by Mary Amato
Juan and Javier are there. Langley and Xander aren’t.
The sky is gray and dark clouds are gathering right above the field.
The coach looks at his watch. “Okay, people, let’s get going in case it rains. Everybody is—”
Langley comes jogging out with Xander.
Juan shakes his head.
“Sorry we’re late,” Langley says to Stevins.
Stevins nods, which is a real little motion since he’s got no neck, and he keeps his refrigerator face on, but I think I see a little smile. “I was just saying that everybody here is in the same boat. I’m going to judge you on skills and speed and teamwork. Soccer is a team sport.”
Soccer is a team sport, but every coach probably wants a star like Xander on his team. They want to get the goals any way they can.
He takes us through some warm-ups and then sets up a drill. “Do we have any keepers?” he asks.
Javier raises his hand along with two others.
“You can go first.” He throws a pair of goalie gloves at Javier. “We’ll do a simple shooting drill. One line. First in line passes to me and runs around to the side. When I pass it back, take a shot on Javier here.”
We go.
Javier is calm and confident, on his toes, making save after save.
Xander’s turn. He rips it.
Javier dives but the shot is too hard and fast to block.
Xander smiles.
The coach tries a few other keepers, but nobody is as solid as Javier.
Scrimmage time. There are so many guys trying out, we have to split into four teams.
I end up on Xander’s team.
He won’t pass it to me, even when I’m wide open. He loses the ball three times.
“Pass the ball,” an eighth grader says.
“If I see a shot, I’d be stupid not to take it,” Xander argues.
I look over to see how Juan and Langley are doing.
“Hey!” Diamond’s voice rings out. “Go, Toilets!” She’s cheering from the bleachers and when I look, she points down to the pile of backpacks like she’s trying to tell me something.
“It’s your girlfriend,” Xander says to me under his breath.
Rise above it.
“Xander,” I say. “We’re on the same team here. Maybe if you’d pass, we could score.”
“Hey, I’m trying to score. I don’t see you taking any decent shots.” He gets the ball and plows ahead.
“Xander!” a guy on our team calls. Left wing. Our defender in the back is open, too, and in a great position to chip it over to me. I imagine that I’m up high looking down on the field and I see all these possible connections, like there are invisible streets going from one player to another that the ball could travel on, a hundred different possible paths to the goal. But every time Xander gets possession he dribbles it down a dead-end alley and runs into a wall.
This is exactly what The Plague’s coach meant when he said you have to watch the whole field and not just the ball.
Coach Stevins walks from field to field. How can he even see what I’ve got? All this energy is rumbling inside me and if I could just connect with the ball, I know I could send it flying down the right path to get a goal.
He mixes things up and we play one more scrimmage, then it’s time to go.
He dismisses everybody except Langley, Xander, me, and three eighth graders.
“I haven’t picked any players yet,” he says. “I just need some information from you guys because I know you’re all on travel teams. I need to know whether your practices for your teams will conflict with the Toilers. I have a limited number of slots and I don’t want to give one to somebody who isn’t going to be able to show. Our games will either be on Tuesdays or Thursdays. Our practices will be on Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays when we don’t have games.”
Langley is the first to speak up. “All The Plague games are on Saturdays and we practice on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“Soccer almost every day?” The Refrigerator smiles. “Can you take it?”
Langley smiles back.
The other players give him information about their teams. Then it’s my turn to let him know that I won’t be playing on The Plague.
The coach writes it all down and dismisses us.
I don’t want to miss the activity bus so I hustle. I pick up my backpack and start to take off.
Xander suddenly starts going crazy. “Where’s my cell phone?”
Coach Stevins puts down his clipboard. “You had it here?”
“In my backpack. Somebody had to have taken it. It couldn’t just disappear.”
Stevins’s voice snaps into action. “Okay, people, Xander’s cell phone is missing. Everybody take a look around you.”
A bad feeling creeps into me. I have nothing to do with Xander’s cell phone, but I have this feeling that Xander thinks I did it.
