Upstander

by James Preller

  The kid’s name was Eric, they learned. And yes, he was new to the area. Same grade as them.

  “When’s school start anyway?” Cody asked.

  “Thursday the fifth,” Mary said. “Twelve days from now.”

  “At least it’s a Thursday,” Cody said. “I can handle a two-day week. It should always be that way.”

  Droopy thought that was a genius idea.

  Griff peppered the boy with a series of questions, half teasing and half curious, testing him. Droopy and Cody bounced around, carrying on a dopey conversation. Just when Mary began to relax, Griff held the ball in his hands. “You don’t mind if I keep it for a while, do you?”

  It was a clear challenge.

  The boy stood motionless, seriously outnumbered. He glanced at Mary, his eyes full of calculation. He was doing the math, Mary decided. And he was gorgeous.

  To his credit, Eric played it as cool as he could under the circumstances. He ignored whatever threat floated in the air and pretended everyone was a gang of old pals, hanging out, having a laugh. “I’ve got to go home in a few minutes—” he began.

  Griff bounced the ball back with a one-handed fling. “We’re just busting on you,” he claimed. It was Griff’s way. Friendly one minute, threatening the next, and laughing a moment later, all so no one knew exactly where they stood. There was no clear, firm ground. Griff enjoyed playing with people, like a puppeteer pulling on strings, to see how they reacted under pressure.

  Mary feared for this boy. It had already been a bad day, and Droopy added a thuggish element.

  “Come on, Griff, let’s go. I’m bored,” Mary urged.

  Griff looked at her, nodded once, as if she had made the most reasonable suggestion he’d heard all week. Leaving was a great idea. But he didn’t move a muscle. “So,” he said, in that casual manner of his. Just letting the word hang there like a birthday piñata before finally pressing the question, “You really didn’t see a kid come through here? For sure?”

  The boy blinked. He knew that Griff knew. “I’m just shooting around. I’m like in my own little world out here.”

  Griff replied that he’d take Eric’s word for it—in a way that implied he wasn’t buying it. The lie was a painting in a museum and they all kind of stood around, looking at it. For some unknown reason, this new kid was willing to lie to protect David Hallenback, a stranger he didn’t know.

  Interesting, Mary thought. A hero in red basketball shorts.

  The boy tried to salvage the situation. He reasoned, “I mean, I think I would have noticed somebody if—”

  “I gotcha,” Griffin shot back. “Loud and clear.”

  They talked some more, Griff mostly full of sarcasm, lies. “We’re just looking for one of our buddies, that’s all. You can understand that, can’t you?” Griff snapped his fingers. An idea popped into his head. He proposed a simple wager: the boy had to take one foul shot from the line. If he hit the shot, he would be allowed to keep his own basketball.

  Cody and Droopy perked up, giddy and volatile.

  “This is so lame,” Mary groaned. She didn’t want to see what would happen if the boy missed.

  “What do I get if I make it?” the boy asked.

  “Ho-ho!” Griff laughed. “Now you’re bargaining, huh?”

  Having no choice, Eric agreed to the bet.

  “I bet a dollar he makes it,” Mary volunteered. Eric looked at her. Didn’t smile or nod, just blankly looked at the girl on the bike. Mary knew what he saw: she was one of them. It didn’t make her feel good.

  “You like the looks of him, Mary?” Griff guessed. “The new boy in town?”

  Griff knew. He always knew. He had an x-ray gaze for seeing inside people, for knowing what they felt and thought. It was uncanny and very creepy. Mary didn’t like the feeling of exposure it gave her. It was like he could look right through her.

  “Let’s just get this over with, Griff,” she said.

  Eric tossed up an air ball, a total choke, and lost the bet. He closed his eyes, shook his head a little, angry at himself or maybe just too stressed to shoot straight.

  “Air ball!” chortled Drew P.

  Griffin set the ball on the ground, resting his foot on it, and let time slowly pass. Then he gently rolled the ball back to Eric.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Eric,” Griff commented. “I really thought you’d make that shot.” Griff grinned and lifted his bike off the ground. “We’ll see you in school. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a few classes together. Wouldn’t that be special?” Griff grinned and pedaled away with the others falling in line. They left the boy alone on the court, dazed and confused but unharmed.

