Pretend You Love Me (33 page)

“One minute.” Coach K. held up an index finger. She nodded at Coach Archuleta. “We thought about waiting until tomorrow, but
Manny and I both agreed we should celebrate it now, as a team. The vote was unanimous. Mike Szabo is this year’s MVP.”

“What?” My head jerked up.

T.C. intoned, “Again? How boring.”

Everyone laughed.

“Wait a minute.” I held up a hand. “I didn’t vote. When did we vote?”

Coach Kinneson dropped a jaw. “Didn’t anyone tell Mike about the vote? You girls.”

They laughed again. They’d tricked me. “You’re dead,” I said. “You’re meat.”

Coach Kinneson reached into her golf bag and lifted out a trophy. It was tall. She presented it to me.

A trophy. Bigger than any of the others I’d won. The gold plaque at the bottom read:
COALTON COUGARS, MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
. Underneath the date and my name:
MIKE SZABO
.

She’d gotten my name right. All my other trophies were stored on the shelf in my closet because they said Mary-Elizabeth.
I smiled at Coach and she smiled back. This wave of sadness washed over me.

Regret.

The umpire grumped, “It’s game time, Coach.”

Coach Archuleta tossed me my face mask. “Show me what I missed,” he said. Meaning all of us, I’m certain.

We hustled onto the field. Everyone on the team clapped me on
the shoulder or touched gloves with me. My pride swelled. I loved this game. I loved all of them. As I strapped on my shin
guards, I glanced up into the stands one last time. She wasn’t there—

Yes! She was. Sitting on the top riser. I tried to catch her eye, but she was wearing shades. So beautiful. So mine.

Nothing could ever compare with the happiness I felt at that moment. The sky’s the limit, as Dad would say. Believe it, baby.
Punching my glove and swaggering out onto the field, I chanted with Jamie and the crowd, “Sza-bo. Mighty Mike. Sza-bo.”

Scott City gave a respectable showing. They only lost by a run. Never count out a team, especially one with something to prove.
Same goes for a person.

Did Dad say that?

No, I did. My own personal philosophy.

We flung our gloves into the air and hugged each other. Great season. MVP. The reflection off a windshield as a vehicle pulled
into the parking lot blinded me momentarily. The stereo was blaring an Alan Jackson song: “Who’s Cheatin’ Who.” The music
cut out. As I snagged my glove in midair, my eyes were drawn to the truck. To Bailey opening the door and stepping out.

I craned my neck around to find Xanadu in the bleachers. She wasn’t there. She was at the backstop, breaking away from the
milling crowd. Heading for the parking lot.

Bailey started toward her.

She walked faster, then he did. She trotted, he sprinted. She ran.

“Hell of a season, Mike.” Reese Tanner clenched my shoulder.

Beside him, Mayor Ledbetter said, “Looks like there’s a camp in your future, young lady. When’s it start?”

“What?”

They hung over me, suffocating me.

“The camp,” Reese repeated. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered, backing off. Bailey was kissing her. My heart was knocking so hard, it was cracking ribs. I couldn’t
catch my breath.

Through the sea of well-wishers and back-slappers, I staggered to the lean-to to grab my gear. Everything was spinning.

“Mike.”

I dropped my trophy into my duffel and zipped it up.

“Mike.”

She loomed at the edge of the aluminum shell, smiling tentatively. “Great game. You were awesome, as usual.”

My eyes strayed over her shoulder to Bailey, who was standing off a short distance, talking to Faye and Leland.

“Listen, um. This is so weird.”

I met Xanadu’s eyes.

“I guess he had to get over the initial shock, you know, of me being a supplier. Not to mention drug-head and murderer.” She
dropped her eyes to the ground. “God. Can you believe it?” A smile tugged her lips. “He still loves me. After all that, he
still loves me.”

My brain screamed, What about me?

“Anyway.” She folded her arms loosely around herself and kicked at a glove someone had left propped against the bench. “About
last night. You knew I was upset about Bailey, right? I wasn’t thinking straight. Straight.” She let out a little laugh. Then
her face grew serious. “It didn’t mean anything, okay?”

