My father sucks in his top lip, leaning over his hands at his desk. He pulls in a paper from his stack and a pen from the cup on the other side and begins to draw swirls in the margin.
“If this Nico kid were to come out this week, preferably tomorrow, and ask for a walk-on tryout based on the open position on our roster, then I have the authority to grant him the time,” my dad says, pen stopping abruptly as his eyes meet mine. “But he’s going to have to impress more than just me, Reagan. If he’s really this good, as good as that video you’ve got there, then I’ll press for him. But I’m out of benefits of the doubt with everyone. And he’s at-risk. They’re not going to want to put someone like him on the team. They need to be convinced and want to let me take this shot.”
I swallow, because I’ve known my dad was on a thin line, but hearing him hint at it makes me worry for him…and us.
“Okay,” I nod.
“How well do you know this kid?”
I breathe in deeply through my nose because the truth won’t give my dad that sense of relief he desperately needs, but I also don’t want to lie and give him completely false expectations.
“Well enough,” I say, standing and clutching my keys in my hands.
My dad nods, and looks back down at his doodle. He adds a few features and turns it into a smiley face, then spins it around for me to see.
“Maybe if this coaching thing falls through, they’ll let me teach art,” he jokes.
“I think you have a better shot at music,” I laugh, “and I’ve heard you sing.”
I sling my bag over my shoulder and blow my dad a kiss. He does the same, letting his hand fall to a slap on the desk. I watch him and walk backward a few steps before turning and exiting through the big metal door, skipping to my car, and tossing my things inside. I slump into the seat and smile at the possibility of seeing Nico out there on that field. I don’t know why that thought makes me so happy, and I don’t know why I want to see it happen so badly, but I can’t deny that I do. It’s more than making my documentary good. It’s seeing something good happen for my dad and for Nico, and when the irony hits me, I laugh hard and start my car.
Damned Nico and Ayn Rand are right again.
I didn’t want my dad to know I had no idea where I was going, but I’ve been driving through West End for ten minutes, and I’ve regretted not getting Nico’s address for about nine and a half. The neighborhood is buzzing with activity, more than I thought it would. I’m not sure what I expected, really. Honestly, I’ve only driven through the area as a passenger during freeway closures and wrong turns when I was a kid. When I got my license, though, this was one of the places I was lectured about “not driving at night.”
I’m out of place. My blonde hair, my freckles, my barely four-month-old sporty two-door—a glance around the streets I’m passing through shows how much I don’t belong here.
I don’t belong here.
I feel guilty thinking it.
I slow to a stop sign and wait several extra seconds while a small dog passes into the intersection, but grows frightened and backtracks twice before committing and sprinting to the other side of the road. He stops around a front gate of a house, the yard dirt except for a large tin water bowl and a few dog toys lying on a yellowed patch of grass, and I comfort myself with the thought that he probably lives there. I don’t want him to get hit by a car.
With a heavy sigh, I turn down the last street. Just like the others, people are out on porches, and homes seem open, even as far as front doors propped wide open, welcoming strangers inside. The first thing we do in my neighborhood is lock the door when we step inside, yet here, in West End, where life is supposed to be scary, nobody seems to lock a thing, at least not during the middle of the day on Sunday.
I slow near the end of the street and take in the scene at one house where several kids are playing in the yard, splashing in one of those plastic baby pools. The lawn is immaculate—the edge of the grass trimmed perfectly, the color a deep green, the dirt freshly raked as if it’s a Disney landscape. Rose bushes are trimmed back for the fall, but their color remains green and they’re accented by seasonal flowers. I’m struck by the scene so much that I don’t realize I’m blocking a car behind me while I idle in the middle of the road. The abrasive blaring of the horn shakes me back to life, though.
“Sorry,” I mouth, waving in my mirror and pulling forward.