Emancipated (13 page)

“You want me to play a tennis match with you?”

“Let the punishment fit the crime.”

It seemed too good to be true. “And that's all?”

Darius nodded, slapping his back. “Not gonna lie to you, Paolo, it's a money game. But if we win, I keep the prize.”

Here came the catch.

“Am I gonna have to come up with the stake?” Paolo asked.

“No, buddy, the stake is all on me.”

“And if we lose?”

“I guess we'd better not lose.”

And with that, Darius had stopped and watched Paolo veer off the path toward the house. He'd given a friendly wave and been on his way.

Since yesterday, Paolo had been waiting for Darius to reappear. He hadn't told anyone in the house what had really happened on the beach, and he wasn't about to tell them now. What kind of knucklehead got involved in a money game with some total stranger? He could just imagine himself trying to explain it all away, sounding more dumbass by the second. Paolo peeled foil from his breakfast burrito. Pensively, he took a bite.

Lucy looked across from the opposite end of the balcony, addressing Candace, who was sitting next to Paolo, her legs stretched out. “How was the first day of being a TV star?”

“Exhausting,” Candace replied.

As she began to describe it, Paolo tuned out. His attention went back to the beach. Darius. Who
was
he? How could someone that good not be a professional?

The house was immaculately clean and smelled of pine from top to bottom. They'd toiled half of yesterday to straighten up after the party. The housemates were going to relax, do their homework, sleep. Paolo had about two hours of homework to do, and a tennis student at five in the afternoon. He decided to hit the shower.

He'd barely finished when he heard a knock on the outside door. As far as he knew, no one in the house was expecting a visitor. A horrible premonition struck him. In the pit of his stomach, something lurched. He quickly put on a towel and then opened the door. It was Darius. He took one look at Paolo and smiled broadly. “Heeyyy, pardner. You gettin' ready to come out with me?”

Paolo made to step outside, and ran straight into Darius's outstretched palm.

“Dude,” said Darius. “Might wanna get your racquet?”

Thirty minutes later Paolo was sitting next to Darius in a convertible Porsche Boxster, speeding past Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway. The car felt very new, the silver blue paintwork gleamed with opalescence, the leather upholstery still had a squeak. Their raquets were tucked behind the rear passenger seat, in the shade.

Shortly after Leo Carrillo Park, they stopped at a diner and ate cheeseburgers.

“Now,” Darius said with a warning grin. “What happens next is for your own protection. Unless you want someone to recognize you, that is.” He led Paolo to the diner's bathroom, where Darius cut Paolo's hair short with a buzz-cut razor. Then he applied peroxide.

“Gotta love being blond. White hair. Chicks dig it,” Darius told him smoothly.

Paolo kept his lips pressed tightly shut, fuming. But when they'd finished, he couldn't stop looking at himself in the mirror. Such a small change, yet such a transformation. He looked like Eminem. Not his best look.

They reached Montecito shortly after lunch—a little town just south of Santa Barbara. Paolo had only ever heard of rich people living there: movie stars and the like. The type that felt that Beverly Hills was too much of a zoo. Darius drove the Boxster down streets with their neatly manicured borders into a residential area. He stopped at the security gate before a complex of white, red-roofed buildings. There was no one around. Just a two-way speaker in the wall.

“It's Darius, yo, give my boy Jimmy a shout, okay?”

After a moment, the metal doors gave way. Darius drove through. He parked next to a red Corvette, sleek and beautiful. For a second, Paolo ached to reach out and touch it. “Nice wheels,” he said.

Darius smiled. “That, my friend, is a 2012 Corvette convertible.”

A young man approached. He didn't look much older than Paolo. He was very tan with shoulder-length, straggly blond hair. He wore nothing but yellow cotton espadrilles and a pair of white Billabong board shorts. There wasn't an ounce of fat on the guy, Paolo noticed. Plenty of lean muscle definition. This kid lived for sun and body worship, or else he was an athlete. And to judge by his house, very rich.

Paolo watched as the two other guys bumped shoulders lightly. Jimmy strode over to Paolo. “This the guy?”