“Hey,” Xander says. “I had to call home right after school. I think I might have forgotten to turn it off. Langley, call my number. Maybe it’ll ring.”
Langley dials his phone.
There’s a long pause while the number goes out there looking for the phone. I’m flashing back to what Diamond said earlier about how she got me something, and I’m remembering her pointing to the backpacks.
And then it happens. The sound of Xander’s ringtone.
Everybody looks at me because it’s coming from my backpack.
29.
GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
Coach Stevins takes me and Xander to Mr. Gonzalez’s office. Mr. Gonzalez wants to talk about it, but the activity bus is coming and that’s my only ride home.
I say I’m not guilty, and he says I’ll get to tell him my side of the story first thing in the morning. In the meantime, he says, he’s calling my mom and we should talk about it tonight.
Nobody on the bus knows anything, because they were already gone by the time it happened. I keep my mouth shut and sit down. Lucky this isn’t our regular bus because I could not handle Diamond right now. I know she did it, and if I had to deal with her on this bus, I’d get a lifetime of detentions.
“You made it, didn’t you?” Juan says. He thinks the reason I’m late is because I got good news. “You, Langley, Xander, and those eighth graders for sure.”
I won’t talk about it. He wants to know what’s wrong, but he leaves me alone.
As soon as the bus pulls up, I run over to Diamond’s building. I’m going to drag her to my apartment by the hair if I have to, and she’s going tell my mom what she did. If Diamond wouldn’t have interfered, everything would be fine. I need favors from Diamond Follet like I need a bullet hole in my brain.
I knock on the door. No answer. I knock again and yell Diamond’s name.
“She ain’t here!” Mudman’s voice shouts back, and then he swears at me.
I look around Deadly Gardens for a while, but nobody has seen her.
Nothing to do but go home.
When I open the door to our apartment, Mom is standing at the stove. She’s got Tish on one hip, and she’s stirring something. Rex is sitting on the floor banging a pot with a spoon.
“I didn’t do it.”
She keeps looking at the soup. “I can’t tell you how—” Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. Rex starts banging the cupboard door, and she takes the spoon away from him. “Soon as Lily picks up Rex, I have to go to the Fry Factory. We will talk about this when I get home.”
Rex starts crying.
From the bathroom, Michael calls out, “I can’t find it, Mom!”
“Just a minute, Michael!” she yells back.
“Mom, let me just explain what—”
“Hundreds of dollars. That’s how much Mr. Gonzalez said the phone is worth. Hundreds of dollars. That’s not a little thing. It’s a big crime, Trevor. You have no idea how—”
“I didn’t do it!”
She puts down Tish, picks up Rex, and heads for the bathroom. “You know what, Trev
or? I said I can’t handle this now, and I mean it. We’ll talk about it when I get back.”
Lily comes and Mom does her fake smile and hands over Rex. As soon as they leave, she stomps around the apartment, giving orders, and then she’s out the door.
Somehow I get through Michael’s and Tish’s whining. I put a note on the kitchen table.
I know it looks bad, but I didn’t take the phone. You have to believe me. Here’s what I think happened. I think Diamond Follet took Xander’s phone and put it in my backpack. The day after The Plague tryouts, she overheard Xander insult me, and she wrote a curse word on his locker. She thought she was doing me a favor, but I got in trouble for it and got mad at her. She’s been trying to get back on my good side ever since. Yesterday she told me that she had something for me, and then she showed up at the soccer tryouts, where all the backpacks were, and she pointed at my backpack. I swear I didn’t ask her to take the phone. I didn’t ask her to do anything but leave me alone. Please believe me.
When my mom comes home, I pretend I’m asleep. The lock turns, backpack plops, footsteps move into the kitchen, chair legs scrape against the floor. It’s quiet. She’s reading my letter.
My stomach ties itself in a knot.
After a while she whispers, “Trev, you awake?”
She wants to talk about it.
