The Hard Count (31 page)

“You know I’m right,” I say. “Tell him it’s not his fault, Nico.”

Our eyes meet and agree, and I can tell Nico believes every word I just said. He knows it to be true.

“Your sister
is
right, man. It’s how that place operates. The cream rises to the top with dollars for stairs,” he says. “The rest of us…shit, man. We have to grip and claw and fight and battle. And it ain’t right. None of it. But I need this school. I can’t come out of West End and get somewhere—somewhere
better—
without it. And as much as I want to quit on principle, your dad’s right, Reagan. I can’t do that either. I can’t quit because the only person who would care is me, and the only person I would hurt is me. It wouldn’t teach them anything. It would be removing a problem for them, because me, and my scholarship, and my background…it makes problems.”

Noah and I look at Nico, his gaze lost somewhere over our heads, his eyes serious—the reflection of someone who is driven to make his point.

“You are not a problem,” I say.

He lowers his gaze to meet mine, his lip ticking up just enough to dent his cheek.

“No?” he says.

I shake my head to confirm it.

“What do you think happens when some kid from the Barrio lifts up the state championship trophy at the most prestigious school in the state?” he asks.

“It makes headlines,” my brother answers, a little more confidence in his words, more strength.

“It. Makes. Headlines,” Nico says, his smirk growing. “And it means
more
kids from my neighborhood, and neighborhoods like mine, start to think they can do it, too.”

“And that makes people like the ones who came here to fire my dad nervous,” Noah says, lifting himself to his feet and dragging himself toward Nico on one leg.

“It sure does,” Nico smiles. “Nothing fucks with legacies like opening up the talent pool to competition.”

“Suck it, Jimmy O’Donahue!” Noah shouts.

I watch them both slap hands, holding onto one another for a few seconds, their forearms both flexing with their renewed passion. They’re both on the same side, finally. United in the injustice that took out my dad, and while seeing that feels good in my chest, my heart is also breaking because just outside, my father’s is lost and broken.

T
he disorder
on the field all week was evident now. The Tradition found themselves down by a touchdown—against a team, that under normal circumstances, they should trounce. I was kept out of practice on Monday, told my filming privileges were now relegated to the press box only, and field access was not allowed.

I fought it. I went to the principal, asked Bob to try to help, pleaded with Mrs. O’Donahue, the new chair of the social committee—I asked and begged anyone who would listen. They all said
no.

There was no real reason given. Coach O’Donahue made reference to some theory that I was becoming a distraction, but I knew that was bullshit. The only person I was distracting was him. But I had run into a wall. My film has hundreds of hours of footage and B-roll already; I know I can make something great from what I already have, but I need the last games of the season on tape, so I can’t risk losing the press box, too.

I got to the game early, watching warm-ups play out on the field while I set up my camera on the roof of the box. I decided to sit by my mom for the game, so I staked out our spots near the front of the bleachers, laying down an extra cushion in case my dad decided to come. He flip-flopped on the decision all week, sometimes hell-bent on proving to them they didn’t break him, then surrendering to the fact that they really had.

My father was now nothing more than a physical education teacher at Cornwall. His lifting classes were taken over by Jimmy. He went in on Sunday to pile up his things from the office under the watchful eye of Robert O’Donahue, Jimmy’s uncle—the board member who started these dominoes by pushing the first one over a year ago when he forced the board to hire his nephew.

My dad was able to sneak a few important books out without them getting their hands on them, and I showed him how to log into his computer system remotely so he could extract and delete things that might be helpful to Jimmy’s success. My dad also saved all of Nico’s game-play clips. His new mission was to act as Nico’s agent, voluntarily, of course, and make sure the A&Ms and Ohio States and Brown Universities—all interested in the quarterback from West End—continued to be.

Of course, if the rest of the season played out like tonight’s game, those opportunities might dry up on their own.

My dad showed up at halftime, and I felt the stare from most of the people in the stands instantly. Even now, minutes left in the game, I can feel them looking at us. Some of them are waiting for my dad to do something, to fix what’s happening down on the field. But that…that isn’t his job any more.

He’s reminded me of that every few seconds all night long. Nico gets hit on the blind side; my dad mumbles about Zach’s blown coverage, poor positioning. Sasha misses a catch; my dad mutters out something about play calling, and not reading the defense correctly. Every word from him, though, has been under his breath, until now.

Nico misses another pass, throwing the ball deep, just out of Travis’s reach. As he runs in, the punting team heading out, Coach O’Donahue pulls on Nico’s face mask, jerking his head square with his, his finger pointing in his quarterback’s face, his large body able to overpower Nico’s. Eventually, Nico pushes himself free and throws his hands out, fighting back.

