The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

“Who’s Shayna?”

  Samantha gave her a look.

  “What?”

  “Shayna is Silea’s mother, Rose.”

  “Oh,” said Rose, suddenly uneasy. “Wait, so where is Silea?”

  “Seriously?” Sam leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Rose, Silea’s been out of it. For a while now.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know that? She broke her elbow in three or four places. She had to have surgery, pins, one of those fixed braces. It was a bad one.”

  Rose felt her stomach drop, the blood drain from her face. “I had no idea. I saw her at the assembly but only from a distance, and I didn’t even notice the brace. Plus, she only comes to our house once every—”

  “Two weeks. So you’ve pointed out.”

  “And I try to stay out of her way, so I just didn’t . . . I had no idea. God, I feel terrible.” It occurred to Rose that she hadn’t been physically present at the house for one of Silea’s three-hour cleaning jags since before the holidays; if Gareth knew about her injury, he hadn’t said anything.

  “I’ve been bagging old clothes for her,” Samantha said. “And Kev sent them home with a couple of Whole Foods lasagnas last week to put in their freezer.”

  Rose looked down the hall again where Atik glossed the wood floor with a Swiffer mop, his grandmother standing behind him to murmur quiet instructions. “What is he doing here, though?” she said in a low voice. “He’s the Emmas’ age, or close to it. Aren’t there child labor laws?”

  Samantha shrugged. “Kev checked into it with our attorney.”

  “He did?”

  “You know how cautious he is. Apparently as long as their work doesn’t interfere too much with school hours and they stay below a weekly minimum, it’s fine. Besides, the family lives pretty near the edge. What are they supposed to do?”

  * * *

  —

  As Rose was leaving Twenty Birch she tried to act anonymous while slipping past her housekeeper’s son, on his knees wiping down a bookcase in the front hall, but he caught her eye and nodded up at her.

  “Hello, Ms. Holland.”

  “Hi there,” she said, with a nervous smile. “You—know who I am?”

  “Your family photos, ma’am. I dust them sometimes.”

  Rose swallowed, at a loss for words. “This all looks great,” she said lamely.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Atik, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother.”

  He looked at her, puzzled. “What about her?”

  “Oh, just—about her elbow.”

  His lips curled into a confident smile, and his chin tilted up. “She’ll be okay. She has a really good orthopedist, and they were able to do the procedure without a bone graft. Now it’s just a waiting game for the brace to come off, then she’ll be in PT.”

  Rose narrowed her eyes, taken aback. The kid sounded for all the world like one of her residents. “So who’s the ortho?”

  “Dr. Bowers.”

  “Edward Bowers?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ted’s good. The best elbow guy in Colorado.”

  “I know. I researched him.”

  “And your mom’s pins? Any problems with infection and so on?”

  “Nope, everything looks good.” For a long, strange moment they shared a stare. Rose saw him in those same round glasses twenty years from now, scrubbing in for a neck dissection. She searched for some kind of reassurance to give him, but Atik cheerily said, “See you soon,” and went back to his work.

  On her way to the car Rose tapped out a note on her phone, reminding herself to put a little something extra in Silea’s envelope next week.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  BECK

  ROMO tryouts. Beck had slept in that morning, nothing major but Aidan had to come upstairs to shake his shoulder and rouse him. It had been a late night of financial planning, and when he’d rolled out of bed and called for Sonja, he discovered she was gone somewhere with Roy, again. She hadn’t mentioned the Chipotle incident since the other night, and he was trying to straighten a few things out in the credit card department. After a hurried breakfast of frozen waffles and squishy bananas they had all tumbled into the car at ten past nine, already running late.

  Now an accident was coming up on the right shoulder, the source of the slowdown for the last ten minutes.

  “Did you guys hydrate?” Beck asked the twins.

  “Yes.”

  “And how’s the ankle, Aid?”

  Aidan didn’t respond.

  “Ankle feeling okay, bud?”

