The Underdogs

by Sara Hammel

  “I can use it the whole summer?” she said. Her eyes were welling up with tears, her expression pure and joyful. I’d been waiting a long time to see this.

  Will said with mock exasperation, “Evie. The racket is yours. To keep.”

  Evie opened her mouth and again, I thought the girl was going to cry, and I think Will thought so, too, because he got back to business superquick.

  “Okay. Let’s try that thing out. Back to work.”

  She stayed there for an extra second, though, and looked him in the eye. “Thank you.”

  Will smiled and gave her a nod before turning to get to his side of the court. I knew, and I think Will did, too, that she was thanking him for more than that racket. I couldn’t stop hopping in place, I was so happy. Evie gave me a wink and I wanted to scream with joy.

  She skipped to the other side of the court, staring at the racket as she went. She stood behind the baseline in the ready position, and Will hit her a ball, and Evie brought her new Volcano X back and hit a smooth, deep forehand crosscourt that kicked up right to Will’s forehand. I watched her and Will and that racket practice for the next hour, and I think I felt as content then as Evie did. For once in her life.

  After

  Detective Ashlock pushed open the club’s glass front door two days after the charm necklace debacle. Something was different. My mom sat up straighter on her stool at the reception desk. Even she could see it would be a bad idea to mess with Ashlock today. His face was ashen, not its normal shiny bright white. For the first time since we’d known him, his head was bare. He still had his fedora, but it was clutched to his chest like an old-time Southern gentleman bearing bad news.

  He was accompanied by a short, portly police officer. As Ashlock began to speak, I was mesmerized by the view of his head unconcealed. There had been more than one bet going around that the hat was hiding a colossal bald spot. In reality, it had been hiding a pate covered in close-cropped brown curls with streaks of gray.

  At that moment he was thrusting a crinkly piece of paper in my mom’s face. “I have a warrant to search the women’s locker room and all its lockers,” Ashlock told her.

  My mom turned toward the back office. “Gene,” she croaked. “Gene.”

  “Please give us the keys and show us the way,” Ashlock ordered.

  Gene came out of his office, blinking and appearing confused. My mom walked up to him, showed him the paper, and whispered in his ear. Gene got it pretty quickly and went back into his office to retrieve his keys. Everyone headed for the women’s locker room. Curious members walking in and out of the club were eyeing the cops, who made a big show of not noticing that every single human being in the lobby was focused on them. A bunch of us brazenly stayed in step with them. Mom and Lisa, who had appeared out of nowhere, fell in behind the police, and Evie and I brought up the rear. Patrick and Goran joined us when they saw our group traipsing through the lobby. Lucky sensed something was going on and slipped in with the crowd. Someone must have buzzed Nicholas down at the pool, because suddenly he was there. By then, there were probably a dozen of us.

  My mom yelled the requisite, “Man in the house. Everyone decent?” We heard “All clear!” from a woman inside, and Detective Ashlock walked in, followed by the cop, followed by the rest of us. I, for one, could feel Nicky’s tension. Lisa, apparently very forgiving, hooked her arm through his, holding it tight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him wriggle away. I didn’t think Lisa was going to date him in the end.

  Ashlock took a step toward a block of lockers, and you could feel everyone’s minds working to recall who had lockers in that row. He took another step, and another, until he was standing in front of a row of three lockers, all in the top row: 127, 128, and 129. Lisa Denessen, my mom, and the lunch lady were their owners. The detective snapped on another pair of those dusty latex gloves. The cop shook open a plastic evidence bag, and Ashlock held his hand out to Gene, who gave him the master key. Ashlock slowly reached out toward the lockers—and then someone let out an almighty yell.

  “Hey!” It was the lunch lady. “Don’t! Stop this. These are our private things. You can’t do this.”

  She was panting now, tendrils of her jet-black hair going wild. My mom said, “I’m afraid he can. Let’s let him do his job. If we’re not guilty, we have nothing to hide. Right?”

