Little Pretty Things

by Lori Rader-Day

  He sounded tired. Heartsick, I’d said, but what if he really was sick, the kind of sick you couldn’t see and didn’t easily recover from? Or recover at all. I thought of my dad, and the call that robbed him from me forever. We hadn’t seen that coming. Coach and Fitz were about the same age that my dad would have been. I was keenly aware of Courtney watching me. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t. “So do you, Fitz,” I said. “You have that talent, too.”

  He cleared his throat. “Mike’s got it, enough for both of us. I’m excited to work with Jessica, if she comes through. Whatever you said to convince her, let’s get that on a recruitment brochure right away. Tshirts, even.”

  When I hung up the phone, Courtney said, “Jeesh, the longer we hang out, the more the track team seems like a cult.”

  Was I allowed to tell an armed officer to shove it? “We just lost someone we care about. Also, I’ve found when you hang out with someone a lot, you start to indulge in a little hero worship.” Coach, especially, drew our adoration. We were protective of him and his missed chance at the Olympics. Sort of like Maddy had just missed state, now that I thought about it. They might have had a lot to talk about, afterward, if you could compare losing out on a gold medal for a bronze—not too shabby—with what Maddy had gone through.

  “Hero worship, huh? I’m flattered,” Courtney said. She flicked at the door to my closet and glanced in. “But what I’ve noticed is more of the self-worship variety.”

  “Maybe that’s because running that far and that fast makes you feel like a god,” I said, reaching past her and closing the door.

  She looked at me in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You couldn’t know that,” I said. “The newspaper staff not being that active a sport.”

  “So Maddy thought she was a god? A goddess?” Courtney said. I could tell her mind was racing to fit this newfound knowledge into the map of what we knew. “Maybe someone didn’t like being reminded he or she was merely human in her worship-worthy presence?”

  “That wasn’t who she was.”

  “Well, look who’s back in the fan club,” Courtney said. “How touching.”

  Maddy had been through more loss than Courtney had ever known, it seemed to me. More loss than anyone had ever or would ever give her credit for.

  I’d been too honest with Courtney. She had no idea what I meant. She’d never known the feeling of running twelve to fourteen miles, of walking off the track knowing you’d given everything you had. Knowing you were made of better stuff than most people. Knowing you were a hands-down bad-ass, even if it was the basketball players who got all the attention. Maybe she’d never had something like that, that sense of belonging to something, the solid feeling under our feet of having something to reach for and having someone to help you. It wasn’t worship. It was only love. We had loved each other and Coach and Fitz, who held the team together like a family.

  Like a regular family, which Maddy had not had, and I’d had, but lost.

  I pictured my mom sitting in the bright kitchen with the microwave pinging at her every two minutes.

  I went to my bedroom door and opened it. Courtney shrugged, slid off the doorjamb, and strolled across the room and past me into the hall. She dawdled at a photo on the wall—me in severe braces—before she would let me escort her to the front door.

  “Thanks for the hospitality,” she said. “But before I go, I have to ask you a few questions.”

  “What have you been doing this whole time?”

  “Warming up?” she said, grinning. “Oh, right, no. I’ve been prying. OK, what I need to ask you about is what you know about Billy’s side business.”

  “Billy hardly works his regular business,” I said. “What side business do you suspect him of?”

  “Why is half the motel closed up?”

  “Uh—I guess because we never get enough people to make it worth keeping the whole place up,” I said. We had used the no-vacancy sign before, but the owners had decided to keep the south wing closed up rather than to renovate. That was what Billy had said, anyway. “What’s going on?”

  “What kind of clientele do you get down at the Mid-Night most nights? Think outside the minivans.”

  She was moving fast enough, my head swam. “The minivans are Bargains—I mean, the coupon-cutters. They’re cheap. Or they’re really tired, sometimes both.”

  “What about people who would rather stay somewhere nondescript with a shocking lack of security cameras?”

