The Dance (11 page)

It was good to be out in the fresh air again. The stress had been so thick inside, Michael thought, it had been as bad as a noxious gas. He understood why many kids, like Jessica, took the test seriously. Most name colleges, after all, demanded high SAT scores. But for him, it had been a piece of cake. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had a perfect score so far.

“The team got snuffed last night after you left,” Bubba said.

“Serves the coach right after what he did,” Jessica said.

“How did Nick do?” Michael asked.

The three of them were standing near Sanders High’s closed snack bar. Bubba was taking the exam in another room. They had only a minute to talk. They still had two thirty-minute sections to complete.

“When our guys gave him the ball, he put it in the basket,” Bubba said. “But that didn’t happen much until it was too late.”

“Nick will make his mark,” Michael said confidently. “I’m surprised to see you here, Bubba. You say you’re not going to college. Why are you taking the test?”

“For fun.”

Jessica groaned, taking out her bottle of yellow pills and popping a couple with the help of a nearby drinking fountain. “I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather be doing this morning,” she said.

“What are those, morning-after pills?” Bubba asked.

“Bubba,” Michael said. Jessica didn’t appear insulted.

“They’re No-Doz,” she said.

“Since when does No-Doz require a prescription?” Bubba asked.

“This is just a bottle my dad puts them in,” Jessica said.

“Let me see it,” Bubba said. Jessica handed it over. Bubba studied the label. “Valium,” he muttered. He opened the bottle, held a pill up to the light. “You’ve got the wrong bottle, sister. These
are
Valium.”

Jessica snapped the bottle back. “That’s impossible I asked my mom which bottle to take and she said the one on top of the—” Jessica stopped to stifle a yawn. Then a look of pure panic crossed her face and she spilled the whole bottle of pills into her palm. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

Bubba chuckled. “How many of those babies did you take?”

“Three altogether.” She swallowed, turning to Michael, her eyes wide with fright. “What am I going to do?”

The hand bell signaling the end of the break rang. “You only took the last two a minute ago,” Michael said. “Run to the bathroom. Make yourself throw up.”

“Better hurry,” Bubba said, enjoying himself. “They dissolve like sugar in water.”

Michael took hold of Jessica’s elbow. “There’s a rest room around the corner. Go on, do it.”

“I can’t! I can never make myself throw up.”

“You just haven’t had a good enough reason,” Bubba said.

“Shut up,” Michael said. “It’s easy, Jessie. Stick your finger down your throat. You won’t be able to help but gag.”

The bell rang again. Jessica began to tremble. “I don’t have time,” she said anxiously. “We have to get back. I might mess up my blouse.”

“And I hear Stanford doesn’t stand for messy blouses,” Bubba said sympathetically, shaking his head.

“What is the normal dosage for those pills?” Michael asked.

“One,” Jessica said miserably, close to tears. “I can’t throw up, Michael. Even when I have the stomach flu, I can’t.”

“You’ve got to try,” Michael said. “You’re tired to begin with. If you don’t get the drug out of your system, you’ll fall asleep before you can finish the test. Go on. There’s time. I’ll wait for you.”

Nodding weakly, she headed for the bathroom. Michael turned on Bubba. “Why are you hassling her at a time like this?” he demanded.

“She stood you up last week to go out with Bill and you’re worried about her test score?” Bubba snorted. “Let me tell you something, Mike—and I say this as a friend—forget about Jessica Hart. She’s not who you think she is. She doesn’t care who she hurts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. I’ve got to finish the test. If she passes out, be sure to give her a good-night kiss for me.”

Michael didn’t understand Bubba’s hostility. Jessica’s going out with Bill didn’t explain it. In Bubba’s personal philosophy, all was fair in love. Also, Bubba hurt people left and right, and always rationalized his actions by saying the people in question must have bad karma.

Michael decided to wait outside the test room. He wanted to keep an eye on the proctor should she restart the examination before Jessica returned.

