All The Glory (26 page)

“Fine, you want to know, I’ll tell you. And you can go out there and tell all those reporters and they can print it up and sell a million papers, I don’t care.”

I stopped him by putting my hand on his arm. “People could tear my fingernails out and I wouldn’t tell them what you say to me.”

He looked down at my hands. “Are you sure that hasn’t already happened?”

I glanced at my hands, knowing what I’d see there. “So I chew my nails. Big deal. I’m upset over your situation and whenever I’m upset, my fingernails become very appetizing. Don’t change the subject.”

“You’re the one talking about torture.” He winked at me.

“No!” I pointed at his face. “The puppy dog winky eyes will not work on me today!”

“Today? Do they ever work on you?”

“No, especially not since you started growing that hellaciously awful hoo-hoo on your face.” I pointed at the beard that was becoming way too bushy for my taste. It was only about a half-inch long, but still …
ew
.

He laughed so hard he dropped his fork and flipped potato salad up at me. It landed in my hair.

I stared up at it and sighed. “First he lost his looks, then his coordination. It was all downhill from there.”

He reached over and took the salad out of my hair and then held his hand out as he stood. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, standing with him after putting my plate on the ground.

“Out to the clubhouse.”

“Clubhouse? Hmmm sounds interesting.”

I followed him through the kitchen and out into his garage. He opened up the passenger door of his Camaro and waited for me to get in.

“Are we driving somewhere?” This was a bad idea, and we both knew it. Reporters still camped out just at the end of the driveway and they were all prepared to follow Jason should he ever try to leave. He was free to go anywhere he wanted, so long as it wasn’t in public; they made sure of that.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, shutting the door behind me.

“I’m in the damn car, aren’t I?”

My voice was muffled behind the closed window, but he nodded and then left me there, circling around the back of the car to get into the driver’s seat. The door slammed with a heavy thunk, and Jason put his hands on the wheel.

I looked first at him and then out the front window, staring at the inside of the garage door.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Nowhere. I just miss driving my car.”

I looked at him again. “Sucks being trapped in the house all the time, huh?”

“Yeah.” He laughed but it wasn’t happiness that came out with the sound. “I never thought I’d miss school so much.”

“I never realized how much school would suck without you in it,” I confessed.

He looked at me and gave me a sad smile. “Too bad we didn’t know how awesome this could be before, eh?”

“How awesome what could be?”

“Me and you. You and me.” He smiled like he was embarrassed.

I snorted. “Yeah, right. Like Brittney would have allowed that.”

He looked back out the windshield, his jaw jumping a little. He might have been angry, it was hard to tell because he didn’t say anything.

“So, are you going to tell me the story or not?” I was trying not to get excited about hearing the whole thing, but it was difficult. It wasn’t that I was interested from a voyeuristic sense; it was more that I had this ridiculous idea that I would be able to uncover some otherwise overlooked evidence that could help him. My superhero complex would not give up the ghost.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you. Just let me go back there and put it all straight in my head. I’ve been trying to forget it ever since it happened.”

We both let out a long sigh and faced the front of the car. The only sound we could hear was the ticking of his non-digital clock on the dashboard. I counted out a full two minutes in seconds before he started talking.

Chapter Forty-One

“I’D GONE TO THE STADIUM early. None of the players were there yet. The coach was in his office, going through his playbook and watching videos of the other team, something he did before every game.”

“Was that normal for you? Did you always go in early too?”

“No. I usually rode over with Joe and Derek, sometimes Jamahl, and got there an hour before game time.”

“Why didn’t you go with them this time?”

Jason’s jaw got tense again, but then he answered, something I hadn’t expected him to do, since he’d been so evasive before. “Because … I wanted to talk to the coach about something … personal.”

Jason looked down into his lap, emotions of all kinds fleeting across his face.

“What was it?”

Jason’s eyebrow went up and he looked angry. “Something personal. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“Was it about football or something else?”

