Stealing the Game (16 page)

“Hey,” she said, nudging my arm. “You looking for me to add another scar to your collection?”

“Sorry,” I said. I sat up straighter, sipped some of the iced tea Mom had poured for both of us.

“You know, Chris, I don’t come cheap. So don’t waste your parents’ money here.”

“Right,” I said. “I won’t.”

She looked at me and sighed. “Why isn’t methane gas on the periodic table?”

“Because it’s a compound, not an element. It’s made up of the elements carbon and hydrogen.”

She smiled and clapped her hands. “Very good. You know what produces a lot of methane?”

I shook my head.

“Farts,” she said.

I laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” she said, but with a smile on her face. “Methane is a greenhouse gas and all the farting from people and animals is a danger to the environment. Did you
ever light a fart?”

“No. But I’ve seen it in movies.”

“Movies get it wrong.
Dumb and Dumber
,
Dennis the Menace
,
Nutty Professor 2
, they show an orange flame when someone lights a fart. In reality, it would be
blue.”

“How do you know?” I teased.

“Two college chemistry courses. And a few fraternity parties. Frat boys love doing that stuff.”

We both laughed.

“How’s it going?” Dad asked, poking his head into the kitchen.

“I’m learning a lot about chemistry,” I said.

“Great,” Dad said. He waited, said “Great” again, and left.

The rest of the session went pretty well, even the algebra. Hannah didn’t rush me or get impatient when I didn’t understand a concept. In fact, I was just getting the hang of
figuring out a nasty variable when the front door opened loudly and I heard Jax saying hi to Mom and Dad. A couple seconds later, he walked into the kitchen, went straight to the refrigerator, and
helped himself to a beer.

He leaned against the wall and grinned. “The return of the Dynamic Duo, huh?”

I could smell the beer on him. This wasn’t his first.

Hannah’s cell-phone timer buzzed. “Time’s up for tonight. Good job, Chris. See you next week.”

“Next week?” I said.

“Your folks have me coming once a week to start. If you need more help, we’ll add an extra day. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What time do you usually get home from school?”

“Depends how long practice runs. Usually I’m home by four. Why?”

“Just need to know when to add the extra sessions if we need them.” She must have noticed the panicked look on my face. She smiled. “Don’t worry, we probably won’t
need them.”

She started packing her stuff into her canvas bag. She was very pretty, in an Older Woman kind of way.

“How’s it going, Hannah?” Jax asked.

“Fine, Jax,” Hannah said, with icicles hanging from each word.

“Come on. You’re not still mad about prom, are you?”

She looked surprised. “Prom? That was years ago. Why would I care?”

“Because you asked me to take you to the dance, but I had already asked Tina Mayfair. You’ve hardly spoken to me since.”

“I’ve hardly seen you since. That was senior year and we weren’t in the same classes. We went to different colleges. You majored in poli sci and I majored in education. You
went to Stanford and I went to the University of Arizona.”

“Go, Wildcats!”

“I didn’t have time to attend games, Jax. I was busy working two waitressing jobs and studying the rest of the time. We didn’t all have full scholarships. I’ll be paying
off student loans until I’m thirty. So don’t think we ever had anything in common.”

Jax looked confused, then a little embarrassed. “Oh,” he said. “Okay, then we’re good?”

She looked him up and down with the same disapproving expression that Mom gave him the night he’d told them about dropping out of Stanford. “
I’m
good,” she said.
“I’m not sure what you are.”

Jax grinned again, but it was a strained grin. “Ouch, that’s brutal.” Then he slipped around the corner and disappeared.

Hannah looked at me sympathetically. “Sorry about that, Chris. It’s just that I’m a little surprised about Jax. We all had such high hopes for him. Maybe that wasn’t
fair. Anyone can crack under too much pressure.”

Were we still talking about Jax—or me?

She shrugged. “Still, no one expected him to end up like this.”

“I get it,” I said. “Neither did I.”

She nodded at my sore face. “The Jax I knew in high school wouldn’t have let that happen. He would have protected you.”

She grabbed her bag of books and left.

