Most Likely

by Sarah Watson

  CJ turned without smiling. “I think I’m done for the night. I was just taking a break.”

  “Sitting in front of your computer isn’t a break. Come on. Let’s shoot some hoops.”

  CJ grabbed her shoes and met him in the driveway. They both stretched for a minute without saying much, and then he tossed her the ball.

  CJ dribbled a couple of times. Her dad faked her out and easily stole the ball. She was rusty. He dribbled and she got low, ready to move. Her three older sisters were girly girls. They liked clothes and boys and makeup. CJ liked those things too, but she also liked wrestling and getting dirty and beating her dad at one-on-one basketball. He’d taught her to be strong at defense, and they’d played enough games together that she knew all his tells. He tried for a fast break to the right, and she was right there to block him. She got the ball and drove to the basket. She shot wide and missed completely.

  “Come on, CJ,” he yelled. “Take your time. Focus.”

  Her dad never gave her any slack. He pushed and pushed until she improved. Or cried. Many of their games ended with her in tears and wondering if she’d ever be good enough to make him proud. CJ got the rebound and took another shot. This time it went in with a swoosh. Nothing but net. She loved that sound. It was the sound of winning.

  They played hard for the next twenty minutes, until her mom came out to tell them that dinner was getting cold. Her parents were traditional in a lot of ways. He worked. She cooked. He made the financial decisions. She let him. CJ tried not to get too judgmental about it, though. It worked for them. Her mom was a good mom. She was a great mom. And yet CJ always felt like there was a distance between them. She suspected that part of the reason was because her mom was so much older. Ava’s was too, but she didn’t feel old in the same way. As CJ’s mom once put it, We’re just a very different breed of woman. CJ’s mom had never worked, although she resented it when people described her that way. Raising children is my career. She’d married CJ’s dad right out of college and then she’d had three daughters in a row. CJ was not one of them. Her parents were just becoming empty nesters and her mom was starting to think about finding a career for herself when CJ came along as an unexpected curveball. CJ sometimes wondered if her parents had ever considered other options. She’d never even heard her mom say the word “abortion,” though, so she couldn’t imagine a world where she actually thought about getting one.

  CJ’s two oldest sisters had daughters of their own, and the last time her third sister had visited, she mentioned during dinner that she and her husband were “trying.” As far as CJ knew, this was the closest that any of the Jacobson sisters had ever come to having a conversation about sex with their mother. All three of her sisters still lived in various parts of the Midwest. Sometimes CJ felt like the weird one for wanting to get out. The world just seemed so much bigger to her.

  The next day was CJ’s first official afternoon volunteering with Sensational Recreational. She drove there straight after school and pasted on her most cheerful smile as she pulled open the double doors of the gym. Wyatt waved her over when he saw her. A couple of the boys had already arrived and were on the court messing around. CJ carried her gym clothes in her old cross-country duffel bag. The one with the letters of her last name and her number, 33, sun-bleached and cracked along the side. “Hi, Wyatt,” she said as she walked up. “I’m ready and excited to be reporting for duty.”

  “Clarke. I’m ready and excited to have you.”

  She saw his eyes move to her bag. “I brought a change of clothes. Gym stuff.”

  “You’re a runner?”

  “Yeah. No. I was. Not anymore.”

  “We have that in common, then,” Wyatt said.

  CJ wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not. Was she supposed to laugh? She wasn’t sure, so she looked away uncomfortably instead. “Is Dakota here yet?”

  “About that,” he said. “We should chat.” He rolled his wheelchair and she walked alongside him. “Dakota’s mom called on Friday to tell me she was quitting.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I managed to talk her out of it.”

  “Oh good.”

  “I promised her I had something special for Dakota today.”

  “That’s great. What is it?”

  Wyatt looked at her and it clicked.

  “Oh. Me. Yes. Yes! Me.”

  “Clarke…” He said it in a soft way. “She’s having a rough time. Don’t expect too much out of her. And don’t expect too much out of yourself.”