  “We had those dominatrix people a few years back,” I said. “Do you mean …”

  The pudgy, shamed face of the dead guy from two-oh-six flashed from my memory. His alibi: a young woman.

  “Now you’re catching up,” she said happily. “Remember that round fellow who checked out that morning? His alibi was a prostitute barely out of high school?”

  I stared at her. “What do you mean?” She couldn’t mean what I thought she was saying. Billy? I remembered wondering if Billy would even know what sex sounded like. “You can’t mean—”

  “Billy is right this minute going to jail,” she said. “For turning the Mid-Night into a turnstile for hookers and the men who want to use and abuse them.”

  “Billy Batts.” I ran my hand through my hair three or four times rapidly. I tried out my version of his weedy drawl. “‘Come in, Juliet, room one-oh-niner needs more toilet paper. Over.’ Billy?”

  Courtney’s smile faded quickly. “Young girls. Young,” she said. “Have you ever seen anyone around the Mid-Night who didn’t belong there?”

  Who belonged at the Mid-Night? The bar made it impossible to keep track of all the people who came and went, and most of them had better places they could have been. But then the girls started to take shape: young women getting into and out of cars, young women getting dropped off in the back parking lot, young women asking for change for the vending machines. The strays, too young for the bar. I mean, Teeny was always showing up, too. Surely she had no part in this. But the girls, as Teeny had so eloquently put it.

  Lu and I had seen hundreds of women hurried into rooms over the years. We joked about it. But it wasn’t funny.

  “How young?” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure when the news breaks, we’re going to find that one or two of them still attend Midway High,” she said. “The men, of course, don’t. I can’t wait to find out which assholes they turn out to be.”

  She opened the front door. In the porch light like a star on stage, Coach Trenton stood with his hand raised to the bell.

  “Really popular,” Courtney said.

  “I don’t think your bell works,” he said. His eyes flicked over Courtney’s uniform and then back to me. He took a step backward. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Officer Howard was just leaving,” I said.

  “If there’s going to be a worship service, I could stay,” she said.

  I opened the screen door, let her walk past, and gestured Coach inside.

  At the bottom of the steps, Courtney turned. “I wanted to ask you about—”

  “Good night,” I said, and shut the door.

  “That young lady has been getting around town,” Coach said.

  “She’s been to see you, too?”

  “Quite a few of the teachers,” he said. “Asking about Maddy, as much as we remembered. Very thorough. I suppose you have to be, or justice will never be served.”

  “Do you think justice will be served?”

  In the kitchen, the microwave dinged. Coach winced a bit into the glare of the kitchen. His face, always thin, seemed drawn, tired. “I don’t know, Juliet. I hope so. It’s crazy right now, everyone looking at everyone else askance. All the parents are up in arms, did I tell you?” He threw his hands up. “I’ve no idea how they expect their girls to be ready for their first meet if this keeps up.”

  “If what keeps up?”

  “All the extra chaperoning, for one thing,” he said. “There are too many stage parents in the s
tands right now. It’s distracting.”

  The microwave chimed again. Coach glanced toward the kitchen, then back at me. I must have looked as startled as I felt. “I didn’t mean anything against your dad, Juliet, of course. He was an active part of our community, and of course you were hyper-focused. I didn’t have to worry about you. But Mickie is easily influenced.”

  “Mickie’s parents are coming to practices?”

  “The mother. She’s a flirt, so it’s me she trying to distract.”

  A hot blush burned its way up my neck.

  “The worst part, though, is Fitz falling off the face of the planet,” he said. “Have you heard from him at all?”

  “You haven’t?”

  “Messages. A text, once.” He drew his phone out of his pocket and studied it, frowning. “But when I text back or try to get him on the phone, nothing. He’s been odd since this Maddy thing.”

  This Maddy thing. This murder that had rent our town, taken my old best friend, and ruined the best friendship I’d had since. The microwaved dinged again.

