“Were you saving that seat for him?” I whisper-yell, not that he could hear over the cheering, anyway. They just tipped-off to start the game and both sides of the coliseum are already worked up.
“He asked if I’d be here and I told him to join us.”
“Shouldn’t you have asked me first?”
“Why would I need to ask you?”
Oh, right. Annette knows nothing about the Make Marco Jealous trick.
“I just thought it was going to be a girl’s night out.”
“Only until the game is over. Then it was going to be me hanging out with you and Marco, feeling awkward knowing if I wasn’t around, you guys would be making out whenever you got the chance. Fun times. I was really looking forward to that.”
“So, it’s like a double date? I mean, you and Reginald . . .”
“He told me you were the one who suggested it, so he comes with a good recommendation, right? Plus, he’s so hot.”
I guess remembering Reginald’s hotness is Annette’s cue to actually pay attention to him instead of whispering stuff about him to me, because she turns his direction and pretty much forgets I’m there for the next half hour. That’s fine because I turn my attention to Marco.
All that studying and game-watching must be paying off because I can actually tell the difference between a block and a screen. I can also tell Marco still hasn’t gotten his game back. He keeps releasing the ball too early on his jump shots, and I stop counting the turnovers he’s made. The one thing I do know is that the first half is nearly over and Marco has only put up fourteen points, not good when he’s supposed to be Langdon’s top scorer. The whole season, Marco had been blowing up the scoreboard. Now we’re down eleven points. I don’t know if it’s all in my head, but I swear I can feel the collective disappointment of every Langdon Prepster in the auditorium. The sizzle is definitely gone.
Except for maybe one Langdonite who I noticed a few minutes ago on the other side of the coliseum—his LP Knights gold shirt stood out in the sea of Galloway School blue and Milton Academy green, so he wasn’t hard to spot.
“Hey, does that monocular on your keychain actually work?” I ask Annette after I tear her away from her conversation with Reginald. Normally her keychain, which is really about seventy-five keychains, annoys the hell out of me with all the jangling, but it may help me tonight.
“Yeah, why?”
“Just let me see it for a second.”
She hauls her keys out of her bag and gives her attention to Reginald again.
It’s Brent Carmody. My first thought is only a loser would sit on the other side, especially wearing his own school’s colors, and Brent fits that description. The place is packed but it isn’t like there’s not an empty seat on our side. And even if there wasn’t, he should show some pride and stand if he has to. Anything but sitting with the enemy. I might wonder if Brent is the enemy if he was actually watching the game. He probably doesn’t even realize we’re down eleven points—thirteen now that Galloway just scored—because he’s too busy working the crowd from what I can tell. No, I think he’s looking for someone. Whoever it is, it must be important if he’s willing to wear LP colors on that side of the building.
As Brent picks his way through a row of seats, probably pissing off the people who have to stand to let him by, he stops at one seat for half a second, just long enough for the guy sitting there to hand him a folded game program, and for Brent to hand it back. The other guy’s move was fairly obvious, but Brent’s handoff was such a sleight of hand that I almost didn’t see it. Mildred’s theory about Brent is looking pretty good, and it turns out he isn’t limiting his customer base to Langdon Prep.
The half-time buzzer sounds and startles me. I was so into figuring out Brent’s deal that I didn’t realize we’d reached the half, fifteen points down. I watch Marco head into the locker room with the rest of his team, but not really. He’s straggling behind them, his shoulders drooping like he’s carrying the weight of all that Langdonite disappointment.
“I’m going to check my face,” Annette says. “Come with?”
“No, I want to see if maybe I can talk to Marco during the half.”
Annette gives me a look that says she really wants me to go with her, probably to discuss her new crush and whatever they talked about that made her forget I was here, but I really want to check on Marco. When she fails to convince me to come along, she gives up and leaves me with Reginald.
“Your boy is really stinking up the place, but you can’t talk to him now.”
“It isn’t that bad.”
“No, it’s worse.”
“A few plays broke down, he misread that pick, and he had a couple of turnovers, nothing they can’t come back from.”
“Girl knows her game. I’m impressed,” Reginald says. “I can see why you’d want to go find out what his problem is, but you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, it’s against the rules. You’d make him look like a wuss in front of the team, for another.”
“I suppose,” I say, recalling that whipped comment the guys made after last week’s game.
“Besides, there’s nothing wrong with him that he can’t fix himself.”
“What does that mean?”
Reginald looks at me like he’s going to explain, but must decide I’d never understand. Despite all the knowledge I just dropped, I guess he still buys in to the stereotype about girls not getting the whole sports thing—not just the rules but the whole sports mentality, the whole why of it. In my case, he’s right, but still. I don’t sound like one of those girls.
“If you know so much, why aren’t you playing?”
“I did play, freshman through junior year. Or at least the first half of my junior year season. Why do you think there was an opening for a starting guard?”
“So you’re just angry Marco took your spot,” I say, thinking how the same thing happened when Marco took over the starting quarterback position from Justin Mitchell. But in that case, I know why Marco was able to get the job. Justin was a stoner thief who got kicked out of Langdon.
