Do-Overs (23 page)

-58-

Seed Sowing

“Doesn’t he play on the soccer team?” I asked as I sat down at the table right behind the LSPS the next day in the cafeteria. It was time to start planting in the seeds of illusion. Olivia sat next to me.

“Of course he does,” she answered according to our script. “I’ve seen him play.”

“Is he the one the coach’s wife has the hots for?” I asked in my best stage whisper. I could see he was listening in on our ‘private’ conversation.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Olivia agreed. “I’ve seen her at the games watching every move he makes. Old cougar.”

“She’s not that old. And she’s quite the hottie.”

“Do you think there’s really something going on?”

“If he’s smart there is,” I answered, trying not to gag. “Ready?” I asked and Olivia nodded. I waved the eraser.

“Now,” I said as we were back in the line, “Let’s sit as far away from him as possible.”

“But we have to execute our plan,” Olivia objected.

“We already did. You don’t remember?”

She shook her head no.

“Hm, strange. I guess we have to both be actually touching the eraser to both remember. Well, we did good. Maybe we should go on the stage with Al.” Since Olivia couldn’t remember, I didn’t have to tell her how stiff and rehearsed we had actually sounded.

Since we weren’t sure how many seeds we would have sow to guarantee a good harvest, we decided it would be better to plant too many than not enough.

Right before his soccer practice came the next seed. “You’re on the soccer team right?” I asked him as he was getting out of his big black truck with huge oversized tires. I always wondered what those ridiculously huge tires were compensating for.

“Yeah, why?”

“Uh, well, the coach’s wife asked me to give this to you. Said you’d be the player in the black truck.” With that I handed him a note.

I think you’re hot. And Coach Biggs is going to be out of town this weekend. Would you like to come over and see if you score off the field as well as you do on?

My lunch was about to make a reappearance as I watched him swagger away reading the note. I wondered how long I should leave it to sink in, and also how long it might take him to read all those words, but did a redo quickly as I was afraid of accidentally not getting the note back.

A flick of the eraser and I was holding the forged note in my hand and watching the world’s biggest jerk get out of the his overcompensating vehicle. I tore the evidence into little tiny pieces and threw it into the trash. Two seeds sown. More to go.

Olivia and I continued on this venue the rest of the week. The rest of the ninjas didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but just that we were getting him ripe for the harvest.

“I just got back from soccer practice,” Kaylee announced on Thursday. “It went smooth as butter. I sat by the coach’s wife. She is so nice. We absolutely have to make sure she isn’t hurt by this.” I nodded in agreement. “Anyway. While they were practicing, I asked her who the guy in the grey shorts was. She pointed at the LSPS to ask me if that was the one I meant. He looked up at her while she was pointing, so she kind of looked embarrassed and waved. He waved back and I’d swear he winked. Then she turned to me and said, ‘He must like you. I think he just winked at you.’”

La –ah had procured the garage door code to the coach’s house.

“It was like taking candy from a baby. A big, braggy, babbling baby,” she said. “That Kimberly is always a bragging how she is the Biggs’ babysitter, like working her butt off for five bucks an hour is an honor. So I was just telling her how the Smiths so trusted me with their little Johnny and she had to so one-up me. And so I just told her how they had even given me a key to their house and she said how she doesn’t need a key because she knows the garage door code at the Biggs’, the baby’s birth date. Did me a little research, found out little Biggs’ birthday and voila, I got us the code. 0412.”

Kasha’s job was to make sure that Mrs. Biggs was going to be gone that Saturday night. “Yep, just checked her Facebook. She’s off to a girls’ night out in Branson—guess that’s a girls’ weekend out.”

“And the coach has a meeting here on campus, right?” I reconfirmed.

“According to the campus faculty page, from seven ‘til eight-thirty,” Rachel agreed.

The plan was going into motion.

Our next visit with the LSPS confirmed that the subliminal thoughts were building up.

Olivia gave it her best shot as she hurried to walk next to him. “Hey, I haven’t seen you around much. What you been up to?”

“Busy with soccer.”