  He looked up from his phone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not what I meant to say. We’re all sad about Maddy. We’re all going to be sad about Maddy for a long time. Not even when—I’m saying when—they find who did it. We’re not going to be able to hang it up, are we? She meant too much to us to let it go so easily.”

  The tears I’d been choking back all day threatened. I wanted to tell Coach everything—the pregnancy test, the miscarriage, the puke-green sweater. My stomach hurt from holding in all the things I’d learned. But I couldn’t bear to. Now that she was gone, what reason was there to bring up all that old stuff?

  “I heard from Fitz just a little while ago,” I said. “He wants me to take his classes again tomorrow. I don’t mind.”

  “Well, at least he’s talking to someone,” he said. “And of course no one minds you being there, Jules. You’re a natural.” The microwaved dinged again. “What is that noise?”

  “I have a theory that Fitz is keeping me safe by putting me at the school,” I said.

  It sounded pathetic even as I said it, and Coach’s twitch of a smile made me feel worse. Poor fatherless girl. Soft-headed, lonely wreck. “That’s possible,” he said. “But I’ve known that lug for too many years to think this is good for him. Something’s wrong. More than Maddy and, anyway, we need to stick together right now. We’re a team, right?” He brightened. “And a damn good one, all those years.”

  Now I wondered which years he meant. The Maddy years or the Kristina years? But I didn’t want to ask, and hear how petty I’d sound.

  “Strange that it’s taken Maddy’s death to bring us back together,” he said, looking fondly at the portrait of me in my team kit. “Look at you,” he cooed. “It’s good to see that girl in Midway’s halls again.”

  “It’s a little weird, though,” I admitted. “Things are the same and not. Our trophies in the case could be from yesterday or a thousand years ago, either one. But you probably know what I mean. Your Olympic medal’s right there in the front.”

  He waved his hand. “That was an actual thousand years ago.”

  “I thought your Coach of the Year stuff might be there,” I said. “Or maybe I didn’t look hard enough.”

  “I keep those pieces privately,” he said. “Frankly, they mean more to me than any Olympic medal.”

  I’d forgotten that Mrs. Haggerty had said as much. But—I had seen the trophy in his dark office that night we’d slipped in after hours. “Oh, you kept them at home,” I said. I’d never been inside his home, but based on his car, I imagined a clean, streamlined bachelor pad. “But an Olympic medal—”

  “Not the Olympic medal I was capable of,” he said. “In any case, the Coach of the Year trophy got damaged early on and I never had it fixed. The medallion has survived the years, though. Quality materials—not one of those cheapie ones with the tear-away ribbons. That’s my gold, Juliet. And you girls made it possible. Maybe I’ll wear it to—” The microwaved sang out again. “Is that something trying to get our attention?”

  “I’ll get it,” I said, and led him back to the door. My mother wouldn’t be up to two visitors in one day.

  He was a gentleman, at least, and took the hint. I watched him to his car, waiting for the wave I knew he would throw as he got inside his little roadster. We needed to stick together, the few of us left.

  In the kitchen, my mother stood at the sink. I opened the microwave and took out the plate of old macaroni and cheese, long gone cold again. “It’s late, Mom.”

  “Just wanted to do these dishes.”

  I peered over her shoulder. There were actually dishes to clean. “Did Courtney have dinner here?”

  “Oh, no. Just a snack. She’s a nice girl. I don’t remember you ever bringing her home before.”

  I scraped the mac and cheese into the trash and added the plate to the sink. “I didn’t bring her over this time,” I said. “Which—maybe it’s for the best if you didn’t let anyone in when I’m not here, at least for a while.”

  She flicked on the water and squirted dish soap into the sink. “I’m not a child, Juliet.”

  The soap foam rose. Where did she think the dish soap came from? And whatever she’d fed Courtney? And basically every cent that had kept a roof over our heads and food in our kitchen for the last few years? Like Shelly had said: people thought some things happened by magic.