  “Wait here,” Griff told them, and made a U-turn back to the basketball court. Mary and the others watched from fifty yards away. Griff and Eric seemed to talk in a friendly way, a movie on mute. They exchanged smiles and tapped fists. Griff returned.

  “What did you say?” Mary asked.

  “I told him that I was a good guy to be friends with,” Griff said, “and a lousy enemy.” He laughed. Cody and Droopy joined in. “I also told him that you think he’s cute. Isn’t that right, Mary? I saw you looking at him, panting like a dog.”

  Griff didn’t wait for a reaction. He zoomed up ahead, leaving them to follow, knowing they would.

  22

  [tennis]

  The text from Chantel had come out of the blue: I’m back from camp! Missed you. Let’s get together soon! Free Monday?

  Mary hadn’t even remembered that Chantel was away at camp. Out of sight, out of mind. But after thinking about it, the fuzzy details emerged from her memory. Chantel went away for two weeks to some progressive camp somewhere in the Berkshires. Activities galore and killer mosquitoes and no phones, no internet. Mary had never been to a sleepaway camp herself, so she had a hard time imagining what one was actually like. Most of what she knew came from random comments from friends or things she’d seen in movies. To her the idea of camp was a mixture of cool things (cabins, a lake) and vaguely horrifying things (icky campers, too much singing, peppy counselors, and forced good cheer).

  That explained Chantel’s silence. She hadn’t just conveniently disappeared. And now Chantel was back again, which was definitely going to be awkward. Meanwhile, Chrissie and Alexis were still vacationing together, probably best-friending themselves into a dither, forgetting all about Mary, the unnecessary third wheel, who was stuck at home during the dog days of late summer.

  Jonny had moved out. It changed the house. Not back to normal, exactly, but it no longer felt like there was a bomb about to go off at any second. So that was good, the no-bomb feeling. Still, Mary found herself wondering about her brother, hoping he was okay, and happy, and staying clean, without knowing the answer to any of those things. One positive outcome was that he hadn’t lied about the bagels. They were truly awesome. As an act of espionage, Mary’s mother swung by Gateway Bagels on a near-daily basis. Supposedly to “pick up a few things,” but really just to make sure Jonny was showing up for work (so far, so good). The end result was the house was fully stocked with bagels and four different flavors of cream cheese (jalapeño was most popular by a landslide, though Ernesto also had a soft spot for maple raisin walnut). Mary wasn’t complaining.

  Oh, and Griffin Connelly was dead to her. I’ll never again be friends with him, she silently vowed.

  Chantel had texted again, eager to get together. And even though Mary wasn’t supposed to like Chantel, she couldn’t deny the fact that, well, she did. Chantel was nice and maybe a little perfect, but she was perfect in a nice way. With Griff out of the picture, and Alexis and Chrissie away, Mary’s social life wasn’t bursting with excitement. She decided to meet up with Chantel, but making sure it was at a remote location. The fewer witnesses, the better. It wouldn’t be good if word got out.

  “Do you play tennis?” Chantel asked.

  “I suck, but sure—just don’t slaughter me,” Mary said.

  They met at the high schoo
l courts, which were usually empty in late August. Mary actually enjoyed playing. She represented decently enough and was quick to the ball, whereas Chantel tended to stay at the baseline and power away with a heavy forehand. They didn’t keep score. After an hour, they’d worked up a sweat and sat on the bench under the shade, swigging from water bottles.

  “Whoa,” Mary gasped, shaking her head. “I need to do that more often. I’m out of shape.”

  “You’re good for someone who never plays,” Chantel said.

  “Too many marshmallows,” Mary quipped. “I should probably start eating kale instead, then I’d kill you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Chantel joked.

  “How was the no-phones thing at camp?” Mary asked. “Was it hard?”

  Chantel leaned back. “No, not really. The first couple of days, you reach for it out of habit, but after a while you get used to it. Honestly, I liked it. You know what? I even wrote letters.”

