The Underdogs (15 page)

The Green Monster was the perfect hitting companion. It was a very forgiving partner and
always
hit right back to her. By the end of her first week, she'd taught herself a rough facsimile of a forehand, a backhand, and an underhand slice. All from watching other people.

Considering it was dead summer and the club's air-conditioning could only do so much on the cavernous indoor courts, she'd be boiling hot in her sweatpants and oversize T-shirts, along with extra support from the bra my mom had bought her. It was kinda sad because she had her eye on a white collared Ellesse shirt with pink trim, but Lucky couldn't afford a seventy-five-dollar tennis shirt, and anyway it didn't come in Evie's size. I could see how much she wanted it, and also Serene's lavender tennis skirt, but same problem.

The whole time she played, my eye was drawn to the Wilson graphite in her hand. Such an unusual sight, and yet it looked like it was meant to be there, her fingers wrapped tightly around the leather grip. I had to ask myself: Would that racket turn out to be Evie's instrument, the weapon she needed to face the world? Maybe, I thought, just maybe, my friend had finally found a cure for her melancholy.

 

Before

One day in late July, Evie overheard something she shouldn't have. Annabel's BFF from St. Claire High, Portia, was speaking in hushed tones to Celia as they freshened up in the women's locker room.

Portia was saying that Annabel was upset about something. And that it was big. Evie recalled it vividly because it was such a surprise to her that someone like Annabel even
had
problems.
I don't know what's wrong with her,
Portia said, standing in front of a mirror, brushing her long brown hair over and over.
She's been my closest friend since we were in kindergarten. I can tell when something's up.

Celia had piped up with teenage-girl platitudes:
She's probably PMSing. It's just a bad day. She seems fine to me!
But Portia had shaken her head “in a foreboding manner,” according to Evie.

That's not it,
Portia had said.
I'm worried, and I'm going to Europe with my parents tomorrow for the rest of the summer.

Evie had walked away from that with a sixth sense that something was very wrong.

Later that same day, with this encounter weighing on her mind, Evie bumped into Annabel herself. It was an odd twist of fate that the beauty happened to stay extra late on a day when Lucky had completely forgotten about Evie again. My mom was off duty, so I wasn't even around to keep her company. Evie ran into Annabel in the otherwise empty ladies' room.

“Hey,” Annabel had said to her.

“Hey,” Evie said back coolly, as she relayed it to me later.

“How's it going?” she asked Evie.

“Good,” Evie said. “How about you?”

Annabel hesitated. “I'm good,” she said finally, and smiled at Evie, who later described it to me as a sort of
hungry
expression.

Annabel moved a few feet away from the sinks to the full-length mirror and started examining herself, turning sideways, sucking in her nonexistent tummy. Annabel hadn't looked quite so perfect then. Her hair, usually straight and shiny, was mussed just the smallest bit, and then Evie saw why. Annabel was playing with it obsessively, brushing it behind her ear every few seconds. The sparkle seemed to be gone from her eyes and her skin looked more pale and dry than tanned and robust like it usually did. She was fidgeting like crazy: fingering her hair, tugging at her shirt, fiddling with her beloved dog necklace.

Evie took a deep breath, turned her back on the sinks to face Annabel in front of that mirror, and mustered up the strength to ask shyly, “Are you sure?”

Annabel froze. “I'm sorry?”

She looked quickly at Evie and then back at the mirror. She started tugging on her pink cotton midriff-baring halter top, staring into that mirror again. Evie had never seen her do that before, not in her bikini out at the pool, not in the lobby, not anywhere.

“Is something wrong, Annabel?”

Annabel faced Evie. Something about the confidence in how Evie spoke got through to Annabel. Her eyes teared up, and the fact that Evie had been right, that Annabel had responded to her, emboldened my friend to actually carry on a conversation with her idol, listen, and ask questions. Annabel cleared her throat and composed herself.

“Do you know how many calories fidgeting burns? It's ridiculous. I can burn off half my calories while playing with my hair.” Annabel was looking for approval in Evie's eyes. “It's pathetic, isn't it?”

