Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (16 page)

“Lemme see,” said Billy, reaching
the envelope.

“I’m hungry,” moaned Wayne. “Anyone
feel like eating?”

“Me, too,” said Danny.

“The food in the student center
sucks,” said Emily. “But the Admissions people told me about a pretty good
Greek place a couple of blocks this way.”

“Let’s go,” roared Wayne, and off
they went.

It was a relief for Emily to be
heading away from the part of campus where Meacham’s people were. Michael was
probably right that the attack meant he didn’t know she was Yuki’s daughter.
Also, it was possible he didn’t know what her living arrangements were, or even
that she was trying to finish high school. She suspected this was true of
Burzynski as well, but was a little less confident on this point.

They ate Greek
and middle eastern food, and then bummed around the big city for a few hours.
Everything was bright and shiny compared to Warm Springs or Goshen. They were
all very impressed. Suddenly the meaning of going away to college had a
specific, concrete significance for each of them, even Danny. College meant
independence, freedom, in an exciting new place. Later, Emily collected her
bike and her new truck and headed home. She was exhausted by the time she got
there, and fell soundly asleep almost immediately.

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Chapter 13:
The Big Game

Well, maybe it wasn’t the “big”
game. To be precise, it was really just another game, an away game, down in New
Castle, against the Craig County High School Rockets. But Wayne wanted to go
see it, and Emily thought it would be good to see her friends in action. She’d
never been to a football game before. Of course, Wayne went to all the home
games. He was especially looking forward to explaining the game to her. When
Billy heard she was coming he got her a Chargers football shirt. It was bright
orange. Emily wondered what she could wear with it. This was all new to her,
not just the football game, but also wondering how to match clothes in an
outfit. In the end, she decided just to wear it under her new UVA hoodie with
some old cargo pants. In other words, back to her old style camo. Except for
all the orange.

Emily picked up Wayne around ten.
Because of the long weekend, the game was held a little earlier than usual, at
noon. The ride to New Castle took about an hour and a half. They drove on
winding mountain roads through the Jefferson National Forest. The trees were
losing their autumn colors, but it was still a glorious landscape. She knew the
roads back here well, the trails less so.

She had explored much of this area
with her father the previous summer. They hiked back here for weeks. It was one
of their more rigorous “survivalist” trips. They brought no food or water with
them. Just sleeping bags, some empty bottles, the usual camp tools and a sling
shot. Emily had wanted to bring a bow, but her father said no. He claimed it
would require a special license and he didn’t want to take the trouble. Of
course, she knew that wasn’t the real reason. He had a Sportsman’s License
already. He always had one no matter what. She also thought it was extremely
unlikely a Ranger would ever find them back in the woods. He just wanted to
make her learn how to use the slings. And she got to be pretty good with both
kinds, though she preferred a sling to the sling shot. She didn’t manage to bring
down any game with either one, but she got good enough to hit a stationary
target from fifty feet even with the sling. One side effect of this training:
she noticed little round rocks on the ground. When she checked her pockets at
the end of a day, she often found one or two, even if she couldn’t recall
picking them up. The best, she thought, were about the size of a peach pit,
though rocks about the size of a chicken egg would go further in the sling.

Wayne rambled on about the rules of
football the whole way down. Apparently, each team is really composed of two
separate teams that take turns wrestling their opponents for control of the
ball. That part sounded dreary enough, but it seemed likely that every once in
a while, one player would break out from the melee with the ball and everyone
else would chase after him and try to bring him down. This might prove to be
quite exciting for everyone involved. Running away with the ball, she gathered,
was Danny’s role on the team. Another possibility was that someone might back
away from the crowd and hurl the ball to a teammate running in the other
direction. Wayne explained that it was Billy’s job to see that the other team
did not succeed in this effort. Emily wasn’t deeply interested in the
trivialities of this arcane game. But she was very interested in seeing her
friends prove themselves on a suitable field of glory.

