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I turned my eyes to him as he leaned his head on his hand and stared ahead.
“In 1954, Edward McClanahan was my age,” he told me. “Senior, basketball star, bit of a bad boy, but only where it counted…” He smiled, teasing me. “He was good to people. He showed up for people, you know?”
I didn’t know much about Edward McClanahan, other than the basketball team made an annual pilgrimage to his grave. I never really cared.
But I stayed quiet.
“That season was supposed to be their greatest,” he said. “They had the team, the coach, the years of training… They could anticipate each other’s moves, even their thoughts.” He met my eyes. “That’s what years of playing together had brought them to. They were a family. More than family. They were in perfect symbiosis.”
Like the Horsemen. Watching them sometimes, the other players didn’t exist. Michael, Kai, Damon, and Will were like the four limbs of a single body.
“And that rarely happens,” he continued. “They relied on each other and would do anything for each other, and they were going all-conference. Everyone was hyped for what was coming that season. The games, the parties, the celebrations…”
I wondered how true all of that was. He painted a nice picture, but we believe what it suits us to believe, and nothing more. Everything seemed better in hindsight.
He smiled. “Elvis had just hit the scene, everyone wanted a Chevy Bel Air, and “Sh-Boom” by the Crew-Cuts was the number one song in America.” His face fell a little, and he continued, “Homecoming Night, a girl from Falcon’s Well—one of our rivals—showed up at our high school dance. Alone and wearing a pink dress of lace and tulle. The twinkle lights above the dance floor glittered across her hair and bare sho
ulders as she walked in, and no one could take their eyes off her. She was so nervous, knowing she didn’t belong there.” He paused, turning his head and holding my eyes. “Feeling like a mouse in a snake pit. She kept holding her stomach like she was going to throw up or something. But she was pretty. So pretty. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.”
McClanahan.
I looked off, past the Ferris wheel and toward Cold Point, seeing her in my head. The strapless pink dress that poofed out the way dresses in the fifties did, while young men wore suits.
“They say she came to cause trouble,” he told me, his soft, low voice drifting into my ear. “That the rival team sent her to sow discord. They say she taunted our whole team. Tried to get them to do things to her that night so she could play the victim the next day.”
Why was he telling me this?
“No one knows how they knew where to find the body, or if she even screamed, but she was found through the morning fog hours later, broken on the jagged rocks below,” he said, “her pink dress stained red and the waves plastering her hair to the stones as her dead eyes stared up at the cliff above. The last thing she saw was the person who pushed her.”
I tried to lick my lips, but my mouth was too dry.
“They say the team was going to have to forfeit the season under all the media scrutiny and investigation.” He drew in a long breath and exhaled. “They say all the guys who didn’t come from wealthy families were going to have to forego their hopes of athletic scholarships because of it. They wouldn’t go to college.” He paused. “They say the coach would have to be fired and move his family, the prospects of finding another job after such a scandal not high.”
I didn’t know all that. I listened as he went on.
“All I know is,” he sighed, “a week later, Edward McClanahan left a confession on his parents’ kitchen table and then followed her over the cliff. The last line of the confession read ‘We want what we want.’”
I turned my eyes on him as sweat cooled my pores.
We want what we want.
“They say McClanahan sacrificed himself so the season could go on.”
Like he took the blame? He didn’t do it?
“That’s what they say, anyway,” he mused, a gleam hitting his eyes. “But the whispers tell of something else.”
A flutter hit my stomach, and I barely breathed, waiting for him to continue.
“They say she was caught between two best friends—McClanahan, who was in love with her, and A.P., her boyfriend. He wasn’t wealthy like McClanahan, but he was clever. And ambitious. Not someone to be underestimated.”
My interest piqued even more. A mystery.
I liked mysteries.
“They say she was pregnant,” he told me. “They say she jumped.” And then he looked at me again. “They say Edward… didn’t.”
Didn’t jump? So the rumors say Edward was pushed instead?
