Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  Josie glances up and down the street before answering. “Text me later,” she says. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  I shoot Josie a text as soon as I get home, but she doesn’t answer right away. I’m lying in bed, studying the empty pill bottle on my dresser, and thinking about the Oxy from Luther in my jeans pocket, when my door slams open hard enough for the knob to crack into the wall and bounce away. The sound of pulverized drywall trailing to the floor fills the room as I stare at Mom.

  “What the hell?” I ask.

  “Where is my wedding ring, Mickey Catalan?” she shouts at the same time.

  “I . . . Mom!” I yell, as she swipes the orange bottle off my bed stand. Instinctively, I lunge for it, but she’s on her feet and quicker than me, pulling it out of my reach as my legs get tangled in the sheets and I roll to the floor. There’s a solid smack when I hit, and my teeth click together, but she doesn’t move to help me, or ask if I’m okay.

  “My wedding ring,” she repeats, holding the bottle above her head.

  “How would I know?” I say, running a finger along the inside of my lip where it connected with the floor, soft tissue already swelling.

  “Did you take it?” she asks.

  “Why would I do that?” I ask, hauling myself back up onto the bed, crouched under her glare. I’m answering questions with questions, hoping that love will outdo logic as I lead her down the path that makes me look good, the one she wants to follow.

  “For money,” she cries, her voice breaking on the second word. “You drained your bank account, Mickey. I checked.”

  The anger is seeping out now, having already crested with her entrance. I’ve overheard enough fights between Mom and Dad, seen the explosion of rage and fallout of quiet tears. She’s going to fold now. Her words will stick to her convictions, but her tone will be begging me to give her a believable alternative. I’ve got the template for this conversation down, have heard Dad talk her out of her suspicions more than once.

  And she let him.

  “Mom . . .” I start quiet, like he always would. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I do, though, Mickey,” she says, eyes narrowed. “When your dad called I was so angry I couldn’t think, but then Devra texted me. She wondered if you’d been asking me for money lately, or if anything had come up missing around the house.”

  Mom sinks onto the bed, her fingernail working the edge of the label. “I told her she could stick it where Chad came from, but then I looked at your bank account.”

  I swallow once, thinking.

  “And then I went through my jewelry box,” she says, a hitching sigh escaping with the words. Her jewelry box, which held almost nothing. The practicalities of her profession have always kept her from wearing much, but what she did keep had emotional value. I’d taken the only piece worth anything.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s up, or are you going to make me keep talking?”

  “Mom,” I say carefully. “I’m okay.”

  I say this, because it’s not quite a lie. I say this, because it’s almost true. I could be okay. If I can get her calmed down and find out what Josie’s idea is to keep us from withdrawal and get through this ball season, everything will be all right. I take another deep breath, then let it out with a shudder.

  “Carolina needed . . .” My mind is racing, looking in all the dark corners, any thing, any reason, any person I can throw to Mom for punishment.

  Just as long as it’s not me.

  Just as long as she doesn’t know.

  “Carolina needed . . . money.”

  “What for?”

  “I . . . I really don’t want to tell you.” And it’s true. I really don’t want to say the words that are going to come out of me next.

  “Mickey,” Mom insists, voice going thin and hard. “What for?”

  “A . . . procedure,” I say, quick and fast, spitting the words before I can talk myself out of them. Mom sits up straighter, but her face clouds, the doctor in her always on duty, the mother in her ready to offer comfort.

  “She could have come to me,” Mom says. “I could have talked to her about her options. Did you tell her that?”

  I shake my head, my throat still full of the taste of Oxy. “She didn’t want to talk. She just needed it done. She’ll lose her scholarship if she can’t play, and she can’t play if she’s . . .”

  I don’t say the word pregnant, because it would make this a real lie, not an insinuation. And maybe it’s not even that much of a lie, really. For all I know Carolina could be pregnant.

