Swagger (10 page)

The next day, and every day after that, Levi and Hartwell were together at lunch. I'd look over at them now and again. Most of the time, Levi had his nose in a textbook, and Hartwell had a pencil in his hand. But sometimes they'd just be talking, their faces intense, each listening closely to what the other said. A stranger looking at them then would have thought that they were best friends.

Halloween rolled around. Both my parents were working, so I passed out the candy. As I dropped mini Snickers bars into little kids' bags, I thought about Redwood City. If I'd been there, I'd have probably gone with Mark to the Haunted House on Middlefield Road and then afterward to the free rock concert out by Pete's Harbor. One thing was certain: I wouldn't have been sitting home alone.

I
HAD A MAJOR CHEMISTRY TEST
two days after Halloween. If I could manage a C+ or B−, my overall grade would be C. If I flunked it . . . I didn't even want to think about what that would mean.

I studied a couple of hours on Wednesday night, and then I got up early on Thursday morning to head to school for one final hour of review. The library was open and empty. I laid my notes on a table and stared at them. I'd taken too many notes—pages and pages. What should I study and what should I ignore? I suddenly understood how overwhelming everything must have felt to Levi.

I plunged in, trying to learn as much as I could, which is why I didn't notice Hartwell until I heard his voice. “Looks pretty impressive,” he said, and I jumped. He raised his hands. “Sorry, Jonas, I didn't mean to scare you.”

He sat in the chair next to me and flipped through my notes. “Chemistry. That's harder than ninety percent of the classes you'll take in college. How's Butler as a teacher?”

I explained, choosing my words carefully. For all I knew, Hartwell and Butler were friends, though it seemed unlikely.

Hartwell nodded in sympathy. “My high school physics teacher was like that. They make your life miserable.” He paused. “Could you just drop the class?”

“No. The coach at Monitor College says I need a C in a lab science class or I can't get in.”

“Are you getting a C?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you have a back-up plan? Did you get feelers from any school other than Monitor?”

I shook my head. “No. Monitor was the only school that called. If I don't get in there . . .” My voice trailed off.

Hartwell thought for a moment, then stood quickly. “Follow me.”

I closed my notebook, stood, and then trailed behind him as he went down a long hallway and into a small room way in the back. In it were a couple of tables with staplers, sticky notes, and paper clips spread out on top. In a corner on a small desk sat an ancient iMac computer.

“What's this place?” I asked.

“It used to be a teachers' workroom, but when the school was remodeled, they put in a new workroom by the main office. This room has been forgotten. I stumbled upon it by accident.”

“So why are we here?”

“I want to show you something.”

He sat down, switched on the iMac, and motioned for me to pull up a chair. The computer took forever to load, but once it did, the screen filled with folder icons, each with a different teacher's name on it. Hartwell slid the mouse to me. “Double-click on Butler's.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Do it.”

I took the mouse and double-clicked. Again it took forever, but at last the folder opened. Inside were a bunch of other folders. Hartwell reached over and pointed to one entitled
CURRENT YEAR
.

“Try it.”

“Won't there be a password?”

“Find out.”

I double-clicked.

Again it opened.

Butler didn't have it protected.

My heart raced. On the screen was a file labeled
CHEMISTRY
. I double-clicked and a long list of files, organized month by month, appeared. Everything was there. The lab assignments, the quizzes, the tests, the answer keys.

Everything.

I looked at Hartwell.

He wagged his index finger, silencing me before I could get out one word. “Jonas, I don't condone cheating, but a bad teacher like Butler—he's the real cheater. He's cheating you out of your chance for a college education.”

The room seemed unnaturally quiet. Ten seconds passed. Ten more. At last Hartwell patted me on the shoulder. “I'm going to leave now. If you want, you can e-mail those files to yourself. If you don't want to do that, then close up the computer and forget I ever showed this room to you.” He paused. “Take as long as you want to decide. Like I said, this place is never used by anyone. You can find your way back, right?”

I nodded.

With that, he stood and walked out.

