by Alan Janney
“Thanks!”
“Why were you with Hannah Walker?” she asked.
“They told me to pose with her.”
“Lucky you,” she said sarcastically.
“I agree.”
“Chase,” she said, and stood up. “Don’t tell me you’re still in love with her.”
“I was never in love with her,” I protested. “Besides, I thought she was dating Andy.”
“No, dummy. They broke up.”
“Whoa! What happened?”
“He broke up with her. The rumors were all over the internet. He probably cheated on her because all guys are jerks.” She frowned, and crossed her arms. “I remember when you used to sit near Hannah in middle school and wouldn’t stop talking about it.”
“What do you have against Hannah Walker?”
“Nothing,” she sighed and deflated onto her bed. “Only that she’s perfect.”
“So are you.”
“Shut up,” she said. “Oh Chase. Now that she’s single, she’s going to fall in love with you. You’re perfect too. Are you taking her to Homecoming?”
“What?” I laughed in surprise. “Of course not. We didn’t even speak to each other. I didn’t go to homecoming last year and I probably won’t go this year either.”
“Wow,” she smiled. “You really are clueless.”
“No I’m not,” I frowned.
“Yes you are. What an adorable mess you are, Chase. You’ve spent your whole life in a gym or on the field. You’re socially inept, like an attractive caveman. You don’t understand how the school works. You’re as ignorant of the high school’s societal hierarchy as I would be on a football field.”
“What don’t I understand?” I threw the stuffed dog at her.
“You’re popular now, idiot. You made the Varsity football team. You might be elected to the junior class’s homecoming court. You have to go to the dance.”
“I’m not popular. I’ve never been popular,” I chuckled.
“You used to be unpopular. This year will be different. Trust me.”
“That is hilarious. Me, on the homecoming court. First of all, I wouldn’t even try out for it.”
“Try out for it?” she cried. “What’s wrong with you? Try out for it? People vote for you whether you want them to or not.”
“Nobody even knows who I am, Katie.”
“Yes they do, doofus,” she practically shouted. “They just did a news story on you. Remember? Two minutes ago? You’re so competitive and so focused on football that you haven’t even bothered considering the implications of making the team, a nationally ranked team!”
“Huh.” Maybe she was right.
“You’re so nice, Chase. Maybe too nice. You’re so polite and optimistic that you’re almost unaware of the real world.”
“All I want to do is beat Patrick Henry.”
“Ugh, me too,” she made a sour expression. “Those guys are such jerks. Anyway. Enough about stupid sports. How’s your father?”
“Uh,” I winced. “He’s okay. Hanging in there. No seizures yesterday.”
Her eyes teared up. She couldn’t even think about Dad’s difficulties without getting emotional. “I wish I could help him.”
“Got an extra eight hundred dollars?”
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Follow-up treatments. Physical therapy. Occupational therapy. Stuff like that.”
“You’re out of money? And no insurance, right?” she asked.
“Might as well have no insurance. Our deductible is like twenty thousand dollars, and our co-pays are high. I only have sixty dollars in my bank account. Dad’s salary barely pays the bills.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have no clue,” I sighed. “Free clinics? Try the therapy by ourselves? He’s either in pain, drunk, or hopped up on his meds. Barely speaks to me anymore”
“Your poor Dad. And poor you,” she said, stepping behind me to rub my shoulders. Which hurt. A lot. But also felt good. Really good. Really, really... “I’m glad you came over.”
“Me too.”
“I’m glad we’re friends.”
Friends. There it was. I was her friend. Nothing more. That’s all I’d ever be. She sat on the bed across from me and looked at me expectantly, like she wanted me to say something. The moment was strangely charged, intense.
“Right?” she asked.
“Right,” I faked a smile. “Glad we’re friends.”
She half-smiled. “Want to get some ice cream? My treat.”
The ice cream was actually frozen yogurt and it was located a mile south. We walked to save on gas. As we strolled we could hear the distant wail of sirens. The nighttime glow of the city was tinged an angry red from the flames burning closer downtown. The riots were getting nearer.
At 9:30 we were walking home, near the park on a well-lit sidewalk. I recognized Katie’s neighbors, walking home a hundred yards ahead of us, carrying shopping bags from the local boutiques. Cars intermittently rolled past us.
Then everything happened all at once. We passed in front of a closed beauty salon and Pow! something unbelievably cruel and hard hit me in the back of my head. My knees gave out and I lost all muscle power. The world dimmed. I was forcefully yanked backwards and slammed deep into the recess of the salon entrance. My stomach was already heaving and a heavy boot kicked me in the gut. I croaked something inaudible and got to my my knees before something else crashed into my skull.
I blacked out to the sound of muffled screaming and deep laughter.
Katie…
I awoke in Katie’s bed. My pulse was sending shocks of agony deep into my brain with each beat. Her lamp was painful. I kept my eyes closed and groaned.
“Chase? Oh thank God. Mama!” Katie yelled and my head almost split open like a melon. “He’s awake!”
“Shhhhh,” I murmured.
