Stick (12 page)

I
knocked until he answered. He'd changed the locks. I could tell by the haze in his eyes he'd downed a few beers, and he scowled when he saw me. “I told you…”

I held out a sheet of paper and a pen to him. “I need your signature.”

He looked at the paper with the Hamilton Saxon standard emblazoned on the top. He brightened. “You decided to play, then? Coach said if you decided to rejoin, I'd need to sign another release form.”

“I'm playing.”

He grinned. “I knew you'd come around, son. Come in, come in. I had a spare key made. I'll get it for you.” He clapped me on the back and went inside.

I followed, the paper still in my hand. He sat down, and I gave it to him. He was shaking his head and smiling as he signed. “Sometimes it takes tough love to show you where you should be, Brett. I always had faith in you. Always. And we can put last night out of our heads. I set your trophies back up.”

I took the paper from him, folding it. A sudden jab of guilt hit me. I knew he'd sign the transfer without reading it. I also knew he loved me, but maybe not the right way. “I've got to get this down to Lewis and Clark before five. Coach Larson said he'd wait.”

“What? Larson? Lewis and Clark?” he said.

“Yeah.”

He looked at the sheet in my hands. “Hold on here, Brett. I thought we—”

I
was
playing football again, and I was playing it on my own terms. If my dad couldn't accept that, it was his issue to deal with. “I know. I'm excited, too. They're a good team, and Coach Larson said if I show myself during practice this week and next, I can start wide receiver a week from Friday. It's against Shadle.”

His face went dark. He'd gone to Hamilton as a teenager. He'd played Hamilton ball with Coach Williams. He jabbed a finger at the paper. “What did I just sign?”

“Transfer slip. Mr. Reeves said I could have an emergency transfer because the team is bullying me. I'm playing for Lewis and Clark, Dad,” I said, then bent and picked up the extra door key. “Thanks for this, too. I don't know how late I'll be. I have to start studying the playbook and watching their tapes.”

He gawked as I left. I could almost feel the silent explosions going off in his head.

C
oach Larson shook my hand and ushered me into his office. I'd never met him before, but the slender, youngish-looking man seemed nice enough. A picture of a woman and three kids, younger than me, stood on his desk.

He was all teeth through his smiles, but there was an undercurrent in the tone of his voice, and I couldn't tell if he was happy to meet Brett Patterson or happy to have the best receiver in the state on his team. I hoped both. He took a seat, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “This is a surprise, son.”

“To me, too, sir.”

He took his baseball cap off and scratched his head. “I've been thinking on how to do this ever since your counselor called me this afternoon, and I can't say I'm too comfortable with the situation.”

“How is that, Coach?”

“It's going to look like I…,” he began, then stopped. “You're transferring due to some bullying that went on. I'm assuming it was because you quit the team.”

“Yessir.”

He adjusted his cap. “Then let's get one thing straight. It ends here. I coach fair and I fight hard. My team does, too. I'm sure Coach Williams will change his playbook after hearing about this, but if I hear one word out of your mouth that gives the Tigers an unfair advantage on the field, you're benched for the season.” His eyes bore into mine, his smile gone. “You understand that, son? I play fair.”

I laughed, full of relief.

“You find what I just said funny, Brett?”

“No, sir. Not at all. I just wasn't expecting…I just want to play football. Fair football.”

He extended his hand across the desk. We shook, hard and strong. “Then welcome to my team.” He tossed a playbook to me. “Practice at five-thirty tomorrow morning. You study up. Just because you've got all those numbers stacked up around you doesn't mean you walk onto my team. You don't prove it, you don't play. Earn it, Brett. Now get out of my office.”

On my way home, I was almost giddy with excitement. I would play, and I would play my way. The right way. And in the process, I'd watch Coach Williams and Lance Killinger wish they never knew me.

I
couldn't sleep. I usually hit my bed and was out like a light, but my mind ran circles thinking about what would happen. Preston telling me I was Superman jabbed through my thoughts, and finally I gave up on sleep and grabbed my phone.

He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You up?”

“Unless you're having a particularly lucid dream, yes, I'm up,” Preston said.

I glanced at the clock. A few minutes before twelve. “What are you doing?”

“Why are you calling, Brett?”

“I transferred to the Tigers.”

“And you wanted to chat about it at midnight?”

“I couldn't sleep. Are you out?”

“Out what?”

“Doing your thing. You know. Crime-fighting stuff.”

“Yes, I am.”

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to the corner of Sixth and Fiske. Preston hopped in. “Any luck?”

Tonight he was in full regalia. No hoodie, no sweats covering his costume. “I wouldn't consider people being victimized by crime as lucky, but no. Most times I go out, I don't see anything.”

“Don't you feel weird walking around like that?”

“No.”

I drove. “Where do you want to go?”

“Stay around this area. This neighborhood has the highest crime statistics in the city.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“The police department has a detailed crime map online. And I keep my own records. Serial robberies generally follow a pattern. You just have to figure it out.” He pointed to a small convenience store up the block. “They've been robbed three times in the last six months.”

“What's the pattern there?”

“The only thing I could figure is that it's happened every other month, on the night of the fifteenth, and between twelve-thirty and one-thirty.”

“Why?”

“Payday is on the fifteenth. Stores like that sell cigarettes and beer like crazy on paydays. They have a lot of cash in the till.”

I blinked. “And today is…”

“The fifteenth,” he said. “And they weren't robbed last month. If there is a pattern, it'll happen in the next forty-five minutes.”

