Bouncing (25 page)

Alex took what was offered, but from the moment their lips met she knew she had to stop quickly, because the contact caused a flood of wet and heat and throbbing. It had been building for so long, Alex couldn’t stand much more torment.

Pulling away, she thought of something she knew would quiet the fire burning within her. She had to tell Brit the truth.

Since her conversation with Sal that morning, it had been on her mind. She’d planned to tell Brit at the beach, but she’d chickened out. Watching the movies, she’d only half followed the plots as she saw her own personal drama unfolding instead. Thoughts of the conversation looming ahead of her would haunt her until she told Brit. It was time.

Looking at her, Alex pushed the hair back from Brit’s forehead and kissed her gently. She sighed, and her words seemed to float on her breath. “I have to tell you something.”

Brit seemed to sense Alex’s anxiety, because the passion in her eyes died, replaced by fear. She pulled away, and sat up, studying her. “Alex, what is it?”

Alex wished she could quiet it, but what she had to tell her might only make it worse. Instead of trying to protect Brit by offering false words, she cleared her throat. “Have you ever heard of ankylosing spondylitis?” she asked.

Confusion replaced the fear, as if she didn’t understand the question.

“Noooo.”

“It’s an autoimmune disease. I have it.”

As Brit sat up, her eyes flew open and her jaw dropped. “You have an autoimmune disease?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sick? I mean, obviously you’re not sick, are you?”

“I guess it depends on how you look at it. I’ll always have the disease—there’s no cure—but it’s under control. My symptoms are in remission.”

Brit cleared her throat and reached for the bottle of water on the bedside table. After taking a sip, she offered it to Alex. “So what are your symptoms?”

Leaning back against the headboard, Alex closed her eyes and listed the problems that had plagued her for more than a decade.

“What’s the worst thing?”

Alex rolled her head toward Brit and their eyes met. She saw concern there, and fear. “The uncertainty. Not knowing when it may pop up. ’Cause I know it will. Not knowing how bad it might get.” Alex closed her eyes again. “Worrying that I’ll get sick from the medicine.”

“Sick how?”

“The medicine blocks my immune system. I’m more likely to catch everything contagious. I can also get cancer.”

Alex opened her eyes again and looked at Brit.

“I don’t know what to say,” Brit said.

“There’s not much to say.” Alex smiled sadly. Obviously, she’d been right. This was more than Brit could handle.

“What can I do to help you?” Brit asked after a minute.

“Whatta ya mean?” Shouldn’t Brit be running out the door by now, ready to end their fledgling relationship? Or at least be slithering away from her, worried about contracting the disease?

“I mean, what do you need me to do?”

“I don’t understand,” Alex said.

Brit sighed, a rare display of impatience. “You’re my girlfriend. You’re dealing with something difficult. How can I help you? Do you need me to clean your apartment because your back is sore, or do you want me to cook healthy foods that boost your immune system, or do you just need me to hold you?”

Alex leaned back again, and before she could raise a hand to wipe them, the tears she’d held for a decade flowed from her eyes. Making good on her offer, Brit slid close to her and wrapped her arms around Alex.

Brit would have done anything to help her, to take away her pain and make everything all right. She couldn’t do any of those things, though. So she just lay next to her, holding her, until Alex relaxed and drifted off to sleep. Then she kissed her gently on the lips and slipped out of her arms.

It was hard to imagine that someone so physically fit and strong could be sick. Yet, apparently, she was. As she looked at Alex sleeping next to her for the first time, Brit was determined to do everything she could to keep Alex right there. Forever. Pulling out her smartphone, Brit leaned back against the headboard, her face inches from Alex’s. She didn’t detect any sign of the strain she’d seen earlier or any sign of the disease that had invaded her body. She was simply beautiful as she lay sleeping, and Brit was overwhelmed with love for her.

After turning on her phone and navigating to the search engine, Brit typed in the words “ankylosing spondylitis” and began reading.

Taking Care of Business

Trying hard to look casual, P.J. paced the corridor outside the girls’ locker room, an envelope in his sweaty hands. Even though he’d been in business for more than two months, and had already done this hundreds of times, it was still nerve-wracking. The fear of getting caught had him fumbling and stumbling, jumping at every noise, and he swore if the girl didn’t show her face in thirty seconds, he was leaving. Twenty bucks just wasn’t worth it.

