The Underdogs (26 page)

Before Nicholas could shoot my best friend, I crouched so low my stomach brushed the ground, and then I rose up with all my might and leapt at him with everything I had, aiming my jaws for his neck and my paws for his eyes.

But he'd sensed my intentions, too.

While I was in the air flying at him, Nicholas shot me in the chest. I went down, and everything went black.

 

After

Next thing I knew, Evie was hovering over me, glowing with a heavenly aura. My first instinct was to smile at her. I was so confused I can't even explain it. I didn't know where I was, what I was waking up from, and why Evie looked so terrified.

I felt a sort of numb pressure on my tummy area, and I was panting hard. “You're going to be okay, sweetie,” Evie promised. She whipped off her new sweatshirt and I felt her press on my chest. “You're such a good girl. We're going to take care of you, don't you worry.”

But her voice was thick and shaky as she fought tears. That's when the pain broke through the numbness—it was a slow, throbbing alarm that something was terribly wrong. I could breathe okay, which gave me hope. Everything came back to me in one great rush when I heard a man scream,
“Oh, God,”
and then I saw it was Nicholas, still holding a gun—and pointing it straight at Evie's head from less than ten feet away. Right—he'd shot me.
Nicky?
Why? My focus was going in and out, but I was alert enough to see now that the aura lighting up Nicky and Evie was from the yellow parking lot lights, that we weren't in heaven, and that we were still all alone with this angry person we'd thought we knew.

“Look what you made me do,” Nicholas shrieked. He sounded so crazed he gave me the shivers. “I'm sorry, Chelsea! I'm so sorry, girl. I had no choice…”

I had to move. I had to get up. To stop him. I wouldn't let him hurt Evie, and he of all people should know I'd fight to the death. I tried to wriggle on the rough pavement, still warm from the sun beating on it during the day, but Evie held me down gently so I stayed on my side.
Don't move. Don't move, Chelsea
.

“Drop it, Nicholas,” a smooth, sure voice broke into the night.

I knew that molasses-like sound so well. Detective Ashlock was here.

“Don't move or I'll shoot the girl,” Nicholas yelled back. He took a step closer to us. I tried again to get up, but Evie held me down, her sweatshirt helping to stem the blood.

I heard the
click
of metal on metal, and Ashlock—who had materialized out of nowhere and was standing on a patch of grass to Nicholas's right—yelled back, “Another step and I'm going to have to shoot you, Nicky.”

“Detective, he shot Chelsea. We have to get her to a vet, like,
now
,” Evie cried. I could feel blood trickling through the sweatshirt, a wet stickiness that had begun to mat my fur. “It's going to be okay, girl. Stay with me.”

“I know, Evie,” Ashlock said calmly. “Backup is on the way. We'll sort this out, right, Nicholas? And then we'll get Chelsea straight to the vet.”

“Oh,
please
,” I heard Nicholas say. “I'm a dead man walking and you know it.”

“Not if you stop this right now,” Ashlock said. I almost believed him. “Not if we find out this was a terrible accident. But you have to help me, Nicholas. You have to come in peacefully and help us sort this whole thing out.”

I could feel Evie shaking, and I couldn't blame her; the scene was surreal. Nicholas, our golden boy, the hero, was suddenly possessed by the soul of an evil demon. We had to somehow process two dimensions colliding—the one where Nicholas was a heroic Boy Scout and the one where he was a scary murderer. It appeared he had either lost it completely, or he was finally showing his true colors.

“It
was
an accident,” Nicholas said defiantly. “And no one feels worse about it than I do. But it was also self-defense.
Annabel
attacked
me
.”

I started to fade, and I heard a distant, muted cry from Evie.
Chelsea, Chelsea …
It was such a sweet sound, but I didn't know if it was enough to keep me there.

Ashlock, his voice more urgent now, shouted, “Nicholas, I believe you. You were trying to talk sense into your sister, right? But she wouldn't listen. So you had to—you had to grab her so she'd hear you. Then what? Maybe she hit her head and fell into the pool?”