He received a surprise when the lady came into the hallway to speak to him. “Are you the Michael Olson who won the work-study position at Jet Propulsion Laboratory last summer?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s me.”

She smiled, offered her hand. “I’m Mrs. Sullivan. My son is an engineer at JPL—Gary Sullivan. He spoke very highly of you.”

Michael shook her hand. “Gary, yeah, I remember him. He was a neat guy. No matter how busy he was, he always took time to answer my questions. Say hello to him for me.”

Mothers always loved him. Too bad he didn’t have the same luck with their daughters. The lady promised to give Gary his regards.

Jessica reappeared a few seconds before they started on the next section. She didn’t speak, just looked at him, her eyes half closed, and shook her head. He should have checked those blasted pills before she had swallowed them. From the beginning, he had wondered if they were really No-Doz. They went inside and sat down and started.

If 2X - 3 = 2, what is the value of X - .5?

(A) 2 (B) 2.5 (C) 3 (D) 4.5 (E) 5.5

On this section, they were allowed slightly more than a minute per question. Michael found he could solve most of them in ten seconds. A was obviously the answer to the first problem. He didn’t even need his scratch paper. When he got to the end of the section, however, and glanced over at Jessica, he saw she had blanketed both sides of both her scratch papers with numbers and equations. He also noticed she had filled in only half the bubbles on her answer sheet. Her beautiful brown hair hung across her face as she bent over the test booklet. But every few seconds her head would jerk up.

She’s hanging on by a thread.

The proctor called time. Jessica reached down and pulled a handkerchief from her bag, wiping her eyes.

“Jessie,” he whispered. “Hang in there.”

“I can’t think,” she moaned.

“No talking,” the lady ordered.

They began again. Reading comprehension. Michael had to force himself to concentrate. The miniature essays from which they were supposed to gather the information necessary to answer the subsequent questions were distinctly uninteresting. Also, he was peeking over at Jessica every few seconds, worried she might suddenly lose consciousness and slump to the floor.

She’s not going to get into Stanford with these test scores.

It was a pity she had waited until now to take the SAT. She would not have a chance to retake it in time to make the UC application deadlines. He really felt for her.

And what are you going to do about it?

Much to his surprise, Michael realized a portion of his mind was methodically analyzing the best way to slip her his answers. Of course he’d have to make a list of them on a piece of his scratch paper. The real question was how to get the paper into her hands without the proctor seeing. He did have a point in his favor. The lady obviously thought he was a fine, upstanding young man. Nevertheless, a diversion of sorts was called for, and the simpler the better.

It came to him a moment later. He immediately started to put it into effect. He faked a sneeze.

During the next fifteen minutes, while he polished off reading comprehension, Michael faked a dozen more sneezes. Then, after penciling in the final bubble, and without pausing a moment to recheck his work, he began to copy the answers. Yet he jotted down only those that dealt with the final two sections. This was his way, he knew, of rationalizing that he wasn’t really helping her cheat.

What if you get caught? What if she doesn’t even want your precious help?

He had an answer to that. At least he would have tried.

Carefully folding his list of answers into a tiny square, he closed his test booklet, collected his other papers, and stood. There were nine minutes left. The proctor had her eyes on him. She was smiling at how clever he was to be the first one done. He began to walk toward the front.

He was half a step past Jessica when he sneezed violently, dropping everything except his tiny square. “Excuse me,” he apologized to the room as a whole as he turned and bent down. Jessica hardly seemed to notice his presence. Both her hands were situated on top of the table. He took his tiny square of scratch paper and crammed it between her tennis shoe and sock. Then he glanced up, and—it took her a moment—she glanced down. Their eyes made contact. Knocking on dreamland’s door, she still had wit enough left to recognize his offer. She nodded slightly, almost imperceptibly.

When he handed in his stuff, the proctor proudly observed how he hadn’t needed any of his scratch paper. Thankfully, she didn’t observe that he was a page short.

“It was nice to have it handy, though,” he said. “Just in case.”