“No,” Evie said. “It's not pathetic at all.”

My friend later told me she felt like she was out of her own body in that brief moment when she was the strong one in the face of this tortured beauty.

The tears came back and Annabel said, “I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't tell anyone. No one will understand.
I
don't even understand it.”

She sat down on a wooden bench in the changing area and Evie stayed where she was, to give the girl space. “I understand,” Evie said. She said she'd never forget the smell of Annabel: it was the smell of flowers and elegance.

“Everyone tells me how happy I should be. What a perfect life I have. But I don't feel perfect—and I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“You're not crazy, Annabel. Lots of girls feel that way,” Evie assured her.

Annabel asked, “What're you doing here so late? Aren't you in that tennis camp?”

Evie shook her head. “My dad works here. I only watch.”

Annabel crinkled her nose. “I happen to know the camp gets out at five on the dot. Come on now. What are you still doing here?”

Evie, in the spirit of sharing and honesty, admitted her father's deadbeat behavior.

“My dad kind of, like, forgot about me. He's so busy and sometimes he—”

“Forgets.” Annabel nodded. “That sucks. But no biggie. I'll drive you home. You're really easy to talk to, you know,” she said, rising and smiling at Evie for real this time.

They walked through the lobby together, so close that every few steps Annabel brushed against her, and to Evie's dismay not a single person who mattered saw them begin their friendship. In the car, Evie told me, Annabel had shared more with her than any girl ever had, and she'd talked and talked, and Evie listened. Two things Annabel
didn't
mention were Goran and Patrick. Evie learned a few things that night, but not about Annabel's love life.

 

After

Goran was not doing well. His tennis game was on the fritz, and the Yale Championships—his last chance to hit number one this year—was coming up fast. Evie and I winced as he shanked another backhand into the net. Will shouted from across the court:
“Concentrate!”
Youch. If the Missile was misfiring, we knew Goran was in trouble. You didn't need a psychology degree to see he was grieving for Annabel; his looseness was gone, his legendary confidence shaken.

He slammed a down-the-line forehand so wide of the line Will couldn't get to it, oblivious that Detective Ashlock, who'd just breezed by Evie and me sitting on the lobby sofa during afternoon camp session, was heading his way. We tiptoed behind him, keeping our distance as he cruised through the café doorway and took a sharp right—straight to Court 1. We were hot on his heels and managed to plant ourselves in the walkway behind the green curtain, peeking through a crack after he'd disappeared onto the court.

Goran ended another rally with a net ball. Thoroughly irritated, he tossed his Volcano Onyx high in the air. When he turned to catch it, he saw the detective—and didn't miss a beat. He caught the racket and said, steely eyed, “I do not have time to stop. You may talk to me while I practice.” He fed a ball to Will, bouncing on his feet waiting for the return.

“That's okay,” Ashlock boomed from ten feet behind the baseline. He seemed startled by his own voice; I don't think he realized how much it would echo under that cavernous roof. “This won't take long.”

He looked wildly out of place, and for the first time since we'd been spying on him, he wasn't in charge. Or so it seemed. “Your shoes,” Ashlock yelled over the sound of slamming balls and squeaking footwork.

Goran lunged for a wide forehand from Will, and proceeded to nail it out of bounds. Will yelled, “Focus, Goran. Keep your eye on the ball.”

Goran said nothing and started another rally.

Ashlock tried again. “Nice sneakers. Are they Volcano exclusives?”

“Of course.” Said sneakers squeaked against the green surface as Goran nailed a shot. I remembered Goran showing off the new, experimental shoes the company had sent him, and Will shaking his head about style over substance.

“I notice you wear them a lot. In fact, every time I see you,” Ashlock said.

“Yeah. They're kind of helpful (
grunt, thwap
) for playing tennis.” He was in a killer rally with his coach now.

“I also like the little decoration on the right shoe.”

Goran huffed and puffed and hit a down-the-line forehand humming with topspin, his stylishly longish dark hair whipping as he did.

