A Heart Divided (21 page)

“You know, we might could fetch some groceries after the game and take them by Cooper’s,” Jack suggested. “Before I catch my plane.”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

“Warren Elementary does a big Thanksgiving pageant
every year,” Jack went on. “The Strikers always say it’s for sissies, but they really want to be in it. Last year Cooper was the turkey. They’ll be hurt I’m not there.”

“Maybe a teacher can videotape it. And explain to the kids that she’s sending you the tape.”

“Yeah. Good idea.” Jack ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t help ′em with their homework from New York, though.”

“On the phone,” I suggested.

He nodded. “Right, right.”

Down on the field, the band marched in place as it played a brassy rendition of “Rocky Top,” the University of Tennessee fight song. The cheerleaders and drill squad did their pregame routines, and the scoreboard clock ticked down the time until kickoff. Jack’s eyes took it all in, memorizing each detail. “There’s Mrs. Augustus and her husband,” he said, nodding up the aisle.

We stood to greet the elderly couple. Her courtly husband, Alvin, who’d worn a jacket and string tie to the game, helped Mrs. Augustus along. She smiled broadly when she reached us.

“Why, hello, Jackson. And Kate. Jackson, I miss seeing you at the library.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Jack said. “I mean, I
do
miss you, ma’am.”

“I just ordered some wonderful new plays,” she continued. “August Wilson’s latest. And a new book on Method acting I thought you’d enjoy.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Jack said.

“And Kate? How’s that play of yours coming?”

I had a difficult time looking her in the eye. “I’ve been thinking that I may not be the right person to write it. I feel like I’d have to live here for a few lifetimes first.”

“I can understand that. But don’t give up, Kate.” She took my hand between hers. “I ordered something for you, too. A videotape of a play by Anna Deavere Smith.
Fires in the Mirror.
Do you know it?”

“Her name sounds familiar.”

“Well, I think you’ll find her work very provocative. Now, I want both of you to come in and see me soon.”

Jack barely nodded; I said something noncommittal. Mrs. Augustus lingered a moment, as if there was more she wanted to say. But in the end she just said her good-byes and continued down the aisle with her husband.

Jack put his head in his hands for what felt like a long time. When he looked at me again, his eyes were anguished. “Kate, do you know that I see you everywhere? I smell your perfume on the wind. Hear your voice in my head. I’m so much more
myself with
you. To be without you would be… but I can’t…”

He stopped, searching for the right words. Tentacles of fear curled around my windpipe. Because I already knew.

“I can’t go with you,” Jack continued. “It’s not just that I’d be walking out on Redford. I’d be walking out on the person I want to be. But I don’t want to lose you, Kate.”

Have you ever known a boy who could say such a thing
and mean it with his whole heart? Me neither. Before Jack, that is. Now, I already understood that you can’t always get what you want in life. But at that moment in the football stadium behind Redford High School, I learned that sometimes there’s a moment when your highest self shows you how to get what you need.

Instead of hurling myself at Jack’s feet to grovel, to beg, this peaceful feeling came over me. Instead of closing down, something inside of me opened up.

“You won’t,” I said, surprised at the firmness in my voice, at how right this felt. “Because I’m not leaving Redford.”

He looked confused. “After the way they’ve treated you—”

“Jack, if I go, I’ll never find out who set me up. These people will never learn how wrong they are about me. I’ll never write the play I want to write, and they’ll never see it. And Nikki—I should stay and help her fight. And… well, that’s enough right there.”

“What about Lab? And Showcase?”

“That hurts,” I acknowledged. “But they’ll be there next year, I hope. Besides, I know who the best person is to take over your team. Me.”

“You’d do that?”

“Well, I was thinking we could kind of do it together. Corinth isn’t that far away. You can come home on weekends so we can see each other, and you can coach their games. I’ll do your tutoring. Once you turn eighteen, transfer
back to Redford High if you want. Your mom can’t stop you. I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

“Why would you do that?”

I shrugged. “Temporary insanity. True love. Sore loser. All of the above.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. But I figure sometimes you just have to make a stand. They can’t get rid of me that easily. And neither can you.”

He laughed. “I think the ghost of Stonewall Jackson has occupied your brain.”

“I didn’t learn it from him, Jack. I learned it from you.”

“You are one amazing girl, Kate Pride.”

“Working on it, anyway.”

He hugged me and whispered into my hair how much he loved me. I liked the me he was hugging so much more than the me who couldn’t breathe without him, who was so desperate to run away from everything, and even more desperate for Jack to run away with me.

The game announcer’s voice rumbled over the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Redford welcome to the South Columbia High School Barbarians!”

The South Columbia team, in daunting black uniforms with gold trim, charged out of the dressing-room tunnel. Their fans cheered, while the Redford fans booed good-naturedly. As the Barbarians jumped around near their bench, pumping themselves up, our band and cheerleaders formed a double-file corridor near the tunnel. When
they were in place, the PA system again echoed off Redford Hill.

“Please welcome… your Redford High School Rebels!”

Pandemonium reigned as our team charged forth in their white home uniforms with red numerals and the band struck up our fight song. The cheerleaders formed a pyramid. Then Sara did an impressive tumbling run and got boosted to the top. She looked great up there, red ponytail whipping in the wind. To think that I had once misjudged her as badly as her friends were misjudging me now. Amazing how they’d all just blindly agreed that I was this horrid person. Hadn’t I overheard Sara saying that people were sheep? She was so right. They’d follow some—

I gasped. Rewound my thoughts. Holy crap. It couldn’t be.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

“I’m not sure.”

Didn’t Sara just use the same line at Jimmy Mack’s that some character—Sandy? No, Cindy—had used in that poison play?

They’re all such sheep.

