Adam appeared by my side. “I saved you, Victoria,” he said happily.
Owen shrank back. “Don’t be such a drama queen,” I told him. He glared at me. “What?” I shrugged. “You have to admit, you’re a little soft.”
“Oh, I’m sorry I don’t have the modern-day Prometheus to hide behind.”
“You threw the ball too hard at Victoria,” Adam said, turning cross.
“I threw the ball too hard?” Owen pressed his hand to his chest. “I threw the ball too hard?”
Adam got that deep furrow in his brow, almost like a caveman. “Yes.”
I put my hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Adam, next time let’s agree to give poor Owen a free pass. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Good guys don’t hit my—”
“Adam.”
He dropped his chin to his chest. “Okay.” He scuffed his shoe against the gym floor, leaving a black skid. “This game is confusing.”
Our class was starting to funnel back into the locker room. Adam reached out his hand, which Owen reluctantly accepted.
“Let’s go.” I thumped Owen on the back.
“Smith!” It took me a moment to register that Coach Carlson meant Adam. The three of us spun around. Coach jogged up to us, whistle bouncing off the white polo that was working double as a bra.
Adam smiled when he approached. “Hi, I’m Adam Smith. I’m from Elgin, Illinois.”
A slight tilt of Coach Carlson’s head. “You ever think about playing football, son?”
“I threw one yesterday,” Adam replied flatly.
Coach Carlson gave me an is this kid for real look. That was becoming a popular one when it came to Adam.
I cleared my throat. “He hasn’t.”
Coach Carlson eyed Adam from the shoes up. “Never?” He shook his head as if he thought we might be fibbing. In Hollow Pines, even toddlers had thought about playing football. “You like running around out here? Throwing balls. Catching things?”
Adam scratched his head, then there was that same spark in his eyes. He liked orange; he liked pizza. “Yes, I liked it a lot.”
“You show promise. Come out to practice after school. I can’t guarantee you anything about spots on the team, but I can promise there’ll be a lot more where that came from.” Coach gave a small salute and pivoted on his heel.
I trotted after him. “But Coach Carlson, don’t you think that he should get settled in first?” I called after him. “Focus on his academics?”
Coach Carlson’s butt cheeks sucked in the fabric of his mesh shorts and trapped it in the little triangle between his crotch, legs, and rear end. “That’s enough, Frankenstein,” he said without stopping. “Maybe you could learn something from your friend there. You know they don’t give out trophies for who can study the most by the end of high school.”
I threw my hands up just as he was disappearing through the open door to his glass-encased office.
“Actually, they do,” I yelled. “It’s called valedictorian.”
He raised his eyebrows and tugged the blind cord, sealing himself off.
I stamped my foot, spun, and marched back to where Owen and Adam were waiting. “For the record,” I said. “I think this is a very bad idea.”
FIFTEEN
Half-life is usually used to reference nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, but anything can have a half-life. It’s the amount of time required for a quantity to fall to half its value from the first time it was measured. I shouldn’t be surprised. Like I said, anything can have one. That includes a charged atom.
*
I didn’t ask about football practice the whole ride home. Maybe that made me a jerk. Maybe that was what normal people did. The same kind of people who asked how people’s days were or what was wrong when somebody was crying in the bathroom. Not me.
It was a relief to return home. My nerves felt like frayed wires, sparking with the memory of my broken phone, the tire tracks, and the missing boy. By now, I had a tiredness in my bones over the whole ordeal that made me eager to retreat into my own personal headquarters. Plus, hopefully we’d gotten this whole football thing out of our system. Since Adam didn’t mention it, either, I felt validated in my usual rightness as I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of Bert.
Mom worked as a secretary at a small law firm during the day, but she moonlighted as a waitress at the Waffle House, and tonight she had the five-to-ten shift, so I didn’t have to be on the lookout as we traipsed to the hatch. Adam’s steps were heavy on the ground. Without a word, he stepped into the cellar in front of me.
He had taken four steps when he staggered, knocking hard against the railing. “Adam?” I said, alarmed.
He grunted and then pushed himself up. He got to the last few steps. His knee buckled and he staggered. Barely catching himself from crashing to the floor, he careened sideways.