Yeah, I should say, I’m awake. But I can’t. All the pressures of the day are squeezing the breath out of me.
30.
THE DREGS
In the morning, my mom wakes me up. “We have to talk,” she says, and sits me down at the table.
I’m not even awake yet.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she says. Her face is saggy, like she got older overnight. “Have you talked to Diamond about this? Has she admitted anything?”
I shake my head.
My mom goes on. “Let’s say it’s true about her. If so, then—”
“It is true, Mom.”
She sighs. “What are you going to tell Mr. Gonzalez?”
“I’m going to say I didn’t do it.”
At the bus stop, I don’t say anything to anybody.
When I get to the office, Xander is already there with his dad, waiting in the chairs by Mr. Gonzalez’s door. His dad is tall with brown hair, just like Xander’s. He’s got designer-looking clothes—black jeans and a cool blue shirt. I remember Xander saying he’s a photographer. Maybe he’s a famous one.
Xander whispers something, and his dad looks at me.
Mr. Gonzalez steps out of his office and Xander’s dad breaks into a smile. They shake hands.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gonzalez,” Xander’s dad says. “I’m Alexander Pierce.”
“Yes, yes,” Gonzalez says. “Thank you so much for all your work on the Web site. The photos are amazing. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Mr. Pierce waves one hand. “It was nothing. Happy to do it.”
Mr. Gonzalez takes them into his office. His voice is too soft to hear, but Mr. Pierce’s laugh rings out. “Sure, we can get this straightened out quickly.… Not the one to throw stones,” Mr. Pierce is saying. “The boy … Well … not exactly trustworthy.” Another laugh. “Yes … I heard he had a phone and lost it.… This used to be a solid neighborhood.… It was a mistake to redraw the boundary lines.… We’ve been supporting … more than our share … seriously consider sending Alexander to private school … shouldn’t have to worry about having things stolen.…”
Mr. Gonzalez talks awhile, and then Mr. Pierce’s voice comes through again: “Let’s be honest, the people from those apartments are the dregs.… Xander should be surrounded by a peer group that lifts him up, not one that drags him down.”
After another long minute, the door opens and they walk out. I pretend like I’m getting something out of my backpack so I don’t have to look at them. My face is burning.
Mr. Gonzalez brings me into his office. “Your mom called right before the Pierces arrived. She’s coming in tomorrow morning so that we can all sit down and talk about this together. She told me about the note you wrote. So you believe that Diamond stole the phone and put it in your backpack?”
“I didn’t do it. Somebody had to.”
He looks tired, like I just handed him another problem that he doesn’t want to deal with. “Mr. Pierce was asking if we should involve the police.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach.
“Since the phone is undamaged and back in Xander’s possession, I’d like to keep this a school matter, but I want you to understand that stealing is a crime.”
“I do.”
“If I call Diamond in here, what do you think she’s going to say?”
“I don’t know.”
He sighs and looks out the window like he wishes he could jump out and keep running. I wouldn’t want his job, either.
After a few seconds he turns back. “First thing in the morning, we’re all going to sit down together. Diamond, too.”
He tells me that I have to go to class.
I keep my mouth shut and go to my locker. I’m shaking. I’m unloading the stuff from my backpack when I notice it: my Fungi Identification Notebook is missing. I was planning on working on it at lunch.
I check my locker and backpack three times.
Great. This day just gets better and better.
31.
DIAMOND
By the time I get to Computer Applications, word about Xander’s cell phone showing up in my backpack is out. I can tell. It’s like somebody painted a giant bull’s-eye on my back, because everybody is aiming glances at me.
U.S. History next. Diamond is in that class. When I walk in, she hustles over and says, “I heard about the phone. What did you say to Gonzalez?”
Javier turns to listen.
I refuse to answer.
During math she gets called to the office. I’m sitting there, staring at these equations that I’m supposed to be solving, but I’m imagining her in with Mr. Gonzalez. She’s going to kill me. She’s going to tell everybody that I’m just trying to pin it on her. I can’t win.