He waited for Jessica in the hallway. She came out with the group, ten minutes later, and immediately pulled him off to the side. Her big brown eyes were drowsy—he imagined that’s how they would look if he were to wake up beside her after a night’s sleep—and she was obviously wobbly on her feet, but she practically glowed.

“I would kiss you if I wasn’t afraid my breath would put you to sleep,” she said. “Thanks, Michael. You’re my guardian angel.”

“Did you have time to put down my answers?” His big chance for a kiss and he had to ask a practical question. She nodded.

“I had to erase a lot of mine, but I had time.” She yawned. “How do you think you did? Or we did?”

He laughed. “Pretty good.”

She laughed with him.

He didn’t want her driving. She said they could still go to the mountains as they had planned, as long as she could crash in his car on the way up. Even though he protested that he should take her home, she insisted an hour nap was all she needed to get back on her feet.

On the way to the parking lot, she excused herself to use the bathroom. Michael had to go himself. He ran into Bubba combing his hair in the rest-room mirror.

“Did she conk out or what?” Bubba asked.

“She did just fine—thanks for your concern.”

Bubba chuckled. “Hey, what’s a few Valium before a little test? I made it once with a six-and-a-half-foot Las Vegas showgirl after chugging down an entire bottle of Dom Perignon. Talk about a handicap in a precarious situation. She could have broken my back and paralyzed me.” He straightened his light orange sports coat. “So what did you think of the SAT?”

“A pushover.”

“Really? I had to think on a couple of parts. I probably got the hardest test in the batch.”

“I believe you,” Michael said. Bubba was pleased to hear his favorite line turned on him. “I’m serious. I think the difficulty rating varies considerably between the tests.”

Michael stopped—stopped dead. “What are you talking about? There’s only one test.”

“No. Didn’t you hear what they said at the start? They use four different tests so you can’t cheat off your neighbor.”

I’m in a bathroom. This is a good place to be sick.

Michael dashed for the door, leaving Bubba talking to himself in the mirror. He had one hope. They had come in late. Perhaps the proctor had not taken the time to select two different exams.

The lady was sorting the booklets when he entered the room. “Forget something, Mike?” she asked pleasantly, glancing up.

He had to catch his breath. “No, it’s not that. I was just wondering—My girlfriend and I, we’re going to talk about the test on the drive home, and it would be nice to know if we were talking about the same test. If you know what I mean?”

He smiled his good-boy smile that mothers everywhere found irresistible. “I don’t want to change any of my answers.”

She laughed gaily at the mere suggestion of a scholar like him doing such a despicable thing. “I can check for you, of course. But I’m sure I wouldn’t have given you the same series. What’s your girlfriend’s name?”

“Jessica Hart.”

She flipped through the computer answer sheets, found his first and set it aside, and then picked up Jessica’s, placing the two together. “No, you were code A,” she said. “Jessica was a C.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll know your scores soon enough.”

“How long?”

“Oh, with the district’s new computer system, you could receive the results in the mail in about a month.”

“Is there any way of finding out sooner?”

“You could call the test office. They might know the score as early as this coming Friday.”

He thanked her for her time. Outside, he wandered around the campus like someone who had swallowed a whole bottle of Valium, the thought
I should have known
echoing in his brain like a stuck record.

When Jessica finally caught up with him, he was standing in the campus courtyard holding on to a thin leafless tree that felt like a huge number-two marking pencil in his hand. She looked so happy that he debated whether or not to give her the next few days to enjoy it. Unfortunately, he was too devastated to psych himself up for a good lie.

“Where did you go, silly?” she asked. “I’ve been searching all over for you.” She grinned. “What’s wrong?”

“We have a problem.”

She put her hand to her mouth. “No.”

He nodded sadly. “A big problem. Our tests, Jessie, they weren’t the same.”

“No, that’s impossible. What does that mean?”

He spared her nothing. “It means you got a zero on the last two sections.” He coughed dryly. “I’m sorry.”

She stared at him for the longest imaginable moment. Then her face crumbled and her eyes clouded over. She began to cry.

This was another date they were never going to go on.

