Citrus County (8 page)

“I’m not
asking
you,” Mrs. Conner said. She raked her rust-colored hair. “And I know about the vocab quizzes. Don’t try and legitimize your class by stealing from the English curriculum.”

“Which kiss-ass is spying for you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Hibma said. “Your shoes are way too small. Your toes flop out onto the floor. Can’t you feel it?”

Mrs. Conner had looked down her nose at Mr. Hibma, using the lower part of her bifocals, keeping her composure.

The tryout. Twenty-one girls. Mr. Hibma started them out with stretching, putting them in a circle and having each choose one body part. He backed off and watched the unsteady things roll their necks, bend at the waist, perform jumping jacks. He was more an impostor in the gym than in the classroom. He didn’t even know where the locker rooms or the weight room or the coaches’ offices were. He’d never, as far as he knew, blown a whistle. He’d never yelled at anyone for that person’s own good.

Mr. Hibma closed his eyes and controlled his breathing. He would fake his way through this. If he possessed a talent for anything, it was faking his way through things. This was
his
gym. He was a natural component of this environment. He had boundless energy. Weeks would pass; they had no choice but to pass. The games would come and go and no one would notice that Mr. Hibma wasn’t really a coach. As far as these stretching girls were concerned, he was the supreme sultan of basketball.

He held their athletic futures in his hands. Mr. Hibma strode over and stared at the girls and they quit giggling and whispering. They eyed one another.

Mr. Hibma guided himself through a lecture about boxing out. He set up a drill in which he launched errant shots and made the girls slam into each other trying to claim the rebounds. He tried his whistle and rapidly grew fond of it. Mr. Hibma could’ve picked the team already. It was obvious which girls were afraid of the ball and which weren’t. He would keep fifteen; he could keep the three cute girls and never have to play them in a real game. They’d be third-string, morale-boosters, something for the fans to look at.

It occurred to Mr. Hibma to sit all the girls down and speak about the importance of their appearances. In middle school, he reminded them, ugly girls were intimidated by pretty girls. Hell, it was that way with adult women. A team could gain an advantage by keeping tan and having their nails done.

“Do you know what active-length nails are?” he asked. “Spend your allowances on a good haircut, down in Pinellas County. Stop at Macy’s and learn a little about makeup.”

Eventually Mr. Hibma had to let the girls scrimmage. The short twins with the big teeth could shoot three-pointers. A girl with muscular legs and no eyebrows beat everyone down court each time but was too jittery to complete a layup. One girl, extremely skinny with a bowl cut, could handle the ball. She dribbled between her legs and behind her back and whipped passes here and there. Scoring was at a premium, but the scrimmage had the
look
of a basketball game.

Afterward, the girls huddled again. The twins looked at each other. “Coach?” one said.

“Don’t call me coach. Call me Mr. Hibma.”

“Mr. Himba?”

“Not Him-ba.
Hib
ma.”

“Do we really have to get our hair and nails done?”

“If you want to start.”

There was a murmur and then it died down.

“Now,” said Mr. Hibma. “Important business.”

He explained that it was all of the girls’ personal responsibilities to get the two huge girls who threw the shot and the discus to try out for the team. Rosa, the Mexican one, and Sherrie, the other one, had to try out. This was vital.

“Befriend them,” ordered Mr. Hibma. “Pressure them. Bribe them. Just get them the hell out here.”

Walking onto the school grounds, right up the main drag near the sign that said
CITRUS MIDDLE SCHOOL
in concrete letters, Toby was called over by two women in a shiny blue car. They were the FBI agents. Their car looked like it had been washed about five minutes ago. The hood was dazzling in the morning sun. They didn’t bother to get out. The one talking to Toby was in the driver’s seat. She had very short hair.

She said, “Don’t worry, sport, we won’t make you late. We won’t make you tardy.”

Toby felt hot. He didn’t know if it was because of the agents or because the sun had found him. Toby did not feel worried, in general, about the cops or these agents, but maybe he was just telling himself that. He stood there and partook of quiet deep breaths while the woman asked him questions, mostly about Shelby. Toby answered them honestly. He told them Shelby had come to see him during PE class a couple times before she officially returned to school. He told her they had geography class together. The other agent, the one in the passenger seat, didn’t even look over. She squinted out her window.

