What We Saw(68)

A man with dark hair in a navy-blue suit sitting in front of us turns around, smiling at Adele. “That your son?” he asks.

“Sure is,” she says.

He extends a hand to her. “David Langman,” he says. “Duke basketball. We’ve had our eye on Ben for the past few weeks. Think he could make a great addition to our program.”

Adele is speechless for a moment, then digs into her bag for more candy, offering David Langman a Twix bar. His laugh is knowing and kind. “I’m good,” he says, declining.

“I’m sorry!” Adele drops the candy bar back into her purse. “It’s just so exciting to think that he might be able to get a . . . scholarship?”

“You should be excited,” David says with a kind smile. “We had our eye on another player, John Doone.” His face turns somber. “Guess he got mixed up in this whole scandal at a party a couple weeks back? Anyway, we aren’t looking to bring on anybody who would be a PR problem,” he explains. “Want to keep the focus solely on basketball. Ben has great court sense and a solid handle on the ball. Glad to see he kept his nose clean.”

He hands Adele his card. “I’m going to see if I can fight the lines at the bathroom. We’ll be in touch.”

Rachel and Christy go with Will to get Cokes, following the Duke scout into the stands. Adele sinks back down onto her seat, staring at the business card between her glossy blue fingernails. When she looks up, I see tears in her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I smile, and put an arm around her. She nods and smiles, glancing up toward the bright lights on the ceiling, trying to keep her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.

“It’s just—” She fans her hand in front of her face. “He’s worked so hard for this. It’s exactly what he’s always wanted.”

This last sentence climbs the musical scale until it reaches a cracked falsetto and releases tiny tears of joy. Mom hugs Adele from one side, and I lean in from the other. A dance mix booms over the loudspeakers and Adele springs up from between me and Mom, hooting, “Go, Big Blue!” as the drill team takes center court. They’ve adjusted the spacing for their routine, covering Stacey’s absence completely.

“It’s like she never even existed,” says Lindsey.

I nod, but don’t know what to say. Her comment is true, but it also reminds me that for the past hour, I haven’t thought about Stacey, or the Crisis in Coral Sands even once.

For a little while, I was just a girl watching her boyfriend play basketball—excited and cheering—and wishing things could always be just that simple.

When the second half starts, Ben sinks two threes early, and we keep a lead of six points for a while. The other team is ferocious. They have desperation on their side, and finally, with five minutes to go, LeRon fouls out. Four minutes later, it’s a tie ball game.

With twenty seconds winding down on the clock, Ben brings the ball down, passing out to Reggie, who tries to drive in for a layup but has to toss the ball back to Ben at the top of the key. Ben tries again, threading an expert pass to Kyle. Kyle can’t get clear either and passes back up to him.

Five, four, three . . .

As the whole arena thunders with a countdown, I see Ben square up and let fly with a jump shot that seems to sail in slow motion toward the basket, the thwfft of the net drowned out by the buzzer and the roar of twenty thousand people.

Almost single-handedly, my boyfriend wins the game.

As we leap from the bleachers and run onto the court, I see Adele spring forward into David Langman’s arms, smearing blue lipstick across the shoulder of his suit. Ben is nearly tackled by the entire team in the middle of the court, but he somehow stays upright and fights his way over to me.

“There you are,” he yells as he sweeps me up in the sweatiest, smelliest, most perfect embrace I have ever known. His lips find mine at center court, the strobes of a hundred photographers, flashing in purple bursts through my eyelids. Ben promises to text me as soon as he gets onto the bus, then is hustled toward the locker room on Kyle’s and Reggie’s shoulders.

The cameras are in full force outside the arena, too, but not all of the journalists are covering the game. As Mom and Adele push through the doors that lead into the parking lot, we are greeted by a tunnel of anchors, using a huge crowd behind them as a backdrop for live reports. Police are roping off a walkway in the middle of what is now a full-on media circus. The handful of protestors from the school parking lot has quintupled in size, their faces covered in pink masks, their voices raised in a chant:

Not a victory for the victim!

Not a victory for the victim!

Lindsey catches my eye. “Guess not everyone has forgotten,” she says.

Far from it.

Here in the parking lot, beneath the glare of the camera lights, Stacey Stallard is the main attraction.











thirty-nine


FRESH OUT OF the shower after the game, I open the bathroom door to air out the steam. I’m wrapping my wet hair in a towel when I hear the words drift down the hall.

“Get a roooooooom!”

I have heard those words from that voice before. I never wanted to hear them again.

Almost before I realize what’s happening, I’m throwing Will’s bedroom door wide-open.

“How the hell did you find that?”