She comes back faster than I expected and looks scared. When the teacher isn’t looking, she slips me a note:
Mr. G asked questions about Xander’s phone. I told him I didn’t know anything about it. What’s going on? RU trying to get back at me for the locker?
I tear the note to pieces and brush them off my desk.
When lunchtime rolls around, I pretend like I’m not a walking target for gossip. I sit down with my tray, my back to the Summit table. Juan slides in opposite me.
“Rumors are flying,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Did you do it?” he asks.
“Nope.”
I don’t say any more, and he doesn’t, either.
I am glad he’s there, though. Because it would look really pathetic if I was sitting all by myself.
Diamond is huddled at the far end of the Deadly Gardens table with Celine. On the way out, Celine comes over and says, “Diamond needs to know what’s going on.”
I look her right in the eye. “Diamond needs to figure out things for herself.”
I get through English and science. We have an assembly last period, which saves me from having to go to P.E. with Xander and Diamond. Next thing I know, I’m getting on the bus.
Markus is right behind me. “Heard you got caught, man. You need some lessons from the master. Doesn’t do you any good to steal a cell phone. They can always just kill it or trace your calls.”
I tell Markus to give his little lesson to Diamond, and I sit in the back.
Diamond and Celine get on.
Markus yells, “Diamond, what’s up with Xander’s phone?”
Diamond throws her backpack on the seat. “I don’t know why everybody’s looking at me. I didn’t do nothing.”
The bus takes off, and all this rage just rumbles around and around in my brain. By the time the bus pulls up to Deadly Gardens, I ca
n’t stand it anymore. I follow Diamond to her building.
“Oooh,” Markus says. “There they go.”
I shout back at him to shut up. Then I yell, “Why’d you do it, Diamond?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Diamond walks in the front door of her building.
I head in after her. “I’m not going down for what you did, Diamond.”
In the middle of the ground-floor hallway, she drops her backpack and turns around to face me, putting her hands on her hips. “What did I do?”
“You stole, Diamond. It’s a crime.”
She gets all huffy. “I didn’t steal it, for your information. It was a present. I was just trying to be nice. Go ahead and kill me—”
“Stop lying. You stole it from Xander, and we both know it.”
“It wasn’t Xander’s. I got it from Mr. Raye.”
“Right. Mr. Raye gave you a cell phone.”
“No! The marker. He gave me the marker I put in your backpack.…” She yanks my backpack around and unzips the small front pouch and pulls out a silver marker. “It’s for your designs. Silver. Mr. Raye said I could have it because I helped him clean up. I don’t know nothing about Xander’s cell phone.” She sticks the pen in her backpack.
She got a marker from Mr. Raye and put it in my backpack at tryouts. That was the “something” she said she was getting me. A gift. She didn’t steal Xander’s phone.
32.
HELP
I don’t know what to do or what to say. I was so sure she had done it. In a daze, I turn around and walk back toward the front door.
“Thanks a lot, Trevor!” she yells.
A door bangs open.
Mudman’s voice slices through the air like a rusty blade. “I thought I heard you. You little piece of—”
Next thing I know, she’s running for the front door. He bulldozes past me like I’m not even there. Before she makes it out, he grabs her and pulls her down the stairs toward the laundry room. “You’re in trouble again, you—” he yells, and she’s trying to say something, and this strange feeling is taking over me from the inside out. Then there’s this bad noise like a crack that makes me jump. I’m running down the stairs even though it doesn’t feel like my legs are working. I have no plan, no idea what I’m doing. But my legs are fueled with that stuff that runs through your veins and makes you strong in emergencies. Adrenaline. It’s like the adrenaline is activating another me that’s inside of the scared me, a me that is running toward Mudman instead of away from him. I run into the basement hallway and he’s holding Diamond’s arm with one hand and his other hand is in the air, and I still don’t know what I’m doing, but my voice rings out. “Stop!”