“Want a bagel?” the agent in the driver’s seat said. “Apparently my partner’s lost her appetite.”

Toby shook his head. He didn’t fidget. This FBI agent had no accusation in her eyes. She wasn’t trying to make Toby nervous. She was underestimating him, like everyone did. She was questioning him only because she didn’t have any good leads, only because he was a friend of Shelby’s and she was casting a wide net.

She adjusted her mirror and put on some lip balm. “Is it fair to say you’re in tight with all the troublemakers around here?”

“No,” said Toby.

“Don’t you all run together?”

“I don’t run with anyone.”

“A lone wolf, huh?” said the agent. “Here’s the thing. A lot of these cases crack because people can’t keep secrets. There’s certain secrets that get heavy and people can’t take it anymore and they tell someone. Then
that
person tells someone.”

The agent stopped talking. She didn’t start again until Toby nodded.

“I want you to be my ears. If any of your buddies say anything I’d be interested in, you let me know.”

Toby told her he would and she gave him a staged smile.

“What do you kids do for fun around here?” she asked.

“Fun?” Toby said.

“You’ve heard of it, right?”

Toby took a broad look around the parking lot, at all the kids getting dropped off by their parents, bags being jerked out of trunks. “I don’t know what
they
do,” Toby said. “I walk around. I get the lay of the land.”

Toby’s eyes had adjusted to the gleaming of the car’s paint job. He could see into the back seat. There weren’t any guns or high-tech equipment. There was a case of bottled water.

“Is she your girlfriend?” The agent leaned out the window. Now there was something in her eyes. “Is Shelby your girlfriend?”

“No,” said Toby.

“How about this: Are you her boyfriend?”

Toby took a step back.

“I can see it, the whole goody-goody with the bad boy thing. It’s a time-honored tradition.”

“Shelby’s not a goody-goody,” Toby said.

“It’s okay to be a goody-goody. I’m a goody-goody and I do all right.”

The agent grinned like she’d made a joke, but no one was going to laugh. Especially not her partner. She handed Toby a business card.

“Okay, sport,” she said. “I’m going to roll up the window now.”

The afternoon hours were the flattest. They were like Citrus County itself, fit only for ambush. Shelby wanted to get higher or lower. There were no basements, no second stories. Her house had no attic. Shelby didn’t want to keep walking on the same ground. She was on a dumb plank of land where nothing would roll away. Everything stayed right where it was and festered. Shelby had been reduced to silly fantasies—visions of her and her dad moving off and working a farm somewhere, visions of going to stay with her Aunt Dale in Iceland, of having Aunt Dale show her how to be a rigid, invulnerable woman. Shelby wanted something more dramatic, more honest. She wanted a crashing ocean instead of the wash of the Gulf. She wanted weather that could kill you. She wanted respect from someone who actually knew how to judge.

She walked around the outside of her house, finding no way to get onto the roof. She ended up in the backyard, lost. She lifted the kiddie pool and flipped it over and curled underneath it. The sounds in the air, the accidental noises of the world, were different under the plastic shell. They seemed to come from a long way off, from the bottom of some blue sea. Shelby felt animalistic. She detected a strength, a madness, a rogue element inside her that would help her shape the days of her life. She wanted to determine herself. She wanted to force her way into an open destiny.

On his way to track practice, Toby walked up on Shelby at the playground. She had a newspaper, like the first time he’d talked to her here, when Kaley had been swinging. She held the paper at arm’s length as if it smelled bad. Toby didn’t know what she was doing at the playground. She ought to be avoiding this place. Toby kind of missed the old Shelby, the regular Shelby. It was disorienting to be around someone bleaker than himself. And Toby still had a slight fear that Shelby would detect his guilt with some sisterly sixth sense. He sometimes suspected she could read him like a book, that she would look into his eyes and see Kaley slumped against the bunker wall on her cot, her dirty feet smudging up her sheets, her ears red and teeth gnashed. Shelby wasn’t looking for clues, though. She had never been part of the search. She was just trying to understand what it meant that her sister was gone.

Toby sat down on the end of the bench. Shelby wore a thin T-shirt that revealed the soft form of her breasts, which shifted each time she moved her arms to turn a page.