A chill ran through me. “That's pretty cool. Almost like one of those FBI profiler guys.”

“Pull over up there. In front of that blue truck.”

I did. “The first time I ever saw a crime happen was with you. Those guys and the car.”

“That's because you don't look for it. And besides, if you research the right areas, your odds of seeing something go up dramatically. Turn the engine off.”

“I've seen cashiers at 7-Eleven put cash in tubes and drop them in a safe. Why don't these guys do that?”

“Manuel Cruz. He's from Venezuela. He opened up the store himself when he immigrated here. It's not corporate. Just a mom-and-pop place. They live in the apartment upstairs. Two kids, nine and eleven.”

“What
don't
you know, Preston?”

He shrugged. “It's all public record.”

We sat in the dark, the silence comfortable as we watched the late-night traffic go in and out of the store. Preston wasn't one for small talk, and after a few minutes, he buried his nose in his phone.

“Bored?” I said.

He kept his eyes on the phone. “No. A man in a blue Accord just parked on the side street across from the place. I'm looking up his license plate.”

“Why?”

“Because he's sitting there doing what we're doing, and there are only two reasons for that. I somehow don't think stopping crime is on his mind.”

“Maybe he's just stopping to get something.”

“Across the street? When the parking lot is nearly empty?” he said, tapping his phone. “Connor Tatum. Thirty-one years old. Convicted of shoplifting, theft, grand larceny, and strong-arm robbery. Get ready.”

“You're sure?”

“No.”

A thrill went through me as I watched the car. I felt like I was on some sort of reality show like
Cops,
just with a hundred-and-seventeen-pound kid dressed in a costume instead of fully trained officers who knew what they were doing. “So what do we do?”

Just as he put his mask on, the Accord's door opened and a man got out. “We see what happens.”

My heart raced as the man pulled his hood over his head and strode across the parking lot to the front door. “No, I mean, do we go in now? Stop it?”

“We wait until it's over, then detain him. Statistically, interrupting a crime like this in progress endangers the victim more than the crime itself does.”

The man reached the building and went inside. We watched as he spoke to the cashier. Then all hell broke loose.

Just as the man took his hand from his pocket, the cashier literally
launched
himself over the counter, tackling the guy and driving him into a rack of Hostess doughnuts. Blood pounded in my ears and I tightened as the two men went down and out of sight. “Preston…”

“Change of plans,” he calmly said, dialing 911 and opening his door. “Yes. Robbery in progress. Fourth and Stevens.” He hung up and threw his phone on the seat.

In the next moment I was out of the car, running after Preston. His cape flapped in the night air. As we neared the store, there was the crack of a gunshot, and I slowed, fear stabbing through me. “Preston! NO! He's got a gun!” I screamed.

Preston kept running, and when he flung the door open, this exciting little adventure stopped being anything but terrifyingly real and ugly. This wasn't a game, and the reality that Preston wasn't playacting at being a superhero hit me square in the stomach. He was willing to risk his life for what he believed in. For his guilt. For his father.

Something in me snapped, and I sprinted again. Not to the car, not away, not to my home and my bedroom and my safe life. I ran after my friend. My crazy friend.

I hit the door and saw the blood. Dark and thick, pooling from underneath the body of the cashier. The floor was strewn with doughnuts, candy bars, beer cans, and bags of chips. A stainless steel pistol gleaming in the fluorescent lights caught my eye. The remnants of pepper spray stung my eyes.

Preston was struggling furiously with the robber. They were next to the condiment section, and bottles of mayonnaise, catsup, and mustard were flying everywhere. He'd somehow disarmed the man, and as I jumped to help him, two little girls and a woman, all in nightgowns, rushed from around a corner at the back of the store and began shrieking and screaming at the sight of the cashier lying in a pool of blood.

Preston, now sprawled on top of the guy, and with what looked like catsup and mustard smeared on his face, frantically reached into a pouch on his belt and took out his Taser. “Z-z-zip ties,” he stammered, looking at me as he jammed the Taser against the man's exposed belly.

I blinked, not understanding. The man suddenly stiffened, a silent scream frozen on his face.

“Zip ties! GET THE FUCKING ZIP TIES!” Preston screamed, and I was jolted out of my frozen terror.

Yanking at the pair of white plastic zip ties on Preston's belt, I knelt over the still-being-electrocuted guy and grabbed his wrists, sliding the ties over his hands and cinching them tight.

Without a breath, Preston heaved himself from the guy and scrambled through the mess to the cashier. He leaned over the man and ripped open the bloody T-shirt. “Help me. It's through the chest.” Blood pumped from the wound in tandem with the heart, spilling his life away. Preston jammed his finger into the hole. “It went all the way through. Reach under his back, find the exit wound, and stuff your finger in it. He's bleeding to death.”

I did so, feeling the sticky, slick texture of the blood. I gritted my teeth. I almost retched. “It's big. Bigger than my finger.”

“Use two fingers. Just get it plugged.”

Sirens howled closer, and as the woman and two girls crowded around, Preston looked at the woman.
“No morira.”

She gazed back at him, then nodded.
“Eres valiente. Gracias,”
she said, then cupped her husband's head in her hands and kissed his brow.
“Gracias.”

Two hours after the paramedics took Manuel to the hospital and the police had interviewed us, with Preston blithely telling them he'd been at a costume party and happened to be in the store when the shooting occurred, I sat in my bedroom. Picking up my phone, I Googled
“No morira.”
It meant “He won't die” in Spanish. Then I looked up
“Eres valiente.”

“You are brave.”