Bailey called, “Xana.” She jumped. Lowering her arms, she smiled again, shyly, and said, “I better get going. His mother and
father want to
talk
to me.” She rolled her eyes. “Persecute is more like it. Why did he have to tell them? Now everyone’ll know.” Her eyes darkened.
“God, I hate small towns. I don’t know how you stand it. So Toto.” She reached out to touch me, but I was too far away. “Call
me later, okay?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and jogged away.

Out of the lean-to, in the opposite direction, across third base, in front of the scoreboard, I walked, loped, broke out,
ran.

It didn’t mean anything, okay?

My legs pumped, arms pistoned. Didn’t
mean
anything? The wind whipped at my face. It didn’t mean anything, didn’t mean anything. Okay? Okay? My chest hurt. Wheezing,
coughing, gasping for air. I slammed the ladder against the tower, my hands shaking so hard I could barely grip the rungs.

At the walkaround, I stumbled over the bolts on the metal floor. I lost my balance, fell to my knees. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t
balance, couldn’t force myself upright. I crawled to my spot.

Jamming my back into the water tank, I hugged my knees and felt myself sinking, sinking.

Didn’t mean anything mean anything mean anything, okay?

“No!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “No. It’s not okay!”

A
tidal wave of tears surged up from a deep well inside of me. They gushed from my eyes and sluiced down my face. Mike doesn’t
cry. Mike Szabo does not cry.

She does not cry because she does not feel.

It didn’t mean anything, okay?

To who, Xanadu? To who?

I bawled. I bawled like a baby. Not since I was four and fell off the roof and broke my arm had I bawled like this. “Don’t
cry, baby,” Dad had said. “Big girls don’t cry.”

Don’t they, Dad? Don’t they cry? This hurt. It hurt more than a broken bone. Bones fuse, they heal. This hurt would never
heal. It ruptured my core, the fiber of my being, it ripped away at my soul.

Didn’t mean anything, okay?

“No! It’s not okay!”

I don’t know how long I sat there, hunched over, heaving out my guts. Hours? Days?

Control. Gone.

Action. Over.

The gate screeked.

I curled up tighter. Go away. Please. Go away.

Footsteps. The whoomp of a body flopping down next to me.

“Go away.” My voice sounded small, frail. Not me, not Mike. Just go, I prayed. I don’t want you to see me like this.

“Wow, I haven’t been up here since I was a kid. Dad forbid it, you know. Too dangerous, he said. What do you call that? Irony?”
Darryl snorted.

I lifted my head. It was too heavy for my neck. “What do you want?” I snarled. “I don’t have the truck.”

“That must be because I do. I got your stuff too. That big ole honkin’ trophy.” Darryl smirked. “Jamie said I could probably
find you up here. What did you guys do, steal a ladder from Hank’s?”

I buried my face in my knees again.

“People kept telling me you guys were coming up here. Phew.” Darryl let out a short breath. “It’s a long way down. I forgot
how far.”

“If you’re scared, get off.”

“I’m not scared. I’m just saying…”

I whipped up my head and glared at him. Take the hint. Leave.

Tapping a Marlboro out of his crumpled pack, he grasped the cigarette between his teeth and offered me one from the pack.
I shook my head. He flicked his lighter and a flame sparked to life. Lighter fluid. I closed my eyes. Leaned back against
the water tank.

Darryl took a deep drag. The smoke smelled good. I don’t know why; I hated cigarettes. “Maybe if you told me what was wrong,
I could help you,” he said.

I laughed. Bitter sounding, acrid tasting in my mouth.

“Believe it or not,” he went on, oblivious, “I do know a thing or two about life. I’ve been around the block. Okay, I admit,
it’s a short block.” Darryl chuckled at his own joke. “Could be I have a few in
sights though. I could maybe give you a different way of looking at things.”

My tears welled again. Darryl’s voice—the intonation, the inflection, even the words—sounded so much like Dad.

He nudged my foot with his. “C’mon. Try me. What are big brothers for?”

Hating, I thought.