“Sorry,” a whisper. Something soft and wet pushed against my temple. Footsteps. More whispers.
“Chase,” Katie’s mother said gently. “You don’t need stitches. But you might have a concussion.”
“Mmm.”
“Can you hear me, sweetie?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What day is it?”
“School starts tomorrow.”
“But do you know what day it is? Or the year?”
“It’s Sunday, and why are you talking so loudly?” I murmured and did my best to smile.
“I called the ambulance,” she said. “But the dispatcher said your condition isn’t a high enough priority. All available ambulances are transporting victims near the fires.”
“Mkay.”
“Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing they can do. Not really.”
“I agree,” she said. A wet washcloth dabbed at my head again. “Poor carino.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Someone saw us,” Katie replied. “Gave us a ride.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Katie said. “Just really pissed. And really scared. And I can’t stop shaking.”
“Did you see who hit you?” her mom asked me.
“No. Did Katie?”
“No,” Katie replied. “Some big ogre put his enormous, stupid gloved hand over my entire face. I couldn’t see or breathe. It was awful.”
“The 911 operator said a police officer would come by to take a statement,” her mother said. “But it wouldn’t be very soon.”
“They took both our wallets,” Katie sighed. “And my phone.”
“I left my phone at home,” I observed. “Lucky me.”
“Lucky you.”
“I’ll get yours back,” I said.
“You will? How?”
“I don’t know. But I will.”
“Right now you’re going to rest,” her mom said, and she kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll drive you home in a little while.” Retreating footsteps.
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“This has been a bad week,” I said.
Katie slipped into bed with me, covering us both with her sheet. Even though my eyes were closed I knew she was watching me.
Katie’s mom had once told us that we might not stay friends as we got older, that our bodies would change and so consequently would our relationship, and that we might start viewing the opposite sex and each other in ways that friends don’t. And as we lay in the same bed, our knees and arms touching, so close, I knew her mother had been right.
I’d never had a girlfriend, and the implications of having one shifted parts of my reality. Something about her close proximity, and the availability of physical contact, was intoxicating. If she was more than my friend…then I could touch her. Put my arm around her. Hold her hand. Touch her neck. Kiss her. The intimacy and the expectancy of the situation were so strong that I felt like a balloon losing air when I realized she had fallen asleep.
I didn’t open my eyes for another hour, and only then because I had a dangerous epiphany. Her air conditioner was gently humming and her mother was washing dishes in the kitchen. I sat up, wincing against the pressure and pain, and turned on Katie’s laptop.
Katie’s smart phone was new. A few months ago I had helped set it up. She had been close to helpless so I’d registered it, synced it, and downloaded a few apps.
I had also installed a phone-finding app with corresponding software on her computer. Her phone perpetually tracked and reported its own location. In other words, I should be able to find it.
I opened the program on her laptop and clicked Locate.
On screen, a map of Los Angeles appeared with a large blue shaded circle showing a hundred-mile wide diameter in which the phone was located. After a long few seconds, the phone triangulated its position and the circle reduced itself by half, narrowing the possibilities. The computer clicked and whirred. The blue circle shrank even farther. Still farther. It zeroed in on western LA. Very near the riots.
Closer and closer. The map jumped and the street view of a dilapidated house sprang onto the screen. I jotted down the address. Katie’s phone was in that house.
“Gotcha.”
Chapter Three
Tuesday, September 4. 2017
Our school, Hidden Spring High, is new. The school is built like a large cross; the north, south, east and west wings are all state-of-the-art and the grassy quads between are plush and friendly. The suburbs are full of plastic surgeons and movie producers and internet moguls. Taxes are high, and the PTA’s coffers overflow with donations; the school has money. The student parking lot looks like a luxury dealership, all cars freshly waxed. Every student has a school-assigned tablet, as well as the latest runway fashion trends.
My old faithful Toyota and I stuck out. I parked beside an SUV whose tires cost more than I could get for my entire car. Despite all the money and trapping of superficial success, I wasn’t sure if this campus was any happier than the average school across America.
On the way across the parking lot, someone shouted my name. I looked up to see...nobody I knew. I glanced around, trying to identify who might have called me but I recognized no one in the small loitering crowds.
When I was ten I’d participated in an All Around gymnastic tournament that had received little media attention. Only one photograph made the local newspaper and that lone picture captured my single, agonizing mistake. I had slipped on the balance beam, one foot falling on either side of the beam, and caught myself with my hands the instant before landing on my crotch. I had to admit the photograph was hilarious; me appearing to land painfully and my face bulging. The next year at school I was greeted by students making the ‘Chase Face,’ which consisted of a student groaning and grabbing their crotch. I had laughed along with the joke, though secretly I’d been mortified.
And so I scanned the parking lot, hoping this was about football and not about my past embarrassments.
“Saw you on TV, Ballerina! Have a good game.”
“Thanks,” I replied vaguely to the smiling gang of beautiful people I’d never met that was waving at me. I kept walking. That was weird.
“Sorry about your mom!” “Thanks?” I mumbled to myself. No one else noticed me on the way to class.
