Home and Away

by Candice Montgomery

  I hear every beep of Merrick’s phone as he dials a number, the scent of sweet butter and garlic and paprika wafting to me from the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I say as I get up from the couch to walk over to Merrick.

  Merrick only continues to dial. “I’m calling.”

  “What? Who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just gonna call and demand to speak with whoever’s—”

  “Okay, wait,” I say. “Maybe … maybe don’t call.”

  “Well, why not? Do you not want to play anymore?” He clicks his phone locked and turns the stove off.

  I shrug. Of course I still want to play, it’s just—“I don’t need your help.”

  “You don’t need my help or you don’t need anyone’s help?”

  I roll my neck as tension settles into it slowly, like a sheet being spread over a bed. “This isn’t about you,” I say, walking away, crossing my arms to stretch out the muscles in my upper back. “Don’t make it about you, please don’t take it personally. I just. If I make this team, it’s not going to be because my dad harassed someone into letting me play.”

  He walks away, then turns back. “Don’t be out late Thursday. We’re having dinner with my parents. They want to meet you.”

  I don’t know where this leaves his feelings, but I drop it to say, “Your parents?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  In my room, I pack my gym bag with my favorite gloves and cleats. Kai follows, sits on the floor in the corner, and watches me.

  There’s a new kind of anxiety swirling in my chest, the kind that sprouts up from meeting new people and also the potential for more answers about the box.

  But, God, I love it when he watches me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mamma’s unmistakable voice is coming from the living room as I’m about to leave the apartment for school. And then I hear Merrick’s. It’s too early in the morning for voices to be this loud.

  I can remember Mamma and Daddy trying to teach me how to whisper. I wasn’t that loud, as a kid. No louder than the average child. But something about whispers and children—it doesn’t compute for them. So I had to be taught. Apparently, Mamma never perfected the technique either, because I can very clearly hear both her and Merrick whisper-shouting at each other.

  “You can’t just show up here, Sloane. Did you even ask T if she was okay to see you? You have to think about her and how she feels—”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like I’m still just some college freshman in your classroom, Merrick. I can’t ‘just show up’ the way you did? You showed up and stole my daughter from me—”

  “Our daughter, Sloane. Our daughter, whom you lied to. You did everything to keep us apart, and now she’s here. By her own choice. Because you and Solomon lied to her. To us both!”

  “I didn’t lie to you!”

  “An omission is still a lie, Slo! She chose to be here. Tasia chose this for herself.”

  What he doesn’t know is that I’m here because it was the lesser of two evils. Because I needed a fresh start. Because he had a space for me that seemed uncomplicated at the time. Because getting answers about who I am, who put that box of things together, and who sent it—all of it makes me feel too much. Both settled and uncomfortable in my skin. And yet, without answers … I’m starting to hate all the questions. All the unknowns. I’m starting to hate me.

  “For her!” Mamma says, shouting now. “I did it for her!”

  Merrick laughs an ugly laugh. “You did it to protect your own ass. You’ve always been about yourself. You were like that nineteen years ago and you haven’t changed, Slo—”

  “Stop it, stop doing that.”

  “Doing what.”

  “Using my name like that. Don’t call me that. And you wouldn’t have wanted her back then, so why should I allow you to have any part of her now? You were a selfish son of a bitch. A baby with your Black, Afrocentric, nineteen-year-old student would have been way more than you could ever handle. I did this to spare you, Merrick. I kept her from you for your own good and for hers.”

  “You’re a bitch, Sloane. I’m handling it. I am her father, and even if you and Solomon never want to acknowledge that, Tasia knows, and she is my only priority.”

  Something in my chest crawls up my throat. I don’t have any reason not to believe it’s my heart. I wonder for the span of approximately six seconds if this moment should go on my What It Means to Be a Good Parent list.

  I’m a priority. He says I’m his priority. It’s not something I’ve heard from Mamma or Daddy since the box showed up.