Out in the parking lot, a dozen students were waiting for him, and every one of them had money for him. He’d be done and gone in five minutes flat. Here, he was a trapped animal and didn’t like the feeling at all. They were going to have to make some other arrangements, and soon. P.J. couldn’t handle the stress.

He couldn’t eat and was losing weight, and even though he was exhausted, his sleep was fragmented, interrupted by bad dreams. After he woke up, his thoughts often prevented him from falling asleep again.

“P.J.” Someone called to him, and he turned to see one of his classmates approaching him. Kevin Bennigan was bearing down on him quickly.

“Do you have physics?” he asked.

Shaking off his earlier concerns, P.J. smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Can you spot me, buddy? I don’t have the cash.”

P.J. frowned. He hated when this happened. Kevin was a foot taller than he was and outweighed him by a hundred pounds. He didn’t like to tell him no, but he didn’t have a choice. The envelopes he picked up from The Man were numbered, and the exams they contained were printed on copy-proof paper. At the end of the day, he either had to give The Man an exam, or a twenty. No exceptions.

He tried to act tough when he replied. “No can do, pal. You know the rules. No money, no goods.”

“Fuck, man, help me out here. We’ve been friends since kindergarten.”

Kevin had never been his friend, but they had played Little League on the same team one year. “Believe me, Kev, if it was up to me, I would. But they’re counted, and you don’t want to go fucking with my boss.”

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and a boy carrying a black instrument case walked through. “P, what’s this nerd’s name? He’s in our class, right? Lyle? Kyle? Who is he?”

“Lance. His name is Lance.”

Lance approached with a bounce in his step. “Hey, Lance,” Kevin said. “I’m in a bind here, man. Can you loan me twenty bucks until tomorrow?”

P.J. closed his eyes and fought the urge to punch Kevin in the mouth to keep him quiet. Lance was not only at the top of their class in academics, but he was a model citizen and the one P.J. would vote most likely to send him to jail. Lance eyed both of them suspiciously as he pursed his lips.

“I’d consider you my friend for life, Lance. Anything you ever need, man, I’ll be there. Anybody gives you any problems, you come to me.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yep, you’ll be my new best friend.”

Lance pulled the wallet out of his back pocket and removed a twenty-dollar bill.

“Thanks, buddy,” Kev said as he took the money and escorted Lance the rest of the way to the band-room door. He returned with a sneer.

“A loser’s born every minute,” he said as he handed P.J. the money.

“You got that right,” P.J. replied, and Kevin had no idea he wasn’t referring to Lance. P.J. searched his backpack and pulled out an envelope marked “Kane—Physics” and placed it in Kevin’s waiting hand.

Kevin practically skipped down the hall. “Gotta go lift, man. Big game this week. Thanks for your help.”

“Sure, no problem,” P.J. said, but he’d already returned his gaze to the locker-room door. He stopped and leaned against the wall, debating what to do. He didn’t want to piss off a customer, but how long could he be expected to wait?

Just as he was about to abandon the mission, the door opened and a girl in a black basketball jersey and shorts came through.

“Jesus, Kelsey, if you’d made me wait another minute I was outta here.”

“Sorry, P. Coach Dodge snuck up on me and wanted to talk,” she said as she handed him a twenty-dollar bill and accepted the envelope in exchange.

“Well, I can’t do this anymore. You’re going to have to meet me in town like everyone else. It’s too risky.”

Kelsey’s expression turned sour and her eyes flew open wide. “Don’t say that, P. You know I need you. We’ll figure something out, okay?”

“I gotta go,” he said as he walked away.

“Thanks.” She tucked the envelope into her shorts and headed back into the gym.

P.J. pulled his car out of the school parking lot and made his way to the town library, where the lot was crowded with cars, most of them belonging to the students who were waiting for him. He looked around for signs of trouble but didn’t spot any security cameras out here, and no suspicious-looking cars. He approached a Mercedes SUV parked farthest from the building.