“They’re opening a jazz bar in Crystal River,” she said. Nothing was happening in her face. “Have you ever heard anything more pitiful?” She folded the paper, taking the time to follow the original creases, then flung it under the bench. ”They say music soothes the soul.”

“I haven’t heard much music.” Toby found that he wanted to say something to make her feel okay. He wanted to see some hope in her.

“How come you still haven’t asked for my phone number?” Shelby said.

“Because I don’t have a phone,” said Toby.

“In your house, you don’t have a phone?”

“Never have.”

“Your uncle again, huh?”

Toby shrugged. The swing set looked lonesome. Toby wished they’d come and tear it down already, get rid of this old playground that didn’t belong here.

“Can I ask
you
something?” he said. “Did you really throw a bunch of Cracker Barrel on a girl?”

Shelby’s lips pinched. “All that stuff is still in the fridge. My dad won’t throw it out because that would mean admitting how much time has passed.” She looked at Toby flatly. “I don’t know what we eat anymore. I really don’t.”

Toby tried to keep his eyes from darting to Shelby’s chest. He felt sick. He felt like he might throw up and he never felt like that. Shelby rested her arm down the length of the bench. She touched Toby’s ear.

“What the hell are you wearing?” she asked him.

Toby had on skimpy green shorts and a tank top that read greece.

“You’re shallow,” he said. “Making fun of someone’s clothes is shallow.”

“You haven’t been to Greece, have you?”

“I haven’t even been to a Greek restaurant.”

Shelby drew her arms to her chest and shuddered, startled to be cold.

“I know it’s going to be okay,” Toby said. “We’ll be okay.”

“You don’t have to try to be a good guy.” Shelby drew a breath. Thunder could be heard, far off. “We won’t be okay, you know that.”

“I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

The thunder was steady and not very threatening. If it did anything harmful, it would be to other people. Toby, out of nowhere, could feel his courage gathering. His stomach didn’t feel bad. This wasn’t the dashing focus his evil sometimes provided him, but his own simple, native courage. Shelby considered Toby the one good thing about Florida and Toby knew it. He slid down the bench toward Shelby and heard the newspaper crumpling under his feet. He could smell Shelby’s hair. She had goose bumps but to Toby she was warm. Suddenly she hopped up, startling Toby, her boots making a chirp. She strode past the swing set, leaving muddled tracks in the sand. As she passed, she pulled one of the swings in the air and released it and it was still swinging when she disappeared around the corner. It was the swing Kaley had been in that day. Toby couldn’t raise himself off the bench. He watched the swing. He watched it until it stilled, until its slight movement was the work of the breeze.

When Toby got to practice, Coach Scolle was herding everyone into a circle. He said they had to move ass because if he felt one drop of rain he was clearing the field; no one was getting struck by lightning on his watch. He went around and made everyone name their goals for the season. Vince, the kid who tried to buy friends with gum, wanted to clear six feet at the high jump. Rosa and Sherrie, the enormous girls, wanted to beat Pasco High, a black school that, with the exception of girls’ volleyball, dominated all sports within the district. When it was Toby’s turn, Coach Scolle complained about having a pole-vaulter on the team, about having to lug the apparatus out every day, about the high-jumpers sacrificing valuable mat time, about worrying that Toby would break his neck on Coach Scolle’s watch. The coach informed Toby he would waste no energy instructing him.

“You better check that book back out and do some trial and error,” Coach Scolle said.

“I still have it,” Toby said. “I’m on chapter two—conditioning.”

“Could be a long chapter for you.”

Toby shrugged. Plenty of people on the team were in worse shape than he was, overweight even. Coach Scolle asked Toby’s goal. Because pole vault was a middle school sport only in Citrus County, Toby could not hope to win a state title, possibly not even a district title. “To learn to pole vault,” he said.

Coach Scolle huffed. “Believe it when I see it.”

This was the point at which, normally, Toby would’ve been a smart-ass. He would’ve asked the coach if the real reason he was afraid of a few clouds was that his man-perm could get damaged. If the real reason he was afraid of rain was that one of the windows of his Firebird was busted out and covered over with a plastic bag. But Toby said nothing. Being seen as a bad seed would only hinder him from here on out. He didn’t want that kind of attention. Though he hadn’t realized it when he’d tried out, he saw now that he’d joined a sports team to appear average, and showing up the coach and getting booted from the squad would defeat the purpose.