“Personal. It was personal.”

Sensing he wasn’t going to go any further with this part of the story, I changed tack. “Okay, what then?”

“I went in there, to his office, and brought up this thing I wanted to talk to him about, and he just … acted like an asshole.”

“Asshole? Like what … he was rude?”

“He was …,” Jason started punching the steering wheel over and over, first lightly and then harder, “…nonchalant … like it didn’t matter.”

“Like what didn’t matter?” My heart was going nuts. I knew I was about to hear something that no one else but Jason and the coach knew.

“The personal thing I needed to talk to him about!” Jason gave one more punch to the wheel and a loud beep came from the horn, echoing all over the garage.

I was a little scared at the violence, and I think he was too. We both stared at the wheel and then at his hand. There was a small dot of blood there where he’d opened up a cut on his knuckle.

I had a hard time swallowing when I saw that. All I could picture was that fist killing a man.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I have a temper sometimes.”

A shiver ran through me and I wondered for a moment if I should be scared to be in the car with him like this, with his dad upstairs in his office and no one around to see what was happening.

Then a second later I wanted to slap myself. Jason was my friend. Jason would never hurt me. It didn’t matter to me that he had actually murdered someone. It was an accident, a mistake. He hadn’t gone into that office that day to kill anyone.

He wiped the blood on his shorts and stared out the front window again. “Anyway, words got heated, the conversation went downhill fast, and then he moved and I moved and there was some shoving and punching and down he went.”

“Down?”

“Yeah. He fell and his head hit the desk and he didn’t get up.”

“What’d you do?” I was having a hard time not being dizzy at this point. I felt like I was there watching it. And let me tell you … if you’ve never had an actual murderer tell you about how he killed someone, I don’t think you could understand what I was going through. Let’s just say it wasn’t anywhere near pleasant.

“I just stood there. I waited for people to come. I don’t know how long it was before they were there, but they found me standing there doing nothing.”

“Did anyone say anything to you?”

“Everyone just kept asking what happened, and then someone yelled out that I killed him and everyone started shouting and the cops showed up. They took me away, but not before half the guys I used to call my best friends were threatening to end me. They looked at me with such hate …” He shook his head silently, staring off into space.

“Wow.” I had to wipe the sweat off my upper lip. “That must have been intense. Just hearing the story…” I couldn’t finish because it was completely insensitive and more than a little stupid to be comparing my hearing what he’d done to him actually living through it.

“Yeah. Intense. You could say that.” He was lost in thought, nodding his head at nothing.

“I’m just wondering …,” I paused to make sure he was listening, “… I mean, if that personal thing you were talking about was something important, and he came at you … did he come at you? I mean, maybe it was just self-defense or whatever. Just … maybe he had a responsibility to do something that he didn’t do, or maybe you felt … threatened.” I was grasping at straws, but at the same time I was waiting with baited breath, hoping that I’d struck on something that might help him. Teachers and coaches were supposed to help students when they went to them with personal problems, right? They have a responsibility, right?

“Responsibility…” He practically spit the word out. “Responsibility. Yeah. That’s fucking awesome. Just great.”

“Great as iiinnnn … you think he had one or that he should have had one?” This was getting confusing, but he was talking and I knew of course that he was hiding something.
Getting to the bottom of things
had become my reason for being.

“Never mind. I’m done. Story’s over.” He threw his door open and got out. He didn’t even wait for me before going back into the house.

When I finally got inside, his father was standing in the hall looking bewildered.

“What was that all about?” he asked, looking over his shoulder towards the front hall.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to tell him what Jason and I had been talking about. He probably wished the whole thing would just disappear like pretty much everyone else on the planet had from their lives. I tried to think of a single person who would be happy that Jason did what he did and no one came to mind. Nobody was served by the coach’s life being ended so soon. No wonder everyone was talking about sending Jason to the electric chair.

