Spoils (10 page)

“Leni! Leni!” Someone calls my name.

I should say something.

“Leni!” The voice is full of concern. “Leni!”

Strong hands lift my head and lay it on a hard lap. The bright red of the sun's glare behind my eyes vanishes into lovely darkness. Something cold and wet dribbles on my face and makes me gasp, which causes me to breathe in water. I sputter, sitting up too quickly, only to knock into something hard.

“Oh!” I cry out and grab my forehead.

There's an echoing cry and the shade is gone. As my eyes pop open, the bright glare of the sun slaps my eyeballs.

I pitch sideways, clutching my eyes, and land with my face in the burning hot sand.

“Ack!” I say with a mouthful of grit. Blinking against the bright glare, I turn to face my bumbling rescuer.

“What the hell are you on?” Gavin says.

Of all people on this earth. Why Gavin?

I'm reeling from my visit, from the knock on the head. I touch my forehead gently and feel a lump rising. I'm utterly unprepared for a showdown. Gavin sits less than a foot away and rubs his mouth gingerly.

As he lowers his hand, I can see that I clocked him good.

“You're bleeding,” I say in a small voice.

He shoots me an annoyed look. Then he reaches for his canteen, takes a swig, swishes and spits in the sand.

“Are you okay?” he asks after a significant pause. He clearly expects some great explanation about what just happened. Something along the lines of epileptic seizure or diabetic coma. An Ecstasy tablet gone bad. Something that makes sense.

I don't answer.

“I saw you collapse,” he accuses. “It scared the crap out of me.”

I don't want to talk. Michael's words are slipping away so quickly I can almost see them blowing away. Leaving with them is my understanding of what I'm supposed to do. I don't want to talk to Gavin about this. Especially not Gavin. Still woozy from my encounter, my head spins as I try to stand, and I stumble back against him. He catches me and eases me down to the sand. Though weak and dizzy, I still notice that his chest is broad and solid.

“It's the heat,” I lie, poorly, rubbing my throbbing temples.

“Bull,” he says, though he does angle his head so that he blocks the sun shining in my eyes. And his hands are very gentle. “Do you want me to text Rob?”

I have no idea who Rob is. The driver, I guess.

“No.”

I don't want to leave this spot. It's silly to think there is something special about this square foot of sand. Michael can come to me wherever he wants to. But it still feels special, holy. It slowly sinks in that Gavin is mixed up in this whole mess.…No. I don't want him to text anyone. Michael said it comes back to the one who was wronged, and suddenly I'm certain Gavin is who he meant. The sinking feeling in my stomach tells me that I'm not a big enough person to be happy that I get to fix him. Gavin is apparently as deeply embroiled in this mess as Natasha and I are. Which means it isn't a horrible coincidence that we are in the same class again. It's part of a divine plan.

I'm in so much trouble.

“Look, I don't know what you're trying to pull here,” he says after a long moment. “But you're either high or seriously ill. Nobody collapses on the beach in the middle of the day and then is so fricking hard to rouse. You might as well tell me what's doing.”

“No, no.” I shake my head. “It's not like that.”

“And why are you soaking wet?”

That I can answer. “I went swimming.” And then I add smugly, “With dolphins.”

“Now I know you're high.”

“I even touched one!” I shove at his chest a bit. He doesn't budge. Slowly he reaches for my wrist, his fingers easily encircling it. My heart gives a ridiculous leap at the touch of his hand on mine—until he tugs on my wrist. He's strong enough to pull my arm away but he's asking permission. I mutter under my breath as I unfold both arms so that he can see my clean, unmarred blue veins.

“I don't do drugs,” I tell him. “You
know
that.” But of course, he doesn't. How could he know anything about me? I look away, depressed and confused, and shift out of his arms.

He takes a deep breath and then turns so that he's sitting next to me, his long legs bent, his arms casually draped around them. “I don't want to see you hurt,” he says.

I have to muffle my snort. Why in the world would he care about me, a little nerd from his senior year?