Once Hartwell left, my eyes went back to the screen. I'd cheated some in middle school by looking at other kids' papers during tests, but I hadn't cheated since then. Still, what Hartwell said made sense in a way. I was willing to learn, but Butler cared only about smart kids like Edward Yang. Maybe he was cheating me.

I opened up my e-mail account, selected all the quizzes and tests, attached them to an e-mail to myself, hit Send, and then logged out of my e-mail account. Next I double-checked to make certain that I'd left Butler's folder exactly the way I'd found it. When I was satisfied I'd left no trace, I shut the computer down. The whole process took only a couple of minutes, but on that ancient computer, it seemed to take hours. When I returned to the main room of the library, Hartwell was nowhere to be seen.

There was a bank of computers in the back of the library looking out over the practice football field. I sat down in front of the one that was farthest from the librarian's desk, opened my e-mail account, and clicked on the Butler's file labeled
TEST—NOVEMBER
. There they were: all the questions and all the answers. I took a deep breath. Then, for thirty minutes, I pored over the material. I didn't get it down cold, not by a long shot, but I got enough.

Butler passed the tests back two days later; I had an eighty-six. When Celia saw my grade, her eyes opened wide. “Way to go!” she mouthed.

“Pure luck,” I mouthed back, making myself both a liar and a cheater.

T
HE LAST HARDING HAWKS FOOTBALL
game was on a Saturday night in the middle of November. I hadn't attended a single game, partly because I'd been studying so much and partly because it would feel weird to walk into a stadium by myself. Then, on the Friday before the game, Celia asked me if I was going. “Maybe. I'm not sure. Why?”

“I was hoping you could give me a ride.”

My heartbeat quickened. “Sure, I can give you a ride.”

“Can you also give my friend Missy a ride? We normally go together, but neither of us can get a car.”

“No problem,” I said, my short-lived hopes gone.

 

When I pulled up in front of Celia's small yellow house near the Burke-Gilman trail, she and Missy came out the front door before I even got out of the car. I drove to Memorial Stadium, and we sat together in the student section, but off to the side. Missy's boyfriend was Colton Banks, the kicker. Every time there was a punt or a kickoff, she'd get excited, but nothing else excited anyone. The evening was cold, dark, and windy. Both teams were terrible; the game had no flow. About fifty times I asked myself why I was there.

Harding lost 13–9 on a last-minute touchdown that was set up by a fumble. Their record was 2–7 or 3–6, something awful like that, so no one was surprised or disappointed. We were leaving the stadium when Ashley Lau, one of Celia's volleyball teammates, rushed up. “There's going to be a party over in Laurelhurst. Everybody on the team is going to be there. You've got to come.”

Celia looked at me. “Do you want to go to a party?”

“I don't know,” I said, hesitation in my voice.

Ashley smiled at me. “Come to the party. You'll have fun.”

“I won't know anybody,” I admitted.

“You know Celia and Missy,” Ashley said, “and now you know me.”

 

Ashley wrote down an address that meant nothing to me, but Missy guided me as I drove past the University of Washington, through tree-lined, dimly lit streets. Finally I pulled up in front of a fancy brick house with a huge lawn in front.

The party was at the home of one of the boyfriends of a girl on the volleyball team. His parents were out of town for the weekend. We followed the music down into a large basement area. The volume was loud, but not so loud as to get the police called. Celia and Missy immediately latched on to a group of friends. They tried to bring me into the conversation, but I couldn't follow much of what they were talking about.

After a few minutes, Celia was dragged off somewhere by one of her volleyball teammates. I milled around until I found a corner with a big-screen television. I plopped down on a sofa and watched the fourth quarter of a Boise State–Hawaii game. Once the football game ended, I switched to
SportsCenter
, growing more depressed with every fantastic play.

Around eleven thirty, two guys showed up with a couple of cases of beer. They immediately cranked up the music, which made me nervous. If I got caught drinking and Knecht heard about it, that would be it for me. Goodbye scholarship. I couldn't let myself get kicked off a basketball team before tryouts had even started, and in a fancy neighborhood like that one, neighbors called the police.

