The Underdogs

by Sara Hammel

  Evie giggled, and together we made our way down, the three of us helping one another as we went so none of us fell.

  After

  Evie was staring into space. She’d gone through all the stages: fury, impatience, sadness, boredom, and back to anger. Why? Because Lucky had really done it this time and we were stuck with the world’s most annoying front desk staffer. Things had started to get better between him and Evie, and he’d taken her with the gang a couple of nights ago to see Take Me Out, the white-hot movie everyone would be talking about when school started. Their new deal was to alternate R-rated movies with PG flicks that she could go to, and he’d vowed to never leave her stranded again when they had plans together.

  Tonight the gang had gone to see the R-rated Iron Fisted, so Evie had gamely agreed to stay at the club and hang out with me. Harmony was lifeguarding, and we had fun sitting with him at the pool when the sun set and the club got quieter. Lucky was supposed to be back by nine thirty to pick up Evie, but when Harmony closed the pool at ten they still hadn’t returned. “I can’t leave you guys,” he said to us, “obviously. But, hmm … I do have a date.”

  Because the front desk staffer wouldn’t close the club until eleven, we assured Harmony we’d be fine with her. We called Lucky’s cell over and over. Evie grumbled, “He always forgets to pay his phone bill. It’s not surprising we can’t get through.”

  The movie had ended long ago. The court lights had been turned off and the members were long gone. It got later, and still Lucky hadn’t come. At precisely ten fifty-nine, Margee, the desk staffer, glanced at the clock on the back wall and shrugged. “I’ve gotta close up,” she said. “I need my beauty sleep.” Evie appeared alarmed and Margee, who had spent a lot of time hiding in the women’s locker room (we suspected she was chattering on social media), added, “You know, I can’t be responsible for your parents being late. That’s not on me. You both practically live here anyway. You’ll be fine!”

  Really? Being left alone in a sprawling, dark, empty building with no grownup in sight and a killer on the loose was kind of a big deal. And now that the police were back to square one with Annabel’s murder, we were edgier than ever. It suddenly occurred to me that in our current situation we were equally vulnerable whether this psycho was a club regular or a random maniac roaming the St. Claire area. We sat at the desk, frozen. The eerie yellow parking lot lights shone through the club’s glass front door with a muted glow. It was disconcerting to see more outside than we could inside; the lobby behind us was an endless pit of black tar we couldn’t see through for the life of us. You can’t simply flip on a light in a place like this. There’s a massive panel of switches. Every light is connected to another, and some of them take fifteen minutes to come to life. So we made do with the little desk lamp and waited.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Chelsea?” Evie asked, her voice struggling to be nonchalant, tinged with bravado.

  As it happened, I did believe in ghosts because I saw them sometimes and I couldn’t always tell if they were good ghosts or bad ghosts. But that is another story. For tonight, as I stared into the darkness of the lobby and the tennis courts, everything just felt wrong. As I was thinking this, from out of nowhere came an alarming bright light through the glass doors. We heard a thud in the distance, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Somehow, it felt more frightening being a sitting duck inside that club than being outside in the semi-lit, wide-open world. Evie hopped off her stool and grabbed the heaviest racket she could find in the loaner bin under the reception desk. She took a practice swing and nodded to herself.

  “Stay close, Chels. I’m sure it’s nothing, but we should check it out.”

  We headed outside, where it was immediately apparent where the light was coming from. We moved stealthily toward the pool area, which jutted off the main building to the right, tiptoeing along. The pool lights were on full blast. We stood at the gate, pausing to listen for any movement. Evie put her finger to her lips and we waited. After a few seconds, we heard a voice behind the fence.

  “Why, Annabel? Why did you leave me? Whyyyyyyy?”

  It was a male voice, visceral and hysterical. I couldn’t for the life of me recognize it. Evie mouthed, “I’m going to see who it is.”

  The latch had already been undone by whomever was in there, so Evie took hold of the handle and gently swung the wooden gate open a few inches. She peeked inside and I scrunched down for a look, so both our faces were poking through, one on top of the other.