In this case, the field was on the
south end of town, a couple of blocks from the school. There were no stands,
just a big open field ringed by trees. Most people brought folding lawn chairs
or blankets and watched the game from the sidelines. About four hundred people
were in attendance, mostly from New Castle. But a few dozen Bath County
supporters came down as well. They were mainly clustered on one side of the
field, behind the benches where their team sat. Almost all of them were wearing
orange. Emily fit right in with this group. The team arrived about an hour
early in a couple of school buses, along with a small marching band and cheerleaders.
The bands from each school got to perform before the game and briefly at half
time. Emily found it charming that the game provided an occasion for all sorts
of displays of student interests. The cheerleading squad was perhaps a bit more
mystifying. They wore bright orange outfits somehow coordinated with the
uniforms the team wore, and carried orange and black pompoms as well as
enormous colored cones. At various breaks in the game they would yell slogans
through the cones and perform intricate gymnastic stunts. Their athleticism was
impressive, though oddly derivative. Emily couldn’t fathom its purpose. She
supposed that was true of the football game itself, too. But the game involved
a struggle with opponents, however contrived it might really be, which both
sides took very seriously. Here, at least, there seemed to be an opportunity to
achieve something noteworthy, perhaps even to be justly celebrated for it by
the people watching.

Wayne had brought a couple of lawn
chairs for them to sit in, which he placed a bit to one side of the field.
While he was setting up the chairs, and chatting with other kids, Emily
wandered over to the refreshment stand and got a couple of sodas and three hot
dogs, two for Wayne and one for her. By the time she returned, Wayne had become
the center of the contingent from Bath County, about fifteen teenagers. They
all looked familiar. Emily knew some of their names, but she didn’t really know
them personally. She sat down next to Wayne and handed him his hot dogs. He
wolfed the first one down in two bites--“Thanks, Em”--and then paused to
contemplate the second one. She took a couple of little bites of hers. It
wasn’t exactly the taste treat she had been led to expect. She wished she had
put more condiments on it, and got up to go back to the stand.

As she walked away she heard a lot
of chatter and even a couple of howls. She looked over her shoulder and saw
Wayne with a blushing big smile on his face playfully pushing a couple of guys
away. She smiled as she thought about it. Wayne was not often the center of
social attention. He obviously enjoyed being seen with her, and she just liked
being around such a big, kind soul. There would probably be some innocent
gossip as a result of this afternoon, but she didn’t mind. She had never given
a fig for anyone’s opinion of her before. She was certainly not going to start
now. She even wondered if the gossip played some important role in bringing
kids together and apart. Like a game of “telephone,” idle social chatter was a
way to see one’s self in the social world through the eyes of others. It could
be harmful or harmless, she supposed, but not because it was true or false. It
was always sort of false, as all projections of one’s inner life onto the
social world must necessarily be. But it was also a means of developing and
unfolding one’s self, of expanding one’s possibilities. So she didn’t mind that
the other kids were confused about the true dimensions of her relationship with
Wayne, or that he obviously took no trouble to disabuse them of their error.
She was even amused by it. She liked Wayne.

She was also quite surprised by how
many of the other kids wanted to say her name, to ask her questions, to tell
her their opinions. She enjoyed their attention and reflected it back toward them.
She asked about them, about their plans, their hopes and desires. She told them
about her generic plan to go to college somewhere, but tried not to say too
much. One of the girls who was there, Wendy Williams, was particularly
interested in getting to know her. She was a goth, which meant she dressed much
like Emily used to, though in more somber colors, and she had some piercings
and favored dark makeup. During the game, she made a big show of not being
interested in what was happening on the field. She said she was only there
because her brother was on the team. But it was easy to see that she very much
enjoyed the occasion, even if she pretended to be above it all.

