Canary (13 page)

Mrs. Reid started talking about the song we were singing, and I glanced over to Julia's section of singers. I caught her eye and shrugged. I waited for her to nod back or give me some kind of forgiveness, a sign she understood what I'd done. But she didn't, and who could blame her? How could she, when I didn't even understand who I had just become?

Dad knocked on my door a week later as I was
getting ready for school.

“Morning, Kate,” he said in an unusually cheerful voice.

“Is everything okay?”

He never knocked on the door, let alone came into my room. I swear I usually heard him walk faster by my room in case I decided to open the door and try to have a conversation. I could probably build a bomb in here and he'd never know.

“Everything is fine,” he said, rocking on his heels. He was dressed in a suit, hair still wet from his morning shower. “I wanted to make sure you'd be at the game tonight.”

It was Beacon's first game of the season. Everyone was going. “Of course. I can't wait.”

“Good. I was hoping you'd say that.” He clapped, as if he was done talking. I figured he'd turn and walk out, but he paused. “It's been nice seeing you at my practices.”

“I like watching the team. I've missed basketball.” The words slipped out of my mouth, and I felt as if I had betrayed something by saying it. The
play-off game in eighth grade flashed through my mind, but I pushed it aside. The truth was I did like being a part of basketball again.

“Well, then, I guess I'll see you tonight, kiddo.”

“I'll be there.” I watched him walk down the hall before I turned to my dresser.

I dug around in my top drawer, then pulled out a picture I'd hidden after Mom got sick. The photo was of Mom, Brett, and me crowded around Dad at the end of one of his games. Brett and I wore foam fingers proclaiming Dad's team was number one, and Mom's arm was draped over Dad's shoulder. Instead of the usual sadness I felt looking at it, my body felt warmed. Dad had come and talked to me. He wanted me at his game. Maybe I'd been wrong about giving up basketball. Maybe that's what would bring Dad back to me.

Jack's time was consumed with practices now that the season was starting. Dad required him to weight train in the morning and be ready to run drills in the gym after school. I had no idea how he was getting his work done. The talents Jack had on the basketball court were unmatched in the classroom, so while I took honors level courses, he didn't.

We were both taking a current world issues class, though, at different times during the day. It was a semester-long course all students were required to take. There wasn't a textbook. Instead we read newspapers, magazines, and opinion pieces on current events. I loved the class and the opportunity to not just learn about what went on around me but what other students thought about these issues.

Most of the players, however, loathed the course. They'd complain at lunch, claiming it was biased, only focusing on political issues and not more current things like sports.

“If the class is about world issues, we should look at all the issues,” Luke argued.

Ali, Jenna, and I would remind the boys over and over again that which pro player signed with which team probably wasn't an important world issue. But they believed Mrs. Sheridan didn't know what was really important and blew off most of the assignments.

I had a suspicion the real reason the team didn't like the class was that the material was new and they couldn't copy old worksheets and tests. I wasn't sure it was true, but Brett talked about the help the basketball players got. I believed Brett. There was no way Jack could be passing all his classes with the work he put in on the basketball court and the lack of time he put into his schoolwork.

I was in my bedroom trying to finish some reading and questions when Dad called from downstairs.

“Kate, Jack's here.”

“Send him up!”

Jack appeared in my doorway and held up two paper coffee cups with steam rising out of them. “I brought hot chocolate and hot chocolate. Which would you like?”

“Geez, so many choices. I think I'll take hot chocolate.” I tilted my face to him, not reaching for the drink but for his lips.

He leaned down and kissed me.

“I wasn't expecting to see you tonight.” I cringed as I caught sight of my outfit in the mirror. I wore a yellow Olmstead High T-shirt, complete with holes, and black sweatpants I had cut off at knee length. I'd pulled my hair into a ponytail and wrapped a bandana around it. I was a giant bumblebee.

“Well, don't be so excited to see me,” he teased and handed me one of the cups. He used his free hand to yank on my ponytail.

“Of course I'm excited to see you.” I pushed my books aside on the bed. “I'm always excited to see you.”

“That's what I like to hear. It's a lot better coming over here when I don't have to worry about your dad finding me.” He started his usual routine, wandering around my room, looking at the pictures on my bulletin board. I'd hung up the basketball picture I'd pulled out of my top drawer the other day. It was next to a picture of my family on a camping trip for Brett's birthday. He'd begged Mom to be able to rough it for a night, so the four of us drove to a campsite about two hours away and pitched a tent. I was miserable, but Brett loved it. He loved anything to do with the outdoors and survival.

Jack laughed at a new picture of Ali, Jenna, and me, taken late one night at a party. We were trying to make a pyramid, Jenna and Ali on the bottom with me trying to keep my balance on top.

As Jack continued to look at pictures, I searched the room for stray pairs of underwear or other gross things I could hopefully get rid of before he noticed. Luckily, I was safe and my room was relatively clean.

“How was practice?” I took a sip of the hot chocolate, feeling the warmth slide down my throat and into my belly.

“Good. Your dad worked us hard, but I think we'll be ready for Thursday's game against Perry. What are you working on?”

“The current issue questions due tomorrow. They suck.” I gestured to the papers and the articles I was researching.

Jack grabbed a page.

“Did you finish them yet?” I asked.

“Man, there are a lot of questions here. I didn't think we had that much to do. I haven't even started.” He threw the pages down and fell onto my bed.

I flopped next to him.

His hand found its way up my shirt. “I really don't want to do them, do you?”

I let him kiss me. Of course I didn't want to do the homework, but it was due tomorrow. “I have to finish it.”

“No, you don't. I'll get us an extension. Mrs. Sheridan will give me a break. I'll tell her I had a late practice.”

“A late practice?”