  “She couldn’t go to her parents about it,” I go on more confidently, because that part is certainly true. “You know how they are.”

  “Yes,” Mom says, rolling the pill bottle in her hand. “I do.”

  “So . . .” I let the word drift, hoping more will come. Amazingly, they do, welling up from the depths, fed by the last dripping remnants from my head. “So she asked me for the money.”

  “The boy involved helped as well, I would hope?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I didn’t ask questions. She asked for help and I gave it. She’s my best friend.”

  Fuck. Listen to me. How can I sound righteous while lying through my teeth?

  “Right.” She squeezes the bottle, wanting to believe me. My name on the label smears under her sweaty palms. “What about my wedding ring?”

  “I don’t know,” I say again, shrugging. “When’s the last time you saw it?”

  “January twenty-fourth,” she answers quietly, and I close my eyes against the clench of my stomach, guilt crimping the lining into a tight ball.

  “Mom, I . . .”

  “It’s . . . okay, Mickey,” she says, closing her eyes tight. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  Mom’s okay, and I’m okay, and we sit there crying on my bed, the space between us measured only in inches.

  But neither of us crosses it.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  sidekick: someone associated with another, but not as an equal

  Luther picks me up a few hours later, coming into the house and doing the whole meet-your-mom thing. I’m flustered as I introduce him, but Mom isn’t listening too intently, anyway. I think she’s mentally measuring Luther’s shoulders and wondering about his delivery.

  I’ve got to adjust the passenger seat when I get in his car; my knees are touching the dashboard.

  “Who was the last person in here?” I ask, panic gripping me at the thought that it was some tiny cheerleader.

  “My little sister,” Luther says, and my relief tells me just how much the answer mattered.

  We’ve got a couple hours’ drive ahead of us to the stadium, and the same nagging voice that warned me I wouldn’t have anything to say to Josie without the assistance of Oxy is whispering in my ear again. I throw back the one pill I’ve got left—courtesy of Luther—when he stops at a gas station to fill up.

  We’re not too far out of town and Luther attracts people the second he’s out of the car. I overhear most of his conversation with a guy at the pump about Baylor’s ill-fated tournament run—triple overtime in their division title game when a kid from the opposing team threw up a Hail Mary three-pointer that went in. There was heated debate about whether he’d released before or after the buzzer, but the refs had already made a run for the locker room. Big Ed told me they had to be escorted out by security to ensure their safety.

  That story gets replayed by the pump while I’m scrolling through my phone, attracting another guy, who glances into the car and sees me. There’s a flash of recognition on both our parts when I realize it’s Bella Left’s dad. We give each other waves and I know it’s going to be all over the county that Luther Drake and Mickey Catalan were hanging out.

  Luther knocks on the window, asks me if I want anything. I ask him to grab me a water and he goes inside to pay. Judging by the arm movements of the cashier, another basketball story is being told. By the time Luther makes it back out
to the car I’m feeling pretty good, my blood warm and my limbs loose.

  “Sorry,” he says, handing me the water. “You know how it is.”

  I do know how it is, and being with someone else who gets that too is awesome.

  “Thanks for the water,” I tell him. “Looked like a pretty interesting conversation in there.”

  “Ha,” Luther says, pulling back out onto the highway. “Everybody likes to talk about me breaking the backboard over at West Union.”

  “I heard about that,” I tell him. “You even impressed Big Ed.”

  “Big Ed?” he asks, and I think it’s possible I detect a hint of the unease I felt before, when I wondered who had been in his passenger seat.

  “Yeah, Big Ed. He owns the market in town.”

  “I’ve been in there,” Luther says. “He’s not that big.”

  “I’m sure no one seems big to you,” I tell him, and he shakes his head.

  “No, not really. It’s gotta be the same for you, though, right? I mean, who seems big to you?”

  “You,” I tell him honestly.

  And he smiles.

