What We Saw (20 page)

“Get packed,” he says with a wink. “Pretty soon you're coming, too.”

He kisses me, then climbs onto the bus. The trace of his lips lingers for a long time, even after the bus of Buccaneers has rolled away from the news vans and protestors toward the tournament, effectively trading one battle for another.

I WAS WRONG
about the satellite trucks.

When we pull into the parking lot at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, there's a whole area for news vans, and it's packed. There must be thirty of them, lined up from all over.

Iowa basketball is a big deal—even if you're a high school team. I “knew” this, but I didn't really
know
this until we file inside the arena. It's massive. It could seat the population of my entire town, and still have room for another four thousand people.

With twenty thousand people in the same room, it's hard to stand out. For the first time in a couple weeks, it's nice to feel invisible. No one cares who I am. No one is looking at me—even sideways. As we fight toward our seats through the throngs of
people, I'm almost giddy with relief that no one is staring after me. Lindsey notices this, too.

“So weird not to see Sloane Keating lurking somewhere,” she says.

“Keep an eye open,” I warn her. “She might jump out at any moment.” Lindsey laughs, and suddenly it feels like the last two weeks are a bad dream. Rachel and Christy are as wound up as Will, each of them talking over the other. Will drapes his arm around Rachel's shoulder every now and then to see if he can get away with acting like “a baller.” Rachel jabs her fingernail into his ribs every time he says that or refers to himself as “Pistol,” and takes to calling him “Pipsqueak” instead.

When Mom leads us down toward the court, instead of up toward the cheap seats, Will almost has a coronary. “Wait,
what
?” he asks, grabbing Mom's arm.

“Surprise!” she shouts. “Adele got three extra court-side seats because she's a player's mom, and I bought two more so we can all sit close.”

Will may have shed actual tears, but I can't be sure because he was screaming so loudly that we all had to turn away.

Adele waves us toward our seats in the second row, just behind our home bench. She's dressed head to toe in Buccaneer blue and gold. Her brassy auburn curls are piled on top of her head in a gold lamé ribbon. She has even painted her lips blue with some sort of lipstick so opaque that it makes me immediately concerned about the amount of chemical coloring she will ingest during the game.

Before long, Phoebe is flying over our heads, her perfect smile frozen in place. The Buccs are announced one by one, and pandemonium breaks loose.

From the very first moment at tip-off, the game is physical. The other team has a couple of burly forwards, and their defense is deadly. Even if Dooney had been present to nail jump shots over their heads, we'd have had to fight hard. LeRon gets into foul trouble early and Coach Sanders has to rotate several other guys in and out.

Through it all, Ben is unflappable, studying the court as he brings the ball down, slowing it up at the top of the key, pointing and directing, calling plays, setting picks. He sees the whole picture every time. When nerves cause a couple of the other guys to make bad passes or Kyle to miss a shot, he shouts encouragement.

Control. Stamina. Dexterity.

Some things never change.

At the half, we are down by only two, and as the guys head into the locker room, Ben turns and points directly at me and his mom. We all cheer our heads off, Adele leading the charge, then digging into her giant purse and passing fruit snacks and candy bars down the row.

“You think of everything,” Mom tells her.

“Had a coupon,” Adele says in a low voice. “But don't tell Ben.”

A man with dark hair in a navy-blue suit sitting in front of us turns around, smiling at Adele. “That your son?” he asks.

“Sure is,” she says.

He extends a hand to her. “David Langman,” he says. “Duke basketball. We've had our eye on Ben for the past few weeks. Think he could make a great addition to our program.”

Adele is speechless for a moment, then digs into her bag for more candy, offering David Langman a Twix bar. His laugh is knowing and kind. “I'm good,” he says, declining.

“I'm sorry!” Adele drops the candy bar back into her purse. “It's just so exciting to think that he might be able to get a . . . scholarship?”