On the Thursday before homecoming, Nick Grutler stayed after practice to work on his free throws. In the game with Holden, he had been fouled every other time he’d gone to the basket. The free-throw line, only fifteen feet from the hoop, was well within his range; the problem was, he was supposed to stand relatively still while taking a foul shot, and he had trouble hitting even the backboard when he couldn’t move.

Nick put up a hundred practice shots and made half—not bad, but not great, either. He finally decided that when he was sent to the line during the game, he would just pretend he was taking an ordinary jump shot, and not mind what the people in the crowd thought.

Another reason Nick had stayed after practice was because he didn’t want to take his shower with the rest of the team. When the coach was around, and they were working on plays, the guys treated him fair enough. But if Sellers was not present and The Rock—or the other two leftovers from the football team, Jason and Kirk—were in a bad mood, which they generally were, then he got razzed. If only Michael were around, Nick thought. The week before, when Michael had been coming to practice, no one had said so much as boo to him.

Putting away his basketball, Nick briefly wondered if it was all worth it. Here it was four o’clock, and he had to be at the warehouse by five to work an eight-hour shift, and he was already exhausted. Michael had told him he had to take the long view, but that was hard to do when he could barely see where he was going late at night while riding home on his bike. He couldn’t see how all this was going to get him into college on a scholarship.

And he had thought being on the team would impress Maria. Yet as far as he knew, Maria didn’t even go to basketball games. Even if she did, and he scored a hundred points every night, she wasn’t going to talk to him. Why should she risk it? She was afraid he might kill her.

But that doesn’t matter. None of that matters.

Maria’s own words. They applied to his situation now. He had discovered something last Friday night during the game, the one thing that was giving him the strength to persevere. It had happened four minutes into the first quarter. Michael had passed the ball to him down in low. It had been the first time he had handled the ball on offense. He had two guys on him, and probably shouldn’t have put it up. He just did it on impulse, without looking for anyone to pass to. He missed, but managed to get the rebound. Stuffing it home an instant later, hearing the roar of the crowd-roaring for
him
—he felt an intoxicating power flow through his limbs. It was then the realization hit him: he
loved
to play. And it was strange, in the midst of all the hoopla, in a very quiet way, he had felt at home on the court.

He was not going to quit.

Nor was he going to accept the situation lying down. The Rock was sitting on the bench tying his shoes when Nick entered the shower room.

Nick silently laughed when he saw how quick The Rock tried to finish with his shoes, how he put his head down and tried to disappear. It occurred to Nick that, since their first encounter in the weight room, they had never been alone together.

“Hi, Rocky,” he said. “Waiting for me?”

The Rock’s finger stuck in the lace. He was not so brave when he had no one at his back. “No,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought you said. But I asked twice because, well, you’re always asking me the same question twice. It can be annoying, can’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I said, yeah.” The Rock gave up on his shoes, stood, and closed his locker. He started to step by. Nick blocked his way.

“I want to talk to you.”

“About what?” He was scared, a bit, but still cocky.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

The Rock thought about it a moment. Then he sat down. Nick remained standing, propping his foot on the locker at his back so that his knee stuck out close to The Rock’s face.

“I never thought,” Nick began, “that we would ever work together on anything, so I never cared why you despised me. But now we’re on the same team, and I don’t want it to be a losing team. I don’t think you do, either. What do you say?”

The Rock grunted, uninterested.

“What does that mean?”

“Go to hell, Grutler.” The Rock started to stand up. Nick grabbed him by the collar. The Rock’s eyes widened. Gently but firmly, Nick sat him back down.

“Now I’ve put it politely,” Nick said, still holding him by the neck of his shirt. “But you’re being rude. And that makes me mad. And the last time I got mad at you, I almost killed you. I’m asking you again, are you going to lay off me or am I going to have to finish what I started two months ago?”

Now The Rock was really afraid, and more arrogant than ever. “You would kill me, wouldn’t you?”

“I just might.”

