The Rivals (18 page)

Then his voice is low in my ear. “I’m going to spend one hour with Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Stanford, and then I’d really like to take you to the science lab.” He takes out a key from his front jeans pocket and dangles it in front of me. “I have a key.”

“Then we really should experiment.”

As we’re packing up our books an hour later, Martin tells me about kangaroos. “Did you know they’re not really from Australia?”

“I have to say I did not know that at all, Mr. Summers,” I say, and give him a grin, because this is yet another reason why I am crazy about him. He is fascinated with biology and he loves to share what he learns. He’ll get this excited look in his eyes; I’ve seen it many times when he talks about biology and science and animal behavior. This is music to him; this is his Beethoven and Chopin.

“They’ve been fooling everyone, those sneaky marsupials. Now there’s evidence they’re really from South America,” he says, and begins telling me about jumping genes and junk DNA, but then I get a text I can’t ignore. It’s from Jones, so I flip open my phone to read it as Martin talks.

Dad just called. So pissed. Come visit?

I turn back to Martin and he’s no longer talking and there’s this look in his eyes now. Retreat, maybe. Because maybe he thinks I’m like the girl who says she loves football when she dates the quarterback but is just faking her affection for punts and plays and handoffs.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because I don’t want to be that girl. I’m not that girl. I’m not faking it. I’m not faking anything with Martin.

“No worries,” he says, and looks away as he jams a book in his backpack.

“Can I take a rain check?” I ask.

Martin gives me a curious look.

“It’s Jones,” I explain, and I feel my cheeks go red.

“You guys going to go practice or something?”

“Uh, no,” I say.

“Okay,” he says slowly, waiting for me to explain why I’m dissing him for another boy.

“It’s just…I need to see him,” I say. I’m guessing now would be another bad time to mention that weekend trip to New York.

“You need to see him,” Martin repeats, and it’s not the words he’s saying that matter, it’s the surprise in his voice; it’s the way he knows I’m not telling him everything. But I can’t. I’ve sworn to Jones I won’t tell anyone about his dad, not even Martin. “I thought we were going to…”

“I know and, trust me, I want to. I would much rather be experimenting with you. But it’s just he’s going through some stuff, okay?”

Martin holds up his hands and now he’s the one backing off. “Then
stuff
should take precedence, especially with the soon-to-be rock star.”

“Martin,” I say, protesting, “that’s not fair.”

“I’m not going to apologize for wanting to be with you,” he says. “Especially after the other night.”

And there’s that stretching, tearing feeling again. Only this time I feel like I’m being ripped in half and it hurts like a son of a bitch.

Jones is alone in his room because Jones has a single. He requested it, made a case for it, saying he’d hate to disturb roommates with late-night violin playing. He is now one of the few seniors who lives roomie-free, though his late-night playing is of the guitar variety only.

“Come in,” he says after I knock.

His hands are wrapped around the silver body of his guitar, and he leans back on his bed.

“Feeling up your girlfriend?”

“Oh yeah. Problem is she’s a cold fish.”

I pull out a chair and sit down. “So, what’s going on?”

Jones rolls his eyes and pushes his guitar to the side of his bed. He puts his hands behind his head and closes his eyes. “He’s such a dick. Now he said if I’m going to keep up my cold front with him, he’s going to rethink whether he’ll pay for college.”

“Wow. He’s hard core.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. This is obviously why companies call him to clean up their messes. He hasn’t met a line he won’t cross.”

I bristle for a moment, thinking of all the lines I’ve been crossing—snooping, spying, little-white-lying. Am I like Jones’s father, playing both sides, justifying every action and inaction if I can get what I want in the end?

“Do you think he’ll really cut you off, Jones?”

Jones sits up, pushes a hand through his long dark hair. “I don’t know. He might be bluffing. He might not be. But the fact is, this is what he does. This is how he operates. You’ll never know what the truth is with him, just the strategy.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I would gladly go to community college. I’m not going to beg him for money.”

“Dude. You are a rock star,” I say, admiring my gutsy friend for standing firm on his own moral ground, for wanting his dad to be a man of conviction too.

