Snitch (10 page)

“He’s gonna freak!”

“He’s gonna die!”

“He’s
gonna
come out and say, ‘Didn’t I park my car here?’”

“This is the best senior prank ever!”

“Look what we did, man! This is
freakin
’
awesome!”

We slapped each other on the back one more time.

“Wait ‘till he finds his car!” Johnny laughed.

Once we thought about that, we all ran like hell
.

“Anything happen in school today?”
Mom was loading the dishwasher with dishes from the after
-
game sandwich she always made for me.
I
almost choked on my milk. An hour ago I had been laughing hysterically. Now, my shoulders were feeling a little tight from worry.

“Sorry we couldn’t make the game,” Dad said, pouring a soda. “After next week we should be able to come.”

“No,” Mom warned him. “It’ll be two weeks before we can go.”

The phone rang while Mom and Dad did the parent thing and checked the calendar to see who was right.

“It’s me, Andy-O,” Johnny said. “Have you heard anything?”

My stomach dropped. “No. Should I have?”

“No.
Just checking.”
Johnny laughed. “That was amazing, wasn’t it? It sure beats anything you and I have pulled.”

“Those boys are strong. I mean, I helped, but I really think they could have done it without us.”

“Yeah.
They’re beasts. We’ve got a lot of weight lifting to do before we hit varsity football,” Johnny said. “Anyway, remember: we were all with each other in the locker room after the game. We are our own alibis until our parents can vouch for us.”

I swallowed hard. It was a good plan as long as everybody stuck to it. We really didn’t have anything to worry about.

“I can’t wait until tomorrow. This whole thing is crazy.” I hung up, smiling about our evening.

“Who was that?” Mom wanted to know.

“Johnny.”

“Can’t you boys
ever
stop talking about the game?” Dad teased. “Come over here and tell us about it.”

So I did. And even though I don’t like
lying
to my parents, I especially added a lot of detail about what happened in the locker room until they picked me up.

***

The next day Johnny and I got to the gym as fast as possible. Since we spent most mornings checking in with Coach, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary except
that morning
we found Sizzle standing
outside
the door talking to him.

“Nobody’s allowed to go in the gym,” Sizzle told us, his face angry.

Coach suspiciously eyed the three of us.

“What?” Sizzle asked. “What’s going on?”

I followed his lead.
“Yeah.
Why can’t we go in the gym?”

Coach didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he looked straight into Sizzle’s eyes. “Is there anything you want to tell me, son?”

Sizzle threw his hands up in the air. “What are you talking about? What is going on?” Suddenly his eyes opened wide. “Did somebody do something to the gym?” Sizzle’s face clouded with anger. “They did, didn’t they?”

Johnny took his cue. “What did they do? Is it the floor? Did they wreck the floor?”

This was great. Sizzle sounded innocent because he really didn’t know what was going on, so I joined in. “I bet someone stole our equipment? Who did it?”

That was enough for Coach. “It’s nothing like that. Calm down.”

“Well, what happened?” Johnny demanded.

“I can’t say,” Coach said quietly. “I’m just glad to know you boys didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Sizzle crossed his arms over his chest. “This is stupid. This is
our
school. This is
our
gym. What’s going on?”

Coach answered by sending us to class.

But we watched. We noticed when the work trucks came in. We snickered when the tow trucks arrived. We whispered to each other and
bumped fists in the hallway. It didn’t matter anyway; by the end of first period, most of the school
was whispering about Mr. Perkin
s
’
car wedged
between the bleachers like a lemon seed in a straw
.

I don’t really know how we got away with it; I just know we did. Mr. Perkins figured it must have been the football team, but he never could prove anything thanks to Drew’s soda cup. No matter how often he pulled kids into his office, no one seemed to know anything and everyone had an alibi. The only freshman he talked to was Seth, and Seth’s dad put an end to that. We heard he came into the office, told Perkins to stop picking on his
kid,
and threw a chair.
The chair
part
could have been a
nothing more than a
rumor, but knowing Seth’s dad
,
it could have been true too.

There was talk
that
next week’s pep assembly was going to be cancelled, but punishing us for something no one could prove we had done didn’t seem fair. So the pep assembly w
ent on
as planned.

Putting Mr. Perkins’ car in the gym was the
best
prank
ever
.

The movie we went to see was stupid, but it didn’t matter. Liz and I sat in the back row of the theatre near the wall. Kate and Jason sat a few rows up near the aisle to give us some privacy.

“Isn’t this great?” Liz studied Kate and James who actually appeared to talk to each other once in a while. “I can’t believe Kate is out on a real date.”

“Do they like each other?”

“I think so. I know Kate thinks he’s cute, and I catch him looking at Kate all the time in science.”

I shrugged. I didn’t really care about whether Jason thought Kate was cute. I had even given up trying to guess if either one of them was going to find enough confidence to actually speak to each other beyond a few words. I was too busy trying to figure out how to get my arm around Liz’s shoulders without looking like a freak.