  CJ felt a wave of nerves and did her best to shake them off. “Not at all. It’s going to be great.”

  “I’d originally planned to start the kids on basketball today. But Dakota’s mom mentioned that tennis was her favorite sport Bee-Dub.” When CJ looked confused, Wyatt elaborated. “Bee-Dub. Before wheelchair.”

  “Is that an expression?”

  “No. I’ve literally never said it in my life. But I like it. I might use it again. Anyway, I figure we’ll give tennis a shot today.”

  The gym doors clicked open and Wyatt angled his head. “She’s here.”

  CJ turned and saw Dakota for the first time. Her hair was bright red, and you could see the freckles that dotted her nose even from across the court. Her mom also had red hair but in a deeper and more intense shade. She was a Sansa Stark to her daughter’s Anne of Green Gables.

  Mother and daughter both saw CJ and started to come over. One came willingly, the other had to be pushed.

  “Clarke?” said Dakota’s mom.

  “CJ, actually. And you must be Mrs. Gorman. Hi.”

  “You can call me Margaret.” She seemed nervous.

  “I’m so excited to work with Dakota today,” said CJ.

  “Well, she’ll see to it that that feeling doesn’t last.” Dakota gave her mom the kind of withering look that belonged on the face of a teenager, not an eleven-year-old. Her mom sighed. “Sweetheart, please try to have a good attitude today. Wyatt switched to tennis just for you. And CJ is here to make sure you have a good time.”

  “Good time?” CJ said. “Oh, we’re not going to have a good time. We’re going to have a GREAT time.”

  Dakota rolled her eyes and looked at her mom. “Is she serious? She cannot be serious.”

  Margaret gave CJ an apologetic shrug before turning back to her daughter. “I’ll pick you up right at five.” She gave Dakota a big kiss and then mouthed two words to CJ, Good luck.

  As soon as Margaret left, CJ knelt down so she was eye level with Dakota. “So, you ready to have some fun? Let’s go pick out the best racket. I saw a really cool purple one in the pile. You like purple?”

  Dakota pulled on the two levers that unlocked her wheelchair brakes. She rolled to the sideline and parked herself there. CJ looked at Wyatt. “It’s not you,” he said. “Don’t take it personally.”

  CJ smiled her best camp-counselor smile. “Not at all. She just needs a pep talk. I give great pep talks.”

  While the boys huddled around Wyatt and selected their rackets, CJ sidled up to Dakota. “Can I tell you a secret?” CJ asked. When Dakota didn’t say anything, she kept going. “I used to get really nervous about playing sports. I thought that the only reason to play was to win. But the best time I ever had was when I lost a race. We’re just here to have fun today. Doesn’t that look like fun?”

  She motioned to the court. Wyatt was being goofy and hilarious as he showed the kids how to hold their rackets. Everyone was laughing.

  “It doesn’t seem fun to me,” Dakota mumbled.

  “You won’t know until you try. How about you give it just five minutes. I’ll even set a timer so we don’t go a second over.”

  Dakota twisted her fingers together and looked up at CJ. She didn’t seem angry or sullen anymore. Just sad. “Please don’t make me play. Please.”

  Her voice was edged with tears, and CJ felt completely out of her depth. She responded in the only way that seemed right. “Okay,” she said.

  CHAPTER N
INE

  “DO YOU think that Danglehoffner guy is coming again today?”

  “Huh?” Martha said. She was leaning on the concession-stand counter, staring at her phone while Victoria absentmindedly cleaned around her.

  “Danglehuffer. Darfenderfner. No. That’s not right. What’s that guy’s name? The cute movie buff?”

  “Dinglehopper,” said Martha. Then she went back to her phone. She was reading the latest issue of the McKinley Blaze online.

  “Dinglehopper? Like the fork the Little Mermaid uses as a hairbrush?”

  “Yep,” said Martha. Jordan had decided to hold off on publishing the park article, and there wasn’t anything terribly exciting in the issue.

