He turns off the TV and starts gathering the papers in a neat pile, grumbling about Jake owing him.
“You worry about you, and I’ll worry about Jake,” I say, even though I’m not the least bit worried about Jake. The presence of his truck in the driveway tells me he came home during the night, and he’s earned the right to sleep in.
But by ten I wonder enough to crack open his door.
The bed hasn’t been slept in.
I check my phone for a text saying he spent the night at Kolt’s. That must be what happened, even though I’m not sure why he’d bring his truck home first.
Still, he must be with Kolt. Maybe he typed up a message and was so busy celebrating that he forgot to hit Send.
There’s a buzz of irritation at the back of my skull as I text him: Time to come home or at least check in. Even MVPs have to report to their moms.
By the time I’ve cleaned the floors and finished the dishes Luke left half done and sent Jake three more unanswered texts, the irritation has been joined by a small seed of worry. Is he okay? Surely I would have heard by now if something had happened to him.
I pull up Coach Cooper’s number but hesitate. It was handy to have in the seasons before Jake had his own phone. But it’s been years since I used it, and I’ve never taken him up on his offer to “ask about anything, anytime.” I had no real cause to suspect that he was so warm to me for any reason other than that I was his star player’s mom, but I’d always wondered if there was something not quite right in the offer. If there might have been an element of it that stemmed from the fact that I was his star player’s single mom, since he lowered his voice and glanced at his wife whenever he made the offer.
So I keep my text to Coach Cooper formal and brief.
Hi, Coach. This is Sabrina Foster. Is Jake still at your house by any chance?
I’ve barely had time to set the phone down when it chimes with the reply.
We never did see Jake last night. I kept hoping he’d come. And I hope you know you would have been welcome too.
My chest feels like it’s caving in. I type the words “Are you sure he was never there?” and erase them, three times. Of course he’s sure. For all his faults and borderline flirtations, no one could question that Coach C always knows exactly where his players are and what they’re up to. Sometimes better than even their parents do.
I scroll through my contacts until I find the one person who might have been able to convince Jake to skip the team party. When they were together, I saw enough signs—hasty ponytails for her, shirt buttons missed for him—that I knew they weren’t saints, but they’d never spent the night together.
Now I find myself hoping, hard, that they have.
Hi, Daphne. You haven’t seen Jake, have you?
This time, the reply takes longer, and I let myself imagine that she’s with him now. Maybe they’ve gotten back together and are trying to find the way to cover some indiscretion, not realizing that all that matters to me in this moment is knowing that my son is safe.
Finally the answer comes.
I haven’t seen him since before the game. I’m sorry. Do you have Kolt’s number?
She sends the number along, but it doesn’t help. Kolt hasn’t seen Jake, either.
“He’s missing, isn’t he?”
Luke appears at my shoulder as I stare at my phone, tears stinging my eyes.
“The first twenty-four hours are the most critical in missing-person cases,” he says. It’s a far cry from The Clone Wars, but he’s clearly quoting something.
“What should I do now?” I ask, as much to God as to myself.
But it’s Luke who answers. “Call the police.”
So I do.
Thanks for talking with us again, Kolt. We’ve received some new information that raises additional questions.
Okay.
When was the last time you saw Jake Foster?
In the locker room, after the game.
Are you sure? Think hard, son. Because we have a witness who says they saw you pick him up from his house around midnight.
No, sir. That witness is mistaken, or messing with you. I can promise you I haven’t seen Jake or heard a word from him since the locker room. Is Seth Cooper your witness? Because I already told you, he’s the one you should be questioning again.
Is there anybody who can vouch for your whereabouts at midnight that night?
Sure. My parents. Like I said, I went to the party earlier that night—everybody did—but I was home before midnight and didn’t leave the house again.
If everybody was at this party, weren’t you worried that Jake wasn’t there?
I wasn’t worried then. Jake doesn’t always come out after games. But I’m worried now. Where’s my best friend? That’s the only question that matters.
Did you and Jake ever fight?
Nope. This is pointless. Quit talking to me and go find him. Where’s my best friend?
Did he ever get angry at you? Were you ever afraid of him?
Nope. Where’s my best friend?
Were you jealous of Jake? His athletic ability, his relationship with the coaches, anything like that?
Jealous? Are you kidding me? He’s my best friend. Where’s my best friend?
Were things different between you and Jake after his injury last summer?
Where’s my best friend?
I think we’re done here. Let us know if you remember anything, okay?
When the police leave my house, my parents just sit there on the couch. I slouch across from them, hands in my pockets, pinching the soda-can tab I picked up yesterday at Jake’s house until it cuts into my thumb.
Maybe I should show it to my parents.
Maybe I should have shown it to the police.
Maybe no matter who I show it to, they’ll tell me it doesn’t mean anything.
Not maybe. That’s exactly what will happen.
Maybe I’m an idiot for picking it up in the first place.