“Chemistry?” he said to the driver, an underclassman whose name he didn’t know. But this was the third chemistry exam he’d sold him in two months, along with biology, history, and algebra. P.J. didn’t know his name, but he knew the kid’s entire class schedule. “Yeah,” the boy said as he parted with the crisp bill and took a copy of the chemistry exam Mr. Lewis would give the next day.

“Thanks,” the boy said, and before P.J. walked to the next car, the Mercedes pulled from the lot.

A total of ten exams changed hands at the library, and then P.J. drove to the Dunkin’ Donuts a mile away and sold another six, then to the gym, where he passed along five more. His final stop in this neighborhood was at the park, where another five people awaited him. In less than forty minutes, he’d sold copies of six different exams to twenty-six students and had all the profits in a bank bag in his car.

He spent the next three hours in a similar manner, stopping at a variety of stores and public buildings, ever changing to avoid suspicion and detection, until, emotionally exhausted and nearly starving, he arrived at his final destination. “How much?” The Man asked when P.J. knocked on his office door.

Every night’s tally differed. It varied, based on the number of exams given on any particular day. The one constant was the ever-growing popularity of this little business, and P.J. was finding it harder to make all his deliveries. His territory covered four school districts, and each week more students showed up at the predetermined rendezvous points, causing more time to slip through his fingers as he raced to deliver the exams and get home in time to complete his own schoolwork.

“Sixty.”

“Whew! Nice job, Little Man. Anything else?”

“Ninety bucks in tickets.”

P.J. offered him the bank envelope, a bulging vinyl bag holding twelve hundred dollars, plus another envelope containing ninety additional dollars, plus the tickets declaring the wagers on the football games scheduled for the following weekend. He forced a smile as The Man counted the money and gave two hundred dollars back to him.

That was a bonus; their agreement had been ten percent of P.J.’s collections. Some days his take was fifty dollars, and on others like this one, a few hundred. Since he’d started this business with The Man, he’d been averaging almost a thousand dollars a week. It was more than his father made at the mall, and if business grew, he’d be earning more than his mother as well.

He hadn’t spent a penny of it. Even if he wanted to, even if he didn’t feel like a piece of shit for doing this, he couldn’t start spending that kind of money without raising Wes’s suspicions. Since he’d confessed, Wes had taken a bigger interest in P.J.’s activities, as if he needed to keep an eye on his brother. P.J. had lied to Wes, told him it was all over with The Man. He was also saving to repay his grandfather. But he couldn’t do anything to redress the situation with all the teachers he was cheating—people whom he respected and admired, and who thought highly of him. At least, though, he could make restitution within his own family.

“See you tomorrow,” The Man said, and sadly, P.J. knew he would.

First Comes Love

Fall was slipping by and the leaves were long fallen from the trees in her apartment complex as Brit walked through her front door on the day before Thanksgiving. School had been dismissed early, and practice had been short. Now Brit had the entire afternoon for one of her favorite activities—baking pies. On this occasion, for the first time in her life, she wouldn’t be mixing dough and slicing apples in her mother’s kitchen, but in her own. And instead of her mother and sisters beside her, today it would be Alex.

Since she was a little girl they’d made pies, at first with her mother’s sister and her grandmother, and lately just the Dodge women. If there were no Alex in her life, she would have been at her mother’s house in the early afternoon and up to her elbows in flour shortly thereafter. She’d drink wine while making dough and mixing pumpkin and creating great memories. At night, she’d fall asleep in her childhood bed, exhausted but happy.

But there was an Alex, and Mr. and Mrs. Dalton had invited Brit to Thanksgiving dinner at their house the following evening. Although it would mean lying to her family, she couldn’t decline. The expectant look on Alex’s face as she’d passed on the invitation had just been too precious to refuse. And then, when Alex told her it was her responsibility to
buy
the pie for dessert, Brit knew she was in trouble. No way could she allow her girlfriend’s family to eat frozen pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving dinner.

And so she’d told yet another lie to her family, begging out of their traditional pie-baking party with a false claim about a late-afternoon basketball practice. Her sisters had been sympathetic, but her mother was livid. Brit feared her reaction the next day, when she planned a migraine shortly after dinner to escape her parents’ house in time for a second Thanksgiving feast with the Daltons.