My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Ford, is a retired mechanical engineer from a car manufacturer. He is supposedly a genius and understands everything about numbers, but he cannot teach. He coughs and hacks into his enormous beard and annotates diagrams on the board while his students work.
I sat down in the back and immediately a short Asian kid slid into the seat next to me.
“Lee!” I said. “Thank God. I’m so glad you’re in this class. We’re going to study together.”
“I’m not in this class, bro!” Lee said.
Lee is a 5’4” ball of nervous energy under a black mop of thick hair. Teachers compare him to a character in an Indiana Jones movie I’d never seen, though he’s supposedly named after a Steinbeck novel I’d never heard of. “Are you kidding me? I’m in Advanced Calc, dude. I’m assisting Mr. Ford for additional math credits.”
“Even better. My own private tutor.”
“Yeah right, champ. Maybe if you were Andy Babington. The school doesn’t want its quarterback Wonderboy struggling with academics. You’re just Wonderboy’s sidekick, which still means you’re pretty cool, actually.”
“You and Katie are both nuts. She said I was going to be popular now. I won’t even throw a pass this season,” I said.
“Katie?” he asked, his eyes widening and he leaned forward so far we were almost touching. “Did she mention me? She only returns twenty five percent of my texts. I did the math once, bro. Exactly twenty five. Do you think she does that on purpose? That number is too round and divisible to be a coincidence.”
“Mr. Jackson!” a loud voice boomed. This classroom was an auditorium, and his voice echoed. I was at a desk in the rear at the top of the room and Mr. Ford stood at the front with his hands on his hips. “If you are done socializing, we need to get started.”
“Sorry, sir,” I said.
“We have the quarterback’s permission to begin?” he asked, his furry face glowering in displeasure. I’d apparently made a poor first impression.
“No, sir. I mean yes, sir. I mean...I’m not the quarter…nevermind. You don’t need my permission,” I trailed off, foolishly.
“Correct. I certainly don’t,” he sneered and turned on the projector so we could watch the broadcast of our school’s own student-run morning show.
“Way to go, man,” Lee whispered under his breath. “Mr. Ford hates jocks.”
“I’m not a jock,” I hissed back.
“Whatever you say. The odds of you passing this class will drop proportionately to our team’s win percentage. Andy Babington had Mr. Ford last year and his GPA dropped from a 3.95 to a 3.82.”
After math, I had Spanish Three. Señora Richardson arranged her desks in groups of four so we could work collaboratively. Katie and I sat with two students she knew from photography. She related the details of our mugging to her friends and gave me half her chocolate bar.
When the lunch bell finally rang, my head was pounding. I’d washed the dried blood out of my hair but my skull was still tender and throbbing regularly. I went to the table we sat at last year and I found Cory Owens already there eating.
Cory Owens is black, six and a half feet tall, and almost as wide. He is a mountain of a man and he’s on the Varsity team. He doesn’t speak often and moves even less, though when he does the whole world shakes. Most likely he’ll play college football as an offensive lineman, though he’s indicated before his only goal in life is to be a professional chef. A tray of school food rested on the table in front of him, supplemented with a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from home. He and Lee are my best friends.
I sat across from him and started eating an apple. “How’re your classes so far?” I asked.
“Modern Literature and Culinary arts,” h
e rumbled.
“So, good?”
He nodded. “Lots of fine women.”
“Ah.”
Lee and Katie joined us soon and we fell into our routine. Lee’s classes were too easy but he got to sit next to a ‘serious hottie’ in AP Physics, which he had to get force-added because he’s just a junior. Katie thought calculus was going to be too hard but Lee promised to help her study every night.
I examined Katie while she spoke and decided she was the prettiest girl I’d seen so far today. How could I never have noticed this before? Her presence radiated like a physical force. I was more determined than ever to reclaim her stolen phone.
Katie told the story of our street robbery again. Her mom didn’t have enough money to purchase her a new phone so she was really depressed. Lee wanted to see my wound. Both Cory and Lee had seen the Channel 4 story on our football team, and Lee had read the article in the newspaper. The lunchroom televisions were showing continuous coverage of the midtown riots, casting a sober shadow across our first day of school, like an impending storm just over the horizon.
Near the end of lunch Katie and Lee left to get front row seats in their next classes. Cory went to throw his trash away, and while I waited for him I used my phone to cancel the debit card in my stolen wallet.
And then Hannah Walker materialized beside me. One second I was alone and the next a tan, long-legged, blue-eyed blonde was smiling at me. She wore black jeans that looked like they’d been vacuum sealed on, a small green polo, and she was holding something behind her back.
“Hello Chase! Are you busy?” she asked.
“I’m not busy,” I said, somehow sounding normal. “I thought our picture in the paper turned out nice.”
“I agree. You probably don’t remember,” she said and sat down beside me, closer than Lee had been sitting. “But we had a class together in middle school.”
“I remember. You gave me a Christmas card.” “That’s right,” she beamed. “And you did not return the favor.”
“This year,” I smiled, “you’ll get two.”