“I asked myself,” Ashlock yelled, “why is this tough guy wearing a heart on his sneaker? Is it a good luck charm? A mistake at the sneaker factory?”

Will hit a mid-court shot right to Goran, but our handsome tennis machine, clad in black-and-white Volcano gear that day, didn't even swing for it. The ball died and rolled into the curtain. Goran turned around slowly to face the detective, hugging his shiny Volcano Onyx tightly to his chest. “Say what you need to say so I can get back to my training.”

Ashlock crouched and, kneeling before our god of the fuzzy yellow ball, examined Goran's right shoe. “This little pink heart,” Ashlock said, peering closely at the sneaker's instep: “Annabel drew this on your shoe for good luck during one of your meetings behind Court 9, didn't she? And despite knowing there will be evidence on this shoe because it—and you—were with her the night she died, you keep wearing it because you feel like you have to honor her somehow. Am I getting warm?”

Evie mouthed to me,
Oh. My. Gosh.
I knew this would be almost too much for her to process. I, too, felt the revelation like a punch to the gut. I mean, this put into astonishing perspective Ashlock's demanding to look at Mom's and Gene's shoes that first day.

Will took off jogging from the other side as the detective rose and leveled his steely gaze at Goran. “If I look under your shoe right now, I'm going to find microscopic flakes—flakes you would've missed when you scrubbed them—that we can match to the vomit at the pool. More to the point, we will match an imprint we found in that vomit with your exclusive, one-of-a-kind, not-available-in-stores sneaker with a very distinctive pattern on the sole.”

Goran was not cowed. He stood tall, with a firm set to his jaw. “There is nothing I can say to the evidence,” he replied in thick-accented English. “I was there. I did not kill her.”

Will slid up to stand next to his student. “I don't believe you have to talk to the police if you don't want to, Goran,” he said with narrowed eyes.

Goran spoke anyway. “I will tell you this. This has killed me, do you understand? I might as well be dead myself. You are right about one thing. It is my fault this happened.”

I could practically hear my—and Evie's—heart thumping.

“You found her body, didn't you?” Ashlock confirmed quietly. “Why didn't you call the police if you had nothing to do with her death?”

Goran laughed sardonically. “In my country, you do not call the police. Look, sir, I was at the club for a date with Annabel. Things were finally perfect with us. There are always rumors about me in the tennis world, and she'd started to believe them—until I proved to her they were lies. I'd promised to meet her here after a dinner with my parents and we were going to make a fresh start. Annabel was going to sneak out, and we were to meet at midnight, but my car broke down. I called and called, but she never picked up. Then the phone went to voice mail. I didn't have enough cash for a cab and I didn't want her to think I stood her up, so I left my car and walked six miles home, took my dad's car, and drove here.”

“Let me guess,” Ashlock said. “You have your own key.”

Goran looked confused. “Of course.”

That was the joke of this whole investigation. See, my mom and Gene had given Ashlock the answer they believed to be true back when he'd asked who had keys to the club. It was a short list. But it was inaccurate. The truth was, everyone and their uncle had a key to this club. Patrick had gone out and copied the master key years ago when Gene had loaned it to him for some after-hours tennis training, and over the years keys had been copied again and passed down to junior staff, senior staff, and even members.

Now Goran had a lump in his throat. “And so I went out to the pool and saw her there. I—I—didn't know what to do. I don't know what happened. I was three hours late; it was three a.m. Because of me, someone killed her.” Goran looked on the verge of a breakdown. “If I'd been there, no one could've hurt her. But I swear: she was dead when I arrived, and I knew the lifeguard would come very soon. I did not think it would do any harm if no one ever knew I was there.”

It broke my heart to hear that Annabel was waiting for the love of her short life to come and meet her, but evil came instead. I figured Ashlock had to give Goran a big hug now. Instead, he said, “Mr. Vanek, I'm going to have to take those shoes with me. You are officially a person of interest in the murder of Annabel Harper.”

Goran didn't flinch. “My parents have hired a lawyer, so from now on you must speak to her. And check Annabel's texts, her phone records. You will see I am telling the truth.”