“I picked him up playing on Venice Beach. He's the real deal, man. Closest I've come to losing for a year.”

“A'ight, well it's gonna happen today, D. Because I got me a tennis pro. From Spain. He's buddies with Rafa.”

Paolo interjected, “Nadal?!”

Darius winked at him. To Jimmy he said, “That's why I'm insisting on odds, bro. You put up your Corvette, I put up my Boxster.”

Paolo took a sweeping look at the grounds. Two cottages, a large two-story house, gardens. Between the pink and white bougainvillea, he could see the blue chink of a swimming pool. As they stood there a tall, slender, deeply tanned woman with shoulder-length, straw-and-sand colored hair approached along the path toward the pool. She wore only a turquoise sarong, dyed Balinese-style with a seashell pattern and wrapped tightly around her body, revealing her shapely collarbone and calves. The woman tilted her horn-rimmed Ray-Bans and flashed a smile at the tennis players.

“Hello, Jimmy's friends. You be sure and put on a good performance for me today. I'll be coming out to watch you once I've taken a swim.”

Jimmy scowled. “Mom, don't.”

Jimmy's mom pouted. Then she surveyed the rest of the group. Her eyes stopped on Paolo. He could sense her gaze sweeping over him, slowly taking in his entire frame.

“I may watch,” she conceded, spinning on one foot. “And I may not. We'll see.”

Paolo watched her go. He leaned into the back of the Boxster, picked up the rackets and handed one to Darius. “Where's the court?”

As they made their way around the back of the house, Darius whispered into Paolo's ear, “You know the Spanish guy?”

Paolo peered at the tall, well-muscled athlete who stood on the court, bouncing a tennis ball. “Oscar Cortada. He's number twenty in the world!”

“Good thing we fixed your hair.”

But Paolo strongly doubted that the other player would recognize him. Cortada played on the international circuit. Paolo would be a huge nobody to him. Now he looked like a jerk and all for nothing.

The match turned into a tense, exhausting battle. The third set went to a tiebreaker. In the final set, Paolo finally understood why Darius had sought him out. While Darius and Jimmy were both flashy players with moments of brilliance, when it came to stamina, they just didn't have game. Paolo and Oscar dominated.

In the end, though, Darius's flashes of genius in combination with Paolo's power and technique eventually gave them the edge. And to Paolo's immense, exhausted relief, he and Darius won. And Jimmy's mom never showed up.

The two of them walked back to the cars. Fear had won it for them, Paolo realized. Darius had hurled murderous looks in his direction every time they lost a point.

In victory, Darius was surprisingly subdued. He handed Paolo the keys to the Boxster. Paolo closed his fist around them. “You want me to follow you home?”

“Hell no.”

“Where should I leave the car?”

“I could give a shit.”

Darius opened the door to the red Corvette, turned the key, and put down the top. Slowly, it dawned on Paolo what had happened.

“The Boxster isn't yours. You stole it for the stake.”

Darius peered at him for a second. “I ever hear
word
from you, you're a dead man.”

“Tough talk for a tennis player,” Paolo responded softly.

For a second, thunder flared in Darius's eyes. Paolo tensed, ready to spring back if the man attacked. Then, abruptly, Darius relaxed. He took a breath. “You'll wise up, eventually. I was just like you once.”

“In what way?” Paolo asked. “Honest? Or a tennis pro?”

“You just hustled a rich kid out of a forty-thousand-dollar car, homeboy,” Darius pointed out. “So no, I don't think you're
honest
anymore.”

The words sunk into Paolo like needles. Unsteadily, he backed away. Darius started the engine. As he reversed, Darius leaned out through the open window. A laconic grin was on his face.

“Get the Boxster off Jimmy's dad's driveway before they figure out it's hot. Don't let the cops catch you in that thing. And Paolo, before you go back to that country club, do something about your hair.”

The keys to the Boxster felt strange and unwieldy in his hand. Paolo's fingers fumbled as he tried to find the ignition. In his mind, he was already being pulled over by some traffic cop, asked for his license and registration papers.

His future was looking precarious. Convicted felons didn't get licenses to practice law.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

OUR LADY OF MERCY CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, TUESDAY, MARCH 10

“Miss Long, I'm going to pretend I didn't find you here.”