The paradox of Wendy’s demeanor
caught Emily’s curiosity. She pushed herself to the margin of social life, but
still longed to be included, even if she couldn’t admit it to herself. She had
come with a couple of other goths, but clearly had no interest in hanging
around them. Emily found her intriguing. She was smart and pretty, but trapped
in a rather self-defeating form of social behavior. She defined herself almost
entirely by what she disapproved of, rather than by anything she actually
wanted to accomplish. By contrast, Emily was determined to achieve a normal
social life, to extricate herself from the web of deadly intrigue that had
engulfed her family, but as yet had not been able to articulate any genuinely
specific goals. The end result was that she ended up seeming to the other kids
to be just like Wendy and her friends, at least before she started wearing
Andie’s clothes. The thought occurred to her that it might be good to get to
know Wendy a little bit better.

The lawn chairs proved to be
superfluous once the game started. Everyone stood along the sidelines in groups
to cheer their team on. Danny had a frustrating day. He was tackled before he
could go anywhere on almost every play, while the other team seemed to run all
over their defense. But on one play toward the end of the first half, Danny
managed to break free from the scrum. He burst through the left side, pushed
one defender aside, ran straight over another and went the length of the field
for a score. Everyone in orange went wild. Even Emily, and Wendy too. He had
two more long runs in the second half and scored once more. Billy struggled in
the first half against the players he was matched up against. They were mostly
quite a bit taller, and could catch balls thrown over his head. But he was
quite a bit faster and didn’t let anyone past him with the ball. In the second
half, he stepped in front of a receiver and intercepted the ball. Later, he
scooped up a fumble and ran it in for a score. Emily and Wayne cheered louder
than anybody on that play. Billy saw her on the side line and made a
mock-ceremonial bow in her direction. Wendy noticed and teased her.

“Aren’t you the social butterfly,”
she said. “I had no idea you were so popular with the football team.” Emily
laughed and smiled, but said nothing.

Unfortunately, it was all heroics
in a losing cause. Craig County High won by two touchdowns. They were bigger
and faster at most positions this year. But at least there were a few
highlights the Bath County contingent could console themselves with. Emily
hardly noticed the final score at all. Sure, somebody won and somebody lost.
That was inevitable, but it wasn’t what really mattered in her mind. The game
was just an occasion for her friends to grapple and to achieve. The fact that
they were facing a bigger, stronger opponent only made their successes that
much sweeter. As she saw it, everyone who played that day forged a little bit
of character, developed themselves in the struggle, and were that much the
better for it. But none more so than her friends!

Afterwards, while Wayne was over by
the benches congratulating the guys, Wendy plumped down in his chair.

“Emily, how come we’ve never hung
out before? What’s it been, like three and a half years and I barely know you.”

“I’ve been kind of a loner. I
hardly know anyone,” Emily replied wistfully.

“Yeah, right!” Wendy snorted. “Everyone
here knows you, or wants to know you.”

“Yeah, I noticed. I was kind of
surprised by that myself.”

“We should go do something one of
these days. Whaddya think?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure. I was thinking of
going for a ride up in these mountains tomorrow. Wanna come along?”

“I’m not really a nature person, if
ya know what I mean,” Wendy hedged.

“It’ll be fun, you’ll see,” Emily
persisted. “I’ll pick you up at ten, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Wendy
replied uncertainly, perhaps a little worried as to exactly what she’d gotten
herself into.

On the ride back to Warm Springs,
Wayne could hardly stop crowing over Danny and Billy. He was completely taken
by their exploits. The only other thing he could talk about was how much
smaller this new truck was. In fact, it was a little tight on him.

“I liked your old truck better,
Em,” he ventured. “It fit me better.” Emily laughed.

“This one’s better for going off
road,” she said only half seriously.

She glanced over at him and saw how
tightly he was packed in on his side, and smiled. He gave her one of those
looks that said he was well acquainted with all the ways an ill-fitting world
might pinch. Then they both started laughing. He had a way of communicating
with facial expressions that just seemed to strike a chord with her. Hardly
anyone got Wayne the way she did.