  “Letters!” Mary joked. “What are those?”

  “It’s like email with paper, strange, I know,” Chantel quipped. “I enjoyed reading them. Getting mail was special. Hakeem wrote to me—twice.”

  “You guys are still—”

  Chantel threw up her hands, beaming. “I don’t know what we are!”

  “But you’re like … progressing?”

  “Progressing,” Chantel laughed. “That sounds awful. Like a report card! No, we’re just getting to know each other. Slowly. There’s no hurry.”

  “So no pics,” Mary said.

  Chantel blushed. “Some, a little, but nothing, you know, exposed.”

  “Good,” Mary said. “This is good.”

  “But I have to tell you something,” Chantel said, leaning closer. “Promise you won’t tell.”

  Mary nodded.

  “I mean it,” Chantel said. “Seriously.”

  “Okay, okay,” Mary said, eager to hear what might come next.

  “Hakeem told me he did get a picture—from Alexis.”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah,” Chantel said, mouth open, eyes twinkling.

  “He told you that?”

  “Last night,” Chantel said.

  “You got together last night?” Mary was working hard to keep up.

  “We went climbing at the indoor rock gym, so much fun,” Chantel said. “Anyway, I think he was shocked. We were together, his phone dinged, and there she was—topless!”

  “Get out!”

  “Well, she had her arms, you know, like this”—Chantel folded her arms in an X across her chest—“so nothing showed.”

  “What did Hakeem say?” Mary asked. “Were you mad?”

  Chantel looked away, leaning her chin into her hand. “He says that he never asked, she just sent it out of nowhere. I told him to delete it.”

  “That’s so wild,” Mary said. Her mind reeled, thinking back to Alexis’s announcement at the beach. She liked Hakeem. He was her next target. It must be true. “Are you sure you believe that Hakeem is innocent in all this? It sounds fishy.”

  Chantel began packing away the tennis balls, zipping the racket into the protective case. “I know how it sounds, but I do believe him,” she said. “You had to be there, I guess. He was shocked. He didn’t try to hide it from me.”

  “Are you going to say anything?” Mary asked.

  Chantel laughed. “What am I going to say? Nice boobs?”

  In that moment of sharing, Mary almost told Chantel to be careful. About how Chrissie and Alexis didn’t plan on being her friends anymore. She thought about Griffin, and her brother Jonny. But for some reason, Mary didn’t say a word. She kept those secrets to herself.

  23

  [floating]

  It was such a calming shade of blue-green. Soothing, peaceful. Mary drifted on an inflatable pool mattress, her head hanging facedown in the water, wearing goggles and a snorkel. She gazed deeply at the bottom of Chrissie’s pool and thought of all the names she remembered from acrylic paint tubes and other places: turquoise, olive, emerald, cadmium, mint, lime, sea foam, lagoon, teal. She settled on aquamarine, which was basically green with a bluish tint. It was the color of the pool that she was absorbing into her bloodstream through her eyes. A serenity seeping into her body. Mary had earrings that were aquamarine gemstones, a color she avoided during the gray winter months. But for August afternoons in the blistering sun? Perfection.

  Chrissie and Alexis were lounging side by side, content to find themselves returned home after thirteen epic days on the Jersey Shore. Upon seeing their friend Mary again, they squeezed her tight and said all the best, gushy things—but Mary sensed the connection between the two girls was stronger than ever. They were rock-solid besties, and nothing would come between that. Their bond felt like a wall through which Mary could never pass. To her surprise, it upset Mary to feel like an outcast. It wasn’t logical, but a feeling was a feeling, not subject to notions of “right” or “wrong.” Some unspoken part of her simply wanted to belong. She’d felt sad lately and wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just everything. So she floated on the water, letting her thoughts drift to that cruel idiot Griffin Connelly, and Chantel, and, always, Jonny.

  Everyone said it was better that he was living on his own. Yet Mary’s imagination kept her mind racing at night—a nervous, stressed feeling she couldn’t push aside. She woke up in the morning and felt tired. Everywhere she turned, Mary felt disconnected, as if she were fading into the background, as if she were absorbing the colors and designs of the carpets and wallpaper. Could she become a ghost, too? How come no one saw her, really saw her, anymore?