“Not at all. If he can do the job, more power to him.”
“I guess getting expelled made it hard to rejoin the team once Smythe let you come back.”
“That wasn’t the problem. I’d left the team before Smythe expelled me.”
“So the only other explanation is that you’re a quitter.”
“It isn’t as simple as that. Let’s just say I didn’t mesh with the team last year. In fact, I hoped things would be different this year so I asked coach to let me back on, but it turns out nothing has changed. If anything, it’s only gotten worse. Worked out for Marco, I suppose.”
“You still quit, and quitters can’t complain.”
“They can when they quit for the right reason.”
Annette returned then and I wasn’t able to ask Reginald what he meant. A few minutes after the tip-off, I was able to write off the whole conversation because Marco came into the second half of the game on fire, lighting up the scoreboard with twenty-one points, all of them three-pointers. His jump shot is definitely back.
“I guess your boy isn’t so bad after all,” Reginald says after the Knights closed the game with a one-point win, thanks to Marco’s final shot.
Chapter 13
We’re standing in the parking lot waiting for Marco to change so we can get something to eat. It was a big game and, thanks to Marco, a big win, so I talked Lana into letting me stay out until midnight. That may not sound like a big deal, but you’d think so if you knew my mom. She gives me a fair amount of slack, but not when it comes to curfew, especially now that Marco and I are together. Lana worries everyone—well, probably just me—is going to up and get pregnant at sixteen like she did. So I’m pretty disappointed when Marco finally arrives only to say he can’t join us.
“Why not?” I ask. “We don’t have to stay out that late, just long enough to get something to eat.”<
br />
“I can’t. It’s just . . . I got this thing with the coach,” Marco says, making a point of not looking at me. He seems nervous, too. I might attribute that to still being charged up about the win. But the avoiding my eyes part? He’s lying about something.
“Can’t you deal with it tomorrow?” I ask.
“Coach never asked me to stay behind, especially after pulling out a big win like that,” Reginald says, giving Marco a strange look. Maybe he also realizes we’re being lied to.
“I’m not you,” Marco says.
“That’s for damn sure.”
Something is going on between the two of them, but I have no idea what it is. In fact, it’s as though they’ve both forgotten Annette and I are even here.
Reginald makes the slightest nod before saying, “What’s going on?”
With what, I’m dying to ask, but don’t want to interrupt whatever it is they aren’t saying to each other. It’s something important since they don’t want me to know. I turn to look behind me in the direction of Reginald’s almost imperceptible nod and see three cars, including Marco’s. How is he driving that car when a few days ago he was stressed about finding money for the repairs? That question will have to wait, though I think I already have the answer. Right now, I want to know why he’s lying to us.
The rest of the team and the last of the spectators cleared out ten minutes ago, causing a brief traffic jam to the I-70 on-ramp, so the other two cars must belong to a player and Coach Rickford, though I can’t see the coach driving either of those cars. One is a black or dark blue pick-up, it’s hard to tell in the darkness, though it’s clearly a low rider. Not very Langdon preppy. The other car I recognize from the school lot the night I got that all-alone feeling that made me uneasy.
Two or three players drive BMWs and they were all in the lot that night, but it was the color of this one that stood out. It’s a custom paint job in Knights red with gold accents, and I thought whichever player it belonged to had some serious team spirit. I remember thinking the red was a pretty color for a car, but all the gold accents—spinners, twenty-inch rims, and an aftermarket rear spoiler—were a little hood for the Langdon Prep parking lot.
Two people get out of the truck and lean against it, watching us. It’s too dark to identify them, but one must be a player because he’s very tall, about six feet four. The other one can’t be. There are short guards in basketball, even in the NBA, but Marco is the Knights’ shortest player, and he’s two inches shy of six feet. That guy is about my height. I suppose he could be a friend of the player . . . but those cars just don’t fit.
“Yeah, what’s going on? Who is that over there? Those guys look—”
“Nothing’s going on,” Marco says, cutting me off. “I just need to take care of something.”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to wait?” Reginald asks.
“I’m sure,” Marco says, sounding more than a little annoyed. “Sorry I messed up our plans, but Annette, can you give Chanti a ride home?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, but no one seems to hear me.
“Why should Annette drive all the way across town and back? I live on that side of town. I’ll take her home,” Reginald offers.
“Never mind, Dacey. Annette had already agreed—” Marco says.
“That makes sense. I mean, he is going your way,” Annette says, trying to ignore the evil eye I’m giving her.
Reginald may be cute, but Annette is not trying to drive into my neighborhood after dark. I’m sure she’s thinking there will be plenty of time for double dates with Reginald that don’t involve her tooling around the Heights at eleven o’clock.
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
“Chanti, I’m serious. Go home,” Marco says, and he does sound pretty serious. “I’ll call you later.”
