Quarterback Bait (4 page)

“Well, I'm in the middle of drills, Pop. Can I call you back
maybe?”

“It's actually a mite urgent, son. Everything's peachy, but
it's a mite urgent.” I could practically hear the geyser kicking back in his
recliner, angling to keep a TV dinner on his lap. A wall clock revealed that it
was one p.m. on a Thursday. There wouldn't be any services today, so Pastor
Sterling would be spending his day at home.

“I do believe I've finally found someone to care for me,
into my old age.”

“...like a nurse?”

He croaked out a laugh, which turned into a cough again. I
sighed, away from the receiver. Across the hall, Yeardley ruffled his papers
like a fussy bird fixing up its nest.

“A man of God will take what's his, Landon! No, no...I've
found
you
a pretty little stepmother.”

From nowhere, I felt bile beginning to rise in my throat.
Perhaps it was the pancakes from Dee's—Denny and I had kinda overdone it on the
carbo-loading that morning, plus Yvette had sent over a plate of bacon the size
of the state.

“Son? What do you make of all this, now?” Even through the
phone, I could sense his voice hardening. It was like when I was a kid and he'd
walk into the house twirling a switch between his fingers.
The choice is
yours, Landon
,
he'd always start.
You do stuff to getcha hit,
it's my 'sponsibility to hitcha.

“Well, I want you to be happy. Sir.”

“That's nice to hear.”

“And you've always said we were meant to go two by two in
this life.”
“You're mistaking me for Jehovah again, son. But I do 'preciate the quote.”

Maybe he did sound happy. I
tried to picture the old man, years from now—and all I could see was that same
frayed blue robe, and the cigarillo, and the constant mutterings of the TV. I'd
never gone in for his congregation—which was perhaps the biggest point of
contention in our ever-strained relationship—but who was I to begrudge an old
man some creature comforts? In my heart of hearts, a part of me looked forward
to graduation day, when I'd no longer be beholden to Pastor Bill Sterling. If I
lived in Colorado, I wouldn't even have to come home for all the holidays, and
spend time in that silent, smelly house with its constant perfume of terrible
memories. And if Pop had a lady to make him casseroles and ensure he took his
medicine—well, that had to be a good thing. Didn't it?

“Sir, I'm glad you called me. That's truly wonderful news.
When are you planning to—when's the ceremony?”

“I figure I've been a patient man all my life, and when a
good thing comes I've got to seize it. Don't you think you've got to seize a
good thing, son?”

Yeardley slammed his play book shut at last, giving up the
ruse. I let the words 'good' and 'thing' bounce around in my head for a beat
too long, where they collided with my memory of chasing Doll around the gas
station. Her ass, snug in those jeans.
Good. Thing.
Her hair. I slammed
a palm into the concrete wall, suddenly livid at myself. Why couldn't I stop
thinking about her? Why?

“Seize away, sir!” I said, a little too loudly. I heard
Pop's recliner shift in the background. He'd be preparing for an afternoon nap
right about now, if I knew the bastard. And up until this phone call, I could
have sworn I did.

“Mmm-hmm. She's a god-fearing congregant. Has the spirit and
the vessel. She drew a short straw in this life, but we've found one another.
I'm fixing to make my intentions known this evening, and I'd like you to be
beside me on the day, everything being equal.” I swallowed. It was remarkably
rare for Bill Sterling to demonstrate pride in his famous quarterback son. I
had to grab that shit where it came.

“I'm honored, Pop. Truly.” I angled the phone away from
Yeardley, so he wouldn't see the moisture dangling off my eyelashes. “Hey.
What's her name? The lady?”

The old man cleared his throat. I thought I could actually
hear him smile, through time and space and wire.

“Anya Bennett,” he said, lovingly.

Chapter Six

Ash

June 2
^nd

I kicked my locker for a fifth time, enjoying the vibration
of metal on metal as my steel-toed boot attempted to injure the yellow tin. The
late bell had just finished sounding, and yet again my locker was jammed.

