Canary (3 page)

“Jack.” He scuffed the dirt, a cloud of dust floating around his old-school green and gray Nikes.

“Well, I guess I'll see you there.” I pointed toward the cookout. “I'm heading over to make sure that if there's any chocolate cake, it's good and protected in case you get near it.”

“Good idea,” he said with a smile that made me hope I'd run into him again.

Now, two days later, I searched for Jack in the gym and found him under the basketball hoop. He was crouched in defensive position watching another guy to see if he would shoot. I stared at him and willed him to look back at me. No such luck.

A ball bounced near my feet, and I forced myself to look away from Jack as one of the other guys on the team ran past me. These boys were the only people I knew at Beacon, and technically I didn't even know them.

I snuck another look at Jack. He was deeply tanned, no doubt from a summer spent vacationing at some beach only a Beacon family could afford. A white line on the back of his neck divided his hairline from his tan.

I looked around the gym. All the boys shared the same new haircuts. Keeping up appearances was Dad's specialty. He wouldn't stand for scruffy, greasy, or sloppy appearances. Basketball was a three-hundred-sixty-five-day-a-year commitment, and his team needed to look serious.

I touched my own hair, already tangled from the humidity outside. I wished some of Beacon's magic would've rubbed off on me this morning and my hair would behave, but no such luck.

Brett was no different, but he opted to keep his blond hair shaggy, no doubt an act of defiance.

Dad's demands on his team didn't rub off on the two of us, but he didn't seem to notice anyway.

I took my gaze off Jack when a small, pretty blonde girl walked into the room. Her uniform skirt was rolled up to a level I knew wouldn't pass the fingertip rule stated in the student handbook, and she wore heels instead of the ballet flats most girls were wearing. Luckily she caught me looking at the team and not her outfit.

I gestured toward the boys. “Not a bad way to start the day, huh?”

“I could stare at them for hours,” she said.

I pretended to look at my watch. “I think I
already have.”

“Hey, I won't judge,” she said.

She was exactly the type of person I wanted to be friends with. “Really, I was trying to find the gym. I have class there now.”

“
Our
 gym is this way. This is the competition gym where the team practices. You'd think we'd all use the same gym, but they keep us regular students segregated from the greatness of the basketball team. Well, unless we're cheering them on and checking them out.” She grinned.

I couldn't help but smile back. “Thanks.” I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed her out.

Her long, blonde hair was caught behind her book bag, and she pulled it out and let it fan across her back, the light above making it shine.

I sped up to walk alongside her. For someone in heels, she sure moved fast. “I've been to this gym before for a game. I assumed it was for regular class too.”

“Prepare to be shocked.” She led me out of the gym, leaving behind the pack of boys who continued to dribble and make shots from all over the court. Their shouts and cheers echoed after us as we walked out the doors. I thought back to the days when Mom, Brett, and I were surrounded by the sounds of Dad's basketball games, but I quickly pushed the images out of my mind. Now wasn't the time to get upset.

We went down a hallway that curved away from the competition gym. I tried to take it all in. “How the heck does anyone find this place? It would be nice if they put up arrows or a sign.”

“That would take away from the beauty of the shrine we've built to our gods of the basketball court. Beacon doesn't want to remind the world that there is life beyond basketball here.” She rolled her eyes. “That there are regular students who walk amongst the champions.”

We arrived at a door labeled 
Girls,
 and she pushed it open. “Here's the locker room, and beyond those doors is the gym. It was built over a hundred years ago when Beacon didn't allow girls. Now? Voila.” She paused for effect and then flung the door open. “Lucky us, they've let us in. We're privileged enough to get the old gym floors.”

I did a double take. The gym was old. Wait, not just old. It was ancient, as in Abraham Lincoln could have taken classes here. Wooden planks with small cracks between lined the floor. Some areas were repaired, and in those spots, the wood was different colors. I thought of the glossy, slick floor in the competition gym with Beacon's logo in the middle. I walked farther in. “This is awful.”

