Off the Rim

by Sonya Spreen Bates

  It meant drawing out the play to the full thirty-five seconds on the shot clock. A couple of times we barely got the shot before the buzzer. But we held them off fairly well, and when Noah was finally subbed off again, with five minutes left on the clock, the score was 60–55 our way. Yeah, they’d gained a bit of ground. Yeah, it hadn’t been our best basketball as a team. The important thing was we were still ahead, and Noah had proven that he could be an asset to the team.

  The final minutes clocked out nicely. I think the girls knew they were done. Both teams scored a few more points, turned over the ball a couple of times and drew a ton of fouls in a desperate attempt to either get or maintain the lead. When the final buzzer sounded, the score was girls 62, boys 69, and the place went wild.

  Chapter Seven

  The game seemed to break the ice between Jenna and me—it’s hard to resist a collective adrenaline rush. After the game everyone was on a high, and we hit Jo’s diner with both Mountview teams and a good portion of the cheerleading squad, taking over a whole row of booths.

  Jenna called Noah over to join us at a table with Amber, Carlotta and Stretch.

  “Come on, let’s take a picture,” she said, squeezing over to make room for him. It was a tight fit getting six basketball players into a booth meant for four normal-size people. He and Jenna and I leaned together, and she snapped a selfie with her phone.

  “Nice moves out there tonight, Walker,” she said after tucking her phone back into her pocket.

  “Thanks,” said Noah. I think he actually blushed. “You guys were awesome. We only won because of the height advantage.”

  Stretch cleared his throat loudly. “Let’s not neglect to mention the fantastic coaching effort by yours truly.”

  “Yeah, that too.” Noah paid Jo for his soda and gazed around the diner. It wasn’t his usual hangout. The noise level was through the roof. With everyone pumped up on adrenaline and sugar, it sounded more like the school cafeteria than a restaurant. I felt sorry for the few customers who’d been in there before we arrived.

  The noise didn’t stop me from feeling the vibration in Jenna’s pocket, though, telling her a message had arrived on her phone. We were packed in so tight I was surprised it didn’t reverberate around the whole group. I glanced over at her, but she just ignored the phone and me.

  “Did you see Emily Whitton got a new piercing?” said Amber, and the moment for me to ask Jenna about the call was gone.

  “Another one?” said Jenna. “Does she have any body parts left to drill holes into? Where did she put this one?”

  Amber scrunched up her nose. “In her breastbone.”

  Jenna gestured toward her chest and winced. “Like…?”

  “Right between her boobs,” said Amber, nodding.

  I stopped listening. I didn’t need to know any more about Emily Whitton or her piercings and especially not her body parts.

  “How’s the knee?” I asked Stretch. He’d been wearing a brace all week.

  “Not as bad as I thought,” said Stretch. “The X-rays were clear, so it’s physio for a couple of weeks, and then I can get back to training.”

  “That’s great,” I said, although I couldn’t help feeling a slight pang of anxiety in my stomach. If Stretch was cleared to play, would I be back on the bench for the rest of the playoffs?

  “What do you think about the triangle offense?” I said.

  Stretch shrugged. “It’s a risk. But if we can pull it off, it may mean the difference between going to regionals and being satisfied with making the first round. It might be worth it, especially against a first draw like Columbia.”

  So he thought there was a chance Coach would run it in a game. I glanced over at Jenna to see if she’d heard that, but she was still deep in conversation with Amber and Carlotta.

  Later, as we were waiting in the parking lot for Jenna’s mom to pick her up, I mentioned to Jenna what Stretch had said.

  “Really?” she said, taking her cell out of her pocket. She glanced at it and then went still.

  “What’s it say this time?” I said. She’d obviously seen the message that had come in earlier. And from her reaction, I could safely assume it was from the same bully who’d been bugging her before.

  “Nothing,” said Jenna. She glanced around the lot as if searching for something. Or someone.

  A sudden thought gripped me. “Is that perv watching you?” I said, having a good look around too. Except for a couple of cars parked near the entrance to the restaurant, the lot looked deserted. “This is getting beyond creepy, Jenna. It’s got to stop.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Why don’t you block him on Facebook?” I said.

  “I did,” said Jenna. “I’m not totally stupid, you know.”

  “Then how…?”

  “He’s got my email address.” Jenna looked up at me, and I could tell she was trying not to show how freaked out she was. “Someone must have given it to him.”

  My stomach clenched into a knot. “Who is this guy, Jenna? Do you know him? What does he want?”

  Jenna sank down onto the curb, and I sat next to her. She seemed to make a decision, because suddenly her body relaxed a bit. “His name is Nick Smith, but I have no idea who he is. I looked at his profile, but I don’t recognize him from anywhere.”

  I couldn’t think of any Nick Smiths either, although there were a few Smith families in town. Mind you, a name like that could be an alias. He could easily have set up a Facebook account with a fake name. There were lots of creeps in the world. But why Jenna?

  “What does he say in the messages?” I said. “What does he want?”

  Jenna shrugged. “That’s just it. He keeps saying things like Keep your trap shut and If you say anything to anyone, we will hunt you down.”