I inhaled his smoke and held it in my lungs. We all have to die of something, right? Why not cancer? He wasn’t leaving; he
was settling in. “Okay.” I whirled on him. He asked for it. “All right. Question number one: Why was I born this way? Question
number two: Why can’t she love me? Question number three: Why did he—” My throat closed up. I forced out the words. “Have
to die?” I collapsed in a heap again.

Darryl didn’t try to put his arm around me or anything, for which I was grateful. We weren’t that way. We never had been.
I didn’t need physical comfort, anyway. I needed a spiritual guide, an angel. A savior.

Darryl finished smoking his cigarette, letting me cry it all out. Through bleary eyes, I watched as he stubbed the butt on
a bolt and flicked it, skittering it across the walkaround. He turned toward me. “Could you come up with some harder questions?”
he said.

I torched him with a death look.

He elbowed my shoulder. “Never mind. I’ll take a crack at these.” Scratching his bald spot, he shifted to get comfortable.
“Why were you born this way? Well,” he expelled a long breath, “I don’t know, Mike. Why are any of us born the way we are?
Take me, for instance. How come I got all the looks and brains and personality in the family?”

He waited. If he was hoping I’d laugh at his stupid joke, sorry. I didn’t have it in me.

“Okay, take me again,” he continued. “Why was I born such a
loser?” He lit another cigarette and dropped the pack into his pocket. As he blew out smoke, he said, “I thought for a while
I’d made myself this way. A self-made wastoid. Isn’t that what you call me? Isn’t that what everyone says? You’re right. But
I don’t think it’s all me. In the end, it is. We’re responsible for how we turn out. But I sure inherited Ma’s lack of motivation.”

That was the truth.

“You were born special though,” he said.

I scoffed.

“No, I mean it. Everybody knows it. All the time I hear people say, ‘That Mike. She’s one special little gal.’”

I just looked at him.

“They do. Everybody loves you.”

Not in the way I wanted to be loved. Not by the people I needed to love me. The one person who could’ve saved me.

“I think we don’t get a choice in the born-that-way department,” Darryl said. “All we can do is make the most of what we’re
given. Does that answer your question?”

“No.”

“Question number two. Why can’t she love you? I assume you mean that girl who slept over last night. Xanadu, that her name?
Sounded to me like she loved you pretty good.”

Oh my God. All the blood rushed to my face.

“Yeah, the walls in that house aren’t solid steel. And, of course, there’s that hole now.”

I ground my face into my knees.

“Don’t worry. I’m not a peeping Tom.”

It didn’t mean anything, okay?
Okay?

“I was at your game today,” Darryl said. “I try to make it to most of them.”

He did? That surprised me. I’d seen him a couple of times.

“I saw what happened when Bailey showed up.”

I died. Again, I died.

“Some people aren’t made to love each other, Mike. Take Charlene, for instance.”

Why didn’t he just shut up? Why didn’t he leave? Why didn’t he take the fucking hint?

Darryl hooked an arm around one bent knee and took a drag on his Marlboro. “Charlene and I clicked; we really did. After a
while, though, I knew it’d never work out for us. We both knew it. She wanted things in life—a home, family. She had this
vision of who she’d become, who
we’d
become, as a couple. She bought into the extended family plan.” Darryl flicked his ash. “Man. Can you imagine if that was
me living the life of Reese? All those kids?” He sucked in a long drag, held it, and blew smoke out his nose. “Me, a father.
What a joke.”

I don’t know, I thought. Darryl’d be an okay father. Not great. He’d keep those kids in line, anyway.

“Reese was a helluva catch for Charlene,” Darryl went on. “He’s steady and responsible. Ambitious guy. I never could’ve given
Charlene everything she wanted. Everything she needed.” Darryl faced me. I was peeking out at him from under my arm. “Understand?”
he asked.

No. I hid my eyes. Yes. I didn’t want to, but I did. I could never give Xanadu what she wanted, what she needed. She wasn’t
like me, physically, emotionally. I would always leave her unfulfilled and yearning. Eventually, she’d go looking elsewhere.
She’d go looking for guys.