  “Stop bugging me about everything.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that the stakes of this tryout—”

  “Are high. I know, and you’ve told us that like twenty times, but you’re the one who didn’t get up on time and my ankle’s fine.”

  Button pusher. Nerve plucker. Thinner of hair. Beck flexed and unflexed his hands on the wheel until the backup finally cleared.

  Fifteen minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of the Rocky Mountain Fútbol Academy, thirty flat acres wedged along Peña Boulevard ten miles short of the airport, a fifty-minute drive from downtown Crystal in good traffic. As he tucked the Audi into a space Beck calculated what it would mean to haul the boys down here four evenings a week, then again on game days. Call it two hours a day. Times four is eight, then another two on weekends. Away games might require a four-hour round trip to Cheyenne, an overnight to Santa Fe. Twelve to twenty hours per week on the road, hours that could be occupied playing with their friends, hiking the foothills. Maybe some homework.

  But ROMO? It was the pinnacle of youth soccer in this part of the country. If the guys could get spots on the team and keep them for the next few years, who knew where they might land. At the very least full rides to decent colleges, and given the state of Beck’s finances, that was nothing to sneeze at. Some things were worth the pressure.

  * * *

  —

  He found a viewing spot up a slight rise from the pitch, along a fence line separating the ROMO complex from a sugar beet field to the east. The digital recorder had a good perspective from that position. The boys finished warm-ups as Beck adjusted a few settings and hit the record button.

  “Excuse me there.”

  He looked up. One of the ROMO coaches was jogging across the pitch, a tall bald guy in a team warm-up jersey. Andy Millward, Beck guessed, the coach he’d spoken to on the phone. When he neared the end line, he stopped and placed his hands on his narrow hips. “With the Rapids, are you?”

  A rival club in Denver. Beck smiled. “I have two boys trying out.”

  “Which boys would those be?”

  “Aidan and Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury, skinny brown dudes over there.”

  The boys were taking a break between warm-up drills, and they were all staring at him and the coach—all except Charlie, who was standing with his arms crossed, gazing in the opposite direction.

  Millward shook his head. “No filming, and camera aside, we can’t be bothered with dads watching the tryouts ’cause it rattles the lads, so if you can come back and get them afterward, that’d be fair.”

  The coach didn’t wait for a response, just rotated on a heel and jogged back to the team. Expressionless, Beck packed up his camera, folded his tripod, and skulked toward the gate, careful to avoid looking over at the pitch, risking a glance only once he’d reached the gap in the fence. Charlie met it with a glare, direct and scowling, and when the whistle sounded he turned away.

  * * *

  —

  The next two hours were hard for Beck. He was used to watching every minute of the boys’ games, and back in Crystal the CSOC tryouts had always been their own spectator sport. But ROMO’s best practice fields were surrounded on all four sides by a high chain-link fenc
e with opaque black liners, making it impossible to see what was going on from outside the perimeter.

  Though maybe not. As he trudged back to the car Beck noted a few tears in the liner, on the side facing the parking lot. And if there were some on this side—

  With the tripod and camera stowed in the trunk he headed around the fence, a soccer dad on a casual stroll. He followed a gravel path winding through a few stands of evergreens until he spied a decent oval-shaped tear the circumference of a serving platter at eye level. Beck moved his head until he saw Aidan in an orange pinny, standing with his foot on a ball. Charlie was on the next field in a red pinny.

  Scrimmages. Aidan’s orange team versus yellow, Charlie’s red team versus blue, two of three small-sided matches about to kick off. Practice goals with tiny mouths, no keepers.

  Before the first game Aidan looked tense and wary, not keeping his studied pregame chill. But from the beginning he played well. Quick passes, good energy, smart movement off the ball. The talent level around him was clearly raised a few notches, but he looked just like he did with his CSOC team, holding the middle of the field with confidence and grit. The game went on for fifteen minutes. Beck couldn’t tell what was happening on Charlie’s field, but Aidan’s team led 3–1 when the first game ended.