What’s my moral ground, though? Have I somehow become more like the father than the son?

I haven’t been in one of the freshman dorms since I was a freshman. But here I am now with Anjali. As we visit some of the first-years and ask them questions, I feel a bit like we’re door-to-door salesmen. I tell her that, and she laughs. Her laugh even sounds French.

“I wish I sounded cool like you. You must be able to get away with anything with an accent like that,” I tease as we walk down the hall.

She raises an eyebrow playfully, then whispers, “The best part is how it works on the boys. They’ll do pretty much anything when I unleash my Full Euro Woman on them.”

I crack up, and so does she.

“I think it already worked on Parker,” I say.

She shrugs, then smiles. “He’s kind of cute.”

I refrain from saying
to each her own
, and instead we visit with some freshmen in the Debate Club who look scared out of their minds to be talking to the head of the Mockingbirds and Full Euro Woman. When we ask about the Annie dealing and the cheating ring, they all shake their heads and say variations on
no
and
nothing
and
I don’t know a thing
.

“Maybe we should post some signs in the hallway,” Anjali suggests as we make a pit stop in the girls’ room. “They might be too nervous to say anything right now. But we could use the signs to encourage them to track us down if they have info.”

“That’s a brilliant idea,” I say. “I really wish you were on the board, Anjali. But I’m superglad you’re helping.”

“Why don’t we make them orange for Annie?”

“Yes!” I say, snapping my fingers. “And we can put lyrics on them since we’re a
singing group
. Like to a song with orange in the title. ‘Follow me, don’t follow me,’” I say, then sing the rest of the chorus to R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush.” “It’s old school and all, but it’s kind of the perfect song in a totally sick way, because if you’re snorting Annie, you usually crush it up.”

“Ewww!”

Together we make posters and tack them up in the freshman dorm hallways, urging anyone who knows anything about a little “Orange Crush” to come forward.

As we leave I notice a few freshmen glance at the signs, including a short, awkward-looking boy.

Call it a sixth sense.

Even though the dancers are done for the day, I can tell the studio’s not empty. Even though they left hours ago, I
know
someone’s in there. So as I leave the music hall the next evening, I decide to follow my senses. I walk slowly down the hall, tiptoeing until the windows come into view.

He’s there, alone. Theo. I stand to the side, just out of sight, watching him. He’s wearing black pants and a white T-shirt. His head is tossed back, arms to the side, and he’s almost slinking across the floor, a slow, sumptuous sort of glide. Then he leaps, and I find myself crossing my fingers, hoping he lands without pain. When his bare feet meet the hardwood, I can see he’s clearly favoring the right knee. The left one is the damaged one. He winces, closes his eyes, opens them, spins once, twice, leaning again to the right. Then he falls, and my heart catches. I open the door to see if he’s okay, but as I do he’s simply pushing himself back up and I realize, stupidly, he meant to fall.

It was part of the choreography.

But now he’s stopped because I’m here.

“Hey,” I say, brushing an unseen piece of lint off my shirt. “I was just…”

“Watching me?”

“I thought you fell.”

“I did. Then I got up.”

“Anyway, sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you want to watch? I
miss
having an audience,” he says, and I can hear myself in him, in his voice, in the longing, and it’s like this quiet hum connecting us, an invisible thread of energy that links us.

“I would feel that way too. It’s the same with music. We’re meant to play it for an audience. Dancers are meant to dance for others,” I say as if I’m in a trance, enchanted by his artistry, and there’s no way I can ask him anything about cheating right now. Not when he’s been cheated out of what he loves.

“Exactly. It’s not dance unless it’s seen.”

“Your knee’s not the same,” I say, pointing to his leg, because I can’t stop talking to him or asking him questions.

“Never will be,” he says, and if I could bottle his voice and sell it as sadness it’d be the perfect recipe. But no one wants to buy that, just like no one wants to watch a broken boy.

“How do you do it? How do you deal? How do you just get through the day?”