  Oh, God. Nicholas Harper was kneeling on the lawn by the back fence, facedown on the grass right where Annabel’s body was found, crying, “Come back, Annabel. I didn’t mean it … Please … I’d give anything to see you one last time … We’re forever young…”

  Hearing Nicholas’s masculine voice morphed into this shrill falsetto curdled my blood. Evie looked stricken. This uncomfortable emotional scene was about as appetizing to us as a haunted tennis club, so we froze and looked at each other: Do we back off or let him know we’re here and try to comfort him?

  “Oh, Annabel,” he was saying over and over. Annabel … Annabel … Annabel.

  Poor Nicholas. It didn’t look like he’d be recovering from his sister’s death anytime soon. We heard a few sobs, and then he was babbling again. Evie and I exchanged horrified glances. Inevitably, it was at that moment that something went wrong. The wooden gate got caught in a gust of wind and the door, like a great wooden sail, blew out of Evie’s grasp and banged against the fence. Nicholas looked up, startled at first, still in that strange position, his head turned sideways toward us, cheek pressed into the grass. And then—well, then I saw it in his eyes. His face changed from sobbing and surprised to a bitter glare. He narrowed his eyes and scrunched up his face in one great realization, like he’d just identified the cause of all his problems.

  He sprang to his feet and gestured to us awkwardly. “Come in,” he said, his voice oddly syrupy. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot. I felt Evie shiver next to me.

  “What are you girls doing here so late, huh? Come on in. Don’t be afraid.”

  He saw we still weren’t moving and he cocked his head. He looked at Evie; Evie looked at him. Then Nicholas dropped the pretense. The three of us knew we weren’t here for a pool party, that nothing about this scene was normal. He walked across the deck to the lifeguard bench, opened it, and removed something we couldn’t see from thirty feet away.

  While he was doing this, Evie had begun to back away slowly like she’d encountered a wild animal in its natural habitat. But I didn’t. I moved laterally until I was standing between her and Nicholas. Evie backed away a little more. We watched Nicholas come toward us. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his biceps like little hills rising up from the joints of his arms and back down before his shoulders, his abs rippling through the white tee under the bright lights. At the end of summer, his tan was a part of him now, every bit of visible skin a deep brown, with a tinge of pink at the tip of his nose. His hair was too long. His blond curls, usually tamed by a short cut, were wild and out of control, like he was.

  That much I could see now. Because he was pointing a gun at us.

  After

  Evie gasped and reached out to squeeze my shoulder. My adrenaline was pumping, and I held my ground as Nicholas approached us. I could see his fly was half-open, and it looked to me like his trendy jeans were missing a button. I knew, I just knew, that Nicholas’s missing button had to be the same one Ashlock had found at the pool that day. Suddenly, it all made sense. I could hear Evie’s breathing above the frenzied crickets. We were in the parking lot now, out of the pool area, standing under the glow of the streetlights.

  “You have to understand,” Nicholas said slowly, gesturing with the gun as he spoke, “that I never meant to do it. You have to understand that it was an accident.”

  Evie croaked, “But how?”

  “How?” He smiled maniacally. “How? Because of that greasy Russian, that’s how. If it hadn’t been for
him trying to hurt my sister, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Goran. I think we both gauged it was best not to ask questions, so we let him talk. He started pacing. Evie still had the racket in her hand, but now it didn’t seem like much of a weapon. “I—I won’t tell anyone, I promise, Nicholas. It’s none of my business. No one will believe me, anyway.”

  Nicholas ignored her. “I was only trying to keep her from getting hurt. She didn’t know what that—that—person was really like. Who he really is. I told her she was too good for him but she was like, ‘You don’t know him. He’s not like that.’” He growled that last part. “She didn’t listen. She was stubborn, and she kept talking about how they were in love and if I got to know him we could be friends. Please.” He was pacing frantically.

  He stopped again and faced us squarely. “I was supposed to protect her. That was my job. But I failed … because she wouldn’t let me.” He looked at us pleadingly. In that brief moment, I think he wanted us to believe him. To forgive him. To absolve him.