  The detective reached out until the key was touching one of the three lockers. As he did, some of us gasped and some of us let out an involuntary Oh! Ashlock believed one among us was guilty, and we could all see which person’s life was about to change.

  Ashlock slid the key in, turned it, and unlocked number 127. Lisa’s locker. Ashlock opened it, and Lisa’s mirror, her collection of lipsticks, her poster of Joe Manganiello, and worst of all, a pair of granny underwear, were on show.

  The detective was focused on his job, even when Lisa screamed, “No!” The cop held her back as Ashlock riffled through her things. “What are you doing? Leave my things alone. Please don’t…”

  Lisa squeezed Nicholas again but Nicholas again ripped his arm from hers. Guilty until proven innocent, I guessed. The detective used a pen from his jacket pocket to lift up a gray sweatshirt Lisa wore a lot. Underneath that was something shiny. Ashlock let the sweatshirt drop to the floor, then stuck his pen into the locker and gently pulled out a gold necklace. Those pink sapphire eyes flashed, and for one brief moment I thought I saw Annabel’s soul in them.

  “It can’t be,” my mom breathed. “How?”

  She turned to Lisa questioningly. Lisa had started crying. “I don’t know how that got there. Who’s doing this to me?”

  Nicholas turned to her with a look of realization, and then of hatred. “You” is all he said, his voice gravelly. “You.”

  I was afraid someone was going to have to restrain him, but Nicholas shook his head and stalked out. Ashlock turned to Lisa. “This,” he said, “is the necklace Annabel Harper never took off. Yet it wasn’t on her when she was found. We couldn’t locate it—until now.”

  He let it fall gently into the plastic evidence bag the cop was holding. To give him credit, Ashlock wasn’t crowing or gloating or putting on any airs. He was doing his job.

  “Lisa Denessen, you are under arrest for the murder of Annabel Harper.”

  The cop took out his cuffs and grabbed her arm, rather roughly I thought, and brought her arms behind her back as Ashlock was saying, “You have the right to remain silent…”

  “But I didn’t kill her,” Lisa said through her tears.

  My mom, choked up, said, “I know you were jealous of her, but why do this? Why kill an innocent girl, Lisa? You’ve thrown your life away.”

  Lisa looked around at everyone and found no supporters among us. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She closed it, then closed her eyes, and I realized she’d given up. I felt sorry for her, I really did. My mom added, “Someone should call her parents.”

  Patrick was saying, “No way, no way, no way,” over and over and, finally, Evie started crying. She began to sniffle, then cry, then bawl, and then she ran out before Ashlock finished talking about Lisa’s rights, and I followed her. She went to that back room and cried and cried and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

  Before

  Will and Evie didn’t bump into each other much outside of their scheduled lessons, given his crazy schedule and her penchant for hiding. But one day she ran into him in the lunch line, and I watched her hand shaking as she held her plate with turkey on rye, a leaf of romaine poking out of the sandwich.

  “What’s up, Evie?” Will said. He was distracted, rushed, hungry.

  Evie was mortified to be caught eating. “I know I shouldn’t really have this … It’s too much … I was getting it for someone else,” Evie lied. “Up at the desk.”

  She looked down, turning red, embarrassed, yada yada yada. Will didn’t even notice her preteen angst. He was too interested in feeding his body. He took a loud bite of carrot as he scanned the tabl
e, probably wondering if he could get away with spearing an entire pound of roast beef. That man was a walking calorie furnace.

  “You need to eat, Evie,” he said, reaching out to fork a rubbery slice of ham. “You need your protein. I don’t want to see you starving yourself.” He looked at her briefly, politely, and some might say cluelessly, then continued making his sandwich. Evie was so used to Lucky telling her she actually didn’t need to eat that she almost fell over. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. You go, Will Temple. You go, my friend.

  * * *

  Evie turned sideways, brought her racket back, and smashed a forehand crosscourt. She hit it so deep it looked like it was going to fly out of bounds, but Evie’s fierce topspin pulled it back in and it hit the intersection of the baseline and the sideline with such an angle that, if there had been an opponent on the other side, it would have zinged away from her.

