On the Loose (9 page)

My heart does a little flip as the sound of a seat being vacated ricochets in my ear. I turn around, and there, right behind me is none other than
the
Trevor Jackson.

Sighhhhh
.

Our eyes meet briefly as he moves to take the stage next to Mrs. Hall. Did we have a moment there? I think we just had a moment.

He was sitting behind me the whole time, and I didn’t even know it?

I suddenly get why Frances drools when she sees Nash.

“Thank you.”

Oh. He speaks.

Trevor runs a hand through his dark brown hair. His state champ baseball ring gleams on his finger. This boy is the total package—beautiful, an all-star athlete, and a sensitive, yet talented actor.

Which makes him totally off limits to me. He’s so out of my league. I’m meat loaf. He’s filet mignon.

“I’m glad to be working with you guys. I hear there’s a lot of talent in this particular class.”

Did he just look at me? I think he looked at me.

“We will be holding auditions after school next Friday. You can pick up your preview scripts today if you’re interested.” Trevor smiles, and my eyes are drawn to his perfectly white teeth.

Raising my hand, I’m determined not to be a Frances. I will be confident. “What is the play?” I toss my hair.

Oh, my gosh. Did I just flip my hair?
Noooooo
! Next I’ll be giggling and batting my eyelashes. (Which is still better than Frances’s drooling.)

His voice is deep and smooth. “We’ll be performing
Cinderella
.” His mouth lifts easily. “I’ll be Prince Charming.”

Oh, yeah.

Prince Charming, meet your princess.

W
hen James preaches
about hell, I think of PE.

Even though it’s a chilly, almost-spring day outside, in this gym of torture, I’m about to bake alive. Sweat drips out of every pore on my body. My hair is wet. And I can smell my own armpits.

“Katie Parker, you’re slacking. Pick those knees up!” Coach Nelson blows her ever-present whistle as I run by her. This is my seventeenth lap around the gym.

And this is just the warm-up.

Coach Nelson sports a new hairdo reminiscent of a mullet. Mullets always make me grin, but there’s nothing funny about this woman. She’s evil. She’s a tool of the devil. Coach Nelson is also the mother of Angel (ironic name, no?), somebody who quickly befriended me last semester, only to get me into some major trouble. Angel and I still hiss at each other like old farm cats from time to time, but mostly we’ve managed to leave each other alone since “the incident.” Leaving each other alone can be hard, though. Especially when you’re in PE together.

“All right, you sissies. Line up for drills!”
Tweeeeet! Tweeeeet!

Line drills. What a great way to start a class. I love to begin the period with an activity that can induce puking.

I swipe my arm across my forehead, pulling off as much sweat as I can.

“Go!”

My legs propel my body down the court, stopping long enough to touch the floor and hustle back for more. My side throbs after five minutes of this, but I continue the sprints like I’m a Kardashian being chased by the paparazzi. At the seven-minute mark, girls begin dropping to the ground moaning in pain, grabbing their stomachs or some other injured body part. Ten minutes into the drill, and my guts are on fire. My legs scream for surrender. Three more girls quit, leaving only two of us.

Angel. And me.

Our eyes connect.

Her expression is clear.
I’m gonna run you into the ground.

I grunt in her general direction.
You gotta catch me first.

I take the lead, smelling victory (or is it just my b.o.?) and hoping Coach Nelson will blow the whistle to end this. Soon. While I’m still ahead.

I catch sight of Angel’s spiky purple hair in my peripheral vision, and I will my legs to push harder. My lungs constrict painfully as I drag in air. Angel’s arm shoots out and latches onto mine, then with a jerk, I’m propelled backwards. My nemesis darts in front and touches the floor. Just as the whistle sounds.

I glare at Angel, letting her know without words (like I could speak now anyway) what I think of her cheater tactics. Coming to a stop, I lean over, grabbing my knees. My breathing is ragged and harsh. The little kid in me wants to point my sweaty finger at Angel and ask Coach Nelson if she needs new glasses. Because she would have to be blind to not see her daughter’s manhandling of me.

