One of Us is Lying(76)
Reporters are another story. They’re dying to talk to me. I brace myself when a camera lights up as I leave the locker room, waiting for the woman with the microphone to cycle through the usual half-dozen questions. But she catches me by surprise.
“Cooper, what do you think about Nate Macauley’s arrest?”
“Huh?” I stop short, too shocked to brush past her, and Luis almost bumps into me.
“You haven’t heard?” The reporter grins like I handed her a winning lottery ticket. “Nate Macauley’s been arrested for Simon Kelleher’s murder, and the Bayview Police are saying you’re no longer a person of interest. Can you tell me how that feels?”
“Um …” Nope. I can’t. Or won’t. Same difference. “Excuse me.”
“The hell?” Luis mutters once we’re past the camera gauntlet. He pulls out his phone and swipes wildly as I spot my father’s car. “Damn, she wasn’t lying. Dude.” He stares at me with wide eyes. “You’re off the hook.”
Weird, but that hadn’t even occurred to me till he said it.
We’re giving Luis a ride home, which is good since it cuts down the time Pop and I need to spend alone. Luis and I drop our bags in the backseat, and I climb into the passenger seat while Luis settles himself into the back. Pop’s fiddling with the radio, trying to find a news station. “They arrested that Macauley kid,” he says with grim satisfaction. “I’ll tell you what, they’re gonna have a pack of lawsuits on their hands when this is done. Starting with me.”
He slides his eyes to my left as I sit. That’s Pop’s new thing: he looks near me. He hasn’t met my eyes once since I told him about Kris.
“Well, you had to figure it was Nate,” Luis says calmly. Throws Nate right under the bus, like he hadn’t been sitting with the guy at lunch all last week.
I don’t know what to think. If I’d had to point a finger at someone when this all started, it would’ve been Nate. Even though he’d acted genuinely desperate when he was searching for Simon’s EpiPen. He was the person I knew the least, and he was already a criminal, so … it wasn’t much of a stretch.
But when the entire Bayview High cafeteria was ready to take me down like a pack of hyenas, Nate was the only person who said anything. I never thanked him, but I’ve thought a lot about how much worse school would’ve gotten if he’d brushed past me and let things snowball.
My phone’s filled with text messages, but the only ones I care about are a string from Kris. Other than a quick visit to warn Kris about the police and apologize for the oncoming media onslaught, I’ve barely seen him in the past couple of weeks. Even though people know about us, we haven’t had a chance to be normal.
I’m still not sure what that would even look like. I wish I could find out.
Omg saw the news
This is good right??
Call when you can
I text him back while half listening to Pop and Luis talk. After we drop Luis off silence settles between me and my father, dense as fog. I’m the first to break it. “So how’d I do?”
“Good. Looked good.” Bare-minimum response, as usual lately.
I try again. “I talked to the scout from Cal State.”
He snorts. “Cal State. Not even top ten.”
“Right,” I acknowledge.
We catch sight of the news vans when we’re halfway down our street. “Goddamn it,” Pop mutters. “Here we go again. Hope this was worth it.”
“What was worth it?”
He pulls around a news van, throws the gearshift into park, and yanks the key out of the ignition. “Your choice.”
Anger flares inside me—at both his words and how he spits them out without even looking at me. “None of this is a choice,” I say, but the noise outside swallows my words as he opens the door.
The reporter gauntlet is thinner than usual, so I’m guessing most of them are at Bronwyn’s. I follow Pop inside, where he immediately heads for the living room and turns on the TV. I’m supposed to do postgame stretching now, but my father hasn’t bothered to remind me about my routine for a while.
Nonny’s in the kitchen, making buttered toast with brown sugar on top. “How was the game, darlin’?”
“Fantastic,” I say heavily, collapsing into a chair. I pick up a stray quarter and spin it into a silvery blur across the kitchen table. “I pitched great, but nobody cares.”
“Now, now.” She sits across from me with her toast and offers me a slice, but I push it back toward her. “Give it time. Do you remember what I told you in the hospital?” I shake my head. “Things’ll get worse before they get better. Well, they surely did get worse, and now there’s nowhere to go but up.” She takes a bite and I keep spinning the quarter until she swallows. “You should bring that boy of yours by sometime for dinner, Cooper. It’s about time we met him.”
I try to picture my father making conversation with Kris over chicken casserole. “Pop would hate that.”
“Well, he’ll have to get used to it, won’t he?”
Before I can answer her, my phone buzzes with a text from a number I don’t recognize. It’s Bronwyn. I got your number from Addy. Can I call you?
Sure.
My phone rings within seconds. “Hi, Cooper. You’ve heard about Nate?”