“The hard part was getting Jason
to ask her out.” Liz’s green eyes focused on
me as if I was
supposed
to understand what she
was talking about. “He’s
kinda
shy too.”

I guess I must have
stared
at her blankly because Liz rolled her eyes at me.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Then she explained how she tried to hint to Jason over and ov
er to ask Kate out, and finally
she had to come right out and tell him
exactly what to do
. “I still didn’t think he would do it,” she said
,
watching them again, “but he did.”

Liz put a piece of popcorn in her mouth and smiled at me. “I can be pretty sneaky.”

I smiled back at her, but I really hadn’t heard much of what she said. I was deciding whether to put my arm around her or not. Finally, I set my soda down and just went for it.

Liz
noticed
my hand dangling like a fish out of water over her shoulder
,
and
she
took
her hand and closed it over mine. It was soft and warm.

“I was wondering when you would do that,” she said settling into my shoulder.

By now the previews were over and the feature had begun, but I still had no idea what the movie was about. That familiar jolt of Liz-
tricity
was
flying through my body, and I was too busy hoping Liz would let me kiss her.

“Hey
,
Spaghetti-O,
c
’mere
,” she whispered in my ear.

I spent the next hour tangled in her soft lips and strawberry hair.

Of course, I
didn’t
want the movie to end, but it did. The four of us walked across the parking lot to the pizza place just like we had done a few weeks before. Kate and Jason chattered on about the movie, about how unrealistic, how exciting, or how funny parts of it were. They didn’t ask me about my opinion too often
,
which was good because to tell the truth I didn’t see much of the movie.

Over pizza
,
Jason talked on and on about the film and then compared
it
to others he had seen, but I didn’t pay much attention to that either. I was still thinking about Liz, and by looking at her I think she was thinking about me too.

Maybe I
was
falling in love with her.

That night when I walked her to the door, I didn’t care that Dad was in the car watching. I didn’t care that her parents might be looking out the front window where the curtain was suddenly parted. I didn’t care that Kate and Jason were still in the back seat of the car. I kissed Liz
long and
hard
before she opened her front door and left me standing on her front step wishing I could kiss her again.

***

“How was the movie?” Mom asked as soon as I walked in the front door.

“Just okay.”

“Just okay?”
Her knowing eyes traveled from me to Dad and back to me again.

“Can you be more specific?” Dad asked.

“Parts of it were pretty unrealistic,” I said, quoting Jason. “But some of it was pretty funny.”

Then I had a whole discussion
about
a movie I hadn’t paid more than two minutes of attention to. I had Jason and Kate to thank for
being able to do that; a
ll the highlights they had brought up over pizza came in pretty handy at that moment with Mom and Dad.

I love pep rally days. I think the teachers know we aren’t very focused, so they don’t expect much from us in class. By the last period of the day, they kind of give up trying to teach because half the class has to leave early for band or cheerleading or to suit up.

When the assembly starts it’s crazy. The band plays and everyone sits with their friends, talking and laughing. The cheerleaders strut out looking fine, and everything kicks into gear to the beat of the drums and cymbals.

The crowd roars
, j
ust like on TV. It roars. Only when we do a pep rally, one of the people they are roaring for is me. I am one of the people in the center of the gym, and if somebody in the school didn’t know who I was
,
after the pep rally they do.

Pep rallies are unbelievable.

Our rally was Wednesday
,
seventh period
,
because we were playing Thursday
night
.
We were tied with
Nolanville
for first place, and the game was set for our home court, so I knew the stands would be filled. With the district championships hanging in the balance, I couldn’t wait.

The cheerleaders were
busy
running around like they always do, but this time it was different. They had been rehearsing some special cheer, which I thought
Chrissy
probably had a lot to do with since she was
busy
bossing everybody around and organizing these big signs they had p
ainted
on poster board. She kept checking them and double
-
checking them, so I knew it was important to her.

The band was playing our
fight song, and kids were stomping on the bleachers in time with the music. My heart was pumping as we all high-fived one another and got ready to run out on the court where the whole school would cheer us. The cheerleaders strung out a piece of long, green paper and held it so when
Coach
announced us
,
we could run through it. Even though it was torn in half by the time I got to it, I held out my arms and managed to snag a piece of it as I faced the wall of screaming, cheering faces who were doing it all for me.

Above the cheers
,
Coach
said some great things about our team, introduced each one of us by name, and gave our team stats: Eight and One. It was impressive, but I wondered if everyone’s stomach lurched a little when they heard the “one” and remembered that we forfeited that win because we did something stupid to a substitute. The roar that
exploded from the crowd erased that thought, and we all waved and smiled as the music geared up for the next cheer.

Chrissy
grabbed the microphone from Coach and pranced to the center of the court as only she could do.