“Yeah, it's fine. Teachers do it for the team all the time. And if we're lucky, they'll excuse us from the assignment. They understand how hard we work.”

“
I've
 been working hard on these all night.”

“What if,” Jack started, rolling over and kissing my neck, “I help you finish the questions by giving you a back rub?” He placed his hands on my back.

I started to lose all desire to do any kind of work. “Something tells me they wouldn't get done if that was the plan,” I said, rolling out of his grasp.

“Can we work on this together?” He reached for my hand and rubbed it between his two hands. He was so cute I couldn't resist.

“Let me finish this last question, and then you can have all my attention. Does that work?” I knew if I worked with Jack, we'd never get anything done. Besides, there were a lot of other things I'd rather be doing with him.

“Deal.” He grabbed my TV remote, settling on the bed.

I tried to concentrate on the last question, but my eyes kept wandering back to Jack. It wasn't easy to work when he was sitting right there, all hot and sexy. He had a faded Beacon shirt over a blue long-sleeve tee that made his blue-green eyes look amazing. Every couple of minutes he'd grab at me, trying to get me to do anything but the work.

Brett came home just as I finished. He'd probably been out with Julia. He stopped by my room.

Jack looked up from the bed. “Hey, man,” he said lazily.

Brett made a face, muttered, and turned to walk away.

“Nice talking to you too,” Jack yelled.

Brett's shoulders tensed, and he started to turn around, but then he shut the door.

“Why can't you two just get along?”

“He's the one who doesn't like me.”

“It doesn't matter. I just wish you'd figure out how to get along.” I put my pen down and shook out my wrist. The answers were two pages, front and back.

“Damn, Kate, that's a lot of writing.”

“Yeah, I think you'd better get home and start working on them.”

Jack picked up my papers and looked over them. “Can I borrow these?”

“Borrow them?”

“Yeah, you know, just to look at. To help me with my own ideas.”

“I guess,” I said, but I really wasn't sure I wanted to give them to him.

“Geez, Kate. These aren't some top-secret government papers.”

“You promise to bring them to class tomorrow?”

“Don't worry. I'll take good care of them.” He rolled the papers up, tucking them in a back pocket.

I bit my lip, wishing he hadn't creased them like that. Would he get them to school in one piece?

He tousled my hair. “Okay, I better go. It's ten. I need to get home, and I don't want your dad thinking I'm overstaying my welcome.”

“You worry about my dad too much. Sorry I was such a nerd tonight,” I said, upset that after finishing the homework I didn't get to relax with him. “I'm glad you stopped by. Next time we'll make it a little more interesting.”

“I agree,” Jack said, kissing me. “We'll make it a lot more interesting.” He winked as he walked out of the room.

I groaned at his cheesiness and followed him all the way out the front door. He grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze, when the cold air hit us. It would soon be snowing.

“Thanks for letting me hang,” he said, giving me one final kiss before climbing into his car. “I'll see you in school tomorrow.”

I watched his car lights fade away down the dark street.

A few days later, as I pushed my way out of Mrs. Sheridan's class, she stepped in front of me and blocked my exit. “Kate, do you mind stopping by my room at the end of the day? I need to talk to you and a few other people for a couple of minutes.”

“Sure.” I shrugged and wondered what she needed, but I pushed it out of my mind and tried not to think about it until the end of the day.

When the final bell rang, I headed to her room.

On the way, I ran into Jack, Luke, and Dave, a super tall skinny guy on the team. I waved. “What are you doing? Don't you have practice?”

“Mrs. Sheridan asked us to meet with her,” Luke said. “I don't know what the hell she wants, but she better be quick. Your dad's going to be pissed if
we're late.”

“She wanted to talk to you? She asked me to stop by too. Do you know why?”

Jack shrugged as we all walked in and gathered around her desk.

“Okay,” she said as she pulled a stack of papers from her bag and started sifting through them. She pulled out a few sheets and held them up.

I recognized one as my own.

“I'm not sure if you three understood the activity. That's why I wanted to talk to you together.”

“What are those?” Luke asked.

“It's the discussion questions you had to do for homework. I started reading some of the answers, and while they were well written, they're all the same.”

“What?” I asked.

Mrs. Sheridan looked at all of us over the top of her glasses. “Your responses. You all have similar answers, or at least most of it is the same. Some of you left things out and didn't go into as much detail, but besides that, there isn't a difference.”

“I don't understand,” I said, reaching for my paper and scanning it. “These are the questions I did, but how are they the same?”

“Mrs. Sheridan, I think it's my fault,” Jack said. “We were at Kate's house going over the articles and answering the questions together. They look the same because they pretty much are. I know you like when we work in groups or with partners to compare ideas, and that's what we were doing. We thought since they were for discussion, it would be a good idea to talk about the topics together.” The words fell off his tongue, smoothly forming a tale that almost had me convinced.

Mrs. Sheridan blinked a bunch of times as if she didn't completely believe what he was saying.

“Yeah, it helped to go over the articles together,” Luke said.

Dave nodded.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I understand where you could have gotten mixed up. We do go over work a lot as a class, and I guess by calling them discussion questions. . .” She started to nod faster as if the idea was suddenly coming to her. “But I wanted you to do these questions yourself, not in a group. I wanted to see what each of you thought, individually, on the issues.”

“We're real sorry,” Jack said. “I guess we should've realized that. We'll make sure to do our own work next time, unless you say we can work with partners. We didn't mean to do it the wrong way.”

Mrs. Sheridan was either buying all his crap or using it as a lame excuse to not have to deal with disciplining athletes. It was basketball season. She wouldn't want to accuse three players of cheating.

“Okay, I'll let it go this time, but in the future, don't assume you can turn in the same work unless I say you can. I do want you to think for yourself sometimes.” She handed the papers back to us and turned to her desk, signaling the end of the discussion.