by Dahlia Adler
Tariq always assumed she’d end up dating some NBA prospect from one of the nearby colleges. Maybe an actual one-and-done who was good enough to play with men, but not quite old enough to date grown women. All that to say The Courtney Show was a thing.
So much so that when Tariq had seen the single, solitary message in his DMs six months ago, he thought it was some kind of prank.
Courtney: Hey, you got the science notes from yesterday?
He did, in fact, have the science notes, and was happy to say yes to any question from her, though he wasn’t falling into the trap every guy fell into with Courtney. It wasn’t like he was hurting for female attention. Getting drawn in and torched by Radcliffe’s Most Wanted wasn’t part of his plan.
He found out, soon enough, that it wasn’t part of hers, either.
But plans were made to be broken.
* * *
The apartment was empty; Tariq knew it would be. Mama had a shift at the Criterion Motor warehouse, where she unpacked large shipments of auto parts for redistribution to various stores along the Eastern seaboard. Dull, repetitive work that often resulted in her smearing Icy Hot on her lower back late at night. Her version of sacrificing her body on the field, but with little upside beyond food and rent.
He knew how cliché it was to have baller dreams of making millions in the NFL and buying his mama a house. Knew what people (mostly white folks) thought when he talked about it. So he had this joke, where he’d say the thing, then follow up with, “When I buy my mama that house, I’m going to name it like it’s some kind of estate, or British manor. We calling it Cliché.”
Courtney liked that joke a lot. Said it made scouts (mostly white folks) feel comfortable around him. Said personality was part of the game, too. With his size and dark complexion, it was good that he disarmed people with humor.
Wasn’t that how he’d disarmed her?
Tariq reached for the refrigerator door handle, needing water, or juice, or something to soothe his hot, dry throat. As soon as the seal broke, a rotting, invisible hand mushed his face with the force of an on-the-field stiff arm. He flinched away from the smell, then lurched back into the open box, breathing through his mouth, searching the forest of nearly empty condiment containers, pickle jars, and Tupperware that probably should’ve been emptied and washed last season. What was rotten here?
He yanked open the veggie drawer and found a leaky package of thawed chicken sitting in a puddle of pink, congealed blood.
Shit! Tariq had put it there three days ago intending to … he didn’t even know. Courtney was the first person he ever cooked for. Shrimp and crab cakes, paid for with booster money all the players got a piece of since their team was the winning kind. The meal was a hot mess when he finished, the shrimp sopping with butter (you don’t sauté with the whole stick), the crab cakes broken and mostly lost in popping grease (breadcrumbs would’ve helped). Yet he liked the planning of it—strategy and execution. He didn’t always get football plays right the first time, but the process of getting there, then getting perfect, spoke to him.
“You’re meticulous.” Her words.
Or he was.
He tugged his shirt collar over his nose. Twirled long streamers off the paper towel roll to soak up the blood. Yanked the entire drawer free and sat it on the floor, where he disposed of the foul meat in a heavy-duty trash bag. Then he dropped the paper towel in the swill, deciding to let it soak. While it did, he checked his phone, as addicted to status updates as ever, despite his imagination getting the best of him earlier. He missed her. That was expected, and that was all.
More IG. More bikini girls. Normal. Except now he was disappointed. Until he scrolled further, his hopes and fears realized.
There was Courtney again, in that same oval filter.
Not the front shot from last time, with her smile sly and her cat eyes reflecting mischief. No, her head was turned, as if gazing at something to the left of the frame. A good profile shot, with a solid view of one of the simple pearl earrings—also bought with booster money—that he’d given her on her birthday.
It was a tribute page. Had to be.
Except no one knew about the earrings, jewelry so unlike the hoops she normally rocked. So prim compared to her rattling bracelets or diamond stud nose ring. He’d told her he bought them because he didn’t know anything about jewelry. Then contradicted himself by saying Alfre Woodard gave Sanaa Lathan pearls to wear in their favorite old-school movie, Love & Basketball, so that made them special. Really, while booster money bought shrimp and the good lump crab meat, it didn’t cover gold or diamonds like she was used to. She didn’t scoff, or laugh, or call him out. She did rock those pearls among the other three studs that adorned her multi-pierced ears. That was when he suspected they were more than the secret they were playing at.
Tariq tapped the name above her picture, which went to the profile he’d known for their entire time together. The one her mother had deleted a week after they found her.
Courtney Hedge
Beauty/Glam/Fashionista
Your favorite dime’s favorite dime,
and my time ain’t coming … it’s here!
That part was right, but nothing about the rest of it was.
All the pictures were framed by the oval filter. Various angles of her face, in the typical IG grid, but arranged so if you looked at them quickly, your eye bouncing from one to the next, she appeared to thrash about, like an infant shaken by a grown man with such force, thick swaths of her hair fanned into tentacles reaching beyond the oval frame.
They weren’t selfies, and they weren’t anything Courtney would’ve ever allowed on her page. Not her standard Hot Girl aesthetic. In some, there were light patches where her cheek, nose, and neck flattened, as if pressed against the lens the moment the photo was snapped. Those horrified Tariq, because they showed anguish in such detail an artist could slave his whole life trying to render such visceral emotion, and never succeed.