The second I saw it there, I could picture what might have gone down the night Jake disappeared. But what evidence did I have? A piece of garbage that’s tied to a memory and a conversation that didn’t even happen?
I pull my hands out of my pockets. Lean forward to scratch the back of my neck as I rest my elbows on my knees. My parents and I stare at each other until I can’t stand it anymore.
“Well, that was a close one,” I joke. “They almost discovered my heroin stash.”
“Kolt,” my dad warns. He always comes home with his tie loose and his top button open. Not today.
“I didn’t do anything wrong! Effing Seth Cooper and his effing lies. He’s the one they should be questioning again.”
Mom twists the dish towel she was holding when the cops showed up. “Watch your language,” she says.
I wonder if she remembers that Kmart used to scream the actual word right in her face.
It had to be Seth who sent the cops over here. I want to hate him, but the idiot probably pissed his pants right there in the office and said the first thing that popped into his brain. Probably wasn’t trying to get me in trouble so much as get an attaboy out of them. To hell with the truth, I guess, and who cares if my parents end up shizzing their shorts when the police show up to visit their “good” son?
“You really don’t have any idea where he might have gone?” Mom asks.
I slump back in the chair and cover my face with my hands. “I thought the questioning was over.”
“It is,” Dad says. “It is. We’re just trying to help. The sooner he’s found, the sooner your life goes back to normal too.”
Like finding Jake for Jake’s sake isn’t enough to make it worthwhile.
Up in my room, my phone’s all lit up with notifications from Daphne. We used to be closer, back when
she was dating Jake, and I still miss her sometimes. It’s not like I cut her out or blamed her for what happened. Jake got all drama since last summer and probably deserved to be dumped on his ass. But still, it feels better not to have Jake between us, messed up as that sounds.
So I do what she asks and jump on social media to log in as Jake. (She obviously doesn’t know his password is still daphne32 or she would have hacked into his account herself.) I shut down the garbage thread she asked me to. Then I log back into my account and comment on her “Find Jake” page, even though I don’t think it’ll do any good, since all of social media is a garbage thread. Gotta respect the girl for giving it a shot, though.
Speaking of garbage, I stand over mine and make myself drop the soda-can tab.
I didn’t lie to the police, but I didn’t tell them everything, either.
Just because somebody’s your best friend doesn’t mean they can’t be an asshat sometimes too. Case in point: our first summer-ball tournament before senior year.
Coach was usually a little less intense for summer ball, but not this time. When we got to the locker room for our first game of the tournament, he sat us down and unzipped the bag he’d lugged from Ashland. We’d all been speculating about what might be in there—new there. New uniforms? Personalized water bottles? A metric ton of junk food?
The second I saw what it actually was, I froze.
One beat-up old sign, three words:
HEAD
HANDS
HEART
“Isn’t it bad luck to take that out of the locker room?” I asked, backing away, just in case. “Like when you tell an actor to break their leg or something?”
Seth and Jake both laughed at me.
“That’s good luck, idiot,” Seth said. “And there’s no superstition about the sign. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Coach Cooper held it up for us. “Do you remember six years ago, when you first came to Junior Warriors camp? Remember how we sat in the locker room on our last day of camp and Coach B asked if I wanted to keep this?”
We nodded. There were a few new guys and younger guys, but most of us had been in the room that day. This was the team Coach had been building all along, and the season he’d been building it for.
“This sign has hung in that locker room since I played at Ashland. But I never really took the time to think about it, to understand it, until that day. Here’s what it means to me, boys.
“You play with your head. Run every play like we practiced it. See the court. See each other. Be smarter than your opponent during every single second the clock’s running. That’s the part I can help you with most, but still, it’s the five on the floor who have to make it happen.
“You play with your hands. Hard passes, soft touch on the shot, your hand in their face or at the waist or wherever it needs to be to stop them on defense.
“And you play with your heart. That’s the part you boys have shown me for six years now, at every single practice, in every single game. This is our season. I promised you it would be. Today is the day we begin to keep that promise.”
We stood and shouted, gathered in the center of the room by the speech and the adrenaline and all those years of working toward this moment. As we piled our hands in the circle, nobody even had to tell us what the chant would be.
“Head, hands, heart!” All our voices came together as one, and for a second I almost felt sorry for the team that had to face us that day.
But then Jake looked over at me with this weird panic in his eyes. No way he’d play the way we needed him to if he was in his head that bad. Time to lighten it up a little.
“Break a leg, gentlemen!” I shouted. “Break them both, if you’re an overachiever like Foster!”
Everybody laughed but Jake.
He pulled me aside as we headed out to the court. “Be serious,” he said. “We can’t mess around this year.”
“Jake, I love you, man, but you’re wound tighter than a two-dollar watch. We’re a team, you know. It’s not all on you. Lighten up.”
“What would Arizona State say if I lightened up?”
There it was again. Jake had a verbal agreement to play for the school he’d been dreaming of since sixth grade, and he wouldn’t let anybody forget it.