  Evie’s face lit up. It was a wicked good shot. Will, who was feeding her balls from the service box on the opposite side, looked behind him, then back at Evie.

  “Do you know what was wrong with that one?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “It was exactly what you’ve told me to do—deep and hard and right on the line.”

  “Exactly.”

  Evie sighed loudly. I knew her well; she was frustrated with Will’s odd grip. For every killer forehand she hit, she’d hit another one flying off or plopping like a rock into the net.

  “I’ll tell you what was wrong with it. It hit the line,” Will said. “Never aim for the lines.”

  “Why not?” Evie had her racket out in front of her, ready for more forehands.

  “Because if you aim for the lines, you’re not giving yourself any room for error. You’re going to miss too much of the time. Aim for a foot inside the line. If you do hit the line, it means your aim was off.”

  He fed her another ball, and Evie whaled on it and hit it past the baseline. Will raised his eyebrows at her. She pretended she didn’t see his expression. He fed her a few more, and some shots looked great, but more often than not, the ball would be too topspinny and not hard enough so it landed short, or it would fly into kingdom come. Evie had progressed like the star I knew she was, but I think she felt she was struggling to learn the game, which was to be expected considering she’d never played a sport in her life.

  “At some point you’ll be taught by someone else during drills or clinics or camp. They’ll try to change your grip. Ignore them,” he’d ordered her from day one. “They’ll tell you your grip is only good for clay court players. Slow, plodding players who can only hit high moonballs until they put their opponent to sleep. They’re wrong.”

  To prove his point, he’d have her feed him a low, hard passing shot to his forehand and he would whip under it and scoop the ball up, aiming it over the net where it kicked up with pace on the other side.

  “See? Did you see that? Of course you can get under the ball with this grip. And you can hit it much harder when you do.”

  One of the most fun things about Will was his passion. And also the way he yelled to Evie with just the slightest flavor of a Boston accent when he was teaching her, like when he got really excited: Come owan, Evie. Try it again. Yoa almost thee-ah.

  At the end of the lesson about aiming for the lines, Evie was frowning as she walked to the center post, and she kept frowning as she slipped her Volcano X into its case.

  “Your forehand is coming along nicely,” Will said, zipping his own stuff in his bag.

  I thought again how lucky Evie was to have him. The guy now had a full eight hours of coaching elites ahead of him.

  “I guess,” Evie said. “I can’t seem to get that grip.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re doing great. It’s going to take time. It’ll come.”

  He smiled briefly at her and together they started the walk across four courts to get back inside the club. “Let’s focus on what’s going well. Like your serve. Not many people your age can hit it as hard as you. Someday you could have one of the most powerful serves in your age group in New England.”

  “Okay,” she said, mostly to herself. “I know I can do it. I know I can.”

  I knew then that she, too, had been reminded of what an amazing thing it was to have Will coaching her. “Thatta girl.” He smiled, waving goodbye in the café area as he bounded up to the lobby to start his day.

  Even Evie’s bad days on the court were better than our previous life. Our story changed when Will Temple came on the scene, our days no longer made up of slinking through the lobby so Evie wasn’t noticed, or killing time in the back room she’d turned into a dungeon. Now the day was broken into segments of how Evie could do better at her training. Could she find time to do the stationary bike? Could she and I get Harmony to let us hang out at the pool to catch some rays, if we promised to stay on the lawn? And when could she slip onto the court to practice her serve? She’d found the perfect hiding place for her Volcano X, stashed against the back wall behind boxes of pineapple juice that had cobwebs on them. It was the best time ever.

  After

  I wanted to jump up and down with excitement at our luck. A major revelation was walking right toward us—you could feel it. Evie, my mom, and I were having lunch and catching some rays out on the lush lawn by the pool, reflecting on how weird it was that Lisa wasn’t here today because she was, as far as we knew, still in jail, when Gene circled through the revolving door and approached us.