  They’re quiet for a moment, and then Mamma whispers, “I’ll make her come home. Where she belongs. With her family. You’ll never see her again, if I have anything to—”

  A slam against what I assume is Merrick’s glass table, then, “You can’t keep her from me!” Merrick’s yelling now. The echoes of it crawl into every corner of the room. There’s no way I wouldn’t have heard that, so I walk into the room with my book bag and gym bag slung across my shoulders.

  Merrick sees me first. “T,” he says. And that’s it, so I force a smile and shake my head.

  “Can you drive me to school?” I ask him. I could drive myself, but I feel obligated now to get him out of here. Away from this. I hate that this feels like my responsibility. Like I need to save him from this. The need to do something rests heavy on my spine.

  I mentally make the necessary adjustment to my Good Parenting list.

  “Sure,” he says. “Let me grab my keys.” And he walks away to his bedroom.

  The only thing I get to say to Mamma before Merrick comes back is “You really can’t just show up here. It’s not fair to me and, I suspect, it’s not fair to Merrick’s heart either. You can’t make me come home. And you can’t keep me from this anymore. You’ve done enough of that, and legally, I’m pretty sure it’s too late to discuss parental rights. I’m eighteen and legalities don’t exactly matter.”

  Before she leaves, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a Velcro sealed pouch. The front if it says “EPI” in big white letters.

  “Didn’t want you to go without this,” she says, and the sound of the door shutting is gentle and final.

  It might be kind of obvious, but in case it isn’t, the drive to school with Merrick is mute as hell.

  It’s still quiet when I grab my bags out of the backseat.

  He tells me to text him when I need to be picked up, then reminds me, in a faux optimistic shout, about dinner at his parents’ on Thursday as I walk up to the glass doors that read El Camino Real High across them.

  School sucks today. Naturally.

  Except for the fact that I see Kai three times before lunch and he nods at me, specifically, each time.

  I have three classes with Victory. They’re the same three I happen to have with Dahlia. In Western Civ, the teacher, a bald Hispanic woman whom everyone calls Manny, tells us to partner up. The blond girl next to me asks if I want to be hers. I shake my head and say sorry because I see Victory stand and glance at me, brows raised.

  Today, she has one French braid going down the strip right above her left ear. The rest of her hair is down and free, a mane around her head that I wouldn’t call wild so much as natural. Her hair is so much of who she is.

  Before I can nod at her, Dahlia grabs my hand.

  “Let’s be partners. Manny loves me. I have an A in this class for absolutely no reason that I can fathom except that maybe Manny is DTF.”

  “Oh, uh. Sure.”

  “I mean, unless you don’t want to. Pretty sure I spotted Azra Sadeghi visually fondling your cleavage. You could pair up with him and not lift a finger or your shirt or anything. He’d do everything, give you all the credit, and you’d still get an A.”

  She’s already opening her book and her notes—which are close to nonexistent—but still I say, “Nah, let’s be partners.” I glance back at Victory and shrug.

  “Sure? I mean, I
wouldn’t let you partner with Vic regardless of whether or not you partner with me—swear to God, she’s dyslexic. Or, like, I heard she is. Who even knows why she can’t pass freshman English.”

  I nod. “Uh, no. I want to,” I say. “I wanna be your partner.”

  Being friends with Dahlia is its own sort of magic. She’ll make you feel loved and neglected in the same breath. Her attention just feels that valuable. You speak, she dedicates her entire self to listening to you. Not to mention, being friends with her makes me feel a little bit better about her and Kai, even though maybe it shouldn’t. I think, maybe she just wants to be his friend and my friend, and maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s what it is. The three of us can just be friends even though, with Kai, I want more, and he maybe wanted more with her, and she maybe wants less than she has with him now.

  Also, maybe naïveté will win me a Pulitzer.

  After class, Victory packs up fast. To catch up to her, I do that embarrassing run-walk thing that all the freshmen do with their huge, too-full backpacks slapping against their spines.