A key rattled at the door, startling Tariq. He stood suddenly, nearly losing his grip on the phone.
“Oh lord,” his mama squealed, “What is that smell?”
She rounded the corner, work-damp and face crumpled from the odor.
“I’m sorry.” Tariq plucked up the sloppy paper towel and dropped it in the bag with its accompanying meat. “Some chicken went bad.”
“Please get it out of here before I gag! Gawd!”
Scrambling, he sprayed cleaning liquid into the drawer, scrubbed it with fresh paper towels, and asked, “Why are you home so early?”
“What are you talking about, boy? I worked my normal shift.”
Exactly. Three to eleven. She usually didn’t get home until nearly midnight. Before he pointed that out, he glanced at the stove clock. 11:45.
That … that wasn’t right.
He jabbed the wake button on his phone. It showed a different time, but it didn’t make any more sense. 11:47 p.m.
None of the clocks in their house were synched. So as he trudged around the apartment, checking the cable box, and the microwave, and his alarm clock, he found few matches, but all of them were close enough. It had been more than six hours since he’d arrived home. Six hours since he’d first navigated to those strange photos of Courtney. Hours that passed like seconds. Or had seemed to.
Phone in hand, awake, he shuddered. That word, awake, for an electronic device. Why? If it could sleep, and wake, could it also … watch?
With an unsteady finger, he tapped Instagram, expecting more of Courtney in that goddamned oval. Before he could scroll the screen shifted, flashed a red empty-battery icon, then went totally black.
Tariq was relieved.
Field focus, that was what was needed here. One task at a time, one play at a time. He got the chicken cleaned all the way up and carried the bag to the dumpster behind their building. All that existed were the next few steps. Not the shadows visible in the corner of his eye, those shapeless voids. No ovals among them. He was sure of that
, and he made certain not to look directly at them for fear of discovering otherwise.
Inside he showered, dressed for bed, and slid beneath the covers, skipping a step that had been as much a part of his nighttime routine as saying a brief prayer for Mama. He didn’t plug in his phone.
It felt like the right choice.
His sleep was thin. Restless and dreamless, barely sleep at all. He roused ready for daylight to burn off yesterday’s lingering unease.
His phone was ready, too. On his nightstand. Plugged in and fully charged.
Awake.
* * *
Four weeks ago, a body had been found by an early morning jogger. The woman spotted “purple sparks” at the muddy bank of the Alberto River. The sequins in Courtney’s favorite jacket.
She’d drowned. That much was certain. The authorities theorized she’d been crossing the walking bridge, a mile or so upstream from where she was found, the path she’d walked many times, when something happened.
“Dumbass was probably taking a selfie by the railing and tipped over when she couldn’t get the right angle.” That was Auna Brewster’s loud, bitchy hallway deduction. She was a Radcliffe girl who’d talked more shit about Courtney than most. Auna, who’d chased Courtney’s popularity since they were freshmen, with more money and more effort but still coming up short. Auna, who’d gone as far as setting up burner social media accounts just to troll until some other rich-girl frenemy busted her, giving Courtney the ultimate ammunition for revenge.
“When I told her, ‘Sweetie, I don’t need a secret identity to let the world know how tacky you are,’ it was like a supervillain origin story. Chick’s been extra salty ever since. I seriously fear for my life some days, ’Riq!” That was Courtney’s unserious rendition, told after a sweaty half hour together beneath Tariq’s covers while his mom worked that three-to-eleven shift.
Had that Auna/Courtney beef seemed superficial? It did. Until.
Tariq relayed all that to the police when they came asking if anyone else walked with Courtney, or had a problem with Courtney, or meant to hurt Courtney.
Normally, Tariq had a firm “no snitching” policy. But the police had also asked about his whereabouts (hospital, plenty of witnesses, it was the night he’d hurt his knee). If they knew enough to come to him, his Courtney thing wasn’t as secret as they’d thought. If they were asking that many people that many questions, maybe Courtney didn’t fall taking a dumbass selfie.
Police scared Tariq most of the time. This was different. These cops were Radcliffe football fans; they made a point of letting him know. He knew they’d try their best.
As of the present, their best hadn’t been enough.
Courtney’s case had gone cold.
No heat in sight.
Until now.
* * *
Tariq zoned out through the day, only a lurch and slide from tumbling out of his desk in every single class. He didn’t snore, and his teachers were grateful since that would make it harder to ignore his blatant disregard for the lesson. When he was awake, he stared at his phone, an oval filter picture of Courtney now his home and lock-screen wallpaper.
He hadn’t changed his screens—they used to be logos for Ohio State and Notre Dame, his two dream schools. When he tried to change them back, it simply didn’t work. He’d tapped the settings menu so hard he feared he might crack the glass. Then, he just accepted the pics.
It was Courtney, after all. Hadn’t he wanted to see her again?
Courtney posts were like art. She’d been smart about her tools. Never frivolous. “Only post important pictures,” she’d said one weekend afternoon, after examining a selfie, finding it unacceptable, and deleting it, “ones that last.”