“They’d say, ‘Congratulations on being less of an uptight ass.’ ”
“Shut up, Kolt. Verbal agreements don’t mean shit, and you know it. Until I sign on the dotted line, they can walk away.”
It was so dumb I had to laugh. “Dude, they’ve been recruiting you since eighth grade. They’d be gold-plating your toilet seat if the NCAA would let them. They’re not walking away. Just go out there and play your game. That’s all they want.”
Jake walked away, muttering about how I’d never get it.
“Yeah, maybe I won’t. What I really don’t get is why you changed.”
He didn’t even turn back, like I wasn’t worth an answer. We’d disagreed with each other about five thousand times before, but this time felt different somehow. Deeper.
Whatever was off between us, we carried it onto the court: missing each other’s passes, not quite anticipating each other’s cuts, not calling the switch on the screen in time to prevent a score. Jake’s nothing special in the classroom, but he usually reads the court like a damn novel. Not that day, though. And okay, maybe I missed a few key rebounds myself.
We still had a pretty solid lead in the third quarter. When Jake swatted the ball from his guy, I took off, ready for the easy layup at the other end of the court. I looked back just as Jake fired a pass to me—and then watched it sail right over my outstretched fingers.
“Next time,” I said as we jogged back down to play D.
“Would have been this time if you hadn’t let yourself get so slow in the off-season.”
Jake and I had been trash-talking each other for six years straight, but this had an edge to it I hadn’t heard before.
The kid guarding me snickered.
“Dude, shut up,” I said. “You’re down by twenty.”
“Whatever, Assland.”
I slapped him on the back, just hard enough. “Congratulations, man. That is literally the first time I’ve ever heard that joke.”
After that, he slunk off like the idiot he was. But still. I didn’t like getting laughed at by some punk kid who was stealing my material and belonged in the JV bracket. In spite of the scoreboard, we still had something to prove.
So when Seth put up a shot that clanged off the back of the rim like a back-alley trash can, I crashed the boards hard, determined to grab the rebound. Unfortunately, so did Jake—which meant I smashed straight into his back while he was in the air.
He slammed down sideways, right on top of me. We hit the hardwood together, and the impact was brutal against my back and chest. I rolled out from under him and popped back up, ready for the next play, expecting him to do the same. But he just lay there, bent and buckled, grabbing his knee and rolling on the floor and making these long, low sounds like a wounded animal.
“Martin!” Coach barked at me. “What the hell was that?”
I didn’t argue that Jake shouldn’t have even been in there—that he should have hung back to play defense. That he wouldn’t have gotten hurt if he hadn’t come flying in, trying to do my job. You didn’t argue with Coach—especially not about Jake.
Coach shoved me aside to get to Jake. “You’d better hope he’s not out for the rest of the game.”
I didn’t mean to hurt him. Of course I didn’t. Yeah, something was off between us, but he was still my best friend—and I wouldn’t even take out my worst enemy like that. The way Jake’s face had gone all tight and white had me pretty shook.
Two athletic trainers rushed out and helped him to his feet. The scattered crowd cheered as Jake limped out, arms slung arou
nd the trainers’ necks, eyes shut tight against the pain. I tried to follow them, but Coach yanked me back.
“We’ve got a game to finish, Kolt,” he said. “And you’d better make damn sure we still win it after that stunt you just pulled.”
We won, even with some new kid named Ruckert playing like crap at point. But it didn’t feel like it was supposed to. Everybody’s eyes kept flicking toward the locker room, hoping to see Jake running or, hell, even hobbling back out. As soon as the buzzer went off, we fived the other team and filed down into the locker room to check on him.
But he wasn’t there.
“They took him to the hospital,” the trainers told us. “His knee was messed up pretty good.”
So we piled into cars to head over there, still in our uniforms. Everybody was too quiet, too stiff, too worried. Something had to change before we walked into that room and stressed Jake out even worse. Dude hated anything medical. My guess: it had something to do with his dad. But you can bet we never talked about it.
“Maybe you should have showered first,” I said to Seth as the hospital door slid open for us. “Pretty sure making people puke is the opposite of what they’re trying to do here.”
Seth stared me down. “Don’t you ever know when to turn that crap off?” he asked, and he’d never looked as much like Coach as he did right then.
It took a while, but they finally let us see him. Not gonna lie, it was weird. Jake had barely been to the doctor since I’d known him, and now here he was in a hospital bed.
“My boys!” He threw his arms out and nearly knocked over his IV stand. “You came.”
Whatever they’d given him for the pain had definitely done some unwinding on him.
“He has to go for some tests soon,” said Luke, looking proud to be the eleven-year-old with the information the whole varsity team was waiting for. “But you can stay until they take him.”
So we stayed until the nurse came. It was nice to see Jake finally laughing and joking with the guys. Maybe this would turn out to be a good thing.
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