Freefall (11 page)

We’d never gotten along, but I couldn’t think of any specific thing I’d done to her to make her act like this. Was I supposed to know what her problem was?

“Quit looking so clueless,” she said before I’d said a word. “I told you I’d never forgive you for what you did to me on Halloween and I meant it.”

Halloween?

Wait . . .

I chased her down the stairs. “Wasn’t that in sixth grade?”

“Seventh,” she said over her shoulder. “But I still wouldn’t forgive you even if it had happened in kindergarten. You and your rotten eggs ruined my night and my princess costume.”

We were at the edge of the parking lot now and she still wasn’t slowing down. Couldn’t she stay in one place for a minute?

“It was an accident,” I insisted.

“Like I’m going to believe that.”

Okay, she was right; it had been no accident. Isaac and I had sure gotten a good laugh over it at the time. The shocked look on Vicki’s face as she got pelted six times—once on the back of the head and five on her frilly pink dress—had made it even better. We had some seriously good aim. And, yeah, looking back, it was kind of jerky, I guess. But isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on Halloween? Eat candy all day, play some
tricks, bust shit up, ruin things for the kids who have everything that you don’t have?

“You really aren’t over that?” I asked. “It’s been four years.”

“Wow! You can count that high?”

Talk about bitchy. Getting Rosetta’s location out of Vicki was going to be way more work than I wanted to put in. Time to walk away, right? I didn’t need this bullshit. But then I remembered Rosetta’s cry-face and I decided I would give it one more try. With empathy this time. It sure couldn’t hurt.

Step one: Consider how
I
would feel.

That was pretty easy to figure out. I think it would suck to get blasted with rotten eggs.

Step two: Ask questions to better understand.

“You thought it sucked having rotten eggs thrown at you, right?” I asked.

Vicki stopped her minijog and turned to me with her hands on her hips and rage all over her face. “Are you
threatening
me, Seth McCoy?”

“No, I’m asking you a question.”

“Yes, it sucked,” she said, still scowling. “Duh.”

That wasn’t enough to work with, and since I didn’t know what to ask next, I tried Mrs. D.’s favorite question: “How did it make you feel?”

She held out the tiny remote on her keychain and pressed a button. The headlights flashed on a silver BMW right in front of us. “It made me feel like you’re a dickhead.”

All righty, then. Enough questions.

Step three: Summarize the information.

“So it sucked,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “And you felt like I was a dickhead.”

Vicki gestured impatiently. “Hasn’t this been well established by now?”

She was right about that. I’d have to make sure to ask more probing questions if I ever tried this again.

Step four: Summarize how I think she’s feeling about the information.

This was the hardest part—trying to put myself in Vicki’s place—but probably the most important. “So I think what you’re feeling is that the Halloween egg thing was embarrassing.” I tried to see her face to guess if I was getting it right, but she had turned to open the Beemer’s driver’s-side door. “And it was probably pretty gross?”

She threw her bag inside without a word or a look my way.

“And you feel like I was a dickhead because I wasn’t sorry about it. Is that right?”

She turned then, with her super-skinny eyebrows raised high. “You are such an
ass
.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m trying to, you know, feel what you feel or whatever. Can’t you just work with me?”

In answer, she got in the car, slammed the door, and started the engine.

What a waste of time this had turned out to be. Fuck empathy. Seriously.

I headed across the lot and was almost to the Mustang when Vicki rolled up beside me. “Rosetta plays golf at the country club almost every day,” she said, peering out at me over the top of her sunglasses. “She’s probably there.”

I could have fallen over from the shock of Vicki Lancaster doing something decent for once, but I didn’t let on. “I’ve never been there. Will she be on the grass stuff?”

“Yeah, the
grass stuff
, Seth. Park at the pro shop and then head out to the course. You’ll find her if you walk around for a while.”

“Cool. Thanks for helping me.”

That had worked out pretty sweet in the end. If using empathy could get someone like her to chill, maybe Mrs. Dalloway was really on to something here.

“Actually, I’m not helping
you
,” Vicki said. “I just don’t want Rosetta to get a bad grade on her project.”

