Push and Shove: The Ghost Bird Series: #6 (The Academy) (22 page)

“We’ve got a game to play,” North said, his tone deep and serious.

“So?”

“May want to pay attention out there,” North said. “Heard this team was tough. Have it out for shitty quarterbacks.” His eyes flashed once at me, and then he marched off after Silas.

Rocky followed, not bothering to look back.

In a moment, I was alone with Jay in the hallway. My hand was over my heart. They just avoided a fight, but there were threats flying everywhere. What did this mean for Nathan? And Silas? I didn’t understand boys at all.

“He better be right about you,” Jay said coolly. He was partially dressed in his football pants and a T-shirt he’d wear underneath which revealed the bulk of his body. His dark eyes were cold, critical. With the shaved head, he was scary.

The comment rocked me back on my heels. “Pardon?” I asked.

“Silas trusts you,” he said. He turned, heading for the locker room. “I don’t know you, and I don’t care. But half of my team was about ready to risk a fight and getting kicked out of the game for you. You better not be fucking with us.” He disappeared into the locker room.

What else could I have done? I stood there for a moment, unsure what to do and where to turn. I couldn’t run after Nathan just in case anyone was lingering and watching. I waited, wishing North or Silas would come out and tell me what to do.

And what about this person following us?

I turned around, heading the way I’d come. I took my phone out. It took an effort to slow my heart and breathing enough to think clearly. I waited until I was outside and out of earshot before I called Kota.

“What’s wrong?” Kota picked up after barely one ring.

I told him as quickly as I could what happened. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know if I should go back for Nathan.”

“Is anyone around?” he asked. “Where are you?”

“Outside, toward the football field.”

“Are there people over in the stands? Are they filling in seats yet?”

I was on the sidewalk that headed toward the gate and the football field. There were people lingering around the gate. Some were setting up ticket booths. Others were talking and watching, but a few had moved on toward the football field. Booths were open nearby, with people inside. “They’re starting to sell tickets.”

“Go see if you can get one, or volunteer to help out if you need a reason to be around. Don’t let anyone talk you into going alone anywhere. Stay with people.”

“Where’s Luke and Gabriel?”

“We’re giving Mr. Morris and the other driver the run around. We’re trying to figure out who this other guy is. I don’t know how soon we can get back.”

“Should I call Victor to come out?”

“He won’t be able to get back for over a half hour. He’s on the other side of Charleston. Go find a place to sit in the stands. If there’s any emergency, I don’t care where North or Silas is, or where Nathan is, go find them. I’m going to get Nathan to stay within sight, but will have him keep his distance. We’ll have to sort this whole mess out later.”

I breathed out slowly, trying to gather myself a bit. The whole scene was nerve-wracking and now I was all alone.

“Sang,” Kota said. “Sweetie, I’ll come for you as soon as I can. We’ll figure this out. Stay on the line with me.”

“I wish we didn’t have to care what they thought,” I said.

“It’s not really like this in other places,” Kota said.

“The Academy’s not like this?”

“Life isn’t like this. Not really. People may notice some things, but they usually don’t care. If it isn’t their own family or friends, they may talk about it for a minute, but they forget and move on, and it doesn’t affect your life. There’s not a lot of petty rumors unless you’re a public face like in politics or a celebrity.”

I hoped that was true. I couldn’t imagine living my whole life worried about what other people thought. I wondered how much Victor had to deal with. “Nathan doesn’t have any money on him,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Don’t we have to buy tickets?”

“He’ll get in,” Kota said. “Don’t worry about him. Just get yourself in the gate. Do you have any money on you?”

I pulled out the wad of cash I had remaining. “Seven dollars.”

“That should be enough for you.” He paused for a long time, until I thought maybe we had been disconnected.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m driving,” he said. “Sorry. I’m going to put you on speaker. Keep me on the line. Just talk to me if you need to.”

I approached the ticket booth and stopped short, surprised to see Ms. Johnson standing behind the counter. The English teacher was selling tickets? Then I noticed teachers in the other booths. Was that normal?

Ms. Johnson raised her head as I approached and smiled. “Hello. Just you?”

