Even in the theater, all roads lead to sports. Still, it was a relief that Hughie now had support from his teacher and at least one of his friends. “How about the rest of the cast and crew?”
My phone pinged. Another tornado watch notification. So far, the worst of it was light drizzle. I added, “How about Chelsea?”
“Chelsea said — everybody said — they understood, but, you know. We’ll see how it goes when there isn’t a teacher around. After I quit, Garrett joked that I was ‘off the reservation.’ But he busts on everyone.”
I will never understand why being a horrible human being all the time is supposed to make it less bad each time. But if Garrett or anyone else connected to the musical was behind the harassment, it should’ve stopped then. At least so far as Hughie and my family were concerned.
My brother wadded up the empty fry bag. “Besides, he’s thrilled that I quit. Garrett got what he’s wanted all along. Now he’s the Tin Man.”
A faint, fuzzy whisper of the puppies barking suddenly turned high-pitched, insistent, blurring into my dreams. Then a blaring car horn fully awakened me just past three a.m.
I opened my eyes to darkness. Glass had shattered. Not in my room. On the first floor?
The house alarm wailed — loud, urgent, unrelenting.
A storm? A break-in? Was my family in danger?
No denying the dogs’ distraught yelping now.
I leaped from my bed, yanked open my window, caught a glimpse of a lone figure — probably male — running toward the approaching red Porsche, its top down.
Was that Daniel’s car?
The fleeing person was carrying something bulky — about the size of a garden watering can — in one hand. It banged against his thigh, slowing him down.
He intercepted the sports car in the middle of the cul-de-sac, nearly three doors up, then dropped whatever it was into the back and leaped into the front passenger seat.
The Porsche executed a sharp U-turn and peeled out in the opposite direction.
I grabbed my robe, tossed it over my nightshirt, and burst into the upstairs hall.
The lights were all on; the whole family was up.
“All clear!” Mama shouted from downstairs. “They’re gone!”
A moment later, she added, “It’s a can of paint!”
I remember thinking that didn’t sound so bad.
“Wait for me to disable the alarm!” Daddy called. Four beeps later, he was first out the front door. Mama was on his heels, Hughie and me on hers. We shut the puppies in behind us.
The message was painted, huge, in bloody red on our garage door.
“There is no place like home.”
Go back to where you came from.
I could still hear Frodo and Bilbo barking from inside.
I should’ve chosen full-grown dogs. A bigger, more intimidating breed.
In the driveway, Daddy swung an arm around Hughie’s shoulders. “No permanent harm done,” my father said, stifling a cough.
None of us could stop staring at the message. Mama drew us together, our circle of love facing down hate. “Y’all keep breathing,” she said. “Every breath is a victory.”
In the kitchen, Hughie and I each cradled a shaking pup. We’d all hurried back inside after realizing we’d left Bilbo and Frodo locked in with the broken window glass, but they’d apparently stayed in the foyer and would be fine once they calmed down.
The security camera had captured our skulking enemy in a ski mask and gloves, carrying the paint can in one hand and something thicker, bigger, and bulkier, in the other.
Still too hard to make out what. The light was low. It had all happened so fast.
From the video, we could tell the jerk painted the message and stuck the lid back on the can. The car horn sounded. He seemed to panic and jogged backward into our garbage bin, knocking it over. Then, apparently furious, he heaved the paint can, breaking our picture window, and sprinted away, up the street.
The Porsche never appeared in the frame.
Only I had glimpsed it speeding off.
Before long, Daddy was telling us to “Stay back!” as he cleared away the sharp fragments of glass. Mama was on the phone with the police, using words like vandalism and property damage. I thought again of Daniel — managing editor, friend. Getaway driver?
He was a white boy, a middle-class boy, a suburban boy. An athlete.
The justice system usually looked out for people like him. I didn’t trust the system, but I also wasn’t sure it had been his car. Or that he’d been the one driving.