  “Oh, yes, I think you’re totally right,” Evie said softly. “It wasn’t your fault…”

  Her words, meant to comfort him, only got him more worked up. Nicholas bent forward at the hips and covered his head with one hand, that gun flailing about unchecked again in his other. He let out an animalistic cry. “Ohhh God, Annabel. I didn’t mean it … but there’s no going back, is there? Why did you fight me on this? Whyyyy?”

  I’m sure Evie was thinking what I was: If he’s saying Annabel fought him, did something terrible happen by accident? He was sobbing now. He stood up and faced Evie, who smiled nervously. But just when I’d thought he might calm down and believe we were on board with his story about an accident, he seemed to lose his grip entirely. Something was happening to him—something sinister. Something that was not our Nicky.

  “I understand, Nicholas. It’s going to be okay. Clearly it wasn’t your fault…”

  I think Evie believed we were starting to get to him, bond with him, make him realize no one would pay any attention to a wild tale born in the imagination of a kid. That we could walk away from this and everything would be fine.

  I knew better, and I saw it long before Evie did. The change in his eyes. The almost imperceptible twitch of the hand that held the gun, and the pheromones blowing off his skin, all signaling to me he was going to attack. I could smell it.

  I lifted my face to the wind and wiggled my nostrils, and I knew.

  Before Nicholas could shoot my best friend, I crouched so low my stomach brushed the ground, and then I rose up with all my might and leapt at him with everything I had, aiming my jaws for his neck and my paws for his eyes.

  But he’d sensed my intentions, too.

  While I was in the air flying at him, Nicholas shot me in the chest. I went down, and everything went black.

  After

  Next thing I knew, Evie was hovering over me, glowing with a heavenly aura. My first instinct was to smile at her. I was so confused I can’t even explain it. I didn’t know where I was, what I was waking up from, and why Evie looked so terrified.

  I felt a sort of numb pressure on my tummy area, and I was panting hard. “You’re going to be okay, sweetie,” Evie promised. She whipped off her new sweatshirt and I felt her press on my chest. “You’re such a good girl. We’re going to take care of you, don’t you worry.”

  But her voice was thick and shaky as she fought tears. That’s when the pain broke through the numbness—it was a slow, throbbing alarm that something was terribly wrong. I could breathe okay, which gave me hope. Everything came back to me in one great rush when I heard a man scream, “Oh, God,” and then I saw it was Nicholas, still holding a gun—and pointing it straight at Evie’s head from less than ten feet away. Right—he’d shot me. Nicky? Why? My focus was going in and out, but I was alert enough to see now that the aura lighting up Nicky and Evie was from the yellow parking lot lights, that we weren’t in heaven, and that we were still all alone with this angry person we’d thought we knew.

  “Look what you made me do,” Nicholas shrieked. He sounded so crazed he gave me the shivers. “I’m sorry, Chelsea! I’m so sorry, girl. I had no choice…”

  I had to move. I had to get up. To stop him. I wouldn’t let him hurt Evie, and he of all people should know I’d fight to the death. I tried to wriggle on the rough pavement, still warm from the sun beating on it during the day, but Evie held me down gently so I stayed on my side. Don’t move. Don’t move, Chelsea.

  “Drop it, Nicholas,” a smooth, sure voice broke into the night.

  I knew that molasses-like sound so well. Detective Ashlock was here.

  “Don’t move or I’ll shoot the girl,” Nicholas yelled back. He took a step closer to us. I tried again to get up, but Evie held me down, her sweatshirt helping to stem the blood.

  I heard the click of metal on metal, and Ashlock—who had materialized out of nowhere and was standing on a patch of grass to Nicholas’s right—yelled back, “Another step and I’m going to have to shoot you, Nicky.”

  “Detective, he shot Chelsea. We have to get her to a vet, like, now,” Evie cried. I could feel blood trickling through the sweatshirt, a wet stickiness that had begun to mat my fur. “It’s going to be okay, girl. Stay with me.”