I nodded. I had the phone close to my ear, and thought it was rude to be on the phone while buying things. I pulled it away, holding it against my chest. “You handle the ticket booth?” I asked.

“We’ve had problems with some of the students,” she said. She tucked a curly brown lock behind her ear. “They take money off the top or give tickets away. Mr. McCoy was a stickler about this, and had teachers take over.”

At Mr. McCoy’s name, I had a knee-jerk reaction to check behind my shoulder. “He’s not here now.” I don’t know why I said it, but I wanted to confirm it with someone else.

Her eyes widened and then she seemed to relax, like I was privy to something she didn’t realize I knew. “No, not at the moment. Mr. Hendricks said he was on temporary leave. I didn’t get the details.”

Temporary? I wanted to ask more, but wasn’t sure how to put it. Maybe Mr. Hendricks didn’t want to shake up the staff by telling them he didn’t know where Mr. McCoy was. The Academy boys suggested they had control of him ... at least, that was my understanding since the boys refused to talk about it. They simply said don’t worry about him. “How much?” I asked.

“Six dollars.” She yanked a ticket from her dispenser and then held it out to me. She checked her watch. “Mr. Morris is late again. He’s supposed to pair up with me. I hope I don’t have to do the whole night alone.”

Did he do the ticket booth, too? Were teachers paid for this? I passed over the money and she waved at me as I walked away.

At the gate, another teacher ripped my ticket, and told me where the student seating was. After I was through the gate, I followed the path to the stands. I lifted the phone. “Kota?”

“Still here,” he said. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I got a ticket and I’m in the gate. Mr. Hendricks is telling teachers Mr. McCoy’s on temporary leave.”

“He’s still hoping to find him. It’s only been a few weeks since he’s been gone, but it’s been long enough that the school board wants to replace him.”

“With Mr. Blackbourne?” I asked, remembering a conversation I’d had with Mr. Hendricks.

“We’ll see.”

“And Ms. Johnson is working the ticket booth along with other teachers. She’s waiting for Mr. Morris.”

“Mr. Morris is a bit busy right now. He’s behind me.”

“Kota, remember a while ago when I found a list of names on a list in Mr. Hendricks’s office? One with Ms. Johnson’s name on it? Could she...” I didn’t know how to put it. After finding out earlier that Wil had been involved with Mr. Hendricks, and then Mr. Morris, it felt like everyone could be in on this crazy plan Mr. Hendricks had. No wonder Kota was cautious before about not approaching Mr. Morris any more.

“We should talk in person about this,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. We shouldn’t talk about it on the phone in case anyone’s listening. Hang on a second. I’m texting Nathan back about where you’re going.”

I tried to be quiet for him. I kept the cell phone to my ear while scouting out the stands. I aimed for a spot I’d sat at before with Kota and Nathan.

I didn’t have Kota’s jacket with me at the moment. I’d left it in the car. In just a skirt and a T-shirt, I huddled in a seat in the stands. Others had started to fill in. Kids sat in small groups around different parts of the field and in the stands.

It was twenty minutes before I spotted Nathan. He entered the stands, scanned the area, found me, and then drifted over to another section, up higher and out of my sight if I was watching the game. I still felt him there, watching over me.

It felt so familiar, being so distant. It wasn’t too long ago we’d had to avoid each other because of students and now we were doing it again. I hated it.

“Nathan’s here,” I said. “He’s sitting away from me but he’s in the stands.”

“Good,” Kota said. “I’m going to let you go.”

“Are you okay?” He’d asked me so many times that I hadn’t had the chance to ask.

“I’m fine, sweetie. Just driving around.”

“Be careful.”

“Will do. You be careful, too.”

The phone silenced after he hung up. I held it in my palms, staring out at the field. It felt awkward that Nathan was so close and yet he couldn’t approach. If the rumors had spread, he needed to stay away from me for a while until things got cleared up. I hated it. Rumors were stupid.

But at the same time, it confirmed something I’d been wondering for a while. Despite how close the boys had been, it was clear that somehow I’d been crossing a line with them. Touching, hanging out together, these were things other kids were paying attention to. Despite saying we don’t care what others think; too many people paying attention forced us to step back and act more normal.