Was it really possible that she had totally set me up? Made friends with me ahead of time, written the play, and then rushed to my defense so that no one would ever suspect she was the one who’d written it?

“Hey, you just turned whiter than the Rebels’ uniforms,” Jack told me. “You okay?”

I didn’t answer him. My mind was going at warp speed. What had Sara said that night at Starbucks about writing?
Every time we get a creative writing assignment I just wilt.

“You having second thoughts?” Jack guessed.

“No. Jack, how’s Sara at creative writing?”

Jack looked perplexed. “Strong. She had a short story in the literary magazine last year. Why?”

She’d lied about being a weak writer just to sucker me in. Oh my God. Oh. My. God.

“Jack, she did it.”

“What, you mean … you think she wrote that play?”

“I know she did.” I jumped up and started to edge into the aisle.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the field. To kick her ass.”

Before I could move farther, though, the PA announcement boomed off Redford Hill. “Please stand and honor America as we sing our national anthem.” The crowd rose as one, spilling into the aisles. I was momentarily stuck. I stood on tiptoe, peering around people, searching the sidelines for Sara.

Well into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” we saw maybe ten kids run out of the dressing-room tunnel, each carrying a bunch of huge red-and-white helium balloons. “What’s going on?” I asked Jack.

“Dunno,” he answered.

The band kept playing; when the kids reached the field,
they let go of the balloons, which jerked skyward. As they rose, a giant Confederate battle flag unfurled. Delighted, the crowd on the Redford side roared in support.

But none of it made any sense. Because more than half of the kids who had carried that pole onto the field were black, and one of them was Luke Roberts.

“Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner…”

The balloons carried the Confederate flag skyward. It must have already been doused with lighter fluid, because when Luke raised a lighter to the fabric,
whoosh!
A sheet of flame enveloped the banner as it drifted out of everyone’s reach, burning, burning, burning against the night.

The end of the national anthem was lost; all hell broke loose. Enraged Redford football players—Chaz leading the way—charged across the field toward Luke and his friends, who dashed for the South Columbia sideline. Practically the entire Barbarians team stepped forward to protect them. Fists flew; bodies fell. Enraged spectators leaped the fences surrounding the field as the announcer pleaded for calm. The police moved in, swinging their batons, but were immediately sucked into the melee. Suddenly, we heard a loud bang echo off Redford Hill. Someone near us bellowed, “That’s a gunshot!”

People screamed, stampeding for the exits. Jack grabbed my arm as someone almost knocked me over. A crying child fell near us and we helped her up, trying to find out who she was with. A woman—her mother— grabbed her up and ran.

The aisle was now completely blocked. “Down to the field, then under the stands,” Jack called over the bedlam.

We clambered over the seats in front of us. As we did, the ambulance that was always on duty at games tore across the gridiron, heading for the Redford side. It stopped near the fence by the fifty-yard line, and the paramedics jumped out with a stretcher and supplies. “Someone’s hit,” I said breathlessly as we leaped over another row of seats.

“Keep going,” Jack urged me. “Don’t stop.”

I wish I’d listened to him. If I hadn’t paused, it would have given me a few more precious moments of Before. Because my existence is still defined by Before and After. Before I knew who’d been shot. And after I saw that it was my little sister.

Redford Cinema, waiting for my play to be performed, I was in the throes of my worst-ever pre-opening curtain panic attack.

The theater was almost full. I knew so many of the people in the audience. Kids and teachers from school. Principal McSorley Members of the Redford police department. Reverand Roberts and his family. Mrs. Augustus and her husband. Even Sally Redford. No wonder I couldn’t breathe.

“Hey, Kit-Kat.”

I turned. My parents had just walked in. I hugged them
both tight, holding on for dear life. My father ended the embrace and held me at arm’s length. “It’ll be fine, Kit-Kat. I know it.”

“I wish I did,” I said, barely able to get the words past my cotton-dry lips.

My mother put an arm around my shoulders. “Look around, Kate. All these people, together. It’s something. And you did it.”

“Not really, Mom.” I knew she’d understand what I meant.

“I wish Portia was here, too,” she said softly. Choked up, my father nodded.

“Well, we should go sit,” my mother said. “We checked in with the videographer. He’s set to tape in the balcony, like you asked. Are you sure you don’t want to be with us?” I’d reserved tenth-row center seats for them.

I shook my head. “Too long a run.” I hitched my thumb toward the rear exit doors. “In case I need to hurl.”

She smiled. “Okay, then. We’ll see you afterward.”

They each hugged me again before we headed for our seats. The one I’d chosen for myself was in the last row. I peeled off the
Reserved
sign I’d taped from armrest to armrest and sat down, the sign in my hands. Two beads of perspiration rolled off my forehead and plopped onto my lap.

I tried to calm my nerves by focusing on the play’s set, such as it was. The movie screen itself was the backdrop. In front of it was a pair of coatracks from which hung various pieces of clothing—jackets, hats, and scarves. There was a
sofa from Goodwill, my dad’s Barcalounger, a table and a hard-backed chair, and the bloodstained rug from Redford House. That was it. Otherwise, the stage was bare.

“You think she needs mouth-to-mouth?” I heard Lillith ask BB. My two best friends from home had flown in that morning (a total surprise to me, arranged on the sly with my parents) and had slid into the two seats to my left.

BB scratched his chin. “My guess is, depends on who’s offering. Remember, Kate. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. And repeat.”

“You smack me with a ruler again and you’re dead,” I warned.

Lillith raised one newly pierced eyebrow. “You smacked her with a ruler?”

“In a very loving way,” BB explained solemnly, hand over his heart.

“Acupressure?” Lillith guessed. “Voodoo? Kinky foreplay?”