What’s more, I wanted to believe the best of him. If Daniel was innocent, there was no need to drag him into this, and he might never forgive me if I falsely accused him. If I was wrong.
I had to be wrong. At school, the Hive was where I belonged, where I fit in.
I was in no hurry to tear that apart.
Hours later, on our way to school, I shared with Shelby most of what had happened — about the series of hate notes and the painted message, too.
The latter couldn’t have been more public. I no longer saw any reason not to fill her in. Especially given the way she had gaped at the garage door when she arrived to pick me up.
Shelby was outraged. She vowed to stand by me. She vowed to kick some ass.
But Daniel was my friend, not hers. I kept my suspicions about him to myself.
Before the first bell, I waited alone for Daniel outside school. I was chilly as I leaned against the eight-foot-tall Honeybee statue at the entrance. I surveyed the steady migration of students from car pools, buses, the parking lot. The last stragglers.
Finally there he was in his letterman jacket and Iowa State ball cap.
Rubbing his eyes, Daniel nearly tripped over the fire hydrant. Being up half the night would’ve made him tired. The fatigue was hitting me, too.
“Don’t say anything,” I said a moment later, seizing his arm. “Just come with me.”
“What?” One hundred seventy pounds of solid muscle, he didn’t budge. “What’s up?”
“Was your dad’s car stolen?” I asked. “Did I see it tear down my street —?”
“Oh, fuck,” Daniel said. “I’ll explain everything, Lou. But we can’t talk here.”
We ended up at the tennis courts that are half tucked behind the school. Private enough for our conversation but still visible from the parking lot. “I covered for you to my parents!”
“It’s not what you think.” Daniel opened the chain-link gate. “I was there last night to stop what was happening. That’s why I laid on the car horn.”
I followed him inside. “After your friend painted that message on my garage.”
“Before he started the fire,” Daniel replied.
“Fire?” I exclaimed. “He came to burn down my —?”
“The trash bin — or the trash inside the bin, not the house itself.” Daniel set down his backpack. “At least that was the plan. He also had a can of gasoline with him. It’s still in my dad’s car. So’s the foam paintbrush.”
“It’s fire! It could’ve spread! That’s what fire does.”
The puppies had tried to warn us, but they’d bark at shadows, at each other, at nothing at all. My family had been sound asleep until . . . until Daniel had woken us up.
I sank onto a bench. “Your friend broke a window, too. Who was it?”
“More of a teammate than a friend. He freaked, tossed the paint.” Daniel sat beside me. “Pete has always had a temper. Plus he was drunk. Pete wanted to scare Hughie, and he’s got some grudge against you for rejecting him, especially since Cam Ryan’s been going on and on about how easy —”
“Pete?” I exclaimed. “As in Peter Ney? His mother sent him to —”
“No,” Daniel said. “Honestly, I doubt she knew thing one about it. She’s evil and manipulative, not evil and destructive. Mrs. Ney and her ladies who lunch, they’re too dainty to do anything like that, and they’d never put their flat asses on the line, eithe
r.”
I knew from Emily’s story about the guy who’d threatened her dad’s floral business that the grown-ups involved in PART weren’t all church ladies. But otherwise, Daniel’s assessment rang true.
He tightened the heavy gray scarf around his neck, adding, “Pete was on foot, super wasted. He’d been talking large to his equally wasted buddies. They’d been drinking beer all night at the new housing construction site a couple of blocks from where you live. After Pete took off on his own, one of them texted me. On Wrestling, we try to look out for each other.”
It must have been interior paint, I realized. I scooted back, putting distance between us. “Whose side are you on?”
Daniel blew into his hands, rubbed them together. “I was never on their side. Not PART’s. Or Pete’s. Or, well, not Pete’s when it came to you and your brother. Last night, I was trying to stop Pete from doing something he’d regret and —”
“Protecting your own interests?” I asked, remembering that the Wrestling coach had demanded that Daniel choose between the team and the Hive.