“You should be excited,” David says with a smile. “We had our eye on another player, John Doone.” His face turns somber. “Guess he got mixed up in this whole scandal at a party a couple weeks back? Anyway, we aren't looking to bring on anybody who would be a PR problem,” he explains. “Want to keep the focus solely on basketball. Ben has great court sense and a solid handle on the ball. Glad to see he kept his nose clean.”

He hands Adele his card. “I'm going to see if I can fight the lines at the bathroom. We'll be in touch.”

Rachel and Christy go with Will to get Cokes, following the Duke scout into the stands. Adele sinks back down onto her seat, staring at the business card between her glossy blue fingernails. When she looks up, I see tears in her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I smile, and put an arm around her. She nods, glancing up toward the bright lights on the ceiling, trying to keep her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.

“It's just—” She fans her hand in front of her face. “He's
worked so hard for this. It's exactly what he's always wanted.”

This last sentence reaches a cracked falsetto and releases tiny tears of joy. Mom hugs Adele from one side, and I lean in from the other. A dance mix booms over the loudspeakers and Adele springs up from between me and Mom, hooting, “Go, Big Blue!” as the drill team takes center court. They've adjusted the spacing for their routine, covering Stacey's absence completely.

“It's like she never even existed,” says Lindsey.

I nod, but don't know what to say. Her comment is true, but it also reminds me that for the past hour, I haven't thought about Stacey, or the Crisis in Coral Sands even once.

For a little while, I was just a girl watching her boyfriend play basketball—excited and cheering—and wishing things could always be just that simple.

When the second half starts, Ben sinks two threes early, and we keep a lead of six points for a while. The other team is ferocious. They have desperation on their side, and finally, with five minutes to go, LeRon fouls out. Four minutes later, it's a tie ball game.

With twenty seconds winding down on the clock, Ben brings the ball down, passing out to Reggie, who tries to drive in for a layup but has to toss the ball back to Ben at the top of the key. Ben tries again, threading an expert pass to Kyle. Kyle can't get clear either and passes back up to him.

Five, four, three . . .

As the whole arena thunders with a countdown, I see Ben
square up and let fly with a jump shot that seems to sail in slow motion toward the basket, the
thwfft
of the net drowned out by the buzzer and the roar of twenty thousand people.

Almost single-handedly, my boyfriend wins the game.

As we leap from the bleachers and run onto the court, I see Adele spring forward into David Langman's arms, smearing blue lipstick across the shoulder of his suit. Ben is nearly tackled by the entire team in the middle of the court, but he somehow stays upright and fights his way over to me.

“There you are,” he yells as he sweeps me up in the sweatiest, smelliest, most perfect embrace I have ever known. His lips find mine at center court, the strobes of a hundred photographers, flashing in purple bursts through my eyelids. Ben promises to text me as soon as he gets onto the bus, then is hustled toward the locker room on Kyle's and Reggie's shoulders.

The cameras are in full force outside the arena, too, but not all of the journalists are covering the game. As Mom and Adele push through the doors that lead into the parking lot, we are greeted by a line of anchors, using a huge crowd behind them as a backdrop for live reports. Police are roping off a walkway in the middle of what is now a full-on media circus. The handful of protestors from the school parking lot has quintupled in size, their faces covered in pink masks, their voices raised in a chant:

Not a victory for the victim!

Not a victory for the victim!

Lindsey catches my eye. “Guess not everyone has forgotten,” she says.

Far from it.

Here in the parking lot, beneath the glare of the camera lights, Stacey Stallard is the main attraction.

FRESH OUT OF
the shower after the game, I open the bathroom door to air out the steam. I'm wrapping my wet hair in a towel when I hear the words drift down the hall.

“Get a roooooooom!”

I have heard those words from that voice before. I never wanted to hear them again.

Almost before I realize what's happening, I'm throwing Will's bedroom door wide-open.

“How the hell did you find that?”

He jumps and slams the cover of his laptop, spinning around. I swing his door closed behind me as quietly as I can. I don't need Dad coming to investigate.