Or maybe not.

3:29
P.M.

After driving through a winding tunnel of trees to the good old Rich Bitch Hill Golf and Country Club, I spotted the pro shop sign. I bypassed the circular drive and parked in the adjoining lot between a BMW and a Mercedes; you know, your
standard
rich-folk modes of transport. There were plenty of even nicer cars around, though, and I recognized at least half from having washed and detailed them.

I got out and stood next to the Mustang, looking around. There was a lot to take in: grass everywhere—green and bright like it had been spray-painted—and all these ponds, fountains, and white buildings so fancy they looked like they belonged on postcards or something. I’d driven past this golf course tons of times, but the property is surrounded by such tall, thick evergreens that I’d never had any idea all this was going on.

Finding Rosetta was going to be harder than Vicki had made it sound. I could see from here that with all the trees on these hilly grounds, it could end up taking hours. I wasn’t sure I was up for it, but figured I might as well get started.

As I made my way across the parking lot, I passed some old guy getting out of his Jag and three women—probably in their fifties—wearing cheesy visors as they wheeled bags of golf clubs behind them. I don’t know what I expected, but there was something weirdly normal about these people. Like they were hanging out in this unreal place and were unfazed by all of it. That’s what it’s like when you have this kind of money, I guessed. The only way I’d ever know is if I wound up in a super-successful band or won the lottery someday. I figured my chances for either were about one in fifty million. Approximately.

I was about to start up a hill, but just then I caught sight of a girl standing about fifty feet ahead of me. She was wearing dark pants and a red jacket, and her black ponytail kind of moved with her as she hit golf balls into the distance.

Rosetta.

Seeing her now, I wasn’t entirely stoked anymore about
this plan to bust over and save the day. Maybe she’d think I was some kind of stalker. Maybe leaving her alone had been my best choice all along. I mean, she was okay. I could see that from here. Maybe I should go home without her ever knowing I’d come.

Home: the place where my unemployed brother and dropout friend had been sitting around all day waiting to rip me a new one. Home: where nothing but good, good times were waiting.

I sighed. Screw
that
.

I made my way over to Rosetta, trying to ignore my crazy-fast heartbeat. I didn’t even know what I was so nervous about. As I got close, I noticed a wire bucket of golf balls tipped over on the ground beside her. One by one she was sliding the balls forward with her club and thwacking them hard to join the hundreds of other balls that dotted the grass in front of us.

“Looks like a strong swing,” I said. The truth was, all I knew about golf was that watching it on TV was the best insomnia remedy I’d ever found.

Rosetta whirled around, looking the exact opposite of happy to see me. “What are you doing here?”

The girl had made an excellent point. I should turn and walk away. Maybe if I was fast enough, she’d forget I’d been there at all.

So I did.

“Wait!”
Rosetta came running after me and touched my arm. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so rude. You appeared out of nowhere, and it kind of scared me.”

I glanced back at where she’d been standing before. She’d actually thrown her club down to chase after me.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry for scaring you.”

We stood there watching each other. Her face was pale and her nostrils were kind of red, but she wasn’t anywhere near as wrecked as she’d been in the stairwell. She bit her lip. “Um. So what
are
you doing here?”

I went straight for the truth. “You weren’t in IC class, so I thought I’d see if you’re okay.”

She opened her eyes wide, and I could tell she hadn’t expected me to say that. Then she smiled and pointed to a bench about six feet back from where her spilled golf balls were lying. “You want to sit for a minute?”

As I followed her over, she said, “I’m fine, actually. I bombed a physics quiz this morning and had to get out of there.”

I didn’t believe her—no one gets
that
worked up over science—but there was no way I was going to let on that I’d seen her crying if she was going to try to play the whole thing off.

“What did I miss in IC today?” she asked as we sat on the bench. “Did you have to hang upside down and communicate like bats?”

“No, no
bat stuff. Just empathy. Alex and I were empathy-practicing
fools
.”

She laughed. “I’ll bet you were. I can totally picture that disaster.”