“You still dating Taylor? Haven’t seen you together?”

“Nope, on to something better. Hm, strange. But, seems there’s someone better who’s warm for my form.” Gag, I thought as I was walking a step behind. Did anyone really say that?

“That’s what I thought,” Olivia lowered her voice. “I’ve heard you have something going with the coach’s wife. That can’t be true.”

“Stranger things have happened,” and he smiled. Maybe smile is too nice of a word. He leered.

I grabbed Olivia’s hand and let the eraser do its stuff.

We were back were we started. We saw him coming and turned the other way.

-59-

Reaping the Harvest

“Everybody ready?” the general asked. There we were, all eight of us in full ninja black wedged in the da godmother. Rachel made Stina and Kyra double buckle as no one was ever allowed to cruise in da godmother without a seatbelt. Rule of the land. Or the road actually. It was eight on Saturday night and hopefully our plan would work, but just in case, I had a death grip on my eraser.

Olivia and I had given him the note to meet the coach’s wife at eight thirty three different times and then undone it. We were unsure if it would work or not. La--ah had left the final note in his truck that afternoon during his soccer practice. It said,

If I were to find you in my bed at 8:30 tonight, I would be very happy. No worries, he’s gone tonight. The garage door code is 0412.

That note wasn’t going to be retrievable, but we’d tried to make it as vague as possible just in case someone else saw it.

At eight forty LSPS’s black truck pulled up. Late. And arrogant. He parked right on the street by the Biggs’ house. Guess he didn’t care who saw him there. Out he got and swaggered up to the garage door, looked at the paper, four numbers were too taxing for his small mind to remember, and typed in the code. Up went the door and the litterbug wadded up the note and threw it down. This was a piece of luck we hadn’t planned on, but it worked for our good.

“For the first time in my life, I’m glad someone’s a trash pig,” I said.

“I’ll go get it and then he has no evidence at all as to why he’s here,” Stina said crawling out of da godmother’s one good backdoor.

Rachel turned the car on. “I’m moving down the block and then we can spread out and watch from the trees over there. Have to make sure we are not seen.”

“But we ain’t gonna miss this show,” La—ah laughed.

At nine Coach Bigg’s beat-up bug pulled in to the drive, hit the garage remote and went in. We waited. Lights went on in the house. First the lights by the garage, then the middle of the ranch style house and then end rooms. We waited. It was nine-O-five. Still nothing. Had the fool gone in the wrong bedroom? Nine-O-seven. The front door of the house came busting open. Out ran the LSPS in nothing but his boxers. His clothes came flying out the door behind him.

“And on top of everything else, you are off the team,” Coach Biggs was shouting. “I don’t ever want to see your stinking” (okay he used another word that has been edited out of my memory) “face” (actually a different body part) “again. And if I hear one word from anybody, anywhere about my wife, I’ll be bringing you up on charges for breaking and entering.” Then there were numerous other words that I thought an employee at a Christian university wouldn’t have known. But he did and pronounced all them correctly as they came streaming out of his mouth.

There was the LSPS running around the Biggs’ front yard in his pink (go figure) boxers, grabbing up his pants and shoes, forget the socks they were up in one of the trees, desperately trying to find his car keys so he could get out of there.

One of the hardest things I have ever done in my life was to keep from laughing so loudly that Coach Biggs wouldn’t hear me. Then again he was shouting so loudly, he probably wouldn’t have anyway.

“Ladies, our work here is done,” said Rachel in a solemn whisper. “Back to da godmother.”

“For Keesha,” Kasha raised her hand in a fist bump.

We all bumped our knuckles together. “For Keesha,” we repeated.

-60-

To IT Or Not To IT?

“Missed you this weekend,” said the world’s sexiest voice nuzzling my ear. I had been showing Al Dansby
my
favorite books
in the library up on the third floor, the very deserted third floor. “Hope you didn’t stay in your room and study the whole time.”

That made me giggle. Not just his lips nipping on my ear, but remembering our ninja adventure. Seeing the LSPS running half-naked across the Biggs’ yard had made me laugh all weekend. “We kept busy. All of us piled in da godmother for a fun evening out.”