“If someone gave you something…you don't have to tell me who it was, but believe me, it's not a road you want to walk down. I saw a lot of smart people ruin their lives that way.”

He must mean juvie. I can't imagine spending a year and a half locked away. We have gangs in St. Pete. We have big, ugly crime committed by straight-up killers. He was locked in with them for eighteen months.

“I'm sorry,” I say.
For you,
though I don't say that. “But I'm not on drugs.”

Gavin looks away in frustration. He glares at me, like he's going to say something, but then he looks away again. He hasn't shaved this morning and there's a faint shadow around his jaw from the stubble.

“Leni,” he finally says. “I don't blame you for not trusting me. But I hope you believe me when I say that I've seen a lot of messed-up shit and I'd hate to see you pulled in over your head.”

I hug my legs. I really don't know why he's being so nice.

“Gavin, it's not the right time for this.”

“Just listen, okay?” he says, raking his hand through his hair, leaving sand behind.

I stand up.

I suddenly remember Sofia's words.
Let them show you the view from their side of the story. Listen, don't judge.
Gavin rises to his feet too, and even though he's taller than me, he looks pale and frightened.

I remember what a horrible time it was for him. After the initial feeling of vindication, that I'd been right not to believe in that golden charisma that everyone else was falling for, my heart ached for him.

It started out as a kind of joke. Some buddies of his wanted to help a woman who didn't have citizenship papers. No citizenship, no work. So Gavin hacked into the Florida DMV and got her a Social Security number. She was hired. Good deed done. That probably could have been the end of it—they hadn't been caught. But after they saw how well their philanthropic project went, they came up with a scheme that was a bit more entrepreneurial. Go in, grab a few extra numbers, nothing anyone was using, and sell them to undocumented workers. They sold each number for fifty bucks. They convinced themselves that it wouldn't hurt anyone. It was the easiest money any of them had ever made. There were rumors going around school at the time that Gavin was up to something, but none of us knew the full story until the trial, when everything came out.

Gavin always liked to push his luck. He was our school's living legend. He'd wheedle an extension on a due date and charm even the strictest teachers. He'd skip class and go hang out with the school's safety officer. He once popped into band practice, picked up a pair of drumsticks and played with the band, on beat and on time, for the hour and never went back again. He hacked into the school's official blog and slipped in an anonymous editorial about the school board's decision to cancel day care for high school mothers, a piece that was later picked up by the
Miami Herald.
Somebody at school once said his dad was some movie star in the eighties and I believe it. His dad wasn't around, so there was no way to know if this was just a rumor, but there was undeniably something about Gavin that was charismatic and magnetic, and I could totally picture his mom falling for a guy who looked like him. When he laughed, you couldn't help it, you had to turn to look.

Everyone let Gavin get away with his antics because he was brilliant, and we all knew he'd turn into something amazing. I guess he got used to living in a universe that played by his rules.

Until he was caught.

It received a lot of media attention; a high schooler hacking into the Florida DMV. One newspaper article said Pinellas County had just sent its smartest adolescent to jail. Depending on who was arguing in front of the judge, Gavin was either a prankster folk hero or the personification of everything wrong with the youth of today. All of us at Citrus Park High were riveted by the trial.

With the lingering presence of Michael still hanging over me, I fight the feeling that I'm responsible for what happens next. In my mind, Gavin's been someone to stay away from for a long time now. It's hard to redefine him as something else. Something more complicated.

Both of us turn to face the hypnotic repetition of waves on the shore. The waves in the Gulf are so gentle and sweet, only a few inches tall at their crest. I struggle against the feeling that Gavin's some sort of victim. But it saddens me to think about the blazing potential for greatness that we all saw in him in high school and how no one else will ever see him that way. People hear that he was in juvie and from then on, if he steps out of line, it reaffirms their belief that he's untrustworthy. I suddenly realize why he didn't fight the bogus cheating charges. He didn't think he would beat them. So what if this time he didn't do it. Who would believe him?

“Juvie wasn't all bad,” he says quietly as if reading my mind.