“Isn't it? You just have to be careful not to sit on it with bare skin or you might get a splinter.”

I laughed. “I'm Kate, by the way.”

“Oh, geez, I never told you who I was. I'm Ali.”

Groups of noisy girls walked into the gym. We followed them to the bleachers. A few girls waved to Ali as we took our seats.

“Remember,” Ali whispered. “No bare skin on the bleachers, or you'll find splinters in places you don't even want to think about.”

“Got it.” I made a point of smoothing down my blue plaid skirt to cover as much of my skin as possible.

Ali did the same.

A redheaded girl in front of us turned toward me. “Are you Kate Franklin?”

“Yeah,” I said quickly, knowing where this was heading.

People turned to stare.

“Is Coach Franklin your dad?”

I nodded.

“I thought so.” She leaned in close. “I'm Michelle. I'd kill to be in your position right now. Do you get to see the team a lot? What do you think of them? Who do you think is the hottest? Does your dad invite them over to your house?” Her inquisition was cut short when a muscular woman walked in and blew a whistle to silence us. She introduced herself as our gym teacher, Miss Gallagher.

I turned away from Michelle as Miss Gallagher started to discuss the beginning of the school year and the class.

Clearly upset she'd been interrupted, Michelle tried to catch my attention again with heavy whis
pers.

I
 acted interested in Miss Gallagher's stimulating discussion of gym shorts versus sweatpants.

“You didn't tell me your dad was the coach,” Ali said.

“It's not a big deal,” I said, but I knew it was.

Michelle was going to strain her neck if she kept trying to get me to talk to her, and the other girls started looking at me too.

Ali whispered, “But the stuff I said about basketball before—”

“Don't worry about it. I'm kind of sick of basketball.”

“What? You don't like it?”

“It's not that I don't like it,” I said cautiously. “I'm surrounded by it. It gets old sometimes.”

“I'm not sure you can go to Beacon and not be a basketball fan.” Ali shook her head.

For a minute, I thought I'd blown it. Beacon was basketball, and here I was putting it down.

But then her expression shifted into a smile.

“I know,” I said. “I'll have to work on my school spirit. But from the looks of the team, I don't think that'll be hard.”

“I have a feeling you'll soon enjoy basketball again.”

“I 
think you're right.
 It does se
em important here.”

“Yeah, just a little bit.”

I laughed with her.

Miss Gallagher paused from her oh-so-important speech and shot us a warning glare.

Ali leaned into me. “Beacon basketball is a whole new world, its own society. You'll soon learn the team has their own rules and way of living.”

“Which is why they have swelled heads,” I said. “I think I saw a few when I was in 
their
 gym.”

Ali winked. “Their egos aren't the only things big about them, if you know what I mean.”

I covered my mouth to keep my laughter in and tried to listen to Miss Gallagher. It felt good to laugh, as if I hadn't done that in a long, long time.

I left the gym and headed to lunch with Ali.

“You don't mind if I eat with you, do you?” I said as we started through the lunch line. I'd imagined Beacon having fancy food to match their fancy everything else, but it was the same old junk. One cafeteria worker slopped mashed potatoes onto a plate, and another handed out burgers apparently flattened by a steamroller. I reached for a peanut butter and jelly, thinking they couldn't mess that up, and continued, “I don't know anyone and—”

“Of course you can eat with me, but only if you promise to ignore what I said before about the basketball team.”

“Forgotten,” I said and vowed to make sure it was. I couldn't believe I'd told her I didn't like basketball. It was the type of thing people would flip out about, me being the coach's daughter and all.

What I didn't tell Ali was the real reason basketball wasn't my favorite—why I'd stopped watching it, playing it, loving it. She may have accepted that I was sick of it, but I had no idea how she'd react to the truth. What would she say if I told her about the night I fell out of love of with the sport?

Everything was going great that night as Betsy's parents drove us home from our basketball game. I was pumped. We'd won by over twenty points. The eighth grade team was on fire, and a win this big had put us all in good spirits. Betsy and I were singing along with the radio, making up our own lyrics, as we arrived at my house.