  The words chilled me. “We? So he’s not in it alone.”

  “I guess not, but the problem is, I don’t know what he wants me to keep quiet about,” she said miserably.

  “Have you asked?”

  “Yes!” Jenna was clearly frustrated. “When I got the first threat, I messaged him back right away, asked who it was and what he wanted. I thought it was a prank or something.”

  “And…?”

  “He said, Don’t play games with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. But I don’t!”

  I was confused. If the threats were real, and they seemed to be, why not spell it out? Tell Jenna what he wanted her to do? But then, maybe he didn’t want to put anything in writing that could incriminate him later.

  “Since then I’ve just been ignoring the messages, but maybe I should ask him again,” said Jenna.

  I shook my head emphatically. “No, don’t respond to him, Jenna, or he’ll know he’s got to you. How long have the messages been coming? Could they be related to that robbery at the 7-Eleven a few weeks back?” Jenna and her cousin had been in the store just before it happened. I knew Jenna had been interviewed by the cops a couple of times.

  “I don’t see how,” she said. “It’s been almost four weeks since I got the first one, but that robbery was ages ago. And I didn’t see anything anyway. Just a couple of guys crossing the parking lot as I got into Mel’s car. I’d never be able to identify them or anything.”

  “But you gave the cops a description, right?” I said.

  “Yeah, two guys in jeans. One in a gray hoodie, one in a leather jacket. That could be just about any guy in town.”

  It didn’t seem enough to warrant stalking Jenna. Because that’s all you could call it. Cyberbullying seemed like too soft a word.

  “And now someone has given him your email address?”

  Jenna nodded.

  “That means someone you know knows him,” I said, thinking out loud. “Have you asked around?”

  “No.” Jenna turned to look at me. “And don’t go spreading it around, Dylan. That’s the whole point. I’ve got to keep quiet. If I keep quiet, nothing will happen, and he’ll go away.”

  Light
s flashed at the entrance to the parking lot, and Jenna’s mom’s car turned in.

  “Please, Dylan,” she said. “Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone.”

  Her mom stopped the car in front of us.

  Jenna gave me a pleading look. The one I can never resist.

  “Okay,” I said. “But promise me you’ll tell me if he contacts you again.”

  “I will,” she said, all smiles. She put her arms around me and squeezed me tightly.

  “And see if you can get him blocked on your email,” I said. “You should be able to change your settings to do that.”

  She nodded. “See you Monday,” she said and hopped into the car.

  Chapter Eight

  As it turned out, I didn’t see Jenna on Monday. She wasn’t at school. When she didn’t reply to my text before first period, I started to panic. What if something had happened to her? What if that guy had followed through on his threats? What if she was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, or tied up in a dark basement? By the end of English, I was ready to go to the police right then and there.

  Lucky for me, I got a reply just as I was gathering up my stuff.

  I’m fine. Just a stomach bug. Don’t panic.

  Thanks for letting me know, I replied, angry. I was worried.

  Nothing to worry about. Don’t come over. You don’t want to catch this before the game on Wed.

  As the adrenaline surge waned and my heart started to slow down, I thought about how stupid I would have looked had the cops showed up at Jenna’s house to investigate a missing person only to find her with her head in the toilet. Still attached to her body. But it also made me think about how I would feel if something did happen to Jenna and I’d done nothing to help her. I’d never be able to forgive myself. Someone knew Nick Smith. Someone had supplied him with Jenna’s email address. There had to be a way to find out who that was without asking every kid in school.

  Just then Noah walked by and ducked into the computer-science lab. A lightbulb went on in my head. If anyone could find the culprit who was feeding Nick Smith information about Jenna, it was Noah. He knew just about everything there was to know about computers. And once we found the link between Jenna and that creep, we’d have a better idea of what we were dealing with. I had promised Jenna I wouldn’t tell anyone what was happening, but I wouldn’t have to tell Noah everything. And if we did find out who this guy was and what he was doing, she’d forget all about that promise.

  I tracked Noah down at lunch.

  “Noah. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “If it’s about another extra practice this afternoon, I can’t make it,” he said. “We’ve got debating finals coming up next week, and we have to prepare our persuasive argument and points for our rebuttal.”

  I didn’t even know what that meant. “No, it’s not that,” I said, looking around for a place to talk that wasn’t swarming with kids.

  I dragged him into an empty classroom.

  “What’s going on?” said Noah.

  “I need some advice. I’m trying to find someone,” I said. “Or at least find out stuff about him.”

  “So google him,” said Noah.

  “That’s just it. His name’s Nick Smith. If I google him, I’ll get, like, a million hits,” I said. Actually, I hadn’t even thought about googling him. I’d do that when I got home. “All I know is, he has a Facebook account.”

  “How do you know he’s got an account?” said Noah.

  Here’s where it got a bit tricky. “He sent me a message,” I said. I’d decided I’d just keep Jenna’s name out of the conversation. Noah didn’t need to know who the guy was sending messages to. “I had a look at his profile pic, but I didn’t recognize him.” At least, Jenna had.