Will's eyes are wide and looking anywhere but at me. “What? I don't know! What are you talking about?”

I scramble across the piles on the floor of his room and flip the computer open again. There is the frozen image of the white couch, the blurred bodies of Dooney, Stacey, and the rest. My hand is trembling as I point to the screen.

“Where did you find this?”

He crosses his arms and sets his jaw. “I just . . . found it.”

I turn around and head toward the door. “Fine. You can tell Mom where—”

“Wait!” His whisper is a hurricane, angry with a silent plea at the center.

I pause, hands on my hips. Will growls quietly under his breath. “Fine,” he says. “Tyler sent it to me.”

“Where'd he get—”

“I don't
know
. Jesus. He wouldn't tell me.”

I shake my head, chewing on my front lip. “What site is it on?”

“It's not on a site,” he says. “He emailed it to me.”

“Delete it,” I say. “Now.”

“No way.
You
saw it.”

I sputter, eyes wide. “What? How do you know that?”

“Oh, c'mon, I'm a freshman, not an idiot.”

“Debatable. Explain.”

“Everybody knows you were the one who went to Ms. Speck,” he says.

“And why the hell would everybody know that?”

“It's not my fault that you were out in the parking lot talking to her and that reporter. The school has windows, you know.”

“Fine,” I say. “You want to watch it? Let's watch it. The whole thing.”

He blinks at me, his cheeks flushed from the heat of my rage. Slowly, he turns around and taps the spacebar.

The video I never wanted to see again flickers to life once more. Will sits in his desk chair, and I sink down beside him on the corner of his bed.

Rape and pillage, babeeey.

Is she drunk or dead?

I got something that'll wake her up!

Trashy.

This time I watch the corners of the screen instead of the horrible thing happening at the center, and I realize there are more people in the room than I initially noticed. The recessed lighting in the ceiling has a spotlight effect. There are a lot more people walking in and out of those bright bursts than I saw the first time. They're laughing, drinking, making out, playing beer pong on the other side of the room.

The closer you look, the more you see.

Every now and then, a group wanders by the corner of the couch that Randy is filming. They shout or point or laugh.

Dooney. Then Deacon. Then Greg. Then Dooney again. Reggie laughing. Randy shouting.

Will gasps.

I glance at him as he watches the guys paw at Stacey,
climbing on and off her. Her head flops toward the camera, her eyes roll back in their sockets. Every now and then she grunts or groans. As Will watches, his face, set like stone only moments ago, is crumbling—first the contraction of disbelief, then the crinkle of discomfort, the wide smooth planes of shock, and now the heaviness of disgust.

“No more,” he whispers. He reaches up to pause the playback only a few moments past the place where Lindsey and I called it quits.

For the second time in a week, I grab his arm, stopping his wrist over the keyboard. I push his chin back toward the screen.

“No. We have to watch, Will.” My voice chokes with tears, and I see his eyes are shining and full in the glow of the laptop. “We have to look,” I say. “We have to see what happened, so we can tell the truth about it. Stacey can barely remember. We have to help her. Not being able to say no isn't the same as saying yes.” I look back at the screen as the video continues. “She didn't deserve this.”

Will nods. He swipes at his eyes. “Nobody does,” he whispers. “Nobody deserves this.”

I ask him who he recognizes. I can't make out for sure who everybody is. We point at different people, trying to identify everyone we can see as the video ends. A split second before the playback freezes, someone steps in front of the camera. He's facing away from the lens, watching Greg and Dooney, who are still taking turns on top of Stacey. The guy stands under one of the recessed lights so close to Randy that you can't see anything
but the back of his head. The iPhone tries to refocus, going completely blurry, then zeroing in on the closest point beneath the light.

The thing nearest to the camera happens to be this guy's left ear, glowing under the halogen bulb directly over his head. He's so tall, I can see he's ducking a little to avoid scraping the low basement ceiling, and as the focus snaps sharp I see something else, too: an inch-long scar that I'd recognize anywhere.