“You post every day, though.” Tariq’d said. The team had lost the night before and he’d been cranky.
She didn’t let his mood disprove her point. “Because every day is important. Especially for people like us. You should know.”
“People like us” meant the physically gifted. His strength, speed. Her looks. Assets and hindrances, because other people thought that was all they were. Courtney’s strategy: use it, then surprise them from the top with some genius shit.
“It would’ve worked, too. But everybody who’s there to help ain’t helpful,” she said, no longer in his memory because that wasn’t something she ever said when she was alive. She twisted on the couch and faced him, wet, grit-smeared with river mud in her purple-sequined jacket, her voice warbling, her words pushing moss bubbles from her lips. “You should know.”
Tariq jerked out of the dream, his phone in his hand, kicking away from his seat. His powerful healed leg launched the entire desk into the adjacent row, a clanking collision with another defensive lineman, Cory Wilson.
“Dude!” Cory said, more surprised than anything. As was the entire class.
Mr. Staunton looked cornered at the front of the room. No way to give the customary Football Player Pass on such a loud disruption. But the final bell rung, and students exited the room, unconcerned with Tariq’s fit. When it was just him, panting and disoriented, the teacher waved him on. “Just go.”
He did, with Courtney’s oval-encased face seemingly pressed to his screen. Her eyes canted left, the direction he needed to go. At the hallway intersection, he turned right, but not before glancing at the screen, seeing her position shifted slightly, her eyes now cutting his way. She’d become a macabre compass, only settling on a position when he reached the locker room, his stomach churning because they’d have to part.
“Coach is strict about no phones. Even if you’re benched,” Tariq mumbled, reluctantly placing his phone on his locker shelf, sealing it in.
He knew she knew, but he didn’t like the idea of her alone in the dark. He never had.
Sidelined, his locker two hundred yards away, still he felt her. That single pearl earring from her gorgeous profile shot a dying star in the center of his dark mind. Those words from his dream like claxons in his ears.
Everybody who’s there to help ain’t helpful. You should know.
After practice, his teammates showered and dressed while he perched on the bench before his locker, staring at Courtney, watching her eyes. They were closed. Squeezed shut. They remained so as Jimmy Rogers asked him to go for burgers. And when AJ Wheeler invited him over to play Xbox. So he declined, of course.
The locker room emptied. Teammates spilled into the evening. Courtney’s eyes opened. Cutting left, then right. Not in the picture, like some ghost movie. Her image wasn’t some animated spirit. The picture changed, different shots inside that oval filter, refreshing to follow the movement of one so-called teammate. That was when Tariq knew …
… he needed a do-over on his ice bath.
“Morris,” he said, his voice airy, “you got me?”
“You know it, ’Riq.”
Coach retreated to his office to do whatever paperwork coaches do, leaving Tariq and Morris to it.
A powerful stream of water splattered inside the aluminum tub, like pounding a rusty drum. Morris hunched over the lip, dumping scoops of ice from his bucket. “You gotta do a full ten minutes today, ’Riq. I covered for you yesterday, but, for real, the cold is gonna help you get back to cracking skulls soon. We need you out there.”
“Uh-huh.” Tariq hadn’t changed from his street clothes. Jeans, sneakers, a sweater Courtney had gifted him the day before his injury and her death. Following her eyes in the flickering new photos, he made his way to the center of the training room, knelt by the floor drain.
With his house key, he pried up the circular grate covering the drainpipe. Mossy gas escaped; the dark pipe might’ve run to the center of the earth. That was not his concern. The pearl earring, wedged in muck just an inch from the pipe’s opening, though …
“Hey,” Morris said, dropping his plastic scoop in his bucket, “what the hell you doing?”
“What did Courtney ever do to you, Morris?”
The team manager’s smi
le dissolved.
Everybody who’s there to help ain’t helpful. You should know.
Tariq couldn’t look at him, so he focused on the tub. Tried to imagine levitating over it, a bird’s-eye view. If that were possible, he’d see a nearly perfect oval, wouldn’t he? Almost like an old-school picture frame. Or a filter made to look like one.
Morris said, “You don’t look so good, ’Riq.”
Tariq stepped to him, the pearl earring that must’ve come off when Morris did what he did pinched between thumb and forefinger. An earring swishing over the edge of the tub as Courtney thrashed while Morris held her down. An earring floating in a gush of ice water toward a drain where it should’ve disappeared into the dark forever, but didn’t.
There was a different picture on Tariq’s phone now. Courtney’s face pressed hard against the screen—or the tub’s bottom. Fingers visible, gripping her neck. A pale hand, a loose-fitting State Championship ring with its signature amber gem in the shot.
She’d always posted with purpose.
“You killed her here,” Tariq said, her message coming through crystal clear, “then dumped her in the river. Why?”
What change did Morris see in him? What horror had Tariq become? Whatever it was, it unhinged Morris’s jaw and sped up his tongue. “She came in acting like she always does. I mean, why’d she even come here?”
For me, Tariq thought. We were going to give it a real try. No secrets. But my knee … That didn’t matter anymore.