And
literally
jammed—as in, cemented shut with a
gooey concoction of jelly, gum, and what appeared to be rubber cement. It's
something I still don't get about high schoolers. Like, who has the time to
haze the new kid so elaborately? And what disgusting bully spent his afternoon
mashing up shit into a paste, and then some of his precious morning targeting
me with it? Surely there were better ways to spend that time.

It was just about the end of my tenure at Lee High, and
since about day two I'd been playing the victim to everyone. The jam thing was
an unpleasant new twist, but I was no stranger to asshole classmates. It would
go down like so: the first week in a new city, everyone would try to pin me
down. They'd wonder why I was so dark and brooding, and why I wore all black,
and why I didn't speak up in class. Then they'd see me get As. Guys would elect
to notice the boobs that had been failing at discretion, my whole teenage life.
And somewhere in there, some Queen Bee would make an executive decision that
Ashleigh Bennett was an uppity slut freak, who thought she was better than
everyone else. Rumors would begin to circle. Shit like, “At her last school,
she gang-banged her whole lacrosse team.” (Thank you, Des Moines High.) And in
the really bad cases, someone's mother would meet mine, and then some of the
rumors would begin to contain a grain of truth. Anya, claiming she didn't like
to keep secrets, was always unnecessarily candid about her addict past. It was
like I moved to places in an attempt to make a fresh start, while she was in the
business of testing towns for their “groovy” factor. If they couldn't hack her
as she was, it was time to move. Either that, or if one of her boyfriends stole
our TV.

“What seems to be the problem, Miss Bennett?” questioned a
voice. The slightly sleazy voice of my so-far favorite teacher—Mr. Dempsey.
Dempsey had wire rimmed glasses and wore band shirts with jeans, and though I'd
never seen him at the front of a classroom, people called him 'Mister' and he
was apparently permitted to wander the hallways with a beat-up acoustic guitar
in his grip. On my first day at Lee, he'd informed me that he was an AV
tech—even though most of the school's audiovisual stuff had gone digital. I
liked him immediately.

“Nothing to see here, Demps,” I said, swiveling neatly. It
wasn't like I needed the Bio textbook for the lab I'd done four times already,
at as many schools across the Bible Belt. In Denver, I'd actually led the
lesson plan for our entire class. Sometimes, depending on a school's
curriculum, it was like you were repeating grades when you transferred
mid-year. Which was why I'd made the decision semesters before to start
supplementing high school with GRE Prep and college-level APs at whichever
agreeable, nearby college I could find—that was how I'd gotten hooked up with
the pre-college classes at UT, and my party girl Melanie. Pending my latest
test results, I planned to start as a freshman at UT in the fall. And as I
wasn't half bad at taking a test, God-willing it'd be
sayonara, high-school
suckers!
in t-minus two months.

“Don't worry too much,” Mr. Dempsey said, reaching across me
to pick at some of the jam oozing from my locker's spine. “Remember: every
single one of those fuckers is going to marry too young, take a job they can't stand,
and start to look forward to the day they die on their thirtieth birthday.”

“Gosh, Dempsey! That's a bit bleak, don't you think?” But as
if on cue, a guy in a basketball jersey—spying me but not the teacher from the
end of the hall—threw a lewd gesture my way. I rolled my eyes in the direction
of his lolling tongue, but the jock just giggled before scampering off.

“The point is: try not to let it get to you. For the very
best people, high school is often the worst part of life.”

We began to lope down the hallway, Dempsey and I—in no
particular hurry. I'd already made an enemy of my bio teacher, who seemed
somehow miffed with my advanced skill set. Or perhaps I was imagining things.
Whatever. I'd learned a while back that it was easier to think of all new
people as prospective enemies. This way, one didn't get hurt when they turned
on you.