“I should probably get going,” I said.

“Have a good workout?” he asked, walking me to the door.

“I guess. I’m always sore.”

He looked down at me with his hand on the front doorknob. “Well, if it makes any difference, I can see your gains.”

I looked down at my stomach. “My gains?”

“Muscle tone. And you’ve lost a lot of body fat. It’s obvious.”

“It is?”

“Your clothes are hanging off you. You have baggy-butt now.”

I laughed. “Baggy butt? What parent says that?”

He looked so awkward as soon as I said that I felt bad.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that was rude.”

“No, I just … I realized that I’m not even sure what a parent is supposed to do anymore.” His eyes got a little watery.

I put my hand on his arm. “No parent would. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“I try not to be. Thanks for coming over, Katy. It means the world to him, and that’s saying a lot these days. You’re the only one…”

“Don’t get me started on those hypocritical assholes,” I said before I could filter my mouth.

He laughed and pulled me into a hug. “You’re a great kid, Katy. Never change.”

I patted him on the back. “You’re the only adult who’s ever said that to me in my entire life.”

He pushed me out of the hug but held onto my upper arms, looking me dead in the eye. “I am one of the very few adults who’s had the horrible luck of having the veil that covers reality lifted. I see what others can’t or won’t. Trust me when I tell you that your honesty, your smart mouth, and your determination are going to take you a lot farther in life than anything those other kids at your school might boast about.”

I gave him my most annoying suck-up expression. “You mean being prom queen
won’t
guarantee me friends, financial success, and eternal happiness?”

He laughed and aimed me for the door. “You got it. Now get out of here. Your parents are probably wondering if they still have a daughter.”

“Do I come here too often?” I asked, feeling just a little self-conscious about it.

“No. Come here as often as you like. More often if you want. Jason waits for you all day.”

“He does?” My face went warm at that confession. Sometimes I still wondered why he even hung out with me at all.

“You bet. See you tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I have a monster final and physics hates me.”

“Bring your books over here. Jason was a wiz at that stuff.”

“You mean he
is
a wiz at it.”

His dad leaned on the doorframe. “You’re right. He is.” His smile was sad.

I left without another word, for the first time not even noticing whether there were any reporters around. It was like they’d become a part of the landscape. Here on Chestnut Lane there were mailboxes, lawns, cars, lampposts, piles of dog doo here and there, and vultures.
 
Vultures who carried cameras and microphones. This was my world.

Chapter Forty-Two

IT WAS ALMOST THE END of football season and Bobby had been harassing me for a couple months to go to a game with him. It felt disloyal to watch any of those turd football players on the field when Jason was still locked inside his house, but Bobby was finally able to convince me that eating a paper bowl full of nachos and orange non-cheese would do my heart good. When he’d said heart, we both knew he hadn’t meant the one pumping away in my chest that would surely be suffering from the onslaught of transfats; he meant the one that ached for a certain boy with a doomed future.

“I’m so glad you finally came,” Bobby said, sliding the nachos off the counter of the snack stand and handing them to me. “You’re turning into a total hermit these days.”

“No, I’m focusing on my grades instead of football. Trust me, I’m better off for it.”

“Grades? Is that why you’re at Jason’s every single day of every single week of every single month?”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up or I’m going home.” I used a chip to move some beans, chili peppers, and orange non-cheese around. I have an issue with ratios being off in a bowl of nachos. Each chip must have a little of everything or my world feels completely off.

“Hey, I’m not arguing, okay? You look totally fab.”

“I do?” I smiled, knowing for a fact that he wasn’t blowing smoke up my butt. I’d weighed myself that morning and found that I’d officially lost fifteen pounds of fat and replaced it all with toned muscles. Jason had told me just yesterday that I was now in better shape than any girl at school, including everyone on the cheer team and the girls’ basketball team. Adding a half-hour of the elliptical machine to my routine four days a week had made a real difference.