Devious Minds (2 page)

“
C
ome on, Porter.” I held Jack’s head under my arm as I rubbed my knuckles into his thick hair. “You’re not going to get far with the team if you don’t deliver.”

“My sister’s at work, and I can’t go in there. It’s a club,” Jack answered in a defeated voice. He’d been pacing back and forth in the kitchen, sweating over his phone for the last ten minutes.

“No shit.” I set my beer down on the counter and began ripping the label. “You’ve been holding out, Jack. Is she a stripper? Hell, never mind. You
will
go far with the team.”

I’d been instructed by Coach to
take Jack Porter under my wing
. Whatever the fuck that meant. I took it as don’t let him die. I didn’t have time to babysit an eighteen-year-old all day, but when Coach orders, we obey, no questions asked.

“Well, we need a truck. Chance’s is in the shop and we can’t fit the kegs in the Porsche. It’s raining out and I don’t want to lower the top. Just tell her we’ll only use it for an hour and get it right back.” I grabbed my keys off the counter. “Which club?”

I’d invited Jack over to the doghouse, our shared Northern football house on the edge of campus. Yes, I knew
doghouse
spoke volumes of the pretentious douchebags who had resided in its bedrooms over the past ten years. Our landlord was ex-NFL, straight from Northern, and he felt it important to keep the star players together under one roof. He said it encouraged teamwork. Personally, I could have cared less. The rent was cheap, and I was able to live with my best friends, Chance and Fernando.

I feel the need to clarify. I wasn’t your typical jock. I didn’t pound fists or towel-slap my teammates, and I wasn’t going to wear my goddamn number around to remind everyone who I was.

That wasn’t Gray Peters.

I was a good quarterback, but I didn’t swing my dick around expecting it to hit gold.

Any praise I got on campus came from cultural expectations associated with being a first-string QB. Yes, I’m aware of how insightful I must seem. But I have to give credit to the hippies in my sophomore year Women’s Literature class. I took it to meet chicks but ended up griping about the pressures of football with three junior girls who’d never seen the sharp edge of a razor. Once I got over the long hair creeping from their armpits, everything out of their mouths just made sense.

Most of these people knew nothing about me off the field. I was content to keep it that way.

On the other hand, Jack Porter, wonder boy running back, never had a chance to establish your typical footballer persona. I’d never seen girls run away from a first string faster than when that kid stepped into the cafeteria.

He’d been quoted in the campus paper several times already.

When asked what he felt about wearing our school colors, blue and grey, Porter answered, “
Those colors are great. I really like chartreuse, too. You know, it’s like a citrus green. My mom has a citrus sweater and it looks really good on her because it pops against her olive-toned skin. It’s soft too. Reminds me of my baby blanket.”

When asked how he got his keen skill to catch the ball on almost every play, Porter answered,
“People used to throw balls at my head in school. Balls were always flying at my face, hitting my mouth. Once I got a ball in the eye. So one day, I just had enough of balls in my face. So instead of letting them hit me, I just started grabbing them. I was so good at grabbing balls it became second nature. I could smell balls before they came at me.”

Jack Porter, good-looking kid on all accounts, was a hopeless embarrassment. Coach had to ban further interviews, and that’s when I was assigned to be his publicist. A daunting task I was beginning to think I’d fail, so I thought a party might work. If I could get Jack to booze it up a little, maybe he’d make some friends and I could wipe my hands clean of him.

“SpaceRoom,” Jack said, eyes dipped to the floor.

“No shit,” Chance said over his shoulder. He was playing
Call of Duty
on his Xbox. He paused to talk into the headset mic, then turned back. “That’s a gay bar.”

Chance LeMere was a running back as well. Not as good as Jack, but there was no bad blood between them. He saw football as a way to pass time. Chance was also a closet gamer, but he’d never admit that to Northern’s press.

For those not familiar,
Call of Duty
allows you to play online with people all over the world as you fight one another in fake missions. He’d been playing a twelve-year-old kid from Naples, Florida, for the last three weeks. They’d send each other threatening messages over their headsets while trying to kill one another every other day.

“Take that, dickwad,” Chance muttered into his headpiece right before the kid blew off his character’s head. “Damn it!” He threw the controller across the room. “I’m going to get you, little Scott Johnson. I know where you live.”

Giving Chance a disapproving frown, I whapped him upside the head.

“Just kidding, Scott… No… No, Scott… don’t tell your mom.”

I focused back on Jack. “Porter? Is your sister a lesbian?”

If she were anything like Jack, she was a tall blonde. This was getting better by the minute.