I stood alone in the kitchen a moment. She was right. The Jax I knew wouldn’t have let that happen to me. He’d have stopped the game or told Fauxhawk to get out of the park and take
his punk team with him.

But not this Jax. This Jax had just stood by and watched.

I’d been making excuses for his behavior long enough. I needed to confront him right now with everything I knew.

I jumped up and headed for his room, feeling like a gunslinger walking down Main Street for a showdown.

I WALKED
up the stairs as Mom shouted, “How’d it go, Chris?”

“Fine,” I shouted back, and hurried up the stairs. Parents are like Wi-Fi: you have to get beyond their broadcast range if you want any privacy.

Jax’s door was open, so I burst into his room, my face hot with anger. “I want to know what’s going on and I want to know right now!”

He was lying on his bed reading a book. He threw something at me.

I caught it in midair. A bag of frozen peas.

“Put it on your face. The swelling’s starting to come back.”

“Since when do we have vegetables in the house?” I asked. Mom hadn’t cooked a dinner since I was old enough to order from a take-home menu. Dad occasionally made pancakes or
omelets. Our freezer held only ice cream sandwiches—and Hot Pockets for emergencies.

“Since never. I bought them at the store on my way home. They work better than ice packs, because they conform to your face.”

I stared at the frozen peas, trying to decide whether to throw them back at him or press them to my face, which actually was starting to throb again. I went with my face. “I’m
serious, Jax. I want the truth.”

I expected him to grin and say something cheesy like “You can’t handle the truth” or another line from a movie. But he didn’t. He just sighed and nodded for me to sit
down. I sat on the chair at his desk.

“I know you haven’t been going to Stanford,” I told him. “I know that you haven’t even lived at that address you gave us.”

He stared at me with a surprised expression. “Do Mom and Dad know?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell them.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”

He sat up anxiously. “Don’t say anything to them, Chris. Please. It’s important.”

“Then tell me what’s going on, Jax. Tell me where you’ve been for more than a year while we all thought you were studying law.”

“Can’t you just trust me, SP?” He slapped on his big, fat charming smile. “You know, Bro Code. Brothers have each other’s backs.”

“That’s the thing, man. You haven’t really had my back since you got back home. And I want to know why, or I’m going right down to tell Mom and Dad what I
know.”

“Things are…complicated.”

I snorted (Brooke would have been proud). “Complicated? That’s a line from every ABC Family show ever.”

“Good point,” he said. “I’m asking you to trust me, Chris.”

“How can I trust you when all you’ve done is lie to us?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Great. Tell them to me.”

He sighed. He tossed his book onto his desk. It slid across and knocked his keys to the floor.

“Crap,” he said. He started to get up from the bed to retrieve them when he suddenly winced and grabbed his right side. The pain was so intense that he sat back on the bed.

“Jax!” I shouted, and knelt beside him. I lifted up his shirt and saw a bag of frozen corn strapped to his ribs with an elastic ankle wrap.

He tried to push me away, but he was weak. “I’m fine, bro.”

I removed the wrap and bag of corn. A huge boot-shaped bruise darkened his skin like a giant tattoo. “Oh my God, Jax! What happened?”

“Basketball accident?” he said with a weak chuckle.

When I looked at his back, I saw several more bruises. I got up and marched toward the door.

“Hey! Where are you going?” he asked.

“To get Mom and Dad. You need medical help. And maybe even a lawyer.”

Jax jumped up, winced, and hugged his bruised ribs. He blocked the door. “You can’t do that, Chris. Seriously. For all of your sakes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t want to put you guys in danger. But if you tell Mom and Dad, that’s exactly what will happen.”

I said nothing. I had to think. All this was happening so fast that I didn’t know what to do.

“I know it looks bad, Chris. And I know you’re only looking out for me. But I need you to just sit down and listen for a minute.” He pointed to the desk chair.

“This better be good,” I said as I sat. “Otherwise, I’m telling Mom and Dad.”

“Okay.” Jax sat back on the bed. He grabbed the bag of frozen corn and slipped it under his shirt, pinning it to his ribs with his arm. “At least we’ll have a healthy
snack of corn and peas after this is over.” He smiled.

I didn’t. “Just talk.”