  “Hey,” I say. “Sorry about the partner thing. We could hang after school and work together if you want.”

  “I’m busy after school.”

  “Oh. Yeah, me too,” I say. “I like your hair. Can you braid mine like that at lunch?”

  “No.” And you know, she’s gifted with legs long enough to outwalk me.

  A moment after she does, Dahlia finds me again, talks nonstop about how she and Kai ditched first and second this morning to get all-you-can-eat pancakes, which ruins whatever friendship-y feelings I had about her in class five short minutes ago. And if she says “practically the world’s best pancakes” again, I might hit her.

  This makes me think of Tristan. I text him, remember that time we made flourless pancakes I’m entirely shocked when he texts me back.

  with bananas, yeah

  and they were so gross

  and they kept falling apart

  and all we had was that gross sugar-free syrup to eat them with

  and mamma got mad bc we put her nonstick pans in the dishwasher

  After that I say nothing. I wish he hadn’t mentioned her. I wish I hadn’t wasted this conversation on pancakes. There are so many other things I need him for right now.

  Right after lunch, Kai asks me what’s wrong when he spots me in the hall.

  “Nothing,” I say, and keep walking. The halls here are never really clear. Even during classes there’s always someone in them. Right now it’s pretty much chaos and Kai has to basically stiff-arm people out of his way to walk within my general radius.

  “Nah, it’s something.”

  “Okay. It’s something. Drop it.”

  “Is it Merr?”

  “No. Stop.”

  “Or football?”

  “No, Kai. I said drop it.”

  “Did Victory say something to you? Is that why you’re mad?”

  “Seriously. Can you just fuck off and go follow Dahlia around like usual?”

  He stops—quick, hard—and gives me a look that is, quite literally, withering. Then he turns on his booted heel and walks away.

  After I skip lunch to sit outside and catch up on some reading for Civ, I finally break down and text an apology to Kai, the blue bubble floating up on my screen. He opens it immediately and leaves me on Read.

  He doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

  My stomach bubbles with nerves as I change into practice shorts and a sports bra.

  Right as I’m in the middle of taping my ankles, I get a text from Slim that is a shouty-caps JOSIAH AND KAT BROKE UP!!! OMG!!! And I don’t know why, but that makes me angry. I’m so frustrated by it. I delete the text and turn my phone off before shoving it in one of the gym lockers.

  The only way to calm the nerves is to physically wash them off, so I splash water onto the back of my neck and then walk out toward the field. No one’s watching me at first. I eye the team QB and WR on the field and track their movements for a minute, studying their execution, their pace. Trying to map their routes. They’re running the same play over and over. They’ve got corners on the field too, so I know it’s a drill meant for the wide receiver, primarily. But the quarterback is getting a good arm workout from these coasting high passes he’s lobbing off.

  I bounce up and down on the balls of my feet, stretch my calves, and roll my neck. It’s not enough of a warm up but all I need is one shot and I’m not throwing it away. Hopefully I don’t pull anything. I’ll admit, their receivers are good. Real good. That is, until I take off in a hard sprint toward the field as the QB lets another ball rip toward their receiver.

  This is stupid. This is so stupid. Someone could get hurt and the coach could ban me from even attending the games as a spectator, regardless of whether or not this goes off well.

  But it does. I come in low and heavy, intercepting the ball and taking off down the field, dodging as I go.

  I don’t know why. I don’t know what possesses the rest of the players on the field to fall in line with me and do their jobs, to follow this play I’ve basically co-opted. But they do. And this is gonna work. I feel it in my chest, it’s gonna be good. And it is. I see players in my peripheral vision, coming up fast at my back. I hear the coaches screaming “Take her down!” from the sidelines, just before I get tackled hard from behind, right as I make it to the end zone.

  And that’s when everything else comes back to me. Coach Rass is yelling, two other men with clipboards are swearing, grabbing their heads and laughing in what I hope to God and Mary and whoever the hell else is amazement.

  All the other players disperse after the receiver whose route I jumped elbows and winks at me. “Nice play.”