  The teams changed up. Red went to play green, yellow moved over to battle red, and Aidan’s orange stayed put to face black.

  This game was different. Black moved the rock with crazy agility, players rarely touching more than once before dishing off, scoring two goals in the opening minute before the game settled down. The kids on black also seemed to know one another’s names, spitting them out ahead of passes, instructing teammates on where to send the ball, when to move. These must be the current ROMO players, Beck figured, or eight of them anyway; guys already rostered for this season and probably with secured spots on next year’s squad.

  He edged a little closer to the gap. The midfielder on black looked familiar.

  Oh. Right.

  The Egyptian kid from Fort Collins. Baashir, the left-footer Wade had told him about, the kid offered an early spot on ROMO for next year. Strong, fast, nimble as hell, Baashir was every bit as talented as Aidan. Kid looked like a little drill sergeant out there, clapping, encouraging, correcting.

  But Aidan held his own, raising his game in the face of the strong competition. He connected every pass, low-headed a great goal, pulled his team together. At one point he even got in a nice tackle on Baashir, who flashed him a nasty scowl. Amazing. Beck bounced on his toes.

  At the next switch the coaches called all the players in for a water break and ordered them to shed their pinnies, then they reassembled the teams based on what they’d seen so far.

  Beck wasn’t even aware of what was happening until the damage had been done. First Millward tossed Aidan a black pinny, which he pulled on before joining Baashir and the other ROMO players in a larger cluster of thirteen guys. A second group of kids, a few of them from the original black team, were told to don red. The rest of the kids got either blue or orange, handed out at random, the coaches not bothering to call their names.

  The red and black teams began a full-sided game, eleven on eleven, with Aidan and Baashir playing midfield on black, running a four-four-two. The three ROMO coaches stayed on the sidelines, writing on clipboards, conferring in low voices.

  Meanwhile the orange and blue kids had been ordered off to a stubbly secondary field, where they were divided up into a scrimmage supervised by a young assistant coach. The guy blew a whistle for kickoff, then started checking his phone as blue and orange began a sloppy, desultory game.

  The striker on the blue squad was Charlie.

  “But—” Beck said aloud to the hole in the fence, because this couldn’t be right, so he stepped closer, his face just inches from the wire. He saw it all at once, and understood. Aidan looked ecstatic out there, face drenched in sweat, whereas Charlie was just going through the motions, thwacking the ball around with twenty-one other boys. They all knew it was over for them. No second chances, no sibling policy; no ROMO.

  As Beck watched helplessly the same strapping coach glanced for a moment along the fence line. Millward fixed him with a stare, a bearded deer in headlights. The fucker actually smirked before turning away with a cool shake of the head.

  From the far field Charlie saw the interaction. His head spun and he spied his father, gawking through the tear, and gave him a vicious look. The whistle sounded again. Beck backed away from the ragged hole.

  * * *

  —

  You embarrassed us so, so much,” Aidan said once they were in the car. “Everybody was looking. Kids were laughing, both times.”

  “I thought you liked watching yourself play.” Beck tried to sound light, as if what had just happened hadn’t. “That’s why I film every week.”

  “Not at a tryout. God, Dad, might as well get a stupid drone or something so you can spy on us from the car.”

  “That’s not a bad idea, actually.”

  “Dad!”

  “Hey, come on. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, okay? Won’t happen again.”

  Aidan scoffed, but Beck knew what was going on here, because this wasn’t about the humiliation caused by an overinvested father. Aidan was yammering like this to distract them both from the sorry state of his brother, who was staring fixedly out the window as Peña Boulevard blurred by.

  The end of the tryout session had been excruciating, the boys called up one by one to shake the coaches’ hands and learn their fates: every kid on orange and blue sent home with a better-luck-next-time, half the kids on red invited for callbacks, the players on black, including Aidan, offered roster spots. Lots of tears, stiffened jaws; but also bursts of ecstasy from those boys selected for ROMO.