Both of our cars were in the driveway. Dad was never home so early during basketball season. Something wasn't right.

I walked in and saw Dad, Mom, and Brett at the table. I sat with them and waited for Mom to tell me I stunk and order me to take a shower before dinner.

Instead, she offered me a weak smile. “Did you win?”

“We did. I scored twelve points, Betsy scored eight, and the other team kept trying to foul us.”

Mom leaned in.

Dad went to the oven to pull out whatever was cooking.

Brett slowly shredded a napkin.

Dad placed the serving pan on the blue and purple potholder I'd clumsily weaved in first grade as a Mother's Day gift.

“Lasagna?” I said and tried to figure out if I'd forgotten something important. Lasagna wasn't a meal Mom whipped up casually. She made the noodles and sauce from scratch, the process taking hours. Lasagna was reserved for birthdays, holidays, and when my grandma came to visit. “Why are we having lasagna? Did I miss something?”

No one answered, so I helped myself to a huge plateful.

Everyone else sat at the table not eating.

Mom cleared her throat a few times, Dad rearranged his silverware on the sides of his plate, and my brother built his mountain of napkin scraps.

I shoveled a forkful into my mouth. “I didn't mean that as a bad thing,” I said, still chewing, wondering if I'd done something wrong by touching the food on my plate. After a day of school and basketball, though, I was starving. “I'm glad we're having this fancy dinner. Real glad.”

Dad dropped his spoon on his plate with a loud clatter. “Your mother and I need to talk to you.”

I paused between bites. “Bring it on. What do you have to say?”

“Kate, be quiet,” Brett snapped. “You need to
listen to them.”

“Shut up. You're not the boss.”

“We've talked to Brett,” Mom told me quietly. “He was here when your dad and I got home. I didn't want him to sit and worry.”

“What's going on?” I said, scared now because I was the one who was sitting and worrying. Something was clearly wrong. “What happened when I was at the game?”

“Your mother is sick, Kate.”

“Sick? Sick from what? Will she have to go to the hospital?”

Mom let out a little noise, a cross between a cry and a wail, a sound like our old dog Rascal used to make when he heard something outside but couldn't see it. She put her hand over her mouth as if to keep the noise inside.

“Not sick like that. She's really sick.”

My brother pushed back his chair, and it smacked the wall behind him. “I can't listen to this again. I need to leave.”

“You need to sit down,” Dad demanded.

Mom interrupted. “Let him go. It isn't right to make him stay here.”

Brett left the room quickly.

I wanted to follow. I looked at my parents, a million questions on my lips, a trillion fears racing in my head, and zero answers I wanted to hear. The lasagna wasn't to celebrate my team's win or a birthday I'd forgotten. It was to help my parents tell me something too hard to say, something so important we couldn't wait for Dad to come home from practice or for me to shower.

“Your mother is sick,” Dad repeated. “Very sick.”

“How sick?” I whispered, not sure if my voice was loud enough to be heard. I wanted Mom to explain, but Dad continued to do all the talking.

“She has cancer. It's moving fast. The doctors are going to try to treat it, but they aren't hopeful.” His words jumbled, gushed from his mouth like water from the faucet in the bath. “The doctors might not be hopeful, but we are.”

Mom touched my hand. “We're going to try to act as we always have. I want us to be a family. I want us to be normal.”

I wanted to ask what she thought normal was now that she was sick. This kind of normal couldn't be anything like what we all used to know. “How long have you known about this?” I demanded instead.

The heat from her hand burned into mine, yet I shivered. It didn't seem possible, but Mom now looked frail, as if right before my eyes, her sickness started to show. Or maybe she had looked like that all along, and I hadn't noticed.

“About a month,” Mom answered, her confidence building a bit, as if saying the word 
cancer
 out loud was the worst of it. “We didn't want to worry the two of you before we talked to all the doctors, specialists, and people we needed to.”