“Someday I would love to stowaway in da godmother and find out what you wild women are always up to.”

“No, no you can’t,” I responded perhaps a little too forcefully. I had spent the weekend caught between the hilarity of our retribution and the fear that in some way we would be caught in our own sting operation. I also was terrified that Al might find out and in doing so I would have to take a step down off of my pedestal of perfection.

“Sorry,” Al backpedaled. “It seems I have trod on the sacred ground of the sisterhood. I’ll file that knowledge for further reference,” he added as if writing a memo in the air, “Never question the sanctity of the sisterhood of da godmother.”

“I feel awful. I didn’t mean to bite your head off,” I began apologizing. Where was my eraser? Oh yeah, it was back at the book table with my purse and laptop. I turned to walk back and get it, but was stopped as Al took my hand.

“It’s okay. Really. You have friends. And I have friends. And there is couple time and there is friend time. And then a lot of the time there is couple with the friends time. So, since you had some quality friend time last weekend, can we have some quality couple time this one? Let’s go on a date.”

I smiled. “Ok. But, we kind of go out every night.”

“The library and the coffee corner are not real dates. I want to do something special.”

“I won’t object to that. What?”

“It’s a secret,” Al taunted.

I laughed. “Oh, in other words you’re still trying to figure it out.”

Al smiled a mischievous smile. “Got me there. Still working out all the details. But I have the main event already planned.”

There was something there, in the way that he said ‘main event’ that both filled me with anticipation and dread. We had been an item for almost three months, actually sixty-eight days, but who’s counting, except me. Sixty-eight wonderful days. And in all that time IT hadn’t come up. Sure there had been stolen kisses, sweet touches and be honest, substantial snogging. But not the big IT.

“What’s wrong?” Al asked searching my face. “Don’t you want to go out? Have a special evening?”

“Of course I do,” I fudged. “How special you got in mind?”

“A lifetime memory,” he chuckled.

A disembodied voice came over the P.A. system. I gave a startled jump. I thought it was the voice of God at first coming to chastise me for the very carnal ideas that had been materializing in my head. Then I realized it was saying the library would close in five minutes. Guess I was a little more stressed about the turn of our conversation than I wanted to admit.             

***

“IT?” I whispered to Stina at two in the morning. I wasn’t sure if she was awake or not.

“Huh?”

“I’m afraid the IT is about to hit the fan,” I responded.

“What the front door are you talking about?” she said finally fully awake.

I told her about the conversation Al and I had earlier in the evening back in the stacks. It was always easier to talk about serious things in the dark, no eye contact, no facial expressions. “What do you think the main event is that he has on his mind?” I asked.

“Girlfriend, he’s a guy. What do you think?”


 “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Do you want to?”

“No—well yes, well no. Well of course I want to. I’m a red-blooded, hormonal woman. And I’m in love. I’ve never been in love before. I mean this one is it. So why not?” I had to think a while. “No.”

“Why?” she asked. It wasn’t like she was disagreeing, rather making me think it through.

“My first thought is I don’t want to end up like Keesha. I know Al’s different than the LSPS, but still it could happen.”

“Keesha thought the LSPS was different too. That was until he dumped her,” Stina reminded me.

“True. But Al Dansby is different. He’s the kindest, most sensitive, most caring, most wonderful,” heavy sigh, “guy ever. Did I ever tell you that I’m just a little bit in major love with him?” We both laughed. “Maybe that’s not even what he meant.”

“Sure,” Stina snorted. “Finish your no.”

“I don’t like ultimatums.”

“True.”

“True. I still want the dream. The fairytale. Commitment. The ‘happily-ever-after.’”

Stina was quiet for a while. “It’s your life Lottie. Make it what you want. Remember there’s no such thing as a do-over.”

On that I gave a quasi-insane laugh. Little did Stina know how far from right she was. Yet how right she was. I could do things over, but I had still lived it. It was still in my memory and would always be.