“I’m involved in something, Chris,” he began, carefully choosing his words. “I can’t tell you what, because I don’t want you involved.”

“I
am
involved.”

“Not really.”

“Did the basketball game today with the Undertakers have something to do with what you’re into?”

He nodded. “Only a little.”

I took the bag of peas off my face to show him the swelling. “Then I’m involved.”

He groaned. “You don’t understand and I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. For now, I need you to trust me and not tell Mom and Dad. Or any of your friends.”

“Because they’d be in danger?” I said sarcastically.

“Yes. It’s not a game, bro. These people don’t play around.” He nodded at his bruised body. “As you can see.”

“Who did this? Was it Faux—I mean Rand?”

Jax shrugged. “He wears very thick boots.”

“Why did he do this?”

“I owe him money.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“How much? I have savings. Almost a thousand dollars.”

“Really?” Jax laughed. “I’ve never saved more than a hundred bucks in my life. Anyway, I appreciate the gesture, man, but it’s not enough. Not nearly.”

We both sat there for a minute, neither speaking.

“So, is he going to kill you or something if you don’t give him the money?”

Jax shrugged. “No, because then he wouldn’t get his money. But he can make me very uncomfortable until I pay.”

Tears were starting to form in my eyes. I tried to force them back. This wasn’t the time to fall apart. My brother needed help.

“And you thought you could win the money back if we beat the Undertakers? You had to know we couldn’t. They’re older and bigger and probably even better.”

“Rand gave me great odds. If you had won, I would’ve been out of debt. Free and clear. It was worth the risk.”

“What about the risk to
us
? Those guys were monsters.”

Jax looked down, embarrassed. “Yeah, you’re right. I got so caught up in my own problems I didn’t stop to think.”

“So all this is because you have a gambling problem?”

“Pretty much.”

“You dropped out of Stanford Law School to gamble?”

“Ironic, huh?” he said.

“Don’t try to be cute, Jax!” I hollered. “Not now! Not about all this!”

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How do we fix this? Make Rand go away?”

Jax sat up and looked me straight in the eye. I’d never seen him so serious. “You know how you’re always checking places out, trying to figure how Master Thief would rob
them?”

I nodded.

“Well, I need you to give me a plan for how to rob a local business.”

“What?!”

“I need to go in after hours, when the place is closed, and steal enough stuff to pay off my debt.”

I slumped over. My stomach felt like a WWE wrestling ring and someone was slamming metal chairs into my intestines. “That’s just going to make things worse, Jax. What if you get
caught?”

“I won’t.”

“Yeah, right, because no criminal ever gets caught.”

“I’m not your average criminal.”

“Since when did you start being
any
kind of criminal?”The tears were back and I was fighting a losing battle keeping them in. I wiped my eyes, pretending I was just
tired.

“I’m not a criminal, Chris. Not really. This is a onetime thing. And I promise you that I will make it up to everyone involved. I swear to you. I just need you to trust me.” He
reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “You saved my life when you were just a baby. Now I’m asking you to do it again.”

I frowned at him. “Dude, that line’s even cheesier than ‘It’s complicated.’”

“Desperate times call for desperate cheese.” He squeezed my shoulder in a brotherly way. “Will you do it, Chris? Will you help me?”

I was still trying to process everything when the bedroom door opened and Dad walked in. “So, what are you guys talking about?”

THE
house was dark.

Evil dark. Like the dark when you wake up inside a sealed coffin.

The only light was from a dim flashlight that would start to fade out until whacked against the leg.

In the room down the hall on the right was a creepy moaning, like someone in a hospital for the criminally insane.

Which is exactly where we were.

Suddenly the door on the left flew open and a woman in a shredded white dress leaped out with an ax. Her face was ghastly: the skin burned off from acid, one eye hanging half out of its socket,
her thin lips stretched over her teeth like a skeleton face. Her wedding dress was covered in blood.

Fortunately, all this was happening to someone else on the movie screen. Nevertheless, Dad and I crouched down in our seats. We were both wearing sweatshirts with the hoods up and cinched tight
around our faces so only our eyes were visible. This is how we always dressed when we went to a horror film.