Which meant the things I was doing with them wasn’t normal. I had suspected it for a while, but I’d relied on the boys. They were the ones that had reached for my hand, or hugged me most of the time. Facing the reality as other people talked about us made me want to crawl underneath the stands and find a place to hide until I could figure it out.

Still, as I sat alone, I missed Nathan. I missed Kota. And I couldn’t picture any one of the other boys without picturing the others around us. Mr. Blackbourne and the others called us a family. Maybe I was starting to believe it. Perhaps Kota was right and outside of high school, people lose interest in your private life and pay attention to their own.

That didn’t mean what was happening with us was normal.

––––––––

W
hile waiting for the football game to start, I paid more attention to students and parents as the stands slowly filled. I focused on couples in particular. Some couples were parts of groups of friends. Despite hanging out with the entire group, couples still clung to each other.

Most of the time, Silas sat close to me during lunch but I wouldn’t sit in his lap, or any of the boys’ laps, unless the others thought no one was paying attention. They grabbed my hand on occasion to tug me this way and that. They would hold on to my hand in dense hallways when everyone was looking ahead. Their hands sometimes drifted to my back or neck. They reached out for me when they could, when they thought it was safe.

But when we weren’t around other people, they didn’t let go of me at all. They directed me to sit in their laps. They folded me into them and kept me close, like these other couples did.

The Academy boys did it in front of each other sometimes, but not when we were within eyesight of anyone else, which confused me more. Was it right or wrong? Why was everything such a secret around them?

A particularly clingy couple sat three rows ahead of me. The girl huddled into the guy a lot and it reminded me of how I cuddled with the guys. Lost in the moment, I was longing to feel a confident hand from the boys. I was lonely.

The girl turned her head, looking at the boy. He leaned in and kissed her lips.

The sight captured my attention as the girl parted her lips and the boy kissed her more deeply. It was a little different watching this versus watching a couple in a movie kissing. This was real. My heart was pounding for her.

I wondered how it felt. How close had the boys gotten? In the hallway with Silas, there was the same intensity for a kiss, but then he wouldn’t do it. And then he’d said it was killing him, like I was the one not doing it. But I just witnessed this boy in front of me swooping in for this kiss on his own. All she did was turn her head. He did it first. Wasn’t that how it worked?

“Hey there,” a voice said nearby.

I was sure the person who had spoken must have been talking to someone else. It wasn’t one of the boys, so it couldn’t have been directed at me. At first, I didn’t move much, just diverting my attention from the couple to another cluster of students sitting closer to the field as I didn’t want to be caught staring.

A figure cut in front of my view and I looked up, spotting Karen. She was in jeans and a light blue hoodie and her pixie hair was combed neatly. She smiled down at me. “By yourself?”

A wave of relief washed over me. Being alone had been awkward and the sight of her familiar face made me relax. “Yeah, actually...”

“I was waiting for a friend,” she said. “You want to sit together?”

“Sure,” I said. I supposed that should be okay. If Gabriel, Luke, or Kota came back, they could join me or hang out with Nathan. Nathan was really close, so he could swoop in if there was a problem.

It was crazy how I was expecting trouble at any moment and thought I needed looking after. I’d been relying on the boys for so long now, it was just instinct to make sure they were nearby.

Karen sat down next to me. For a moment, we were quiet as she readjusted her hoodie over her hips and relaxed. The kissing couple caught her attention. “Ick,” she said. “If they wanted to make out, they should try the parking lot, or under the bleachers.”

“Other kids do it a lot,” I said, not meaning it to be defensive, but just an observation.

“Yeah, but jeez. There’s a difference between sneaking a kiss and then slobbering in public.” She made a face and then chuckled.

I laughed a little. “It’s all the same to me.”

She turned her head, her soft brown eyes lighting up. “Haven’t been kissed yet then, huh?”

My mouth popped open at her figuring out the truth so quickly. Is it what I said?

She laughed softly. “I knew it. I’ve heard you were going out with Silas but didn’t believe for a moment you spent the night with him.”