  “We need to talk,” he said to my mom, nervously clasping his hands in front of him. She tilted her head toward me and Evie, and Gene said, “They can stay. No more secrets.”

  A glob of tuna plopped out of Mom’s sandwich and fell onto the grass, and as she picked it out, Gene sat down on a corner of her quilted blanket.

  “Lisa is innocent,” he pronounced. Evie almost choked on her tuna.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Mom grew alarmed and laid her sandwich back in its Saran wrap.

  “Because I’m her alibi,” Gene said. “And it’s time I cleared this up.”

  My mom put both her hands up, as if to stop an assault. “Whoa. What?”

  Gene took a deep breath. “I was with Lisa the night Annabel died. She came to my house around midnight, desperate to talk. What was I supposed to do? She was crying. I couldn’t turn her away. She was upset about school, her future, her life. She was so insecure and was always comparing herself to Annabel. It was so late, I couldn’t send her home. She crashed on my living room sofa bed. She has no one else to go to for guidance. You know what her parents are like.”

  Yes, we all knew. It wasn’t like they beat her or anything, but apparently they liked to drink a lot even when she was a little kid. Gene had no kids of his own, and he’d always let the teenagers around here know they could trust him if they ever needed help—and they did.

  “So how do you know she didn’t sneak out?”

  “Because,” Gene revealed, “we were up talking until three a.m., after Annabel was killed. There was no way. Look, Beth—the girl’s lost. She has brains and ambition, but no direction. I wasn’t going to turn my back on her.”

  “Okay,” Mom said crisply. “I guess we were wrong about Lisa. But why didn’t she say all this when she was arrested? She could’ve avoided this whole mess entirely.”

  “Because,” Gene replied, “she’s more decent than any of you give her credit for. She was worried how it would make me look.” He looked down. “I should have spoken up right away.”

  My mom, who had calmed down some, said, “I have to admit I’m relieved. I heard her screaming at Annabel the night she died and thought … Well, it was a pretty awful fight.”

  Evie and I had kept quiet as Gene confessed everything. “So now you know,” he said. “Someone else got there after Lisa left.” And off he went to get Lisa off the hook. I just hoped he didn’t end up in jail himself for his lies of omission.

  Before

  The court surface was still cold ear
ly in the morning, but the sunshine was warming me up as I sat on the sidelines and watched Evie train. She was doing side-to-sides. Will would feed her a forehand, then a quick backhand, then a forehand, and so on. The ball rolled off her racket as she moved in a smooth rhythm: Smack, run, shuffle, smack, run, shuffle.

  Evie was getting good, and she was moving like a real tennis player, lighter on her feet, more confident. It took me a minute to identify the most important difference of all today, though. She was wearing shorts! Her oversize pink shirt looked cute now that it was paired with her new white stretchy Champion shorts. Her legs were suddenly tanned, and they were smooth and shapely. She looked great.

  Will called time on the side-to-sides, and Evie nodded and walked to meet him at the net, wiping her brow with her shirtsleeve, tucking her racket under her arm. She had blond highlights from the sun, clear eyes, and a straighter posture. She was standing taller than ever.

  He started to rewrap his sweat-absorbing grip tape, and as he did, he told her, “Your backhand is looking great. You’re going to be a real threat, you know.”

  Evie—I could see her mind working—wanted to shrug it off but fought the instinct to turn his compliment into a negative.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It feels pretty good.”

  Will finished wrapping and secured the velvety tape. He checked his watch.

  “We’ve got five more minutes,” he said. “Let’s finish up with some sprints.”

  Evie nodded and laid her racket down next to his. I knew this moment was coming, but I didn’t know if Evie could handle it. She’d seen the campers do it many times. She and Will ran the lines for five full minutes, each moving at their own pace, with Evie holding her own as she managed to keep going no matter how bad she wanted to quit, even once when I caught her gagging from the exertion. She sucked it up and kept running. So Evie wasn’t the skinniest person ever, and she wasn’t the fastest kid on the block, but all of a sudden she was fit and healthy and awake, and to me that made things pretty darn perfect.