As for the rest of it, I’d already written off Peter months before. If he wanted to believe what Cam had been saying about me, fine. That was their mutual delusion.
What mattered now was my friendship with Daniel.
Assuming we’d ever really been friends at all.
“An athletic scholarship could’ve been my ticket to college,” he said. “Or partial ticket, like Alexis’s brother at Iowa State.”
Daniel rose to his feet as the morning bell rang. “Fuck it! I’m not Coach’s little bitch or the Neys’, either.” Daniel lunged at the chain-link fence, gripped and shook it, shook it, irate, incensed, like he’d been caged far too long.
He pushed back, threw his hands up, knocked off his ball cap.
It was over in an instant. I had no idea what to say.
Facing me, he added, “So help me, Louise, I’ll fucking march straight to the principal’s office right now. I’ll take back everything I said — everything they told me to say — about Ms. Wilson and she’ll get her job back.”
Her job? I had a sudden flash of Daniel talking to the assistant VP, accusing our Journalism teacher of — what? — corrupting young minds? “You’re the reason she’s on disciplinary leave! You gave them an excuse to get rid of her. Daniel, how could —?”
“I’ll put a stop to it,” he insisted, shaking with emotion. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to.” Daniel’s eyes were bloodshot, teary. “Lou, are you going to tell on me and Pete?”
Like I said, fire spreads. Telling on Daniel would jeopardize his entire future. For all I knew, he had saved my family, and I believed him when he swore to try to make amends.
Besides, it would be impossible to definitively ID Peter from the video. If Daniel’s loyalties shifted, we’d be talking about the boys’ word against mine.
Still, Daniel could’ve stopped Peter and tried to hold him in my driveway. Called the cops on his way over and asked them to hurry there.
Screw the Bro Code. Rescuing Peter from himself hadn’t been Daniel’s only option.
That morning, Hughie’s voice had wavered when he’d asked me if I thought “the bad guys” might come back.
My family deserved to know the truth — so did the Webers and Rodríguezes.
I wanted to forgive Daniel, but I’d never been so pissed off in my whole life.
I bent to snag his ball cap from the ground and shoved it at his belly.
“See what you can do for Ms. Wilson,” I replied.
That morning, Pep had decorated the thespians’ lockers the way they did for school athletes on competition days. That afternoon, my family’s picture window had already been replaced. The paint was still defacing our garage. Mama had installed three more-visible cameras with signs warning that the premises were being electronically monitored.
She knocked on my open bedroom door. “Hughie has decided to go tonight to support his friends. I thought we should turn out to support him and see the show, if you’re up to it.”
She’d been in full TLC mode. Peanut-butter cookies — Hughie’s favorite — were baking in the oven, and the aroma from the kitchen had me salivating.
At my white wicker desk, I looked up from my Rice University application. I’d buried myself in paperwork, trying not to think about Peter and Daniel and whether I was wrong to keep the truth about what they’d done to myself. With PART still on the attack, I was playing the long game, bargaining for the sake of the Hive. Joey and Karishma could mostly make up the difference for our managing editor/Sports reporter, but Ms. Wilson was a different story.
“Daddy’s feeling better?”
“This morning, he pronounced himself fully cured,” Mama replied. “I know better than to argue with the doctor.” As a dentist, Daddy is sensitive about people not taking his medical background seriously.
“I’m not surprised that Hughie decided to go,” I said. “But it’ll be surreal for him.” Surreal wasn’t the right word. Was there a right word in English?
Maybe in Mvskoke.
“Why didn’t you tell Hughie about Baum from the start?” I asked.
“Your father and I were planning to,” Mama insisted. “But we weren’t sure how to address his participating in the musical itself. Or if we should address it, especially once the backlash hit. At first, I . . . but then your father . . . Let’s just say we’re deeply blessed to all live together as a family, but we’re still working out a few kinks in our new co-parenting dynamic.”
She slowly shook her head. “I’m always torn between trying to fix the world for you kids and knowing when to get out of your way. But y’all are forging your paths on your own terms.”
