Knockout Games (24 page)

“Jesus, shut up,” I said under my breath.

Tuffy was staring into the sky. “I remember lying in my bed at night, all pumped up from all the excitement. Whenever I thought about my targets, I just pushed it outta my head. Hell, I didn't know 'em, why should I care? But when I was in ninth grade, I stopped. I saw this guy I'd KO'd a year before. He had to walk with one of them walkers now. He was real messed up and had kids too. I couldn't stop thinking about him. But I was just a kid myself . . . so I had to do one more before I stopped and that's when I got caught.”

“'Cause you stopped thinking straight,” whispered the dude behind me. “Sellout.”

I was about to let him have it.

“Now, I just got out,” said Tuffy. “I never graduated. I got a record. I can't get no job. I'm basically fucked.” Evans glared at him. “Sorry, but you know how it is. I ain't got no future. You guys, though, you still got a chance.”

“Who gives a fuck if he has no future? He was top dawg and he fucked up. He makes me sick.”

That was it. I turned around. “What the fuck is your prob—”

A girl was sitting there looking at me. She pointed down to her feet. I glanced down and saw Kalvin, Prince, and a few others standing underneath the bleachers staring at me through the slats.

“Oh, you heard that?” Kalvin said calmly. “I was running out of shit to say. Takes you long enough to get pissed off.”

I shot a look at Destiny. She kept her eyes glued to the ground.

“Don't look at her. She's a good soldier.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, confused. The girl sitting behind me got up and moved to the next row. I looked over to see if Jamison was watching, but luckily, he was distracted by a couple of guys goofing off on the next bleacher.

Kalvin touched my ankle and I recoiled. “You won't return my texts. How else am I supposed to talk to you?” Everyone was still focused on Tuffy, so Kalvin spoke softly, leaning his head to the edge of the bench. “I really . . .” he struggled for words. “I was really upset when I heard that you had visitors this weekend. And I'm not talking about your dad.”

He had been watching me.

“Then I heard you went down to juvie? And I asked myself, why would she do that? She wouldn't . . . she wouldn't rat us out, would she? Not after what she'd done herself? No, I couldn't believe that, despite the fact that Prince here thinks you're a snitch. No, I said, she's a good girl, just confused; seeing a dead person probably freaked her out, am I right?”

I nodded.

He traced his finger softly up my calf. “I've seen a few myself and it's not a nice thing. Still, I wondered what you talked about? I mean, I know that the surveillance video didn't show shit, and for some reason, they couldn't get anything off your camera that you happened to
leave behind
.” He scowled at me good, then shook it off. “So I figured it out. They needed a witness, someone who knew not only everything that went down that day, but everything about
us
.” He took a deep breath, exhaled.

“But I wonder if that person remembers that she wasn't the only one with a camera and maybe some
other
videos might be making their way into the wrong hands. . . .” He was neither threatening nor angry nor confused. He was certain—certain that everything would go bad for me . . . if I didn't play ball.

“Did you talk to Rodney Graves?” he said, matter-of-fact.

I had lots of answers in my head and things to get off my chest, but before I could, Jamison caught my eye and glared at me for talking. Kalvin ducked back into the shadows. I turned back around and sat there, making sure I didn't look like my crazy ex was standing underneath me. Jamison stood there for the next fifteen minutes, until Tuffy finished his story. Kalvin had stopped talking, but I could feel him breathing on my leg the whole time. I pressed my hands to my stomach and prayed that I would get my period soon. I tried not to imagine the other possibility.

Destiny practically jumped out of her seat the second it was over. She didn't want to talk to her brother or Kalvin or me for that matter.

When everyone else stood to leave, Kalvin reached out and slid something into my hand. “I can't let you take away everything I've built. I just can't. I need you to understand that.”

He and his crew disappeared into the shadows. I looked in my hand. It was Mom's driver's license.

36

I freaked. Called home. Voice mail. I dialed Dad's cell. When he picked up, I started rambling a mile a minute. He'd been out all day, had not seen Mom, and was trying to interpret my incoherence as to why I was calling him before lunch. I made him come pick me up. He heard the panic in my voice and came right away.

Evans said I could leave, but only after I told him that I had been intimidated by someone. When he asked by whom, I just said people that shouldn't be here. He caught my drift.

As soon as we pulled up to our house, I raced upstairs. The front door was unlocked.

I ran into Mom's bedroom.

Empty.

“Mom!” I cried out. “Mom!”

“Hello?” she answered from the bathroom.

I stood there, my head spinning. “Are you . . . OK?”

The toilet flushed and my anxiety dropped away. “Jesus.” I collapsed onto her bed.

Dad walked in. “Now would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

Mom shuffled into the room half asleep. “I thought I was going to get some rest today. . . .”

I took out her license and handed it to her. She blinked. “What's that?”

“Um, your driver license?”

She looked puzzled. “Why are you handing it to me?”

“The real question is who handed it to
me
?” I said.

“What are you on about? Why aren't you in school?”

