching fractions to the class. And when Andrew finally returned, no matter how hard he tried to make sense of the tricky numbers, he couldn’t force his brain to understand them. Ms. Strandquist had tried to help him at first. She’d even taken him aside during recess, convinced he just needed a little extra attention. But eventually, as his absences piled up, she lost hope and stopped trying. Was that the first time he’d been deemed a lost cause? It certainly wasn’t the last.
Every year from that point on, it was the same — from the first moment he walked into class at the start of September, he was already behind because he’d never really mastered what he was supposed to learn the year before. Certain teachers were crueler than others, calling his inadequacies to the attention of the entire class, and Mr. Greenly was clearly in that category, zeroing in on Andrew from the first day and never missing a chance to mock him. In Andrew’s opinion, it seemed like a total waste of class time, but no one ever called Mr. Greenly on it.
Andrew slouched toward his desk, and Mr. Greenly gave him a squinty-eyed sneer from behind his glasses. “Mr. Foreman, thank you for gracing us with your presence. I hope you can manage to stay in class today.” A few students snickered, and Mr. Greenly allowed himself a small smile. “I’d like to know how you think you’re going to pass the test tomorrow, considering all the material you’ve missed?” He snaked through the desks toward Andrew. “Particularly since you’ve done nothing to try and make the work up.”
Andrew was silent, wiping his now-clammy hands on his pants. The unfairness stung him — he knew he had it in him to perform better than he did. It wasn’t his fault his body wouldn’t cooperate.
“Are you hoping it just miraculously clicks into place?” Greenly asked.
Andrew didn’t have an answer, so he kept his eyes planted on the desk, aware of the teacher hovering over him, when suddenly the bell rang.
“Very well,” Mr. Greenly said, giving up on Andrew for the moment and returning to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with our review. We’ll start with solving systems of equations by substitution.”
He dimmed the lights, and the first set of problems from his PowerPoint lit up the dry-erase board.
Andrew looked up, ready for the usual feeling of confusion to wash over him, but instead the equations practically sang to him.
If he solved for y in the second equation, then plugged that value into the first equation, he could find the values for both x and y. He didn’t even need a piece of scratch paper. The logic was so clear that he could do the problem in his head. He felt his hand float into the air, like a balloon filling with helium.
Mr. Greenly looked up with an exaggerated sigh as everyone else in the room scribbled notes, attempting to solve for x or y. “No, Foreman. You cannot leave class to go to the nurse.”
“I have the answer,” Andrew blurted out. “X is seventeen and y is twenty-six.” He wasn’t even worried. He knew it was right. He knew it in his bones. The only confusing part was why he’d never seen it before.
“That is … correct,” Mr. Greenly replied, flabbergasted. Andrew flushed with pride and Mr. Greenly narrowed his eyes. “What would you do if I added a third equation?”
He wrote out the three equations on the board as the class watched in silence.
Fern Gordon, the resident front-row Goody Two-shoes, shot her hand up. “I thought we weren’t doing three equations until next week —”
“I’d just like to see how well versed Andrew is,” Mr. Greenly interrupted. “Since this is suddenly so easy for him.” He made air quotes as he said it, as if suggesting Andrew had cheated.
Andrew studied the board, again not writing anything, the variables easily moving around in his head.
“X is fourteen, y is twenty-three and z is four.”
Mr. Greenly folded his arms. “Incorrect. Z is negative four.”
Andrew scanned the equations on the board. “Check your math, Mr. Greenly. I think you forgot to apply the negative-one multiplication to both sides of the equation.”
Mr. Greenly looked down at his notes, his face reddening as he realized his error. The class began to whisper, looking back at Andrew, who relaxed in his seat, extending his long legs into the aisle.
Mr. Greenly walked toward him now. “What’s going on here?”
Andrew flashed him a quick, crooked grin. “I guess it just miraculously clicked into place.”
* * *
Z walked through the hallways with Jared after school, unable to concentrate on a single thing he was saying, her mind attempting to make sense of what had happened so far that day.
Though the incident that morning with Scott and the yacht idea had been eerie, she’d been trying to write it off as twin telepathy, a concept she’d read about once. She and Scott had never had that kind of bond before, but what else could account for the coincidence?
Then at lunch, right when Z had expunged the incident from her brain, the ringing in her ears returned and nearly knocked her out of her chair.
If I don’t throw up this pizza in the next five minutes, it’ll digest right into my thighs and I’ll never fit into my costume.
Z’s head shot up from her veggie burger and her eyes darted around until they landed at the table across from her, filled with theater kids. It felt as if she was watching in slow motion as willowy Lindsey Singer put down the crust of her pizza and excused herself from the table.
The Lost Causes Page 3