Yesterday, when Hughie told my parents he’d decided to quit the play, they’d both hugged him and told them how proud they were. Because that’s how we roll in the Wolfe family.
(He’ll also probably score a new pair of overpriced sneakers out of it.)
Mama moved closer, smoothed my hair. “How’s my other baby?”
Tired. We all were. We’d been rudely awakened the night before and had had a long day. Tonight Emily and Joey would be covering the musical, which probably meant he’d ignore me again. But this was about my brother and his friends, about our standing together as a family. Or at least occupying four plush chairs in the second row.
I replied, “I’m Team Hughie.”
As we entered the auditorium, seats were filling fast. The controversy had generated a lot of buzz, even some coverage in the local media.
PART’s petition had failed completely. Every performance had sold out.
A student usher handed me a program, and I flipped it to the back page.
Hughie’s badass write-up, “Journey to Oz,” talked about the various incarnations of the story and called out L. Frank Baum on his pro-genocide editorials.
What Hughie had written in his original draft had been expanded by another two paragraphs. He’d paid tribute to the Lakota lives lost and quoted Baum’s own language:
The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.
It hurt, reading those words again. No one could deny their brutality.
“Mrs. Q had a change of heart,” Hughie explained. “She said her opinion had ‘evolved.’ ”
I wasn’t all that surprised. I’d heard Mama on the phone, talking — teacher to teacher — to Mrs. Q only a few days before.
“Brava! Bravo!” I’d lost myself in Dorothy Gale’s adventure, was charmed by the choreography and swept away by the songs. The sets, the lighting — the musical had been an unabashed success. When Hughie sprang to his feet for the ovation, I stood to applaud his friends, too. It pained me to think that PART would assume it had defeated him somehow.
If it had been me in Hughie’s fake tin shoes, I can’t say for sure what I would
have done.
Yes, knowing about Baum had tainted Oz for me, too. But under the circumstances, for Chelsea and A.J. and even for Mrs. Q, I might’ve made the decision to go on with the show.
Would I have done it to spite PART?
Maybe.
Out of love for performing?
I can’t say. I don’t have an actor’s passion for theater.
What I do know without a doubt is that Hughie would’ve been ten times the Tin Man of that loser Garrett. My brother has the biggest heart of anyone I know.
By the way, Garrett’s understudy, Marissa Berry, had moved into his original role when he took over for Hughie. Mrs. Q had played the cast shuffle close to the vest.
Some people in the audience gasped when they realized the Wizard was a girl.
Hughie had the cast party to go to, and I’d told our parents I could catch a ride home with a friend. After the second curtain call, Emily and Joey found us in the jovial crowd exiting the auditorium. It was the first time he and I had been face-to-face since my epic relationship fail.
Joey said hi to Hughie, not me.
“Why didn’t you go on tonight?” Emily asked my brother. “What about the rest of the performances this weekend?”
“Want to interview me for the Hive?” Hughie offered with unexpected enthusiasm.
“I thought I already was,” she replied. That’s when Emily seemed to realize he had something big to say. “Let’s set up the shoot onstage,” she suggested, and they did.
Maybe I should’ve given Emily a heads-up once Hughie had announced his decision at rehearsal. But my first loyalty was to my brother, and it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that he’d want — let alone be eager — to speak out publicly.
As Joey checked the frame and audio levels, I pulled Hughie to the left wing, behind the drawn red-velour curtain. “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “You don’t owe anybody an explanation. Emily’s my friend. She’ll understand if you —”
“I know what I’m doing,” Hughie assured me.
When Emily asked him to explain himself, actor Hughie Wolfe opened with the words “Tonight’s show rocked.” My brother had taken center stage like it belonged to him. Like he was born to stand there. Hughie went on to identify himself as a Muscogee Nation citizen. He explained about L. Frank Baum’s editorials and the atrocity at Wounded Knee.
Hearts Unbroken Page 15