“Hey. My mad empathy skills worked on Vicki. She told me that you come here every day.”

Except, she hadn’t said it because of my empathy. But whatever.

“Actually, I’m not here
every
day,” Rosetta said. “I boycott this place on Wednesdays.”

“Why?”

She waved her hand toward the white buildings behind us. “Oh, they have this stupid thing where men can play on the actual golf course on Wednesdays, but the women are confined to playing at the driving and putting ranges only. The whole deal is such old-boys’ club sexism. Basically they’re saying we aren’t good enough, that we get in their way. It makes me so mad that I boycott every Wednesday to make a statement.”

The way she saw herself as this nonconformist statement-maker while playing golf at a country club was hilarious, but also pretty cute.

“So you play here all the time except the one day a week you aren’t allowed,” I said. “What kind of statement are you making? ‘I’ll show you guys! If you don’t want me here on Wednesdays, I just . . . won’t come!’”

She looked at me, shocked that I was making fun of her,
I guess, but then she burst out laughing. “When you say it like that, it makes me sound ridiculous!”

“Sorry,” I said, still messing with her. “You’re a total rebel. A revolutionary. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.”

“Shut
up
!” She was so adorably embarrassed and just so
pretty
that when she gave my arm a playful push, my head and my entire body started tingling like I was high.

Rosetta shifted on the bench and brought her arms over her head to stretch. “I have to say, I’m glad this isn’t weird,” she said, popping one of her shoulders. “I was afraid of what it would be like to see you again after we skipped from level two to, like, level four and a half on the self-disclosure scale the other day.”

“The
what
scale?”

“We learned about it in class, remember?”

I shrugged. Did she really think I memorized—or even listened to—everything that went on in there?

“The self-disclosure scale,” she said. “It has five levels, and the more people tell about themselves to one another, the higher their relationship moves. It says in the textbook that skipping or moving through levels too quickly can make things uncomfortable. So I was saying that I’m glad it isn’t like that with us.”

“Gotcha,” I said, feeling kind of . . . uncomfortable, actually.

“Oh,
no.
” She put her hands on her now-red cheeks. “I
just ruined everything by talking about it, didn’t I? Forget I said any of that and let’s”—she jumped up, grabbed a golf club, and held it out for me—“hit balls until the awkward moment has passed!”

I took the club from her, but only because she looked like she wanted me to so badly. “Golf isn’t my thing,” I said as I stood.

“You’ve played?”

I shook my head. “It seems boring. No offense.”

“None taken.” She started rushing around to set out some balls for me. “I think everyone thinks that way before they try it. It reminds me of something someone once said to me about coffee. You know, the idea of it might not appeal, but if you give it a try, you might find that it’s tolerable. And then one day when you’ve stopped paying attention, you’ll realize you’re hooked.”

It was weird having my own idea thrown at me like this. Somehow she’d made it sound kind of smart.

“So golf is like coffee. I had no idea.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” she said with mock seriousness. “Nowhere near as horrible as you expect. Of course,
I
still think coffee’s gross, but that fact shouldn’t affect your enjoyment of golf in any way. Go ahead and give it a try.”

I stepped up, raised the club behind me, and brought it back down to the ball as hard as I could. Instead of popping up and sailing through the air like Rosetta’s, it kind of rolled along the grass in a diagonal line.

“You connected with the ball on your first try,” she said, clapping her hands. “That’s really good!”

But she’d gotten excited too soon, because then I missed on my second try. Swung again. Missed. Swung. Missed. “I suck,” I said.

“Maybe it will help if you watch me a few times so you can see how you should be moving. Then I’ll come over and help you, okay?”

I stood behind her—far enough back not to get hit—and watched her square her shoulders, bend her knees a little, wiggle her ass, and then swing. Her ball sailed off, and then seemed to disappear. “Do you see what I’m doing?” she asked. “With my hips and keeping my head down?”

Oh, I saw, all right. “So whose head are you imagining hitting when you do that?”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “Dick, I’d have to have a good imagination to picture a ball this size as a human head.”