I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, but I heard Nicholas say, “She was at the club that night to meet that—that
ape
, and I found her dressed …
provocatively
. She told me she'd started to believe the stories about him, but they'd talked it out and were meeting to profess their undying love for each other. I told her he was wrong for her, but she wouldn't listen, so I grabbed her. But I let go—I let go. And then she lunged at me, started punching me…”

Nicholas's confession trailed off, so Ashlock picked it up. “You had to stop her from hitting you, right? So you grabbed her, maybe around the neck. And maybe before you knew it, she was in the pool, passed out. By then maybe you thought it was too late. It wasn't your fault, Nicky. We know that now.”

Nicholas was silent for a moment, and when he spoke he was bawling again. “I would
never
have hurt her. Never. I only wanted her to know the truth about him. About that girl over at Long Hills Country Club. He says he was there to train her, but everyone knew—he used her and dumped her, and then he did the same to another girl in Connecticut.”

Ashlock sounded totally on board with his story. “You didn't mean for any of this to happen, and when you realized what you'd done you got sick, didn't you? You were so sorry that you vomited on the pool deck.”

Nicky kept that gun leveled at Evie and said softly, “That's right.”

Ashlock continued. “Okay, Nicholas. That's good—you getting so sick means you have a conscience. Now drop the gun before someone else gets hurt.”

Nicholas hung his head, but then snapped it right back up, perhaps realizing he had to pay attention or Ashlock could wrest control from him.

“Annabel died in the pool, Nicholas,” Ashlock said. “Tell me, how did her hair get dried and styled?”

“She—” Nicholas couldn't seem to get the words out. He cleared his throat. “I
loved
her. I wanted her to look beautiful. She was always so beautiful. I carried her back into the bathroom and fixed her hair, dried it, brushed it. Like she would've wanted.”

I was so tired, and getting so cold. I shut my eyes and started to drift away.

“She was found in her bikini top. Why leave her exposed like that?”

“Because,” Nicholas said, “her shirt got dirty when I got so sick. I wanted her to be clean, and she was. She was all clean.”

Ashlock said, “I get it, Nicholas. But why frame Lisa? It was brilliant the way you got into her locker to plant the necklace. You had us all fooled.”

Nicholas snorted, angry again. “It wasn't hard. We share everything at this club, remember? After the way she treated my sister, I didn't care if she was wrongly accused.”

As I listened to these bombshells, I wondered: Is Nicholas good, or is he bad? Is he a great kid who's gone off the deep end, or is he secretly rotten to the core? Have we missed the little signs along the way that he isn't quite the golden boy we like to think? Like I always say, people are strange.

Ashlock also confirmed we'd been stalked. “Well, the police department was impressed that you stayed one step ahead of us. How'd you manage it?”

Nicky laughed again, an eerie, unnatural sound. “I saw Evie spying on you. I heard everything. And yes—I was there when she was telling Chelsea all about her necklace theory. So, yeah, I followed Evie to her hideaway behind Court 5 and from there, it was easy to check in on her to see how close she was getting.”

I was getting woozier, and I didn't know how Ashlock could stop Nicky on his own. If he tried to shoot Nicholas, Nicholas could shoot Evie first.

“Let's talk about this at the station,” Ashlock pleaded. “Let this be over.” My eyes were closed, but in the silence that followed I imagined the boy fighting with himself, wanting to do the right thing, not sure how. I felt a blissful sleepiness come over me, and I took one sharp breath.

“Detective, I'm losing her. Please.” Evie's voice was a cry. I let that breath out, and again everything went black.

 

After

Was I dreaming? I was in a bizarre world where my mom was suddenly with me, crying, begging me to stay with her, and I really wanted to. I was just so drowsy. I could hear everything crystal clear, but I didn't have the energy to open my eyes.

Lucky was there, too, pleading with Evie. “Thank God you're okay! I'm
so
sorry, honey. We got a flat tire on the way back from the movie and my phone was dead, so I called the club a million times from Beth's phone but it went straight to voice mail. We were stuck, and when I couldn't reach you I called Detective Ashlock. He rushed over to check on you.”