Lucy glanced up, dropped her cigarette, and quickly stubbed it under her regulation black Mary Jane shoe. She tried to exude impassivity as she watched the young teacher stroll over to the water's edge and pick up the discarded cigarette butt.

“I'm not, however, going to pretend I didn't find
this
.”

“Aww, shoot, Miss Ashcroft. That's not gonna help me. . . .”

The teacher silenced Lucy with a slicing motion across her own mouth. “Zip it. It's the third time I've found you in the water gardens. You know the water gardens are just for faculty and visitors. And smoking on top of that!” She paused. “It's almost as though you want to be expelled.”

Lucy risked a pout. She was black, a punk, and she wasn't afraid of teachers—it was an unexpected combination that seemed to put most teachers on their guard. It was good to mix up the tough-girl act they expected with a bit of vulnerability.

She cast her eyes down and then glanced up from beneath her eyelashes. Normally, she would reserve the maneuver for a male teacher. But it seemed worth risking now. Ashcroft was one of those teachers who yearn to be liked by the cool kids. Lucy was fairly indifferent to her, but she'd made friends with teachers like her throughout her entire life. Without their protection, she'd have been expelled at least twice.

Miss Ashcroft was visibly surprised. Lucy watched the history teacher ponder the possible motives for the gesture. After a second or two, she clearly came down on the side of manipulation.

“I can't believe that actually worked for you in Claremont, Lucy. But believe me, at Our Lady we get our share of princesses trying to give us the runaround.”

“I'm no princess. Not here, not in Claremont.”

Miss Ashcroft smirked. “Is that so? Well then, kindly report to the assistant principal's office. Do you remember where that is? You should, you were there only last week.”

Lucy bristled. Time to drop the friendly act. She was fine with teachers being strict and bossy—that's what they were paid for. But when a teacher turned on the hostile sarcasm, it was time to check out of that relationship. She and Miss Ashcroft were not destined to be friends.

She could still feel Miss Ashcroft's eyes on her as she dawdled up the long rectangular pond and onto the sandstone staircase, toward the Spanish-colonial-style mansion that dominated Our Lady of Mercy Catholic High School for Girls. She climbed the stairs in the full glare of the midday sun. Reluctantly, Lucy pulled on her regulation blue blazer and straightened the collar of her white cotton blouse.

The assistant principal, Veronica Guzman, waved Lucy toward the chair in the middle of the room.

“I'm going to get directly to the point.”

Her hair, Lucy observed, was solid, like a helmet—a monochrome block of glossy amber. Under a center part and neat, narrow eyebrows, her eyes were large and solemn.

“There have been disciplinary issues with you since the day you arrived, Miss Long. Notwithstanding the minor issues of cigarette smoking on the premises, inappropriate use of the staff parking lot, and general backtalk to members of staff, all of which might conceivably be overlooked, there's the somewhat intractable matter of your attitude toward your academic studies.”

Lucy smoldered in silence. The last grade she'd been given, which had been for music, was an A. In that subject—the only one that mattered to Lucy—she had never scored less than an A-minus. From school she planned to go on to a career in music: playing shows, recording. Maybe a college course or two in music technology. As far as Lucy was concerned, everything was on track. All in spite of her
parents having thrown her out and robbed her of all her local friends and fellow musicians. In Venice, she was already managing to reconstruct something that might even be better. What had seemed edgy in Claremont was commonplace on the Venice boardwalk.

“I'm afraid I don't understand, Miss Guzman,” Lucy said in her most carefully enunciated voice. It wasn't difficult to turn that on either—she simply imitated her mother. “I'm excelling in music. Isn't that the case?”

“Music, yes. No problems there, Lucy, I will give you that. I'm talking about English literature, chemistry, and Spanish. According to your teachers you are now overdue with papers in all three.”

“I asked for extensions. I recently moved, and we had—”

“You moved at the beginning of January,” interrupted Guzman. “Adequate time for any adjustments.” She gave Lucy a hard stare. “I'd have expected more from you, Miss Long.”