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“I don’t believe that for a second,” he says. “Do you want to go...somewhere else?”
“I can’t,” I tell him. “I have to be on the bus when we go back. And I’m not allowed to go anywhere…ever. Add that to your list.”
“That’s not true. You’re allowed to go to my house.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why is that?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Darci and your mom go to the church—”
“Whoa,” he says. “I’m going to stop you right there. Not my mom. Not my sister.Step.”
“Okay, well. My aunt and uncle love your stepmom. And Darci does all that youth group and camp stuff, and they think she’s like…a model citizen or some shit.”
Devon laughs. “Oh god. That’s fucking ridiculous. So they like…set you guys up?”
“Yeah, basically. She’s supposed to teach me how to…not be a shitty human, I guess.”
“What have you learned so far?” he asks.
Now, I laugh. Hard. “Not a lot. But you know what? She has been my friend. She’s been good to me. She could have easily ditched me, and then I wouldn’t have any, so I don’t really wanna—I mean, I can’t—say anything bad about Darci.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do my best to hold it in.”
It’s true. I know she’s not always good to others, but she has been good to me. At first, I could feel the pity coming off of her, and I felt like the charity case that I was, but it eroded into something that does feel like a genuine friendship.
I don’t like all of them all the time. Audrey is mean because she likes it, and it gives her power. We tolerate each other at best. Morgan is just as pretty as the other two but more laid-back and the athletic type. She isn’t concerned with high school socialpolitics the way the others are, but she effortlessly falls into her place. She plays volleyball with Darci and me in the fall, but basketball is where she stands out. There are already colleges paying attention.
And then, there’s Darci. She’s smart but also selfish. I’ve seen her scheming first-hand; it’s not always easy to watch, and she’s not the kind of person whose bad side you want to be on. Still, there’s only one reason people at this school don’t say shit about me being a foster kid or my mom being in jail—one tall, blonde reason.
I’ve also seen another side of her that I don’t think the others have—someone who is maybe hurting a little more than we know, but people like that always are, aren’t they? I wonder where I’d have to look to find Darci’s scars.
“Hargrove!” Coach P yells, waving me over.
“He doesn’t like the whole fraternizing with our peers at meets thing,” I tell him. “Unprofessional.”
I push off the ground and walk away from the bleachers to where Coach Parks stands, glaring at me over his clipboard.
Devon scoffs. “He fucks students, but okay.”
What?My head whips back in his direction.“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. How long have you been here?”
Not quite a year now, but I think he knows that. I havesomany questions. Since I can’t ask them, I shake my head and keep walking in Coach’s direction.
I sit in the grass next to him and a few other field event girls, trying to reconcile this new information. I guess it isn’t thatsurprising—the part where he’d do shit like that. Short, beefy dude with a complex. How original.
But who would sleep with him? He wears white Oakleys with one of those strings attached to both ends, for fuck’s sake.
“Hargrove, are you okay?” he asks, likely noticing I’m staring. I get a look at my reflection in the yellow lenses of the aforementioned sunglasses and realize I’m grimacing.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m good.”
In the end, we lose, and we board the bus again. No one is surprised; we expected it. The only thing I didn’t expect was that their school would hand out ribbons through sixth place; they usually only do this at larger events. I run the fourth-place ribbon through my fingers, laughing when I think about adding it to the box under my bed with my other three ribbons. Still, it feels good to win something, even if it’s only this and even if I don’t have anyone to give a shit, and I’m weirdly proud of it. Maybe I could mail it to my mom; I wonder if they’d let her keep it. I make a mental note to look that up.
The bus makes it back to the school around 8:00 PM. I’m one of the last ones off, purposely taking my time watching my teammates disperse to their own or their parent’s vehicles. It’s always awkward when one of them offers me a ride, and I have to refuse it.