I, for one, believed him. It sounded like Evie did, too.
“Margee,”
she said sharply, realizing what had gone wrong. “She must've put Call Forward on before she even closed the club. It's okay, Dad,” she said. Her theory made sense. Desk staff always put the phones on Forward at closing time, which meant calls went straight to voice mail without ringing. Margee clearly hadn't wanted the phones to interrupt her secret tweeting in the locker room and had shut them down hours early. I had a feeling she'd be fired ASAP.

Lucky, voice rising in a panic, asked, “Where's the animal hospital ambulance?”

I heard Evie again, soothing me, saying, “You're such a good girl,” and “We love you, Chelsea.” I felt her gentle touch on my head, and someone else's firm pressure on my belly. I tasted blood in my mouth.

I heard a cacophony of tennis people's voices and I weirdly remembered they'd gone to see
Iron Fisted
. Someone was yelling,
“What happened? What happened?”
The same thing Nicky had screamed on the day Annabel's body was found. We'd come full circle, I thought. Lots of stuff was running through my mind, let me tell you.

Now I heard a deep, accented voice above me. “You're my good luck charm. You hang on, girl. You hear me?” It was Goran.

I heard the distant wail of sirens, but they got louder mighty quick, until they were so close it was like they were in my ears. “There's only one,” Lucky yelled. “
No
. Where's the second ambulance? For the dog?”

I heard doors slam and urgent footsteps.

“Let's have you sit down, sir,” one of the paramedics said.

“It's only a graze,” Ashlock's fierce radio-announcer voice replied. “I'll take myself to the hospital later. I'm waiting here for backup.”

“I understand, Detective,” one of the guys said. “But you've been shot, and we really need to take you over and make sure you don't go into shock. It's procedure.”

What the heck had happened?
Evie seemed to be okay, Ashlock was still talking away, but he'd been shot? How? And where was Nicholas?

“The boy is over there, cuffed to the fence,” Ashlock told the paramedics. “No ambulance needed. Take this dog straight to Margot Animal Hospital. Now.”

“But, sir—”

“It's a scratch.
Take the dog
,” Ashlock ordered in a voice you'd have to be an utter moron to disobey.

The guy must've gotten the message, because within seconds I felt new hands touching me. “What have we got?” the medic asked someone.

Lucky explained crisply, “Female golden retriever–pit bull mix, about six years old. Gunshot to the abdomen. One bullet. We've been applying pressure now for several minutes … since it happened.” He lowered his voice. “She's lost a lot of blood and it sounds like her lungs are filling up.”

That sounded scary, and I started to get nervous again. My mom seemed panicky and said, “Just take her.
Please
. I'll follow behind.”

The paramedic asked sheepishly, “Who's assuming the vet bills? Sorry, but they're going to need to know this is covered. You know, what kind of measures to take.”

“This dog's bills are guaranteed for any amount,” Gene boomed. “They are to take
all measures
, do you understand? Tell them to do whatever they can to save her.” I think I smiled then, but I'm not sure if I did, or if I dreamed it.

I felt four hands sneak underneath me, and the two lifesavers lifted me deftly onto a stretcher and strapped me in. That was the most scared I'd been this entire time. The straps. The strangers. I admit it, I began to whimper, and I cried a little. Evie gasped, “I'm going with her.”

The paramedic guy balked again. “I'm afraid—”

I wanted to laugh because it was hilarious hearing Ashlock at his wits' end with these clowns. He said, “The girl is going with her dog. That's the end of the discussion.
Now move it.
”

“You heard the man. Move it!” That was my mom. Good old Mom. I hoped I'd see her again.

This time, when I faded out, I felt like whatever happened was going to be okay, because even if I had to leave this world for good now, my people were okay, and that's what mattered. If it was my time, then so be it. I felt a peace wash over me, and I let it take me.

 

After

Well, surprise—I made it. I was unconscious for days after the shooting, stuck in a coma that scared everyone. My mom told me Evie had stayed by my side at the hospital every day. I kind of knew she was there; she read to me and a part of me could hear it, because I had so many new images running through my head when I woke up. She got through
Matilda
, and then shared the gossip about the tennis camp, and how Justine was going to be back on the court when school started and was as healthy as anything, and how Patrick and Goran were back to their old antics, like nothing had ever happened.