“Yes,” Jack replied a little too quickly. “She’s a lesbian.”

He seemed serious, but I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me.

Then he smiled. “No. Don’t think so. I found a vibrator in her room once. It was pink. Not sure lesbians use pink vibrators.”

“Classic,” Chance said, a hint of pride in his voice. “Snooping in your sister’s room. Anything else good in there? How do you know for sure she’s not a lesbian?”

“She might be now,” Jack said thoughtfully. “I read her diary two years ago, so I know she’s had sex with a least one guy. She described him as ‘sloppy and arrogant.’ Couldn’t keep it up longer than two minutes…” His voice faded to a mumble. “Then after that, she turned into a bitch. Well, an even bigger bitch.”

Jack’s eyes shifted nervously. “Shit. I shouldn’t have told you that. You guys don’t know my sister. She keeps Mace on her all the time. Even when she sleeps.” He paused to take in a dramatic breath. “And one time, she was so pissed at my mom, she stole Mom’s car and gave it to a homeless guy in exchange for his dog.” A desperate plea filled his eyes. “Seriously. She’s bad news.”

I slapped Jack on the back, pushing him toward the front door. “Let’s go, Porter.”

“
T
his place is a shithole.”

We’d just pulled up outside the SpaceRoom. A dingy cinderblock building on the outskirts of campus. Jack was quiet the whole way. Kid was afraid of his big sister, but on the field, he could plow into a guy twice his size and remain standing. There was something wrong with that.

“Wait here,” I said, giving the bouncer a onceover.

Jack finally opened his mouth, but I shut the door and headed toward the entrance.

After showing my ID, I made my way into the main room. Instantly, I spotted a blond waitress in the corner and headed her way. She looked up with an easy smile.

Shit, Jack, I got this.

“Hey there. Here to pick up the truck,” I said as she came close. Swinging my eyes over her scrawny chest and thin arms, I could see she was
very
terrifying. “You don’t seem scary.”

“I’m not,” she yelled over the music. “Can I get you a drink?”

I recognized a popular song mixed over another track. Then every few seconds, an eerie bell would ding and a woman’s voice cut through, yelling some nonsense from the speakers.

“No drink… Just here for the keys.”

She threw me a confused look.

“Porter, right?”

Shaking her head, she pointed into the crowd of dancers. “Porter’s over there.”

I pointed to the crowd. “She’s dancing? I thought she worked here.”

“She does. She’s the DJ, but she goes by Sinister.”

“Sinister,” I repeated.
Unbelievable
. “How do I get up there?”

The waitress looked up at the bar clock. “She’ll take a break in three minutes. I’ve got a water to take to her. Wanna do it for me? She scares the shit out of me.”

Nodding, I grabbed the bottle from her tray and braced myself for the frightening beast, DJ Sinister. The waitress was flagged by a table, and I leaned against the bar, studying the crowd.

From here, I could make out a short person huddled over the DJ booth, but it was dark.

As cool as ice, the music faded into a seventies lounge song. Guitar twangs erupted through the speakers, followed by a heavier snare drum, and like magic, it eased into an opera tenor’s voice, deep and rich, and fell in line with the snare beat. And a man’s voice with the confidence of the president blew through the speaker, yelling out some Shakespeare quote. It was all very confusing, but the crowd screamed.

“Gray?” A deep voice came from behind me, and I whipped around.

“Nick Sharbus? What the hell, man? You work here?”

Avoiding my question, he turned away from the bar and grabbed a glass. Pouring a micro-draft, he slid it across the counter toward me. Stoic as always, Nick didn’t say a word. He looked off into the crowd and tapped his thumb against the bar rail, admiring the beat.

“I wondered what happened to you. You just cut out of practice one day, and next thing we knew, you left the team. What’s up with that, asshole?”

I sized him up. He’d added more tats over the last year, but he still worked out judging by the cords of muscles ripping through his forearms.

“It’s complicated,” he said, grabbing a towel from behind the bar. “What are you doing in here?”

“Having a kegger tomorrow night. Borrowing a truck to pick up the kegs. You should come by. The guys think you’re dead or some shit.”

“SpaceRoom doesn’t have a truck,” he answered, pouring a beer for another patron. When he finished, he resumed his position at the bar rail.

I was about to mess with him some more when a small voice clipped through the speakers, “Taking a fiver.” Then a premixed beat started.

“That’s my cue.” I glanced over at Nick, and he eyed the water bottle in my hands. “It’s for DJ Sinister,” I said, making air quotations for effect.
Such a ridiculous name
. “She’s the one with the truck.”