Dangerous Play

by Emma Kress

  Jamison groans and rolls onto his back. Nikki moves to kick him, but Ava grabs her arm. The girl is safe. We’re done. Soundlessly, we leap from the house, our feet pounding on the pavement, our breath ragged against the cold night.

  * * *

  On Monday, I’m full of secrets like Clark Kent, but so much more badass. He was so tortured by his secret. But it’s not a torment. It’s a gift. I float from class to class.

  Two girls that walk these halls are better off because of us, because of me.

  I look at other girls in the halls, wondering how they spent their weekends. I wish I could give all of them this same feeling. This firecrackers-lit-filled-to-burst-don’t-mess-with-me feeling.

  I tell Nikki I wish Reilly had been in the half house too. All of us raining terror on him.

  She smiles a not-all-the-way-there smile. “It was great—to help that girl, I mean. But…”

  “But what?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s just big I guess.”

  I nod. Exactly.

  * * *

  Tuesday, I’m running late to third period. Usually I walk with Liv to the science wing but I’ve missed her because my stupid locker was jammed, and the way I usually take is blocked off because someone spilled chocolate milk all over the hall. I detour through the English halls, walking fast because Mr. Ross likes to lock you out if you don’t get there before the bell. I round the corner to run down the stairs.

  And I can’t.

  Can’t run. Can’t turn. Can’t move.

  Right there, taking his time like he owns it, walking up the steps like he owns them, walking toward me like he—is Reilly. He’s turned to someone behind him, laughing his big, wheezy laugh.

  Everything warps. Like walking into a house that was mine, to rearranged furniture, too-bright lights, and doors leading to wrong places.

  Someone bumps me from behind on my shoulder.

  Grove. He gives me this ugly look, like I shouldn’t be standing breathing living here.

  And I run. I run back down past the English classrooms, down the stairs to the first floor and into the girls’ bathroom just as the bell rings.

  I put my hands on the cold tile wall. Press my feet into the floor. Lean against the door.

  I am not Superman. I am not Clark Kent. I am not anyone.

  * * *

  At practice, I drive myself hard. We’ve got a game against Danver Springs tomorrow and I plan to kill it. With every smack of the ball, I picture Reilly’s face. By the time Liv drops me off at home, I’m exhausted.

  “Hello?” I let myself in the front door. Marvin Gaye answers “How sweet it is” from the kitchen, while Dad’s voice reaches for the high notes. Yes. Motown is exactly what I need.

  “… I wanna stop and thank you, baby…”

  I sing down the hall toward him, “How sweet it—”

  But the song dries up in my mouth the second I enter the kitchen. Mess covers the counters: bowls, spices, stirring spoons, bits of chopped vegetables. But it’s not the mess that stops me. It’s Dad. He must have been prepping this for a long time, which means at least an hour on his feet, which will not end well.

  But he’s smiling as he spins toward me, his apron splattered with goodness knows what. He pulls me toward him, dancing and singing.

  It’s obvious how much it’s hurting him.

  “… I wanna stop…”

  I shuffle him over to the kitchen chair. “‘Stop’ is right, Dad. You need to chill.”

  He smiles as he sinks into the chair, a little breathless. “Nobody’s chiller than Marvin.”

  I smile, turning Marvin down. “Truth. But the last thing you need is a relapse.” I eye his busted watch. The last thing any of us needs is to go backward.

  I see the realization of it cross his face.

  “You due for some meds?”

  “Nah. I’ll wait until dinner. Better with food anyway.”

  Which, of course, I know. But I want to remind him how long he has to wait. “Speaking of food…” I nod to the mess. “What’s the plan?”

  “I just wanted to make dinner. Mom’s been working so hard—”

  That’s when I see the flowers on the table. The wine. “Wait. You went shopping too?”

  “Well, yeah. Mom’s working late. I had to—”

  “Dad! I would’ve done this for you. I was coming home to cook for you guys.”

  He waves his hand. “I knew practice was late tonight, so I figured you might grab something with Liv.”