  Not from Aidan. He reacted to the outcome with a taut and glowing unease, not sure what to do with himself. During the whole of the ride home, as Beck observed him in the rearview, Aidan stole furtive glances across the Audi’s back seat, and Beck saw no triumph in his son’s eyes. Instead Beck saw what he took as loyalty, a will to protect his twin against this new threat to the pack.

  Chahwee bwudduh.

  THIRTY-NINE

  ROSE

  The dean’s sprawling mountain house glowed with a dozen forms of light: ground-level solars lining the driveway, post lamps along the stone path, candles in the front-facing windows, sconces in a patterned brass guarding either side of the door. Inside, gossamer strings of bulbs drooped from terraced beams, pooled luxuriously inside glass vases and bowls.

  Rose and Gareth moved around knots of guests through a sunken living room with dark wood floors and colorful area rugs. Catering staff were spreading out a buffet on the dining room table while others circulated among the guests with trays of appetizers.

  In the kitchen a bartender smoothed a lime slice along the rims of two hurricane glasses, dipped the rims in a dish of sugar, then filled the glasses with a pink concoction that fizzed as he topped the drinks. Rose, looking around, took a sip. Light grapefruit forward, something deeper beneath.

  She didn’t see Samantha or Kev inside. She led Gareth out of the kitchen and onto the upper deck. The Continental Divide marched twenty miles to the west. Seven guests sat with their feet in the kidney-shaped pool down below, lit emerald for the coming night.

  “Is that Gareth Quinn?” someone said behind them.

  It was Tazeem Harb, grand and regal in a long, flowing dress of teal and deep blue silks. The wife of Crystal’s mayor, Tazeem was also a partner at a corporate law firm in town and a fixture in Samantha’s socialite circles.

  “I just finished Gallows Road,” said Tazeem. Gareth’s novel. “It’s wonderful.”

  Gareth looked taken aback. “That’s really kind,” he mumbled as several guests turned their heads.

  “Sam Zellar gave me a copy,” she explained
. Rose blinked.

  “Oh.” Gareth sounded even more surprised. He gave her a bashful grin. “Glad it’s still making the rounds.”

  Tazeem laughed. “Dawn Jansen is a great character, isn’t she?” A smile for Rose. “That scene where she finally understands what’s in the trees, and who put it there? I read the whole chapter aloud to my husband.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Gareth.

  “Say you’ll write more of them,” Tazeem said warmly, with a gentle elbow poke to his arm, and started talking to those guests clustered around them about the need to support Crystal Valley’s local writers.

  Rose stepped away so Tazeem and the others could draw him out. “Yes, I’m a writer,” Gareth said bashfully, in response to someone’s question, then told a self-deprecating joke and got a healthy round of laughs.

  She watched the exchange from an empty spot on the deck, trying to puzzle it out. Why was Samantha passing around a copy of Gareth’s novel? As far as Rose knew Sam had never even read Gallows Road; she’d certainly never mentioned it if she had, and now she was recommending it to friends?

  Rose sulked by the railing until she saw two familiar faces over by the outside drinks table. Mitch Stephenson, her department chair, stood talking with Carl Wingate, that night’s host and dean of the School of Medicine. Rose walked over.

  “Why, it’s the good doctor herself,” Carl boomed. “Hello, Rose.”

  Mitch raised his eyebrows at her. “Rose,” he said, nodding.

  “Hi, Mitch. Hi, Carl.” She slipped between the administrators’ tall frames to lean against the balustrade. “Thank you for having us, Carl. Your home is just beautiful.”

  “We’re glad you’re here,” said Carl. “Chloe’s going to play for everyone a little later, so I hope you’ll stay.” Chloe was Carl and Vince’s eighth-grade daughter; a violinist at St. Bridget’s, Rose remembered, or maybe a pianist.