  “I know, Evie,” Ashlock said calmly. “Backup is on the way. We’ll sort this out, right, Nicholas? And then we’ll get Chelsea straight to the vet.”

  “Oh, please,” I heard Nicholas say. “I’m a dead man walking and you know it.”

  “Not if you stop this right now,” Ashlock said. I almost believed him. “Not if we find out this was a terrible accident. But you have to help me, Nicholas. You have to come in peacefully and help us sort this whole thing out.”

  I could feel Evie shaking, and I couldn’t blame her; the scene was surreal. Nicholas, our golden boy, the hero, was suddenly possessed by the soul of an evil demon. We had to somehow process two dimensions colliding—the one where Nicholas was a heroic Boy Scout and the one where he was a scary murderer. It appeared he had either lost it completely, or he was finally showing his true colors.

  “It was an accident,” Nicholas said defiantly. “And no one feels worse about it than I do. But it was also self-defense. Annabel attacked me.”

  I started to fade, and I heard a distant, muted cry from Evie. Chelsea, Chelsea … It was such a sweet sound, but I didn’t know if it was enough to keep me there.

  Ashlock, his voice more urgent now, shouted, “Nicholas, I believe you. You were trying to talk sense into your sister, right? But she wouldn’t listen. So you had to—you had to grab her so she’d hear you. Then what? Maybe she hit her head and fell into the pool?”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, but I heard Nicholas say, “She was at the club that night to meet that—that ape, and I found her dressed … provocatively. She told me she’d started to believe the stories about him, but they’d talked it out and were meeting to profess their undying love for each other. I told her he was wrong for her, but she wouldn’t listen, so I grabbed her. But I let go—I let go. And then she lunged at me, started punching me…”

  Nicholas’s confession trailed off, so Ashlock picked it up. “You had to stop her from hitting you, right? So you grabbed her, maybe around the neck. And maybe before you knew it, she was in the pool, passed out. By then maybe you thought it was too late. It wasn’t your fault, Nicky. We know that now.”

  Nicholas was silent for a moment, and when he spoke he was bawling again. “I would never have hurt her. Never. I only wanted her to know the truth about him. About that girl over at Long Hills Country Club. He says he was there to train her, but everyone knew—he used her and dumped her, and then he did the same to another girl in Connecticut.”

  Ashlock sounded totally on board with his story. “You didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and when you realized what you’d done you got sick, didn’t you? You were so sorry that you vomited on the pool deck.”

 
; Nicky kept that gun leveled at Evie and said softly, “That’s right.”

  Ashlock continued. “Okay, Nicholas. That’s good—you getting so sick means you have a conscience. Now drop the gun before someone else gets hurt.”

  Nicholas hung his head, but then snapped it right back up, perhaps realizing he had to pay attention or Ashlock could wrest control from him.

  “Annabel died in the pool, Nicholas,” Ashlock said. “Tell me, how did her hair get dried and styled?”

  “She—” Nicholas couldn’t seem to get the words out. He cleared his throat. “I loved her. I wanted her to look beautiful. She was always so beautiful. I carried her back into the bathroom and fixed her hair, dried it, brushed it. Like she would’ve wanted.”

  I was so tired, and getting so cold. I shut my eyes and started to drift away.

  “She was found in her bikini top. Why leave her exposed like that?”

  “Because,” Nicholas said, “her shirt got dirty when I got so sick. I wanted her to be clean, and she was. She was all clean.”

  Ashlock said, “I get it, Nicholas. But why frame Lisa? It was brilliant the way you got into her locker to plant the necklace. You had us all fooled.”

  Nicholas snorted, angry again. “It wasn’t hard. We share everything at this club, remember? After the way she treated my sister, I didn’t care if she was wrongly accused.”

  As I listened to these bombshells, I wondered: Is Nicholas good, or is he bad? Is he a great kid who’s gone off the deep end, or is he secretly rotten to the core? Have we missed the little signs along the way that he isn’t quite the golden boy we like to think? Like I always say, people are strange.

  Ashlock also confirmed we’d been stalked. “Well, the police department was impressed that you stayed one step ahead of us. How’d you manage it?”