  Mary felt increasingly invisible in her own home, a chameleon morphing into the background. There was a movie Ernesto had told her about, something about body snatchers, where pods grew in people’s basements, garden sheds, attics. Eventually the pods slipped in and took the ordinary person’s place. It’s not like the pods killed the regular people—it was more of a transformation. The movie didn’t make total sense, at least in Ernesto’s retelling. You had to go with it, Mary guessed. A lot of movies were that way. Anyway, the pod change was a gradual unbecoming, an unraveling of self, but mostly it was like death, because the original person—we’ll call her Mary, for example—just slowly disappeared like a shadow drifting across a meadow into the dusky woods beyond. Mary longed for the start of school, the busyness of classes and crowded hallways, the sea of faces and the routine of nightly homework. A new beginning, a student’s annual do-over. The summer was too long, too hard. She thought of the boy on the basketball court, his sleeveless shirt and thick eyebrows. That ball thumping on the asphalt like a heartbeat. Or did that rhythm come from within the cage of her own chest?

  Water splashed on Mary’s back. She lifted her head. It was Alexis, kneeling at the edge of the pool. She smiled, flashing a tidy row of white teeth. “Are you going to stay in there forever, Mary? Chrissie’s mom brought out wraps for lunch. Come join us, sweetie. We have so much to talk about.”

  Chrissie laid out a colorful quilt, and the friends picnicked on the grass. Wraps and grapes and homemade brownies. A cold pitcher of sweetened iced tea to wash it all down. “You should have seen the house, Mary, it was sick!” Alexis gushed. “There were, like, I don’t know how many rooms. Outdoor decks on three different levels. You should have come—it was huge.”

  Should have come? That was an annoying thing to say. Mary wasn’t invited.

  Alexis prattled on, talking about hipster-themed restaurants and hot tubs and swimming in the ocean at night. “It’s so scary, the way the dark waves roll in, but I loved it so much. The stars twinkling in the night sky, so freaking gorgeous. Have you ever swum in the ocean at night?”

  Mary had not.

  “You should,” Alexis said.

  “Maybe someday,” Mary replied. Her mood was flat. She wasn’t being any fun. What was wrong with her?

  “And what about you?” Chrissie asked.

  “Kind of boring, quiet,” Mary answered. “My brot
her moved out, which is good, I guess. Definitely less drama. And I made a couple of paintings that are pretty good.”

  “You’re so talented,” Alexis cooed.

  Mary paused to look at her for a moment, wondering if there would be anything else. Like what the paintings were about or what they looked like. But nothing. Mary told them about hanging out with Griffin and his friends—and without going into details, how she definitely wasn’t into him anymore.

  Alexis squinched her nose in sympathy. “He doesn’t seem like your type. What about Pat? He has potential.”

  Mary made a face, signaling she didn’t have any interest in Pat or matchmaking in general. “How’s Project Hakeem coming along?” she asked, shifting the conversation into new territory. “I suppose you couldn’t make much progress while you were away.”

  Chrissie exchanged a look with Alexis. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “We’ve been communicating,” Alexis admitted. “And, actually, there’s a snag.”

  “With Chantel,” Chrissie said.

  “We have an idea,” Alexis stated.

  “But we need your help,” Chrissie said.

  Whoa. Now they were finishing each other’s sentences like a pair of psychic twins. And if that wasn’t weird enough, now they had concocted some kind of diabolical, mad-scientist plan. “Okay,” Mary said. Not an okay that meant yes. It was more an okay that meant, okay, I’m listening.

  Except Alexis and Chrissie didn’t hear it that way. They heard agreement.

  “Oh good!” Alexis said.

  “We knew you’d save us!” Chrissie said, unexpectedly lurching forward to give a hug at the same time Mary was reaching for the grapes. They bumped heads. It kind of hurt, but Mary laughed to cover the pain.

  Mary asked, “What’s the problem with Chantel?”

  “She’s been flirting with Hakeem,” Chrissie said. “Sending him pictures, the works. It’s out of bounds.”