  “Thanks,” I say. Because. I mean. It was a nice play.

  Coach Rass blows his whistle one final time. “You.”

  He assesses me as I jog over to him, looking me in the eye. And then, with almost total acceptance and little reluctance, he says, “Congrats on weaseling your way in. Hope you’re prepared to hurt after today’s practice.”

  He blows his whistle and yells, “Quit horsing around, ya knuckleheads—get in here! Gather round!”

  And they do. Until they spot me, and walk a little slower like they’ve been asked who wants to jump off the cliff first instead of who wants to greet the girl footballer.

  “All right,” Coach says. He directs most of his speech to me. “This is my assistant coach, Cody Jimenez. CJ, this here is … uh …”

  “Taze,” I say. In football, I’m never Tasia. “Taze Quirk. Cornerback.”

  Coach grunts at me and then yells, “Cole!” And then Cole, the tall, buff ginger I met in Scott’s basement/trailer shoves his way forward. He’s introduced as the “Mike” linebacker. Fricking great.

  Dude nods at me, but it’s different than the nods I’ve been getting from Kai in the halls. Before Coach can make introductions, Cole says, “I know her.”

  “She’s here on a trial run,” Coach says. He turns to me. “It’s a trial. I’m not promising anything, and having a girl on my field makes me want to—”

  “Yes, sir.” I’m kinda done hearing how much he hates women. Best to just give him the acquiescence he wants in hopes that it’ll shut him up.

  “Good.” Coach claps to pull us all together. “All right, let’s go. Quit this lollygagging. Get this girl a got-dang helmet, for chrissake.”

  And then Cole, Coach Rass, and two others work with me for the rest of practice, running drills.

  Cole is a middle linebacker, which makes sense. His build is great for it. Big, enough muscle to gain rushing yards if we need them, physically able to really get in there and tackle, play after play. The others are two Black guys, and one is the first-string cornerback, whose spot I’m aiming to snatch. I’m not very hopeful by the time I get introduced to him. He goes by Guy, but I don’t know if that’s actually his name or just a funny thing because he happens to look like Shemar Moore’s kid brot
her. The other, with his white smile and carved-from-stone jawline, is the first-string receiver.

  His name is Adrian, the “nice play” kid from moments ago, and he high-fives me and says, “Girl, I can’t wait for you to take this asshole’s spot.”

  For the most part, I kick ass. I catch every pass that’s thrown to me and I even catch most of the passes that aren’t. The pick-six is what I do. After catching the last one, Coach yells, “Good girl, Taze. Good hands!”

  I’m almost as fast as Guy, what with my legs being a bit shorter than his. My ability to bust up running routes is good, and I owe a lot to Josiah because it was his call to have me spend most of my time working on breaks and keeping my angles sharp.

  At the end of practice, Coach calls us all in, then he pulls me aside and says he’ll talk to the necessary people who need talking to before he gives me his final decision. He also mentions that he’s a little worried, not about my height, but my size. And I try to quell the anxiety over that particular comment by reminding myself that I rebound from tackles much faster than Guy does and nail my targets twice as often. So even though my shoulder is screaming as loud as the anxious voice inside my head, I walk off the field and into the girls’ locker room and force a little hip sway.

  I hope people are watching.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I don’t bother changing in the locker room after practice, but as I walk out, most—but not all—of the guys from practice high-five me, tell me I did good, how cool it would be to have a chick on the team. Some tell me how to find them on social media—Insta or Snapchat or Twitter. And I’m so preoccupied trying to gauge how genuine they all are that I don’t notice Kai, who happens to be standing just off to the left. Until I do.

  I walk toward him and he takes the heavier of my two bags and slips it over his shoulder.

  “Who shoved a stick up your ass today?” he says.

  “Kai. Hello, friend. How was your day? Did you enjoy your hearty pancake breakfast this morning? I do hope so. Have you got much homework? Might I be of some service in helping you complete—”