  “Diffenderfer.”

  Martha looked up.

  “It’s Diffenderfer, right? Logan Diffenderfer. That’s his name?”

  After Martha had handed Victoria the quarter, they’d ended up sitting in the back of the theater and watching the weird French film. Only the movie wasn’t weird at all. It was beautiful. Sad and lonely and yet somehow deeply hopeful. At one point, Martha was so overcome with emotion that she’d had to rush out of the theater. She barely made it to the bathroom before a huge brimming sob erupted from her chest. Martha wasn’t a fan of crying, and she certainly wasn’t a fan of crying in front of other people. When she finally composed herself enough to return to the theater, the movie was over, and Logan and Victoria were talking. Closely.

  “No,” Martha said flatly. “It’s definitely Dinglehopper.”

  There was a knock on the front door and Martha hopped up. “Crap,” she said. “One of us should have been in the ticket booth. That’s probably a pissed-off customer.”

  “Maybe it’s Diffenderfer,” Victoria said, with an eagerness that Martha didn’t like.

  Martha walked to the front door and opened it. “Dad,” she said with surprise.

  Her dad had never stopped by Martha’s work before. Someone was dead. That was the only explanation. Someone had died horribly. She quickly ushered him in. “What are you doing here?”

  “Why aren’t you in the ticket booth?”

  “Is someone dead?”

  “Why would someone be dead?”

  Her father took off his baseball cap as he walked through the door.

  “You can keep your hat on, Dad. Nobody cares.”

  “I care. It’s rude to wear a hat indoors.”

  The conventions of society that he chose to cling to were so annoyingly arbitrary. “So what’s up?” Martha asked.

  “I finished filling out those financial aid forms.”

  “Oh,” Martha said. “Thanks.” She didn’t want to go into debt, but she didn’t want to be veal either. She’d just sent the forms to her dad and her mom last night. Since her parents were divorced, she needed one from each of them.

  “It says they need to be scanned,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d have one of those scanner thingies here.”

  She shook her head. “No. But I have an app on my phone. I can take care of it.”

  Her dad pulled an envelope out of his back pocket. He hesitated before handing it over. “I don’t want you to freak out when you see the numbers. They wanted to know about my debt too. When you add it all up in one column, it looks like a big deal. But it’s not. It’s just how adults live. I know how you get about money and… it’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Martha took the envelope from him. “Thanks.”

  “Patsy. Look at me.”

  She did.

  “I wish I had more to give you.”

  She hated this. She wished her dad knew how to use a scanner thingy or how to fill out a form online like every other parent in the world. She wished he could figure out how to do this by himself so she didn’t have to see the shame on his face right now.

  “No, Dad. It’s fine. Honestly, the less income you have the better off I am. I’ll be eligible for a lot more financial aid. So seriously. The worse this is, the better for me.”

  She was suddenly very aware of Victoria at the concession-stand counter. The sleeves of her dad’s shirt were rolled up, showing off the tattoo on his forearm of an eagle soaring over the American flag that he’d gotten on the anniversary of September 11. The ink was faded and blurred at the edges. People always misjudged her dad when they first met him, and she wondered if Victoria was doing it now. What they didn’t know was that underneath the rough-around-the-edges exterior was a savagely prolific reader who had had an important job once. They didn’t know that in high school everyone thought he was somebody special. Martha had seen his yearbook. He was a football star in the fall and a baseball legend in the spring. Senior year he was voted Most Popular, Best Couple (with Martha’s mom), and Most Likely to Be Drafted by the Cleveland Browns. They didn’t know that he’d done the admirable thing and turned down a football scholarship at Notre Dame to stay in Cleveland with her mom when she got pregnant.

  He took his baseball cap out from under his arm. “See you at home, Patsy.”

  “See ya, Dad. Thanks for this.” She held up the envelope.

  After he was gone, Martha heard footsteps behind her. “Patsy?” There was a slight bit of teasing in Victoria’s voice.