  We’re far enough away from home that nobody looks at us twice as we find our seats in the stadium, beyond the curious glances that Luther’s height attracts. We settle in, and I’m content to be watching a sport—even if it is basketball and I don’t know anyone on the court. Luther is friends with a few of the guys playing because he did a summer camp at their college. He points them out and I nod, only partly interested.

  The one Oxy I had left is doing its job, but I can’t count on such a low dose for the heavy lifting required to actually make me happy. I’m comfortable for now, but the warmth is fading and I’m very aware that I’m going home to an empty pill bottle, and a mom who is going to be making sure no cash walks out of the house in my hand from now on. I’m wondering if I should text Josie again to see if she figured out anything when my phone goes off with a text from Carolina.

  Luther Drake? Are you shitting me?

  That didn’t take long.

  How did I not know about this?

  Her second text takes the smile off my face. She doesn’t know about Luther because I don’t think another story about meeting someone at physical therapy will fly with her, and the truth will go over like a lead brick. I settle for taking a selfie with him and sending it back to her in response.

  She answers with a shot of her and Aaron, making faces of extreme shock.

  You guys are assholes, I tell them in a group text, to which Aaron sends me a pic of an actual asshole.

  That’s not his, Carolina assures me. Witness.

  Gross, I shoot back, adding, don’t get pregnant.

  People don’t get pregnant from assholes, Aaron replies. Do we need to talk?

  YOU don’t get pregnant! Carolina says.

  One of the guys Luther knows hits a three and Luther jumps up with the rest of the crowd, both arms in the air. I check once more, but Josie hasn’t answered me yet. I put away my phone as Luther sits back down.

  “When’s the last time you talked to Josie?” I ask him.

  “When she called Derrick a pussy because he didn’t want to go to a crack house for her,” Luther says. “I’m not in a big hurry to see her again.”

  I think of Josie, the loss in her eyes when they left, the shaking of her hands as she positioned Jadine’s needle.

  “She didn’t mean it,” I say. “She was just—”

  “Strung out. Yeah, I know,” Luther says. “Josie hits it too hard.”

  I don’t say anything, checking to make sure my sweatshirt is pulled down to cover the tiny hole in my arm.

  “Did what I give you keep her off your back last night?” Luther asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, but don’t offer anything more.

  A silence falls between us, the first one of the evening.

  “So, uh . . . do you know where you’re going to college yet?”

  It’s an awkward question, one that anyone could ask, not a guy who likes a girl. But it’s a topic, so I go with it.

  “I’m looking at Vencella,” I tell him.

  “What are you majoring in?”

  “Physical education,” I tell him, and he laughs.

  “What?” I ask.

  “No one wants to be a gym teacher,” he tells me. “It’s just somewhere they end up.”

  “I do,” I insist, hitting him on the shoulder a little harder than necessary. “No, seriously,” I go on, telling him about how I discovered this during our summer softball camps, bringing in the kids and showing them the basics. I have no patience for people my age who can’t step and throw with opposite sides of their bodies, but somebody’s got to teach a kid how to do it.

  And it turns out I like being that person.

  There was something about seeing it click in their little faces, some with sweat-streaked braids and grime around their mouths. Seeing tanned, skinny arms dotted with freckles and tiny noses scrunched up in concentration when a pitch came in really did it for me.

  “Okay, cool,” Luther says, hands up in surrender. “I just don’t want to see you . . .” He pauses, trying to find the right words.

  “What?”

  “I think you sell yourself short a lot, Mickey,” he says. “I’m not trying to be a downer, I’m just saying. When I came to see you play, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact you were the same girl I met at Edith’s, you looked so confident.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what it’s like when you’re in your own place.”

  “Yep.” Luther nods in agreement. “But there’s more to it than that. Your pitcher gets a lot of attention, and I think you’ve convinced yourself you’re just her sidekick.”

  “She’s the pitcher,” I remind him. “What I do, it’s not sexy.”