  “So friend him. Then you’ll be able to see his full profile. You can always unfriend him if he’s not the guy you think he is.”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I said. I was treading on very thin ice now. “The message he sent wasn’t exactly friendly. I don’t want to open myself up to some stalker or something.”

  “Someone’s threatening you?” he said.

  “Not exactly,” I said evasively.

  “It’s a no-brainer, Dylan. They call it cyberbullying, remember? Go to Mr. Anderson or the counselor,” said Noah. It was like hearing a delayed echo. I’d said exactly those words to Jenna only last week. “It’s probably someone at school who set up an account with a fake name. Don’t cave in to a bully, online or not.”

  “I can’t go to Mr. Anderson,” I said.

  “Why not? Once it’s out in the open, it’ll stop. Keeping it secret is what keeps it going.” Noah was getting pretty worked up. This was obviously a sensitive topic for him. “Dylan,” he said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone can be a victim of cyberbullying. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make you any less of a man.”

  Okay, this was going too far.

  “It’s not me,” I blurted out. “It’s Jenna.”

  He couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d slapped him.

  “And I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh.” Noah swallowed.

  I explained what had been happening. “So someone knows this guy and has given him Jenna’s email address,” I finished. “The little weasel.”

  Noah pulled his laptop out from under his books and started it. I’d never seen him so worked up. He was usually Mr. Calm. It made me wonder if he had more experience in this area than he was letting on. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular. But then, Jenna was popular, and look what was happening to her.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Checking out Jenna’s Facebook friends,” he said.

  “None of her friends would give some creep her email address,” I said.

  “Not knowingly,” said Noah. He was flicking through profiles faster than I could follow. “But if one of them gave her email address to another friend, and that friend gave it to someone else who knew our mysterious Nick Smith…”

  I was beginning to get where he was going with this. It was like an online version of a rumor passing through the school from one kid to another. The information always ended up in the wrong hands.

  “That someone is bound to be Facebook friends with Mr. Smith, and if we can find out who that is…” He continued to flick through profiles, going from one friend to another in the blink of an eye.

  “This might take a while,” he said. “Get on another computer and start checking out the friends of Jenna’s friends. See if Nick Smith is friends with any of them. Start with her closest friends. The ones who would have her email address. Don’t bother looking at your own profile. I’m already onto that.”

  I was about to protest that I would never give Jenna’s email address to the wrong person when I realized the futility of it. The whole point of a rumor mill was that it went from one trusted hand to another. Until it ended up in the wrong hands.

  “Got it,” said Noah half an hour later. I’d almost gotten to the point of giving up. Jenna had a lot of friends. And her friends had a lot of friends. Every profile hop expanded the pool of names exponentially.

  I spun around and looked over Noah’s shoulder at the screen.

  Nick Smith. He looked about twenty-five. Dark brown hair, a bit scruffy-looking. His profile photo looked like it was taken in some bar. I’d never seen him in my life.

  “How did you find him?” I asked. “Who’s the jerk who gave him Jenna’s email address?”

  “Jesse Derby.”

  “What?” I was shocked. Okay, I’ll admit I knew next to nothing about Jesse. He never hung out with the rest of us. Always left practice or a game before anyone else had stepped foot out of the locker room. He often skipped practices—and classes, too, for that matter. But he was still a teammate. I felt betrayed.

  “We don’t actually have any proof that he gave this guy Jenna’s email address,” said Noah, always more levelheaded than me. “All we know is
that he’s Facebook friends with him.”

  “Well, I’m going to find out,” I said. I had a burning sensation in my chest. I wanted to punch something.

  Noah grabbed my arm and pulled me back into my chair. “Just relax and put your brain back in gear for a minute,” he said. “We don’t want to make things worse for Jenna.”

  That settled me down a bit. “No, you’re right,” I said. I still felt like I had smoke coming out of my ears, but the fire had reduced to a smoulder.

  “Let’s talk to Jenna. See if she knows this guy,” he said.

  “She doesn’t,” I said. “She’s certain she’s never seen him before. The only one who knows this guy is Jesse Derby.” The last two words came out as a growl.

  “Still, knowing the connection between him and Jesse may jog her memory. If we can figure out why he’s trying to scare her, we can talk her into going to the cops. Threatening someone online has criminal consequences, you know.”

  I didn’t like it, but I knew he was right. “Okay,” I said.

  Chapter Nine

  I had a hard time being around Jesse at practice the next morning. The way he ran around on the court, passing and dribbling like nothing had happened. Like it was an ordinary day and his buddy wasn’t making death threats to my girlfriend. I wanted to wipe the smug look off his face with the back of my hand.

  After forty-five minutes of running drills, Coach set us up for some one-on-one shooting practice. I scooted over to Jesse and gave him a friendly grin. Not.

  It was an unusual choice, and Jesse knew it. Normally, I would have paired up with Matt or Carlos, or Stretch, before he hurt his knee. I think Jesse may have sensed something was up. Still, he shrugged and started dribbling the ball. He eyed me warily as he shuffled from one side to the other. Perhaps he could see the murderous intent behind my smile. Perhaps he just knew I was the better player. Either way, he was taking his time making any moves.