hundred cubic centimeters larger than modern-day humans.”
“So I’m not a Cro-Magnon, you’re saying, but merely a lug head.”
“Grunt once for Taco Bell, twice for Domino’s.”
“At least you didn’t say Sbarro’s.”
“Crap.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No, I mean Monday is roadwork,” Nicole said, going tiptoe to look over my shoulder. “They weren’t supposed to be here.”
“Nic!” This girl from the tennis team, Samantha Rees, practically tackled Nicole into the Coke machine. “Did you get the Care Bears package?”
“Thank you, Sam. It was adorable. I meant to text you back.”
“But you never do. How are we supposed to get in touch with you?”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better.”
“The gate guard wouldn’t let us visit you the other day. Seriously nasty dude.”
“It wasn’t him. I think my mom was trying to keep the house quiet.”
“Nic, we love you. We want to be here for you. When are you coming back?”
“This is Jay,” Nicole said.
“Oh yeah,” Sam said. “I remember you.” She shook my hand a little too eagerly, and I knew that she was replaying it: my pep rally swim. “I mean, from the other day,” she said. “The caf? I was at the table two behind you and one to the right?”
“Oh right,” I said, pretending I remembered the exact location of all five hundred students in the cafeteria.
“He was eating alone,” she said to Nicole. “For the record? I totally respect that.”
More of the team rolled up in their running gear, a fog of wet red rain suits. They were all over Nicole with hugs. Nicole put up a happy front for a second or so, until her hand went to her hip to grab her phone. “Mom, can you hang on a sec?” She apologized that she had to take the call. The other girls headed off to the locker room with promises they would keep calling her until she called them back. “Welcome back, Jay,” that girl Sam said. “Eat with us next time.”
“Definitely,” I said, knowing I never would.
This one girl, Marisol Wood, a sophomore who was by Facebook consensus the prettiest girl in her class, hung back. She was trying not to cry. “Nic, when you’re done with the phone, could I talk to you for a sec?”
Seeing the girl was upset, Nicole became upset. She led the girl to the far side of the vending machines. Without bothering to tell her mother she would call her back, Nicole handed me her phone. She’d done it absentmindedly, her focus on Marisol.
I already knew her phone was off. She hadn’t turned it back on after shutting it down a few minutes earlier. Nicole Castro had faked an incoming call to ditch the girls that were crowding around her. I never would have pegged her the type to be sneaky like that. She hugged Marisol, rubbing her back, smiling as she whispered into Marisol’s ear. Marisol went from sobbing to laughing.
I went to the pro shop and marveled at how much money a person could blow on tennis crap. This was a long way from the hand-me-down Slazenger and a dented three-can of half-bald Penns. A limited edition faux snakeskin racquet cover for $600? Really? And why does sticking an alligator on a shirt raise the price eighty-five bucks? Tennis and reptiles: I see the connection. Nicole found me pricing out energy bars. “What exactly is partially hydrolyzed caseinate, and why would you put it in food?” I said.
“I actually know what that is, for some ridiculous reason,” she said.
“The reason is you have a ridiculously high IQ. What world-ending problem did our friend back there drop on you? Her date to the dance stood her up?”
“Her parents are splitting up. They’d been trying to reconcile, but her dad left for good the other day, she’s pretty sure. She wanted some advice.”
“On what?”
“How not to hate her father.” Then Nicole told me about
“Way more face time than most parents give their kids,” I said. “At least that’s how it shakes out in my house.”
“You can tell me, you know? Your story. I can keep a secret better than anybody,” she said.
“Not sure I can trust you.”
“Pretty sly there, pretending your mother called to avoid Sam and them.”
“You should talk, with your iPod earbuds that lead to nowhere.” She looked back over her shoulder, to where Marisol was punching a text into her phone. “We’re all acting, right? Faking our way through.” Her mood darkened, and suddenly. “Part of me wanted to shake her, hard, and say, ‘Hey, I know things suck for you right now, but can you find somebody else’s shoulder to cry on? My plate is kind of full at the moment,’ as in, ‘Do you not see this bandage on my face?’” Her face flushed, and then she gulped, and the red faded from her skin. Now she seemed exhausted. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, I get it,” I said.
“Do you really, though?”
“Yeah. I do. Really.” I was actually relieved to see her angry. Before that, her seeming acceptance of her fate wasn’t natural.
We were rounding a corner toward the parking lot when Chrissie Vratos bounced up to Nicole with a bump that was almost hard enough to be a shove. “You think it’s funny, Nic?”
“What is your problem?”
“Like you didn’t sic them on me?”
“Who?”
“Give me a break. The detectives? Yeah, they called me in for questioning. They told me they asked you who you thought might have done it, and that you gave them a list, and I was right there, on top.”
“I didn’t even mention you. I never even gave them a list.”
“You mean the one where you drove the ball at my head?” Nicole said.
“You told them about that thing with the squirt bottle. How could you do this to me? I was just joking around.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What squirt bottle?”
Sam pushed between Chrissie and Nicole. Sam said, “The time Diana Poisson beat her and she squirted her water bottle into Diana’s face.” She grabbed Chrissie’s sweatshirt hood and tugged her toward the locker room. “Nic wasn’t even there that day, idiot,” Sam said to Chrissie. Marisol and some of the other girls pushed Chrissie toward the door.
“I told the detectives I had a hunch about who might have burned you,” Chrissie said. “I told them I thought you might have done it to yourself.”
I said what I’m sure everybody was thinking: “Why would she ruin herself?”
Chrissie smiled. “Because, Spaceman, as you’ll soon find out, chica is a psycho.”
Sam jerked on Chrissie’s hood and practically dragged her down the hall.
Nicole called out, “What did the detectives say when you said that I, you know.”
“Burned yourself?” Chrissie said. “Nothing. They didn’t look surprised at all. As if they’d been thinking it all along.”
By the time we got out of the club it was almost 6:30, an hour past sunset, not that you could have seen it that day with the rain. The sky was gunmetal gray and swirling.
