Just a pause. A moment when it wasn’t hard to tell Chris’s team was already groaning, setting up for a loss, while Jimmy took aim, bending his knees...and sent the ball sailing. It hit the backboard, bumped the rim, and two dozen hearts hammered all at once, filling the air with tension like anticipatory drumbeats.
Before it went whooshing down through the net, and Chris’s team swarmed Jimmy, shouting and grinning and shoving him with careful, playful affection while he laughed, eyes wide and dazed as if he couldn’t believe he’d done that.
Because Chris set him up for it, Damon thought.
Because it was just like Chris to notice how often Jimmy was left out.
Damn it.
Last point. Game over; time to break, get them into the showers, and send them off for lunch. Damon let his whistle shrill over the court again, then jerked his head at the boys who’d benched it on the bleachers to work on homework, excused for medical reasons. The basketball players broke apart, laughing and shoving lightly at each other; Damon caught Chris’s name in a little good-natured ribbing, when anyone who ended up on the opposing team in gym class usually knew they were going to lose.
Luke.
The name popped into Damon’s head as he watched the boys straggle toward the locker room and disappear inside. Chris’s roommate was Luke Maddow. Fourth period gym, after lunch.
Cornering Chris’s roommate was probably too obvious.
But Damon could at least keep an eye on Luke, and watch for any obvious tells.
He ducked into his office adjacent to the locker room, just so he could listen for anything like he always did—hazing, fights, he liked to give the boys their privacy to change but keep an ear out for anything he needed to break up. He had a stack of permission slips on his desk for this year’s JV enrollment, parents—or more likely harried, overworked personal assistants—giving their consent and paying gear fees, providing emergency contact information, a few other necessary technicalities. Damon passed the time flicking through and checking them for accuracy, only half listening while everyone wrapped up and started filing out before the bell rang for lunch.
Until he caught the sound of Chris’s voice drawing closer, in tandem with that Clark kid’s, while Jimmy trailed in their wake like a little duckling, watching them with starry eyes. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Chris looked completely relaxed, casual, his eyes lit up with amusement at whatever Clark had said to make him laugh and gently thump his fist to the smaller boy’s shoulder.
But Chris’s laughter vanished as Damon stood from behind his desk and flicked his fingers. “Northcote. Can you stay a minute?”
Chris paused, exchanging looks with Clark, before Clark gave him that look every boy between the ages of ten and eighteen knew far too well:
You’re in it now.
Shaking their heads, Clark and Jimmy escaped quickly, cutting out into the gym, while Chris lingered for a hesitant second before plastering on a smile. “Sure, Coach,” he said, angling through the door of Damon’s office. “What’s up?”
Damon settled to lean against his desk, folding his arms over his chest and studying Chris. He looked normal, maybe a little tired; was Damon reading too much into that hesitation, or into Chris’s easy smile? Damon had called him and several of the other players over after class for any number of reasons—ranging from talking about how they felt about upcoming games to something about their gear, and the boys were so used to it by now that they always came to him without hesitation. They rarely thought of him as a teacher; as someone who could get them in trouble. They just thought of him as Coach.
So why was there a certain wariness behind Chris’s smile, as if suddenly he saw not Coach Louis, but Mr. Louis, and the threat of discipline and punishment dangling over his head?
You’re imagining it.
You and Falwell got this idea in your heads that something’s up, so now you’re looking for something that isn’t there to settle this uneasy feeling inside you.
He wasn’t sure how to approach this, anyway. He wasn’t any fucking good at prodding for information, dissembling, that kind of thing. So he just decided to go straight up with it, and asked, “You gonna make practice this afternoon?”
No—he sure as hell wasn’t imagining the way Chris’s eyes darted to the side, and the guilty flush in his cheeks. Chris parted his lips, but didn’t say anything; he just made an odd sound, then turned his head aside, rubbing his hand to the back of his neck.
“Maybe...?” he hedged. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling that great. Might need to bench it.”
“Yeah?” Damon drummed his fingers against his inner arm. “You been in to see the nurse?”
“Not yet,” Chris answered almost too quickly. “I just, you know, started feeling a little weird during the game. Want to wait and see how I feel. Might’ve just gotten overheated, you know?”
The thing with kids was they couldn’t fake casual if somebody fucking paid them—and Chris’s attempt at casual, with his wide, easy grin and steady fixed stare, instead made him look like someone smiling at gunpoint.
Damon just eyed him, then sighed, looking away. “You sure you ain’t staying to work on that art project? I saw it. Falwell showed me. That wisteria tree. You’re damned good, kid.”
Chris made a soft, choked sound; that smile turned to a frozen grimace. “Oh...you...you talked to Mr. Falwell?”
“Talk to him all the time.” Well...since yesterday. “Faculty meetings. Lunches. That kinda thing. You got a problem with me talking to Falwell, Chris?”
Say it.
Just come clean with me, kid.
But Chris only let out a forced laugh that pitched his voice up by a whole damned octave, and shook his head. “Nah. Mr. Falwell’s nice. He’s been helping me a lot with the fine details, ’cause it’s really hard with something that delicate.”
There’d been a certain light in Rian’s eyes, when he’d talked about the things he’d made. Subtle, but there: like candleglow in a dark room, that brightness so small and yet standing out like a scream against so much empty nothing.
That light wasn’t there, when Chris talked about the sculpture project he was supposed to be so invested in; invested enough that he’d skip practice to work on it.
In fact, he didn’t sound interested at all.
Damon sighed. “Once you’re done with that thing, you gonna start showing your face again? We’ve got our first home game in two weeks.”
“Sure,” Chris said, nodding quickly. “I don’t wanna miss the game, Coach.”
He said it the same way he talked about the wisteria sculpture.