But I shake it off. Like line drills, starting trouble with Angel is pointless.

“Hit the floor, ladies. Time for abs.” Coach Nelson forgoes her whistle and opts for yelling instead. “Move it!” It’s a nice variation.

I grab a mat and settle in next to Hannah. She and I have gotten closer, sharing in the pain and agony of PE. Initially Hannah was too goody-goody for me. Too sweet and syrupy. And, honestly, too dense. But she’s grown on me a lot. And she leaves her overly kind nature in the locker room in PE. Nobody—not even Hannah—can endure this class and still come out smiling.

“Give me one hundred crunches, and I want to hear you count!”

I scoot closer to Hannah. “Wow, Coach Nelson’s new mullet is making her nicer. Normally it’s a hundred and fifty crunches.”

“My stomach is already killing me,” she groans.

Hannah is a little on the plump side. Just one of the many reasons I’ve grown to like her. A lot of the girls around here are into the Hollywood anorexic look, but I know I can depend on Hannah to share a pint of Ben and Jerry’s with me.

At the coach’s next bark, we turn over onto all fours and do planks, which basically means you hold the push-up position until your arms start shaking and your shoulders and abs burn like someone’s holding a blowtorch to them.

“Now I want to see tricep dips from the floor. As soon as you get to one hundred, you can hit the showers. Count it!”

My body hurts so bad I could cry. This class should be illegal. I push through the pain, though, and set my mind on hurrying. The first one to the locker room gets the shower with the curtain that doesn’t have black mold and peep holes.

“Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine.” I heave myself up one . . . last . . . time. “One hundred.” And collapse onto the floor, my body quivering.

I drag myself up, throwing my mat into a stack and shuffle into the locker room.

The rough spray of the shower is a welcome rest, and I take a moment to just let the water work its magic.

The sweat washes away as I stand there, lost in thought.

Last night Millie acted weird. When I showed them my preview script for
Cinderella
and told them about auditions, it was like they were forcing their enthusiasm. I know they are really into my drama efforts, so it was totally out of place. What if they got news yesterday? News they didn’t share with me. When I first arrived in their home, they were very secretive about their MIA daughter. Maybe Millie got bad news, and they’re hiding that from me too.

“Where are my shoes?”

Rinsing off the last of the soap, I stick my head out the shower.

Angel tosses things out of her locker. Shirts and shorts fly everywhere. Her face is red from class. And from anger.

“Somebody in here took my shoes!” She turns on Hannah. “Have you seen them? The ones I had on earlier?”

Hannah collapses onto a bench. She mutely shakes her head.

I towel off as Angel confronts every girl in the locker room. My t-shirt slides on just as Angel plants herself in front of me.

“You.” Her nostrils flare.

I stare at her for a few seconds. My face is totally blank. I will not let her think she is intimidating me.

Which she is.

“Do you know anything about the whereabouts of my shoes? My brown leather ones?”

“Nope.” I grab my socks and take a seat.

“They were here at the beginning of class, and now they’re gone.” Perspiration still clings to her skin.

I concentrate on tying my shoelaces and don’t bother making eye contact with Angel. “Haven’t seen them.”

She picks up a gym bag and throws it against the wall. Its contents spill out. “One of you lifted my shoes. I will find out who did it.” Angel’s eyes scan the room before her gaze lands on me. “And you will be sorry.”

The cool air outside is like a big Band-Aid to my aching bones. James waves at me from his truck in the school parking lot. That’s odd. Millie usually picks me up.

“Hey. How was your day?”

I collapse into the passenger seat. “It was a PE day. Need I say more?” James smiles in response, but his attention seems elsewhere. Something is up.

“I brought you some clothes. I’m gonna take you over to Frances’s house. You can study and eat dinner at her house, then ride with her family to church.”

“Where’s Millie?”