The Rock sneered. “And you’ve got the nerve to ask why I hate your guts? Scum like you doesn’t give a damn about anybody.”

Because The Rock had jumped him twice for absolutely no reason, Nick found his response hard to fathom. He didn’t know how to answer. He let go of him and backed off a step. “Are you serious?” he asked finally.

The Rock rubbed at his tender throat, not taking his eyes off Nick now. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said bitterly.

“I don’t.”

“Get off it, Grutler.”

“I swear, I don’t. Tell me.”

“You’re a pusher.”

Nick couldn’t help but laugh. “You think I sell drugs? Man, you are one misinformed slob. I don’t even smoke pot. Who told you I’m a pusher?”

The Rock was not impressed with his denial. “I know the neighborhood you come from. I work there as a Big Brother. Before you showed up here, I used to see you at a crack house on a corner. No one had to tell me nothing about you. And none of your lies is going to keep me from wanting to spit in your face.”

Nick stopped laughing and went through a five-second period of total confusion. The Rock a Big Brother to black kids? The corner crack house? But then, in a single flash, he understood
everything
. He pointed a finger at The Rock. “You stay here. I’m going to get dressed and then we’re going for a drive in your car.”

“To where?”

“My old neighborhood.”

“Why?” The Rock asked.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Nick dressed quickly. It was half past four. It would be dark soon. He would be late to work. If Stanley was at
his
work, however, it would be worth it to clear up this case of mistaken identity.

The Rock had a blue four-wheel-drive truck. Nick gave him directions. Getting on the freeway, they listened to the radio, and hardly spoke. The Rock drove like a goddamn maniac.

They ended up on dumpy narrow streets Nick knew all too well. The sun had said good night. They could wait a long time for the broken streetlights to come on. Nick could feel the darkness inside as well as out. Yet he did so from a rather detached perspective. He had grown up in this neighborhood, but he did not feel as though he had ever belonged in this slum. He didn’t know anyone who did.

“Park here,” he said, turning off the music. “Under that tree.” The Rock did so. Nick glanced back up the street toward the house on the comer. “Is that the place you saw me?”

The Rock twisted his head around, nodded. “There’s no use denying it, Grutler.”

Nick pulled out his wallet and removed a twenty-dollar bill. He gave it to The Rock. “Go to the house and knock on the door,” he said.

The Rock fingered the bill. “What’s this for?”

“To keep you from getting knifed.” Nick smiled at the alarm on The Rock’s face. “Don’t worry, they’ll be as afraid of you as you are of them. They’ll think you’re with the cops. They won’t want to sell you anything. But ask for Stanley. Say you’re an old buddy. Be sure to say Stanley, not Stan. Have the bill out where they can see it.”

“What am I supposed to say to this Stanley?”

“Whatever you want, except don’t mention my name. You’re not afraid, are you?”

The Rock scowled at him, put the keys in his pocket. “You wait here,” he said, reaching for the door. He had a hard time getting out. He was shaking.

Nick readjusted the rearview mirror, following The Rock’s slow nervous walk toward the house. A stab of guilt touched him. He tried to rationalize that Stanley would not purposely create a messy situation that could not possibly profit him. On the other hand, Stanley might be bored and just looking for something to piss him off.

That moron had better have the sense to know when to run.

The plain white house had two qualities that distinguished it from the others on the block. It had no bushes or trees in the yard, not even grass. And the front door was split in half at the waist. They could open the top and look at you, but you couldn’t go barging in. It was so obviously a drug den, Nick didn’t know why the police hadn’t bombed the place.

Nick suddenly wished The Rock had left him the keys or, better yet, had left the car running. They might want to make a quick getaway. He watched The Rock lumber up the porch. He was fifty yards away at this point, and Nick could see the twenty trembling in his clenched fingers. He was going to say something stupid; it was practically a foregone conclusion. Nick leaned over and pulled the wiring from beneath the dashboard. He had known how to hot-wire a car since he was twelve.

When he had the truck running and looked back up, The Rock was at the door talking to someone. Nick couldn’t see who the person inside was, but he appeared to be a young black kid with a shaved head.

