The Lies About Truth(43)

“Damn, girl.” Tommy clapped his hands in applause. “That’s cool as grits. Maybe I’ll name mine now.”

Oh, why not go with it, I thought.

“You’ll have to let me know if you do.”

Tommy winked at Max. “Don’t let her go, man. Any woman who can fire a gun and wear a scar as pretty as that one is a keeper.”

Tommy’s words were worth more than a hundred sessions with Fletcher, because I heard them.

“That’s the plan, Tommy,” Max told him.

“Thank you.” I stuck those words deep in Tommy’s heart.

“All truth,” he said.

We got back to game preparation after that. Max needed two bags of paintballs and some CO2 cartridges, but Tommy wouldn’t take any payment.

“On the house today. Special-occasion scar bonding,” he claimed as he helped Max fill our gun hoppers and extra ammunition clips.

Before we left, Tommy leaned over the merchandise and said to me, “I was worried you wouldn’t come this year. Your dad said you’d had a hard time of it.” He pointed to the scars again. “Don’t let anybody give you any shit out there. If they do, send ’em to me.”

“Thanks, Tommy.”

“We’re all pulling for you to win,” he told me.

I was pulling for me too.

“Wish you’d listen to me the way you listened to him,” Max said when we cleared the tent.

I traced the X I’d drawn on his chest that morning. “I listen to you.”

Everywhere we walked, Max drew a crowd. Pirates and Paintball veterans slapped his shoulder and welcomed him. People doled out careful sympathy, not wanting to tip a festive occasion toward sadness, but also not wanting to ignore his loss. Candace Rew, Max’s friend from sophomore year, also seemed happy to see him.

Candace examined me a little too long.

“Hey, Max. Hey, Sadie.” Her voice sounded like plastic knives.

I didn’t pay her many words more than Hi, but I paid her attention. Curvy and sexy. She had perfect hips, boobs that made me envious, great ponytail hair, and a face that hadn’t been through the window of a Yaris.

She hugged Max longer than I deemed necessary. I seriously considered wandering back to Tommy, but when Max felt my gravity shift in that direction, he accosted my hand. Candace, lovely Candace, looked quite confused.

I wondered . . . if she’d written Max emails all year, would she be the one with him today?

“Which team did they give you?” I asked, since she wasn’t wearing her jersey yet.

Candace rolled her eyes. “Pirates. I always want to be a privateer and every year, I get stuck with this ugly blue jersey. Privateers just sound more sophisticated than pirates.”

I knew one blue-jerseyed pirate—me—who had zero plan to be sophisticated. I’d rather be on Candace’s team than let her cozy up to Max somewhere on the island.

“Jealous?” Max asked as we walked away.

“Nope.”

“Liar?” he asked again.

“Yep.”

Maybe I understood Gray better right then than ever before. Jealousy was fast on the take.

“There’s no need,” he assured me. “Old news.”

Candace wasn’t the only roadblock we met. Everywhere we walked, we overheard conversations.

“Damn. That kid looks like his brother.”

“Who is his brother?”

“Trent McCall.”

“Oh.”

“The girl with Max . . . was she the one in the front seat?”

“Think so.”

“Shitty hand to be dealt.”

We tried to ignore them, but every comment was a barb that dug into our hearts. Especially the people who said, “Who’s this Trent dude?”

Only the person who loved Pirates and Paintball more than any of you! I wanted to scream.

Moving away from the bulk of the crowd, we tested our weapons in the little area they’d set up. The weapons were sound, and much to my relief, I nailed the target. Feeling satisfied, I asked Max to toss me my jersey.

“It matches your eyes,” he said as I slid it over my Goonies sweatshirt.

“I’d still rather be on green with you.”

With everything done, we needed to rendezvous with Gina and Gray. When I spotted them near the water stations, I snuck up and mimicked Trent’s animated voice from years past. “Pirates and Paintball!”

That made them both whip around with a smile.

“Nicely done,” Gina said.

“One of us had to say it,” I told her.

Gray raised one hand and placed the other over his heart. “I hereby declare the banner passes to Sadie Kingston.”

“Hear, hear,” Max chimed in.

“You guys know being nice doesn’t mean I won’t shoot your asses out there, right?” I teased them.

“Ladies and gentlemen . . . the warrior is back,” Gray said.

I was back. And I wasn’t the only one.

Trent had been the nucleus of our friend family. When we lost him, we lost our chemistry. Little by little, as we remembered the things we’d loved and shared with him, the genetic material began to reemerge. We were still a makeshift group without him, but a group. If we kept this up, going back to school would be easier.