  “I’d never—I wouldn’t—”

  He laughs. “Oh, honey. I just wanted to do something nice is all. And this time, doing something nice for Mom also got you off the hook for cooking. So win-win, right?”

  “Win-win.” But none of us will win if Dad relapses.

  I make my way to the stove and finish sautéing the vegetables while Dad drums the table and hums, the meat loaf already in the oven.

  After I finish the dishes, I see a missed FaceTime from Nikki. I head up to my room and call back. She answers right away, her hair splayed against a pile of ocean-blue pillows.

  “You going to sleep? We can talk tomorrow.” I shut my bedroom door behind me.

  She shakes her head. She bites her bottom lip and I take in her blotchy face, her red-rimmed eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. I wait.

  “I just get so sick of it, you know?”

  “Of what?” I whisper.

  She sighs big and looks up at her ceiling, sinking farther into her pillows. She pulls a blanket up to her shoulders. “Of seeing Jamison. Zo, I see him everywhere. Everywhere. I go to lunch, there he is. I go to my locker, there he is. I go to Math. There. He. Is.”

  “Nik, I’m so sorry.” I spiraled when I saw Reilly. But we’re not in the same classes, the same grade. I can’t imagine being forced to sit through a whole period with him right there.

  She shakes her head. “Usually I can move through it but today…”

  “What happened?”

  Her face crinkles up and tears pool in her eyes. She blinks and a few escape down her cheeks. “Today he was in the art wing. That’s my space. Mine. It’s like the one place in that whole damned school that I can count on being him-free, you know?”

  “Oh, Nik. That’s so unfair. That whole place should be yours.” I wish I could reach through the phone and hug her. “It’s so wrong that this is your life.”

  She half laughs. “I know, right? Like why isn’t this his life? Why isn’t he afraid of me?”

  “He was pretty afraid of you at Billy Jackson’s when your feet sent him flying.”

  She sniffs. Then smiles. “That did feel pretty good. But he’s still around, you know?” She wriggles down deeper into her bed. “My portfolio teacher could tell I was in a mood, and painting wasn’t going to cut it. She let me try working with wood today. Using a chisel and hammer felt pretty good too.”

  “You’re doing wood carving now?”

  She nods. “Yeah. Although I’m not sure I can call what I did today carving exactly. It was more hacking the shit out of a block of wood until it was a mess of splinters.”

  I laugh. “I think that’ll make an excellent title. You’ll probably sell it for a million dollars one day.”

  “Ahhh,” she says. “The artist’s ultimate revenge.”

  “You sound like my Aunt Jacks. She does wood carving too, actually.”

  I tell her about Aunt Jacks and the cool workshop she has behind her house. I’m glad that Nikki has a teacher who lets her switch things up when she needs it. And I’m glad she got to take her anger out on a hunk of wood. But none of that makes any of this okay.

  Because Jamison should be scared of Nikki. He should be the one crying in the bathroom and running the other way. He should be the one scared to go to school. He should be the one hiding in the art room. They all should.

  But instead, they strut the halls like they own them, while we cry into
our pillows. It’s not like the dean would ever take our side over theirs. She made that perfectly clear.

  Maybe, though, after we’re through with them, they’ll be the ones crying into their pillows.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WEDNESDAY, WE PLAY DANVER SPRINGS. They’ve got a seventh grader playing varsity who’s supposed to be some phenom. But their school is about half the size of ours. So I’m hoping their definition of phenom is wildly different from mine.

  On the way there, Nikki teaches us a new cheer she wrote:

  We’re not cute.

  We don’t purr.

  We shoot and score so hear us roar!

  Say we’re small?

  Say we’re weak?

  We’re made of mean and we ain’t sweet.

  We clap and scream “Love it!” and “Yaaaassss!” We chant it on the bus and chant it running out to the field.

  Coach pulls me aside. “Zoe, your intensity has been incredible—in the last couple of games and during practices. Those jabs have been spot-on, and that V-drag you pulled last practice was pure elegance.”

  “Thanks, Coach.” It’s hard not to beam like an idiot when Coach compliments me. I’m glad everyone else is too busy getting ready to notice.