  “I didn’t call you a child,” I said. What did she think of the word invalid? But I didn’t want to get into it.

  I went to the refrigerator. We were almost out of everything: milk, butter, cheese, eggs. In the drawers at the bottom, there were a few wrinkled carrots that had fallen out of the bag, a shrunken head of lettuce. In the cabinets, we had a few more boxes of generic macaroni, some canned beans.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “No.” When would Midway High send me the check from the past two days? Not soon enough. Not soon enough to fix years of neglect and avoidance, of hand-to-mouth, of sometimes nothing in the hand to put to the mouth.

  “Maddy was special to me, too,” she said.

  She didn’t need to say it. Maddy’s death had woken her from her stupor. I should have been relieved, even happy to see my mother again. But I couldn’t reach out for her, couldn’t comfort her, and I noticed she still hadn’t tried to comfort me. How many times since Dad had died had I wished someone would offer?

  I turned toward my room, feeling small and mean for thinking it, but thinking it just the same: She cared about Maddy enough to come back to me. But she hadn’t cared about me enough not to leave in the first place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The next morning, Jessica, Delia, and their peers showed up in the gym in their tiny shorts and high ponytails, and watched as I demonstrated how I wanted them to run the sprints: out to the free-throw line painted on the court floor, and back, then to half-court and back, and finally all the way to the other side of the gym and back. “Where is Fitz?” Delia asked. She didn’t sound concerned for his health, but her own.

  They were talking in the ranks about the motel. It had been all over the news last night and this morning, with more updates promised. The combination of young women and sex was too much to ignore. A few names were going around, but I had no idea where they’d come from.

  “Come on, ladies,” I said. “Enough gossip until I’ve seen some speed.”

  I ran them through a warm-up and then they broke into teams of four and ran in relays. One of the teams was lopsided with only three members, so I took a turn. I was catching my breath on the sidelines when I heard giggling and looked around to see what the comedy was. Jessica was loping across the gym in a stagey jog, as slow as she’d ever moved in my presence. She clowned all the way to the other side of the gym and back, running in place at the finish line before her teammate slapped her shoulder to tag in for her.

  A few of the girls shot me side-eye looks to see what I would
do. I stretched, and then did another round of sprints. As I shot back across the gym on my last distance, still pretty fast for not having run in a long time, Jessica started her next set, again exaggerating her stride without getting anywhere very quickly.

  I did a U-turn and pulled her aside. “You’re almost going backward,” I said. “Is this some kind of pantomime or something?”

  She glanced back at the other girls. They’d all stopped to watch.

  “All right, gawkers,” I said. “Laps, until I say you’re done.”

  The moans rose up, but they quickly assembled a pace.

  “So what’s up?” I said to Jessica. “Is your rib hurting you? Did your first practice with the team wear you out? Are you just tired?”

  She shifted her weight to one foot, and pulled the other up behind her, stretching. Her black eye was fading to a smudge of purple and green. She hadn’t tried to cover it up today. No one had believed the story about allergies, anyway. “Tired, definitely.”

  “OK,” I said. “Why the circus act then?”

  “What’s the big deal? No one’s ever goofed on you before, Super Teacher?”

  I would accept sarcasm, if it came dressed up in such a way. “You know I’m not a real teacher, right? I’m just trying to do for you what someone did for me.”

  She’d been stretching the other leg, and set her foot down hard. “What’s that?” Her eyes were like shutters. Defiance—snap—something else just there—snap—and it was gone.

  “Introduce you to long-distance running. Look, you don’t have to join the team. Trophies aren’t everything.” I thought of the sad silver running man still hiding in my car. The perfume bottle. The stupid barrette and all the crap stuffed into my secret compartment. What were they, if not trophies? The most ridiculous trophies ever collected. “You could probably get a scholarship to school, but maybe you’re all set.”

  “Let’s say I have all the funds I’ll ever need, and I don’t care much for buses and sing-alongs or standing on a podium. What then? Why bother?”