Before I can protest, Reginald is already putting an arm around my shoulders and leading me to his car. I imagine Marco is watching the whole thing and getting jealous, but I turn back to see him jogging toward his car. Surely he wouldn’t be in a hurry to get back to something bad. I think this is one of those moments Marco complains about, when I make something out of nothing.
We watch Annette get into her car and leave before Reginald goes out of his way to drive past the three cars left in the lot. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am when I see Brent in the custom red car. That’s what Mildred meant when she wondered how he could afford to drive it. It also explains why I thought the brand-new BMW looked a little ghetto-fab for our student parking lot, because Brent is only pretending to be Langdon-style and legally rich. You can take the boy out of the economically disadvantaged neighborhood, but you can’t remove his flavor, even if he’s desperately trying to play the role of blond and blue-eyed prepster.
I don’t say anything to Reginald the first ten minutes of the ride, and appreciate that he doesn’t force any conversation. But ten minutes of silence means I have time to come up with a few questions. I start with the most obvious one.
“What was up with your arm around my shoulder back there? I thought you were into Annette.”
“We’d been waiting in the cold for twenty minutes. You were shivering. It was a friendly gesture, not a marriage proposal.”
“I doubt Marco saw it that way.”
“Ruiz had something on his mind other than us,” he says, looking over at me. “Besides, he doesn’t have anything to worry about right?”
“Damn skippy, he doesn’t.”
“At least not anything to do with you and me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? And what was that look you gave Marco when he said he had to deal with the coach?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It has something to do with Brent, which is why you made that slow pass by his car before we left.”
“I wanted Carmody to know I know.”
“Know what?”
“That your boy was about to do business with him. I was trying to help Ruiz even if he won’t help himself.”
“You mean like a witness to something? Is Marco in trouble back there?”
“Carmody is nothing but trouble.”
“Anytime we discuss Marco, you throw hints like you want me to figure out some big mystery but don’t give me any clues. If there’s something to say, just say it.”
“It isn’t my place.”
“The whole night you’ve been playing cryptic. I am so not into melodrama.”
Reginald goes quiet for a minute. I hope he’s deciding whether to tell me what his problem is with Marco, but I’m disappointed. All he says is, “Then you’re probably with the wrong guy.”
Chapter 14
It’s nearly midnight. Reginald dropped me off an hour ago and Lana went to bed not long after that, but I’m wide awake. I can’t stop thinking about whatever Marco is hiding from me or Reginald’s suggestion that we may have left him in some kind of trouble with Brent. Marco should be home by now but hasn’t answered my calls or the five texts I’ve left him, even the one I marked 9-1-1. That’s when I decide I’m tired of waiting for people to give me answers.
For a cop, my mother is a hard sleeper. Like the way a sleeping mother can hear her baby cry, you’d think Lana would snooze lighter than the rest of us, always on the alert even during the REM cycle, but nope. That’s fortunate for me because I’m able to sneak out of the house and into her car. She does have this weird sixth sense though when it comes to me—maybe that mother/baby thing never goes away—and will probably wake soon to find me gone, but I’ll be on the other side of Denver Heights by then.
During the seven minutes it takes to get to Marco’s house, I come up with a hundred scenarios about what he’s up to, none of them good, so I’m relieved when his car—his mysteriously repaired car considering his broke status—pulls in front of his house a minute after I arrive. I flash my lights to let him know it’s me. Denver Heights is not the kind of neighborhood you just roll up on someone in the dea
d of night. When I get out of the car, instead of waiting for me, he runs up on his porch and tries to unlock the door but fumbles the keys.
“Marco, wait.”
“Chanti?”
“Who did you think it was? I flashed my lights.”
“I guess I didn’t recognize the car,” Marco says, still facing his front door.
“You didn’t answer my calls or texts. I got worried and—Marco, why won’t you look at me?”
When he turns to face me, I find the hundred scenarios I dreamed up on the way over here didn’t prepare me for what I see.
“Oh my god, what happened to you?” I say too loudly considering I’m trying not to wake his parents, or the whole neighborhood. But seeing Marco’s beautiful face covered in bruises, his left eye swollen nearly shut, and his busted lip still bleeding, is more than I was ready for.
“I had . . . a disagreement.”
“Come with me. Lana keeps a first aid kit in the trunk.”
“No, my mom might come out—”
“Well, you don’t want her to see you looking like this. Let me at least clean you up some. I refuse to listen to whatever it is you have to tell me while I watch you bleed. Come on,” I say, taking his hand, which makes him wince and pull away.
“Your hand is hurt, too? I guess you got in a few ‘disagreements’ of your own.”
Marco follows me to the car but doesn’t get in. I notice he’s kind of hunched over, holding onto his left side like he’s afraid something might fall out.
“They hurt more than your face, didn’t they? Maybe you need more first aid than I know how to give. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“Chanti, you don’t even have your license yet,” he says, easing onto the front seat.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to drive. And you sure can’t. I don’t even know how you drove home. But if you’re that worried about my driving, we’ll get your parents—”
Guys, Lies & Alibis Page 7