“Not well,” he says, but then he returns to the dance. I watch him, becoming his audience, his only audience, maybe the only one who’ll watch him anymore. He’s not the same. He’s not even close. But there’s still something poetic in the way he moves.

When he’s done, I clap, then stand, then bow.

“My last standing ovation,” he says wistfully, then returns the bow with a flourish. He runs a hand through his caramel-colored hair, then walks back and stands right in front of me, maybe five, six inches away. He’s taller than me, so much taller. I’m used to taller because Martin is easily six feet, but Theo’s got a few inches on Martin.

Theo looks down at me and his eyes are harsh now. “Parker’s not very good at his job,” he says, punctuating every word.

I feel like I’ve been cruelly woken from a sweet dream. The dance is over; the dancer is gone. “What did you say?”

“He should be more like you. He should try just having a conversation. Maybe if he did, then he’d learn something. Instead he follows me. I know you guys are investigating me,” he says. “Remember, I’m not stupid.”

“I never thought you were.”

“You guys need to butt out.”

“Who said we’re in?” I say, playing it cool.

“I mean it. You should stay out of it. It doesn’t involve you,” he says, then grabs his backpack. “But I would expect
you
of all people to understand.”

He lets those last words linger. Neither one of us moves, neither one of us makes a break for the hall. We’re stuck here in some strange sort of standoff in the dance studio.

I decide to make the first move.

“I
do
understand. But that doesn’t make it okay,” I say.

“Ah, but that is where we disagree,” he says. “And now it’s time for me to go. Shall I walk you back to your dorm?”

He’s serious. He can shift gears and go back to how we were just seconds ago. I wish I were like that, able to section off parts of myself and my emotions. But every feeling in me spills over, blurring into the next one.

I shake my head and gesture to the music hall. “I’m going to play some more.”

“Alex?”

“Yes?”

“You can watch me dance anytime,” he says tenderly. He is soft again, sweet again, and I look at him curiously, like I could peel away a layer, then another, then see underneath, see who he really is. Then I realize he is truly two people now. He’s the boy who could dance, and he’s the boy who can no longer dance.

He is severed in half.

And because I’m not that cruel, I’m not that mean, I tell him yes. “I’ll watch you again, Theo.”

Then I return to the music hall and I don’t stop playing. I play past midnight, I play while the world is inky black and sleeping, I play until the first light of dawn peeks through the windows, I play because I can. And finally, when I am spent, when I am exhausted, I play one last piece before I lay my cheek on the keys.

September rolls to an end, sweeping the last remains of summer with it as autumn pulls in, bringing my eighteenth birthday, crackling leaves, cooler skies, and a big fat piece of evidence thanks to the orange posters. I find an envelope inside my mailbox one afternoon. A twinge of excitement rushes through me as I slide my finger under the flap. I reach inside and there are two slips of paper. I look at the first one. It’s an Anderin prescription, a real one, from a local doctor. I look at the second one. Same prescription, same doctor, same signature, except the
T
and the
R
are much more legible in the second one—the forged one.

And as I make out the last name, I feel like I’ve just been sucker punched.

But I pull myself together to read the note:
There’s more where this came from. I need your help. Can we meet?

It’s signed Calvin Tarkenton, then his year. He’s a first-year. Despite my shaky fingers and jittery heart, I call him and tell him to meet us in the basement laundry room at eight. Then I tell him to bring quarters.

Four hours later, I’m playing Trivial Pursuit with Parker and Martin and, I have to say, even though the game is for show, I am kicking their asses. But it only lasts for five minutes because at eight on the dot, Calvin arrives.

Calvin is a small, awkward thing, pale, with cheeks marked by acne scars and an Adam’s apple so precariously large, it teeters off his throat. I realize he’s the boy I saw checking out the posters we slapped up a few days ago. I introduce myself, then Parker and Martin, and I invite Calvin to start his laundry so the sounds muffle our conversation. Calvin almost trips over his own feet on the way back from the washers.

“Thank you for coming. Do you want to tell us what you know?” I ask gently, because this boy seems to need a soft touch right now.