“You do not touch your players like that!” my dad yells, getting to his feet quickly. Within a blink, my dad has hopped over the front of the bleachers, his feet landing in a crunch on the track below, and he’s on the field.

“Oh…shit,” my mom says next to me. I look at her, her eyes wide and her hands clutching her purse against her chest. “We better get ready to go.”

“He has to do something, Mom. That…you saw that, right?” I say.

“I did, but Reagan, I don’t know. Oh God, oh God, oh God,” my mom begins to mumble. She’s uncomfortable with the attention, and I get it. My mom doesn’t like to be the one who isn’t liked, and right now—for whatever reason—we aren’t.

On the field, my dad has reached Coach O’Donahue, and both of their hands are flying in all directions. I hear faint swear words from the distance, and the referees are whistling, calling their own timeout to sort the scene now unfolding on the field.

“I can’t believe he’s doing this,” I say, a smile spreading on my face. My mom’s face, meanwhile, grows more worried.

The other team has taken a knee, as if someone on our side has been injured, which I sort of feel is seconds away from happening. My dad is turning red—the kind of red I used to see when he would yell at my brother for being out too late…for smashing the side door of his Jeep into our dad’s car…for smoking pot. Jimmy O’Donahue takes steps backward, and one of the referees steps between them both, grabbing the collar of my father’s shirt. There are
boos
coming from the stands, and my mom keeps glancing over her shoulder, as if they could be happening for any reason other than the spectacle her husband just made.

She turns back to the field to watch my dad talk—more rationally—with the referee, a guy named Jeff Munds. We’ve known Jeff for years. He handles most of the big games in the state, and ends up doing a lot of ours because of that. My father seems to calm down thanks to Jeff, and as he starts to walk with him to the exit from the field, I watch my mom carefully, her nails in between her teeth and her eyes not blinking, but never focusing in one place for too long. She flits from the exit, to the field, to the score, to my knees, to the place down the bleachers where my brother is sitting with a few friends. It’s like I can read her mind, and the way it’s working out what every person here must be thinking about her.

And then, with a few words, everything about her shifts.

“What’s the matter, Lauren? Can’t handle the spotlight? Thinking of driving the car through Jimmy’s house now?”

I don’t even know where the shouting is coming from, but the words ring through clear, and my mother hears them. I watch her demeanor change, her chest fills with air slowly and her shoulders rise.

“Just ignore them,” I say, my hand finding her arm. My mom reaches into her purse, probably for her keys, ready to leave. I assume she’s going to go find my dad and make him go home. Her hand pauses, though, with one more shout from behind us.

“Tori O’Donahue’s parties are better than yours ever were!” the voice shouts.

Of everything that’s ever been thrown at us as a family, the one thing that has always been off limits is Lauren Prescott’s ability to put together an event of any kind. My mother’s degree is in hospitality, and before my father was making good money, my mom ran a five-star resort. Her events are perfection—always on time, always under budget, and enjoyed by all. To throw stones at her over that, especially now, is a bigger insult than I think anyone could ever realize.

My mom turns to me, and when our eyes meet, I see a glimpse of the woman she used to be before the stress of being the coach’s wife started to tear her down. Her pupils dilate, just enough, and her head tilts a fraction. I imagine the sound of her neck cracking, though I think perhaps it really did. She stands, delicately folding the sweater that was keeping her lap warm, laying it down on her seat pad and walking, her arm looped through her purse, up the steps to the place where the voice came from.

I turn in my seat, leaving the chaos still being sorted out on the field and watch as my mom questions the rows of boosters sitting near the press box until a woman finally stands up and puts her hands on her hips, yelling more at my mother—probably about her party planning.

My mom’s expression remains staid, and as her hater continues to yell, pointing and gesturing toward me first, then Noah, my mom calmly opens the snap on her purse and reaches in, pulling out the thin, silver bottle of leftover party paint she had in her purse from when she and Linda met to make posters for the first game. Without a second of warning, my mom takes one step forward and sprays it at the Tiger logo embroidered on the center of the woman’s sweater, causing her to fall backward and scream.

“Oh…shit!” I say, scrambling up the steps, leaving our things and reaching my mom just as others around her are holding her down, several calling the police.

“Let her go!” I yell, trying to pry their grip from my mom’s arm.

“That’s assault! That…that was assault!” one woman yells.

My mom doesn’t fight them, eventually sitting down calmly on the edge of the bleacher row and waiting. I sit next to her while clutching her purse in my arms to protect it from the circling booster wolves. The sounds of their yelling, their disparaging comments and cruel names—they’re careful not to call my mom a bitch, but they come as close as they can without doing so—it all fades to background noise. They keep bickering, pointing and accusing, even when the police officer working the game comes up to take everyone’s statement.