  Martha shrugged. “What? Your parents never called you anything weird?”

  Victoria looked stung and Martha backed off. “Sorry,” she said.

  “You okay?” asked Victoria.

  Martha nodded. “I’m fine. Patsy was Martha Washington’s childhood nickname. My dad’s always called me that. He thinks I’m like her. Like I’m going to grow up and be…” Remarkable. That was the word he always used. “Whatever. It’s just a dumb nickname.”

  Victoria smiled. “I don’t think it’s dumb. I think it’s really sweet, actually.”

  Martha shrugged. Not because she hated the nickname. Quite the opposite. She loved it. It’s just that standing there, clutching that envelope, she didn’t feel remarkable. She felt scared. “I’ll man the ticket booth,” Martha said. “We shouldn’t be so lazy about not being in there.” She took her envelope and walked away.

  Jordan stared at her whiteboard, the one that her friends said made her look like a serial killer. She was convinced that if she just stared at it for long enough, everything would come into focus.

  Her brother wandered in and plopped down on her purple beanbag chair. “Dad said we’re doing knickknacks for dinner again.”

  Knickknacks meant that her parents were sick of cooking and everyone was on their own to eat whatever leftovers they could find in the fridge. “Okay,” she said.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jordan didn’t respond. She’d written down the date of the meeting with the neighbors and the date that the councilman introduced the ordinance. They were so close together, it was almost unbelievable that it could be a coincidence.

  “What… arrrree… youuuu… doooinng?” her brother said again, this time imitating Dory from Finding Nemo when she was communicating with the whale.

  “I’m trying to save your future. You want to carve your name into Memorial Park, right?”

  “Sure.” He moved to her desk and picked through her stack of college brochures. “George Washington University?”

  “It’s in DC.” The college counselor had told her it would be a good backup, along with BU, if she couldn’t get into Northwestern.

  “I don’t want you to go to DC.”

  “Relax. I don’t either.” It was not an area that interested her. At all.

  “Why would neighbors complain about a park?” He stepped in front of the whiteboard, blocking her view.

  “Lucas, get out. I’m trying to focus.”

  “I thought you were doing this for me.”

  “I am. The neighbors complained because people go into the park to deal drugs and do bad stuff.”

  “That’s not the park’s fault.” Lucas picked up one of her whiteboard pens and drew a smiley face on the board. Then he put the cap back on the pen. “Di
bs on the leftover spaghetti.” He walked out.

  After he was gone, Jordan stepped closer to her whiteboard. It wasn’t the park’s fault. It also wasn’t fair to the kids who lived in the neighborhood. Martha’s neighborhood. They would be expected to play inside from now on. The only reason the councilman didn’t look like a villain was because he got to say he was doing it for the vocal neighbors. Jordan looked at the two dates she’d written down and then scanned her notes. Scott had given her a date and told her that’s when the meeting with the antipark neighbors had taken place. She didn’t even think to ask for verification. Now she was mad at herself. It was his eyes. Those bright-blue eyes that seemed incapable of lying. Jordan reached for her phone. She shut her bedroom door as she dialed. The phone rang only twice before she heard his voice. “Office of Councilman Kenneth Lonner. Scott Mercer speaking.”

  “Scott. Hi. It’s Jordan. Jordan Scha—uh—I mean, James. Jordan James.”

  “Jordan.” He seemed surprised to hear from her. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m still working on my article, and I realized that it would be helpful if I could read the complaints made by the constituents. The ones who spoke up about drug dealing in the park.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Hm,” he said. “I’m not sure that I have anything I can show you. The meeting between the councilman and the residents was private, so I don’t believe notes were kept.”

  Interesting. Jordan didn’t know if that was unusual. She worried it would show her inexperience if she asked.

  “Then how about a name and a phone number for any of the people who made the complaints?” she said. “I can get quotes directly from them.”

  “I’m not allowed to give out our constituents’ personal information.”