Dammit!

The Rock was arguing with the boy, obviously throwing his weight around. The kid disappeared, and The Rock glanced toward the truck and smiled. It was the smile—arrogant, as usual—that pushed the red alarm inside Nick. Cursing himself for trusting the imbecile not to alienate the neighborhood in a minute’s time, he jumped into the driver’s seat and put the truck in gear.

He had turned the truck around and was approaching the house when he saw a long black arm thrust out and grab The Rock by the throat.

The Rock tried to scream. A strangled whimper was all he got out. Nick remembered how strong Stanley was. The long black arm shook The Rock, pulling him off the ground and closer to the door. Nick floored the gas, then slammed on the brakes, jumping out onto the street in front of the house. He needed something, anything to distract Stanley for a second. Nick couldn’t quite see his old enemy, but he didn’t have to. The Rock was toppling into the door like prime surfer beef into the maw of a shark.

Nick spotted a Coke bottle in the gutter. The top had been cracked off, and Nick briefly wondered as he scooped it out of the dust if the last person to hold it had used it to keep someone with a knife at bay.

There was a narrow window to the right of the front door. Winding up, Nick let go with a wicked pitch. Glass shattered glass. The long arm snapped back inside. The Rock crashed to the porch floor.

“Get in the truck!” Nick yelled, leaping into the driver’s seat again. The Rock had never moved so fast on either the football field or the basketball court. Although starting from flat on his ass, he was diving into the back of the truck even as the tall black dude appeared on the porch. Nick revved first gear, leaving a trail of burnt rubber. One look at Stanley had been enough to remind him why he had gone down on his knees and thanked God the day his dad had moved him to the other side of town.

If I look half as scary as that bastard when I’m mad, no wonder people are afraid of me.

The Rock started banging on the rear windshield so Nick would stop and let him in, but Nick left him in the howling wind all the way home on the freeway. It did his heart good to see The Rock go from shaking with fear to shivering with cold. Besides, he was having a great time driving the truck.

The school parking lot was deserted when Nick finally brought the pickup to a halt, turning off the engine. He half expected The Rock to leap out of the back and start cursing. Instead, the guy got up and opened the truck door for him.

“You drive like a goddamn maniac,” The Rock said. “How did you start the truck without the keys?”

“A pusher’s trade secret,” Nick said, climbing down.

“Oh, that.” The Rock turned away. “You’ve got to admit, he did look a lot like you.”

“The only things Stanley and I have in common are that we are both tall and we are both black.”

“Then how did you know I was talking about him?”

“Cops have mistaken me for him in the past. White cops. Now, I guess, you’re going to tell me we all look alike to you.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” Finally The Rock was beginning to show signs of shame, faint signs. Sticking his fat hands in his pockets, he shitted uneasily on his feet. “I suppose I owe you an apology.”

“Especially if you lost my twenty dollars.”

The Rock glanced up, pulled out the money. “I held on to it. He didn’t scare me that bad.”

Nick chuckled as he accepted the money. “Then do you have a bladder infection or something?”

The Rock started to speak, then quickly removed his hands from his soggy pockets. He had peed his pants. “He was a crazy dude. He could have cut my throat. Why did you send me to the door?”

“I just wanted you to see him. I didn’t expect you to make him reach for his switchblade. What did you say to him?”

“I said I was a friend of yours.”

Nick groaned. “I told you not to bring me up. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Why? What did you do to him?”

Nick sighed. The truth of the matter was, he
had
been irresponsible taking The Rock to that house. Stanley was bad news. It was upsetting to Nick to remember exactly how bad, to remember how Tommy had died. It was weird; they had been such close friends for such a long time and now he hardly ever thought of Tommy. The last time had been…

When Alice had died.

No, it had been
before
Alice died, minutes before, when he had gone into that last bedroom on the left. What had been in that room that reminded him of Tommy? The only thing Alice had in common with Tommy was that they’d both died violent deaths.