My mom calmly watches the field, her eyes transfixed on the scoreboard as the clock ticks down. She looks on as our defense completely falls apart under someone else’s direction, Nico never getting a chance to touch the ball again. She watches The Tradition lose, and then a slow smile creeps across her face, and her eyes shift to mine before the officer kneels in front of her to get her version of the story.

“I suppose spray-painting a pair of fake tits looks better on your record than smoking pot and driving through the garage,” she says to me, not whispering enough.

The cop, thankfully, doesn’t seem to care all that much. He likely has to deal with yuppie, ticky-tack reports all day, working around Cornwall. How petty and stupid his report must look when turned in next to the guy from West End.

Dad had been escorted from the field, and waited for us on one of the few picnic tables in the grassy area between the football field and the locker rooms. I find him, after the woman—Penny Schmidtt, a friend of Tori O’Donahue’s—decides not to press charges against Mom. Linda caught the entire thing on video with her phone, including the part where Penny called my mom some torrid names and tried to conceal the vodka she snuck in her enormous snakeskin purse.

“What was that all about?” he asks, gesturing to the stands, where my mom still weaves her way down through the crowd. I’m still holding her purse, which no longer conceals the can of paint. The police officer
did
take that off her hands.

“Mom sort of…” I stop, wanting to rephrase this. “She stood up for herself.”

“She did, huh?” my dad says, looking from me back to the metal steps where my mom climbs down and tugs down her shirt, straightening her sleeves and pants to make sure she looks as if nothing happened at all. Polished and perfect—the Lauren Prescott way.

Her eyes meet my father’s as she walks up to join us, and there’s a slight sway to her hips, her own feminine brand of swagger. Her lips are puckered in a smile, and I’m sure if she could get away with it at night, she’d slide her enormous round sunglasses on just to prove how little she’s bothered by everyone else right now. I know most of it is all an act, but the fact that my mother is finally acting like she doesn’t give a shit is downright refreshing.

“You have a little…something happen up there?” my father asks, his right brow about two inches higher than his left.

My mom’s lip ticks up to match it. She opens her mouth to speak, but stops at the cackling sound of the women walking down the steps a dozen feet behind us, one pulling a sweater out from her chest, some of the paint on her arms and hands.

“Those women are real bitches, Chad. What did I ever see in them?” she says, leaving her gaze on the ladies as they march to the center of the parking lot to the large Cadillac Escalade with a plate that reads JIMSGAL.

While my mother looks on, my dad’s eyes never leave his wife, his mouth curving up sinisterly. My mom looks back to catch his stare.

“What?” she says.

“Absolutely nothing,” my dad says slowly, shaking his head, stepping toward her and kissing her hard on the mouth, just like he did that morning in the kitchen.

In an instant, our attention is swung to the locker-room entrance on the other side of us. Valerie Medina has stopped Coach O’Donahue right outside the locker room. She timed it perfectly, letting all of the players filter in first and cutting him off just after his coaching staff stepped inside to safety. She isn’t touching him, but with the way he’s backed off into the dark corner, one would think she was wielding a sword and fists of fury.

“You will apologize sir, right now. You will apologize to me. To my family. And most importantly, you will apologize to my son. You
do not
touch him like that!”

We can only hear bits and pieces of her rampage, but that part rings out clear. My father hears and steps up to join her, crossing his arms just as her brother, Nico’s uncle, has, which only inflames Coach O’Donahue more.

“Oh, come on! What the hell…did you put her up to this, Prescott?” I hear him say as my dad moves in closer.

My father only shakes his head. I draw in when I see my brother walking out from the locker room along with Travis and Colton.

“Listen…ma’am,” Coach O’Donahue begins. His reference to her only makes her grow more stiff, and I can tell he’s not scoring any points.

“It’s clear you don’t understand how things work out here. This sport is a tough sport, and I need these young men to be able to stand up to a lot of things. Now, if he can’t handle me being tough with him, then maybe this team isn’t for your boy…”

The underlying smile as he speaks says volumes. Jimmy O’Donahue
needs
Nico Medina to be anywhere close to successful for the rest of the season. But if Nico quits? If his mom pulls him? Well, that’s out of his hands.

What he didn’t bargain on, however, was Valerie Medina’s spirt—and her coaching brother. And the rest of us, who remain here, all watching.

Valerie steps in close, her hair still flawless from her day at work, her blouse an exact match to her silky pants, her purse gripped tightly at the straps in her hand at her side. Her heels click against the concrete as she steps toward him, and she holds her finger in front of his face. Her words are so soft they’re kept between her and the coach who tried to strong-arm her son. But he never speaks back when she’s done. She backs away slowly, leaning in to say something to my dad, then turning to her brother and nodding for him to join her as they both move to the parking lot at a steady pace, her feet pounding into the ground with force in every step.