James hesitates. “We . . . ah, had a doctor’s appointment this morning. She had a little in-patient surgery.” He sees my thunderous expression. “It’s okay, Katie. She had a biopsy so we can get a better idea of what’s going on.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? She had surgery and you just forgot to mention it?”

“No, we didn’t forget. We didn’t want to upset you.”

“That plan worked well.”

He rests his hand on my arm. “It was a quick procedure. She’s been home all afternoon. Even been baking cookies—well, with Maxine’s ‘help.’”

I turn away from him and look out the window. “When will you find anything out?”
Or have you already, and you’re just keeping me in the dark?
Again.

“Soon.”

“I could’ve gotten a ride with Frances, you know.” Unlike me, Frances is in the elite club of student drivers.

“Millie sent your makeup because she knew you’d want it after PE.” He turns down Frances’s street. “And I wanted you to have your Bible.”

“I do like to be hot and holy.” No, stop talking! I’m supposed to be mad. James and Millie are shutting me out of all of this, and I
cannot
act like it’s OK.

James stops in the Vega driveway. “We’ll see you at church. And Katie . . .” James gives my hair a little tug. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

My foster dad drops me off with a wave. His cell phone is to his ear before he’s out of the driveway.

What if he’s talking to Iola Smartly? Saying, hey, Millie’s got cancer, so come get this girl off our hands.

No, think positive
. Millie is one of the nicest, godliest people I know. God’s not gonna mess with someone like her. How totally unfair would that be? To her. To me.

I walk past the small koi pond and as soon as I’m on the porch, Frances swings the door open.

“Hey!” Her hair is piled on top of her head, anchored by some hand painted hair sticks her grandmother sent her from China.

“Guess you’re stuck with me tonight.”

“Where did James and Millie have to go?” Frances’s dog takes advantage of the open door and shoots outside. “Ming Yu, get the dog!”

“I don’t know.” I watch her twelve-year-old brother chase their cocker spaniel into the neighbor’s yard. “Millie had a biopsy today.” My friend’s mouth drops. “Yeah, I know. They didn’t even tell me about it.” I shake my head. This is
not
sounding good.

I follow Frances inside. I have yet to adjust to the zoo that her house is. It’s like a circus sideshow. People would pay money to step inside this home. Her father, a pediatrician, is from Mexico. Frances’s mother, a tiny woman with a loud voice, is from China. Together they over-decorate, overcook, and overdo the home with their dual cultures. It makes Frances miserable. The walls are covered with cultural art, historical photos, and generations of family portraits. There is no space left untouched.

“Hello, Katie!” Ling Vega enters the living room, carrying baby Maria on her hip. “Are you hungry? Tonight we’re having an old recipe handed down to me from my great-grandmother.” Mrs. Vega’s black eyes sparkle.

“Oh, yeah. I’m starved. I could eat anything.”

“Tonight I’m preparing spicy fish and cabbage soup.”

Anything but that. I force an enthusiastic smile, but Frances sees right through it.

“Mom, you’re the only one who likes that. I bet great-great-Grandmother didn’t even eat it. Why can’t we have burgers? Grill some hotdogs?” She throws her hands in the air and heads upstairs. “Steaks? Something normal for once.”

“Zhen Mei Vega, there are children starving in the world!” Mrs. Vega calls out after us. “Most of your friends are probably eating frozen chicken nuggets tonight! Or bologna!”

Frances grumbles all the way up the staircase.

“So what’s the latest? Did you see Nash after lunch today?” I flop myself into Frances’s lime-green beanbag chair.

Frances shuts her door and sighs. “No.”

“What did we talk about on the phone last night? Strategic hall placement.”

“I know! But after lunch he was talking to some friends. And then after seventh hour he disappeared into the boys’ bathroom.” She grabs her biology book. “I didn’t think I should follow him in there.” It comes out like a question.

“No! Of course you don’t follow him into the john.” Where has this girl’s brain gone?