“Did
you
like high school, Dempsey?” I asked, halting
us a few lockers down from the lab door. I could hear Mrs. Letourneau taking
attendance inside. Mr. Dempsey regarded me from behind his Rivers Cuomo
glasses, then scratched the back of his tight fro. (
Jew-fro,
he'd called
it, during our first hallway run-in, as he helped me gather my books
post-clean-out. I'd also never heard the term 'clean-out' before, but had found
it instantly endearing that he'd introduced me to two new words in one
sentence.)

“You know, I had a pretty good crew in the pits. It wasn't
so bad.” The AV teach nodded towards my classroom door, and then he winked.
“But you see where I am now.”

“That's grim.”

“Just keep your head down, Ash. College will be great for
you.” Then he moseyed away, leaving me to my latecomer's fate.

After enduring Mrs. Letourneau's speech about punctuality
and the assorted snickers of my tormentors in the first few rows, I took a seat
at the back of the lab. I thought about Mr. Dempsey, who seemed so cool and
together but spoke to me like I was an equal. In an inspirational flash, I saw
him with my sister. If Carson would ever get over that rodeo clown Tex (and
yes—my sister had dated an actual rodeo clown), it seemed to me that those two
could make a good pair.

“What's so funny back there, Ms. Bennett?” When I looked up,
ten pairs of mawkish eyes were fixed on me. I'd apparently retreated too far
into my imagination and had started laughing out loud to myself. You know, like
the cool kids do.

“Nothing, Mrs. Letourneau.”

“You won't be able to locate your pig's heart valves if you
don't pay attention, Ashleigh.” My teacher looked at me in a way that seemed to
demand a response, but I bit my tongue—even though in the diagram she'd drawn
on the board, she'd mislabeled both the parietal pericardium, and the visceral.

I thought about the conversation in the hallway. My cool
companion.
Keep your head down
,
Ash
, Mr. Dempsey repeated in my
mind's eye.

Bored by the repetitive lesson, I allowed my thoughts to
drift toward Anya. My mother had gotten a new job (no small thanks to Carson's
legwork), managing the tiny office of a Montessori school. It was part-time,
easy work, but that alone wasn't enough to soothe my fears. I was worried about
what Mom would do when I left next year. For as much as I wanted to get away
from all the heartache, I couldn't picture her functioning on her own.

“...the ventral side is towards you,” Mrs. Letourneau plowed
on. Pencils scratched all around me. One brazen soul had taken his phone out,
and placed it on the desk behind a scalpel. Giddy with inspiration, I dug into
my shorts pocket and located my own phone, figuring I could at least play a
game of Solitaire while I pretended to participate in an assignment I'd already
aced twice.

To my surprise, my phone had seven texts—though I only had
three numbers in my contacts. One was Mom, one was Carson, and one was
Melanie—who I hadn't spoken to in weeks, anyway. I'd made a few allies in
different cities, but I never kept those numbers in my phone. They only served
to remind me of the trajectory of high school relationships. A buddy would
call, we'd text for a while, and then eventually, inevitably...radio silence
would descend. Even Melanie, who I'd been so close with at the beginning of the
year, had drifted back into the ether of her pre-college coursework. It was
just too hard to stay connected to folks.

All the new messages were from my mom, and they were smattered
with emojis. My heart began to race. She only got super excited when she was in
the middle of some kind of...episode. Unsure what could have been the trigger,
I began to scroll:

Baby, have some amAZing news. Call me bk when ur outta
skool

I don't think I can wate. It's too godo

*good!!!!!

OK—I'm in love!

With a PREACHER MAN!!!

He's asked me to MARRY him, Ash!

Lots to talk abt! PLZ CALL ME BACKKKKKK

I slammed the phone down on the desk, drawing Mrs.
Letourneau's stink-eye again. But this time, I didn't pander to her with an
apologetic smile. I let her see that I was mad.

Of all the things, Anya.
This? This was too much.

At least, I figured, I'd be out of that house by August.
Test scores and a diploma, that was all that stood between me and a college
dorm. I could leave my crazy mother to sleep in the bed she'd made, soon
enough.