“That's what I still want to know,” added Dad.

“Mom, focus. Did you leave the door unlocked?”

“No, I don't think so,” she seemed unsure. “Why?”

I hugged her. She was surprised, but I didn't want her freaking out more than I was. “He was here, Mom. He was in this room.”

She tensed up. She understood immediately.

“Who was here?” asked Dad.

“Kalvin. Kalvin came to school this morning with a message. A warning, more like,” I answered.

Dad got it. He walked straight to the front door and checked the lock.

“Are you OK?” I asked Mom.

She felt her clothes like she was checking for stab wounds or something. “Yeah,” she nodded.

Dad came back in, visually sweeping the room, looking under the bed. “I'm reporting this,” he said.

“What are you going to say?” I asked. “That he stole her driver's license?”

“How about breaking and entering, for one? Threatening a witness? He'll be behind bars today if I can help it.” He took out his phone and called Mr. Graves.

Mom was in shock. “I can't believe they were in here. Watching me.” She shuddered. She looked tiny and frail in her nightgown. When I thought about Kalvin standing over her and what he might have done . . .

“It's all my fault,” I said, hugging her again.

She hugged back, but didn't disagree.

Dad put us on speakerphone as he told Graves what had happened. I added the part about my encounter at the assembly. Graves said they were going to bring in all the suspects tomorrow. They needed extra time to work out the details because the crew were all minors. But they would try to pick up Kalvin tonight just to be safe. After tomorrow, things would be alright again, he assured us.

“And in the meantime?” he asked.

“We can send a squad car over to stay with you, if you like.”

“No thanks,” said Dad. “Just do your job and I'll do mine.” He patted his chest. I could see his holster strap under his jacket.

Mom leaned into the phone. “Send the car,” she said.

Dad stared silently at the squad car parked outside our apartment. He ordered the locks changed, but in the meantime, I took a chair from the kitchen table and propped it up against the front door. When it was jammed in good and firm, he asked, “So we're on lockdown?”

“Yep.”

I wanted to talk to Destiny about everything, but Dad wouldn't let me. At some point, I was getting too antsy. Even though I was grounded from communicating with the outside world, Dad allowed me to go online. I got onto the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
site and saw the candlelight vigil was happening tonight, right outside the library. I showed my dad.

“Maybe we should go?” I asked.

He put his hand on my head, something he used to do when I was tiny. “I don't think it's a good idea with all this going on. It'll be dark, with lots of people. You never know who will be in that crowd.”

I agreed. Maybe they'd have a live feed online or something.

I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Destiny or any of the others. But there was a Facebook notice that I had been tagged in a video. I clicked the link.

A page came up and a video called
Heavy Metal Mama
. I clicked Play. A serene image came up of a park somewhere on a crisp sunny day. And then I saw him: Metal Detector Man—and me coming up behind him.

I shut the laptop. Dad looked at me funny, but I tried to act normal. I opened the laptop again and untagged myself, but now I knew Kalvin still had the video. Something would have to be done.

Mom got up for dinner, which Dad actually cooked—a first. Even though it tasted horrible, I could see he was trying. We didn't talk about much. I suggested that maybe I stay home tomorrow, but Dad said if they got Kalvin tonight, it would be good to show my face, to show the rest of them that I couldn't be intimidated. “It makes a difference in court,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

He didn't answer.

Mom suddenly got brave after being cooped up with us two. “I'm going to work, then. He's not going to make me a prisoner. What's he going to do, march into the lab? We have security.”

So we all drove to Mom's work. The squad car followed us and it felt like having our own Secret Service detail. We dropped her off, and Dad said he'd come pick her up in the morning.

On the way back, Dad took a different route. “Where are we going?” I asked, but as soon as I saw the crowd, I knew.

We drove by the library and there were about three hundred people standing in silence, the candles lighting their faces. Some people had signs saying DEATH IS NOT A GAME and SHE DIED FOR PEACE. They marched in a circle in front of the library. There were pictures of Mrs. Lee on each sign. Someone was singing “Imagine” and playing a guitar.

Dad stopped across the street, but kept the engine running. He just wanted me to see it.

“Snow,” I said. The snow was falling gently and silently, making the whole scene angelic.

After a minute, someone startled us by knocking on the window. It was one of the cops in our Secret Service. “Just wanted to let you know that they apprehended Mr. Barnes, sir. Still, we should probably get back to your home.”

“Did he go quietly?” Dad asked.

“He gave us a bit of a chase,” said the officer.

I imagined Kalvin flipping them off and hitting the streets like one of those parkour guys, hopping walls and jumping off bridges.

“They caught him hiding in the bushes.”

So much for parkour.

37

The next morning I woke up and felt like I was going to puke. I sat staring at the toilet and thought: who feels sick in the morning?
Pregnant girls
.

Shit. I wanted to pretend all the stress was keeping my period away. This was the last thing I needed in my life. I prayed the stress would go away, along with everything else. There was only one kind of blood I wanted to see now.