  He gives me another look up and down.

  “The hell it’s not,” he says.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  economical: managing with frugality; guarding against waste or unnecessary expense

  Monday brings an ache in my bones as soon as I wake up, the focal point buried deep in my hip, radiating. I can pinpoint the healed cracks in every bone I’ve ever broken, identify every fracture as the waves of pain touch them. Everything I’ve got hurts, but I’m not sweating yet, and my guts aren’t liquid.

  I skip my Monday coffee with Big Ed, instead stopping at the dollar store on the way to school, where I grab some Imodium. I wash down four pills when I’m back in the car. I don’t care if I don’t shit for a week, as long as it’s not running down my leg. I chase them with a few Advil so that I don’t feel like my skeleton is pulling apart at the joints. I eye the bottle of water as I feel the last capsule stick in my throat, but resist the urge to drink. I can only sweat so much if I’m dehydrated.

  My phone goes off as I pull into the school parking lot with a text from Josie.

  Sorry—long weekend

  I answer immediately—It’s okay. When she didn’t text me back I assumed she was pissed at me for ditching her Saturday morning, and while I didn’t like how that felt, I disliked even more that I might never hear her idea for keeping us in supply.

  Figured something out, she texts. Come over after school?

  The question mark hurts my heart. If Josie is really my friend it shouldn’t be there, her concern that I’ll say no again finding an outlet in those few pixels.

  Got a game, I shoot back.

  The bubble with an ellipsis inside shows up, then disappears. Shows itself again, then vanishes without a message coming through. I imagine Josie with her expensive clothes, perfect hair, and—I’m sure—re-buffed nails trying to find the right response. It’s weird to think of a girl as perfectly put together as her struggling to find words. God, I know how that feels.

  Like shit.

  It’s a home game today, so I’ll have almost half an hour to kill before we start hauling equipment out to the field.

  I can come over before, I text. But only real quick.r />
  The ellipsis shows again, but this time she sends her response.

  Real quick is all I need. Later!

  My tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth by third period. I roll it around, trying to kick up some saliva, but it’s large and heavy, awkward in my mouth. I can feel my lips stretching over my teeth as I do, tender skin ready to start peeling away if I don’t drink something soon. I shift in my seat, ignoring the teacher as my guts take a spin.

  At lunch I take a bite of my chicken sandwich, chewing everything into tiny bits so they can slide down my dry throat without choking me. Carolina puts the back of her hand to my forehead.

  “You’re not looking so hot,” she says. “But you feel it.”

  Lydia exchanges a glance with Bella Center, while Left and Right stare down at their own sandwiches like they might escape if they aren’t paying close attention.

  “Just a bug, I think,” I say, making a conscious effort to stop my hand as it reaches for the carton of milk on my tray. Carolina spots the move, but misreads it. She digs into the backpack at her side, plopping a bottle of water in front of me.

  “Milk’s not a good call if you’ve got a fever,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say, and crack it open. I take a small sip and swish it around my mouth, waiting until the last second to swallow.

  “Drink up,” Carolina insists, when I go to cap the bottle. “I can’t have you passing out behind the plate.”

  “Nikki wouldn’t mind though,” Bella Right says.

  “I’m—”

  “Fine,” Lydia, Carolina, and the Bellas all finish for me, in unison.

  “Yeah, we know,” Lydia says, pushing her tray away. “Just like you were fine when I found you puking your guts out on the road.”

  “Hey,” I protest, reddening. But the other girls don’t look surprised. I guess it was too much to hope that Lydia would keep her mouth shut about that. “Can’t a girl get sick around here?”

  “How often?” Carolina asks quietly, and everyone else nods.

  “Mickey . . . ,” Lydia begins, “if you need to talk about anything—”

  I stand up, snatching my tray so forcefully that a few peas roll off the side. “What I need is for other people to stop talking about me when I’m not around to defend myself.”