“No?”

“I'm not saying I recommend it,” he says wryly. His hands are shoved in his pockets, feet braced wide. He meets my sideways glance with an ironic one of his own. He's always looked older than his age. At seventeen he easily passed for twenty-one. Now that he's filled out more, he looks like a man in his midtwenties. That must have helped him. Big guys, tough guys, they command respect everywhere. He was a middle-class kid who maybe had a shoving match in junior high, up against guys who'd been fighting their whole lives; he needed all the advantages he could get.

It's wicked hot under the baking sun. A slight breeze gusts up every so often, but with the sun glinting off the water and the pale sand, we're getting pummeled by heat from all directions. Sweat beads and pours freely down our faces and backs. I imagine the toxins of our past bleeding out with each drop.

“Judge Dillard was old-school,” he says about the one adult who wasn't susceptible to his charms. He must sense my gaping disbelief at the fondness in his voice. “She was tough but fair.” He shrugs. “She wanted to see what you were made of. If she believed in you, she wanted reports. You had to earn her respect, but once you did, she'd fight for you.” Everyone in juvie had to attend classes, working toward a GED, and one of the teachers who volunteered there, Mr. Sninski, quickly took measure of Gavin's unusual abilities. Within a few weeks, he had Gavin teaching computer skills to the other teens.

“Everyone wants to be a hacker, so that helped a lot,” Gavin says. “Plus a wicked right hook.”

“Were there a lot of fights?”

“I wouldn't be a door warrior, so I put my boots on.”

I blink at the slang.

“No one respects a britney,” he explains, misinterpreting my blank stare.

“Britney?”

He coughs. “That's, uh, a disrespectful term for a coward.”

“Door warrior?”

He laughs a bit at my tone.

“The guys who act tough as long as their cell door is locked but are little mice when the doors are open.”

I wince at “cell door.”

“Boots on?” But I already know the answer.

“Getting ready for a fight. It's like high school,” he explains. “Only more brutal.”

With the help of Mr. Sninski and Judge Dillard, Gavin won a scholarship to Tech, a full ride for four years. It made him believe in that old platitude that everything happens for a reason.

“Why Tech?” I always wondered if he wanted to leave Florida after his troubles. To leave us all behind.

“There was a professor at Tech, Tovar Isakson. He was like a freaking hero to me. He was the first to do some really groundbreaking research into algae as a fuel source. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about that.”

To hear Gavin tell it, it sounds like a fairy tale, an academic Cinderella story, except thanks to my snooping I know that it doesn't end with happily ever after. Even in his confessional mode, Gavin doesn't talk about what happened next or why he left school. He only says, with a grimace, that it didn't work out.

“The professor left school around the same time, anyway,” he says. “Working on a start-up. I guess I should have stayed in Florida and hacked the lottery.” He glances over and smiles wryly.

I blanch at how close to the truth his teasing is.

“I don't recommend it.” I feel a sudden need to continue the spirit of confession. “We've spent it all, you know.”

“That's rough.”

I huff in a mirthless laugh. “My dad never worried about saving money. Even before we won the lottery, he spent more than we could afford. My parents had so many fights on the twenty-eighth of the month, it was a running joke.”

My dad, part leprechaun, with that confident, mischievous twinkle in his eyes. He doesn't look like that anymore. He was the one who bought the plot to build the house we live in, surprising my mom with it one day at dinner. The house that never felt like a home, because who calls a ten-thousand-square-foot Italianate monstrosity with six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, an indoor racquetball court, a dock with a boat lift, and a saltwater pool their home? Then again, maybe he was entitled to all that mad spending. Maybe it was better for this crazy, tainted money to leave our family quickly, extravagantly. He was the one who bought the ticket, after all. Maybe something about it bothered him.

“At least, before we won, he and my mom were working, so money was grounded in something real. He had to think, at least a little bit. Once money didn't have any kind of meaning, everyone went a little crazy. I don't know how else to explain it. We unmoored. Ticks can drink so much blood that they explode, you know? That's what we were like.”