  “That drawing-boundaries stuff worked, huh?”

  She looks too happy for me and too pleased with herself for me to correct her. No, Coach, I want to say. It turns out playing nighttime superhero and treating the world like my playground was the cure. But instead, I say, “You were right. Thanks, Coach.”

  “That’s my girl.” She pats me on the back. “Now go show Danver Springs who we are.”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  We take our places. Ava crosses herself and hops twice when she enters the goal. I chop my feet. Liv closes her eyes and has her “meditative moment.” We’re ready.

  They win the toss, so they get to start. Their seventh grader’s small and quick.

  But one girl doesn’t make a team.

  She’s got moves and sometimes she spins around us like she’s on wheels. But nobody else on her team can receive a pass. They ignore what’s happening in the back. They hide. They give up the ball the second we near. Their whole game plan is her. I gotta give her credit. She’s trying. So hard. She’s calling and pointing and sprinting and pushing and driving and dribbling. She’s controlling so much but not enough or maybe too much. She’s good. But we’ve got eleven greats to their one.

  We take it.

  * * *

  My celebration ends as soon as I get home.

  Sure enough, Dad is laid up. Also predictable: Mom’s working.

  I wish being right felt better.

  I’m furious at him for being so stupid last night. It’s bad enough to see the pain in his face, but the worst part is I never know how long these relapses will last. An hour? A day? A week? A month? Even singing to Marvin isn’t worth this.

  Thursday, I come home straight after practice to check on Dad. But he must have had another rough day, because he’s sleeping the deep sleep brought on by pain meds. When Mom comes home, carrying a bunch of groceries, I think at least she’s going to cook dinner and help him. But when three wine bottles come out, I know I’m staring at a Rebels night.

  Living with Mom is like the ref making the wrong call. Every time.

  “We’re celebrating. Jacks has her art opening this weekend. Remember?”

  “Right,” I say. I’m playing Sommersville Saturday, or I’d go too. “Good for her,” I say because it’s true. I love Aunt Jacks. But I don’t wait around to hug her. I go upstairs, escaping the Rebels’ entrance just in time. I creep into Dad’s room to see if he needs anything. I don’t understand how Mom can be downstairs getting drunk with her friends while Dad’s suffering upstairs. I stand silent in the doorway, in the dark, waiting. I don’t want to get too close because I don’t want to wake him, but I just need to make sure—and then he takes a big snore of a breath. And I can breathe better too.

  I head back to my room and take out my homework. Like I’m supposed to. Like I do every night. But AP US History is filled with a bunch of old white guys and Hamlet’s being a whiny emo brat who won’t just hurry up and do what he’s supposed to, and it’s really hard to concentrate while Dad’s sleeping away his pain and Mom’s partying it up.

  A couple of hours later, when I’ve finished all my homework, I head downstairs to see if there’s pie. When I turn into the kitchen, I see the aunts in the living room, draping a blanket over Mom. She’s passed out on the couch. Aunt Maya tucks the blanket in around her.

  Aunt Ruth picks up a stack of plates and walks into the kitchen. “Hi, Zo,” she says. She nods back toward the couch. “Your mom’s had it, I’m afraid. She works so hard.”

  Yeah. So do I. As I look at the stack of plates, a scream rises inside me.

  But then Maya gives me a kiss on my forehead and looks in my eyes. “We’ve got this, little one.”

  “I—” But Maya’s already rolling up the sleeves of her blouse and Jacks is piling the food into containers and Ruth is walking me toward the stairs.

  She hugs me. “Your mom’s lucky she has you, Zoe.” She releases me. “Don’t forget you’re lucky to have her too.”

  * * *

  It’s Friday night, and I’m so glad because I get to escape for a bit of parkour. Friday nights used to be us shivering on the stands, as spectators. We’re not spectators anymore. Tomorrow we face Sommersville. But I know that after a night with the girls, we’ll be ready. I’ll be ready. We paint our cheeks with glow-in-the-dark stripes, blue on one side, green on the other. Tonight, we’re all the same team.

  But Dylan’s missing.