I searched out Celia. She was still talking to a bunch of her friends, but our eyes met just as one of the guys shouted out, “Beer for everyone!”

I didn't want to come across as a loser, but I couldn't risk staying, either. Just as I was about to go over to her, she came over to me. “Do you want to leave?”

“Yeah. Can you get a ride from somebody else?”

“No, I'll go too. Let me find Missy and see what she wants to do. I'll meet you upstairs, okay?”

Missy wanted to stay, but her kicker-boyfriend hadn't shown up, so I was her ride home. She was angry, though, and she sat in the back seat letting us know it. When I dropped her off, she didn't say a word as she got out of the Subaru. She just slammed the door and went into her house.

As we drove the empty streets, Celia told me she was glad we'd left. “I don't want to do anything to mess up next year. If I got caught drinking and the school suspended me . . .” She shook her head.

“You don't have to explain,” I said. “It's the same for me.”

I pulled up in front of her house. Before she got out of the car, Celia leaned over and kissed me on the cheek—a kiss a sister would give a younger brother. “I'm sorry Missy was such a bitch. You're a good guy, Jonas.”

Then she was gone, up the walkway and into her house.

T
HE FIRST DAY OF BASKETBALL
tryouts was Monday. My long wait was finally over.

I tried to concentrate during my morning classes, but I kept thinking about tryouts. During lunch I sat next to that same guy from algebra class, and he told some long story about his brother who was in the army. I was glad to be able to listen and not to have to say anything. At my locker after lunch, I joked a little with Gokul and for an instant wished that I played tennis like him or even golf. Everything was clear for those guys. Either you beat the guy or he beats you. Whether I could or couldn't beat Brindle one-on-one wasn't important; how Knecht saw us was what mattered.

I sat next to Levi in health. When the bell sounded ending class, we made our way to the locker room, where we changed before heading onto the court. Levi was relaxed—he had his position on the team cemented—but I was so nervous, my hands were shaking.

Step one was to make the team. As we shot around, I checked out the competition. Twenty guys were trying out for twelve slots. Two guys were tall but had nothing else going for them. Two others were short and slow—what were they thinking? A couple of other guys had stone hands; three others looked out of shape.

We'd been warming up for ten minutes under Hartwell's eye when Coach Knecht appeared, seeming slower and more bent over than ever. His wiry gray hair was uncombed, and he had a gray-black two-day stubble on his face. He looked more like the cook in some old cowboy movie than a basketball coach.

I slipped over to Levi. “Is he sick?”

“I don't know,” Levi said, worry in his eyes.

Knecht motioned for us to form a semicircle around him. He seemed tiny standing before us, but his eyes were still bright. “Give it your best, and you won't have any regrets,” he said in a shaky voice. He followed that with a few more things that I could barely hear before he nodded toward Hartwell and then slowly moved off to sit on a folding chair set up along the sideline at half-court.

Hartwell had us pin numbers to our shirts, and we got at it. Once I break a sweat, I stop thinking and simply play, but all that afternoon I stayed tight. Who was calling the shots? Hartwell or Knecht? Sometimes I dribble between my legs or behind my back for no reason. Hartwell would understand moves like that, but Knecht would think I was showboating. Same thing with crossing over on a guy or pumping my fist after a good play—both came naturally to me. Hartwell wouldn't care, but Knecht wouldn't like either.

When we finished the basic drills, Hartwell broke us up into mini-teams for three-on-three basketball. Knecht stayed glued to his chair, all the time taking notes on a yellow pad.

I didn't have Levi or Cash or any of the starters on my team. The guys I did have didn't know my game, and I didn't know theirs. Nothing went terribly wrong, but nothing went right, either. One play was typical of my day. We were on offense, playing right in front of Knecht. A defender was overplaying this Brandon Taylor kid who was on my team. I was sure Brandon would go backdoor on him. I delivered a bounce pass to the exact spot where Brandon should have been, only he hadn't gone backdoor; he'd popped out for a pass. My perfect assist ended up out-of-bounds. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Knecht write something down on his notepad. What was it? That I'd made a stupid turnover, or that I'd made a great pass?