  At first, we think it’s just Dylan being Dylan, always late. But when she doesn’t show after an hour, we get worried.

  “I hate her foster parents,” Kiara says.

  “You’ve met them?” Liv asks.

  Kiara shakes her head. “No. Dylan always insists on meeting me somewhere else. I think she doesn’t want them to know anything about her.”

  I can’t imagine.

  “There have to be so many good people who are foster parents. It’s such shit luck that Dylan got them,” Quinn says.

  “That’s sort of Dylan’s life story,” Kiara says.

  Finally, Dylan arrives. “Hey,” she says to Kiara, “can I crash at your house again?”

  “Of course. You know my parents love you.” Kiara tries to meet Dylan’s eyes, but Dylan keeps them locked on the pavement. “They being assholes again?”

  Dylan just shrugs. And I know that she needs parkour even more than I do.

  We leap and swing, flip and climb. We rush and run, tumble and twist. It feels delicious, the night air against our skin, letting our bodies move where they want, how they want. The paint on our cheeks erases our features and we’re strange black clouds rolling above the playground, making our own kind of thunder and rain.

  When we’ve had enough, when our skin is bruised and our muscles are tired, we go. We walk together, heads high, as close and silent and fierce as a pack of wild wolves.

  I get permission from Uncle Bob and bring everyone to Scoop Dreams. In all the time I’ve worked for him, I’ve never brought a bunch of friends after hours. We squeeze into the shack and Liv and I scoop—strawberry, s’mores, brownie, fudge swirl, and, of course, cookie dough.

  “They should invent a cheese ice cream,” Ava says, taking her cone from me.

  I laugh. “The dairy is already covered by, you know, the ice cream. Usually the idea is to add something that isn’t dairy.”

  Liv ducks under the counter and searches in the back of the cabinet. Finally, she pulls out a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and hands it to Ava.

  “Focking goddess!” Ava shouts.

  “Where did that come from?” I ask.

  “I put it there last time I worked. I forgot about it till just now.”

  “You are so weird,” I say.

  “You are so brilliant,” Ava
says. She rips open the bag and dips a chip in her cookie dough ice cream. “Ohhhhhhh. This is—” She takes another bite. “I just—ohhhhh.”

  We laugh. “Nice cheese-gasm.”

  She moans. “You do not know what you’re missing.”

  I steal a Dorito and try it. It’s kind of incredible. “Uncle Bob totally needs to invent a Doritos ice cream.”

  “Absofockinglutely!”

  We eat and laugh and talk and gossip and it’s fun. But somehow it’s not enough anymore. I think of last weekend and feel … restless, itchy.

  When we’re finished with our cones, Quinn elbows Sasha. “You want to show them what you made?”

  “Oh right! I forgot I put it in the trunk.” Sasha runs outside.

  “What is it?”

  Bella grins. “Just wait.”

  Sasha hauls a giant shopping bag into the shack.

  “I made us something. And”—Sasha looks at Dylan—“you’re not allowed to make fun of it.”

  Dylan holds up her hands. But honestly, nobody can really make fun of Sasha. She’s probably made of unicorns and stardust.

  Sasha tosses black bits of fabric at us. I unfold mine and see that it’s a kind of hood: light and airy. We all put ours on; they’re cut and sewn so that the hood is loose and long in the back to cover our hair but fitted in the front so only our eyes peek out, like a better version of a ski mask. And since the fabric is thin, we can breathe just fine.

  “You’re a genius,” Kiara says. Sasha blushes.

  Thanks to Sasha, we have the perfect disguise for our midnight missions.

  I feel so grateful for these girls and this thing we’re doing—whatever it is.

  “Well,” Nikki says. “Are we just going to sit around and play dress up or are we going to put these things to the test?”

  We all look at one another, and the inside of this ice cream shack has never felt so alive.

  “There are always people in the Old Cemetery,” Cristina says.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE CEMETERY IS DRAPED IN shadows and we hush our voices as we near. The lights from the street don’t reach far beyond the gates, but splashes of moonlight filter through the scattered trees to the graves below.