The Hard Count

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G
inger
Scott

I
look
over my shoulder when I walk home from school. If the sun is setting, I run.

Mom says it’s best for young boys like me not to be out on the streets at night. That’s when the 57 comes out. I don’t tell Mom, but they’re out during the day, too. My older brother, Vincent, goes with them sometimes. I don’t tell Momma that, either. I think, though, that maybe…she already knows.

I live on a quiet street. Me and my friends play football in the middle. The only time we have to stop our game is when one of them drives through. They drive slow. And they stare at me. Especially the one in the dark-blue car—his eyes look like the devil’s, and there’s always smoke coming from his mouth. My mom says it’s drugs, and his brain is poisoned. But his brain seems to be working okay. He always looks like he’s thinking. He’s the one I watch for when I’m alone.

My best friend, Sasha, is moving. There’s a sign in front of his house, and I heard his parents talking to my mom about how much the neighborhood has changed. I’m only ten, and it seems the same as it’s always been to me. The grocery store still has my favorite pop in the freezer box right outside, Pete’s Root Beer with vanilla. Marina and Paul still have the big orange house on the corner, and she always gives me tamales to take home any time I want. And Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza, who live across the street, still have the nicest yard I’ve ever seen. Vincent says boys aren’t supposed to like flowers, but Mrs. Mendoza grows roses. They smell sweet, and I like to watch the bees eat from them. I don’t care what Vincent says.

I like it here. And I don’t want to move. But I think Sasha’s parents have made my mom want to. She was looking at apartments in the paper yesterday morning during breakfast. I got angry and grabbed the newspaper from her hands and tore it into pieces when I ran out the back door. She caught me by the bottom of my Avengers T-shirt, and it ripped at the neck. She didn’t hit my butt, but she made me run to the store and buy her a new paper. I tried to glue my shirt back together, but before I went to school this morning, I saw it in the trash.

I miss that shirt…

I’m going to miss Sasha. He says he’s moving before they sell the house, but he won’t be far. He’s going to the other side of the freeway. We counted on a map, measuring with a piece of paper I ripped from Momma’s Bible. It was one of the blank pages near the back, so I don’t think she’ll notice. Eleven miles. That’s how far we measured. It costs less than three dollars to get to his new house by bus. Mom says I can go every two weeks. I asked Sasha if he would visit me on the weeks I can’t go to his house, but his parents said
no
. I know they like me, though, so it must be our neighborhood. They must be tired of looking over their shoulders and hiding inside, too.

I’m tired of being scared.

I used to not be. Back before we had to sit on the ground and stay away from the windows to watch TV in the living room. Mom put that rule in place when a bullet came through our front wall. Vincent says it was an accident, and usually that means it’s not going to happen again. It happened to Sasha’s house a week later, though. I thought the hole was cool, but then my mom told me I could have died. That’s when my headaches began, and I quit sleeping through the night.

That’s also when Vincent started getting in the blue car with the Devil Man. My brother told me the bullets wouldn’t hurt us now, because we were protected.

But I don’t feel protected.

I feel like I’m being hunted.

Every day.

I run home fast.

I don’t play outside alone when the sky is orange.

I don’t want to get in the blue car with the smoking man and his laughing friends.

I don’t want to learn how to keep my fingerprints off a sawed-off rifle.

I don’t want to sell drugs to “make some fast money” or “help my momma out.”

Those are the things the Devil Man says when he waits for me and his engine rumbles in the street while I walk home from school. He always laughs when I run. But I’ll always run. He’ll never catch me.

I won’t do any of it his way. I study hard. I get straight
As
. I run. I hide. I keep quiet. I stay out of trouble. I look at the tall rooftops and fancy cars on the other side of the freeway, and I wonder what they’re like.

Momma says we can’t afford the apartment. I don’t care. I don’t want any of it. I want my home with the sweet roses and tamales and music that plays loud on Saturdays.

I love my home.

I just hate what living here makes people do.

I
can tell
within a glance if someone hates me. Sometimes it only takes one word. Other times, it’s those subtle nonverbal cues—a shift of the eyes or arms folded over a chest in an attempt to hide all of that hate inside that’s dying to bore through their chest and grip mine until I choke or die.

Nico Medina is subtle about it. It’s in the way he
doesn’t
look at me, and how he breathes when I speak—the sound of air filling his chest so heavy I think it may just turn into fire and come back at me in flames.

It began our freshman year, when we partnered for peer grading on our first persuasive essay assignment. I spent hours on his, offering critique points in the margins, circling arguments he made that I felt were strong and jotting down my thoughts and ideas on ways he could make his points even stronger. I was impressed with him. Maybe a little enamored, too. I was fourteen and precocious, the twin sister of a jock football player and the daughter of our school’s football coach and a socialite mother who spent every week planning the coming weekend’s cocktail party at our house. I was dying to find someone willing to talk about politics with me, to debate classic literature themes, or maybe sit next to me in the school’s editing bay working on video for the school’s monthly announcement show, that nobody watched, but I put every ounce of my being into. I just wanted another nerd. And I thought I’d found one.

We exchanged papers, and my crush was
crushed
into a thousand tiny, sharp, jagged bits.

Nico gave me a
B
. He wrote WEAK
on the top—and circled it.

In red.

I approached him after class, paper in my hand and finger pointing to his one-word review, and asked him “What is this supposed to be?”

His response: “It’s a word.
Weak
. It describes your paper. You’re bad at this…” he paused when he leaned forward to look at my essay, now wrinkled in my angry, rigid hands. His lips quirked just before he looked up at me again, “Reagan Prescott.”

Every syllable sounded as if he had spit it on the ground. That was our first encounter. That was also our longest encounter, unless I count the times we debate in school. Somehow, our humanities class always turns into a session of point-counterpoint, and Nico is always quick to take up the opposite view of mine.

Because he hates me.

Right now—
hate.
I can hear him sucking in his breath through his nose, his shoulders rising like a shield against my voice. I’m talking. I’m…arguing. He
hates
that. The fire in his veins is waiting to burn me to the ground.

We’ve been debating over altruism—the idea of a truly selfless act. I believe they exist. Nico…not so much.

“I just feel like that perspective is too broad. It’s a black-or-white kind of statement eliminating the gray. In this case, that gray area is an entire array of emotions that you’ve basically just boiled down into one category—”

“Yes, selfishness. You get it now. You’re actually arguing my point exactly—that all acts are done out of self-interest. We are, by nature, ego-driven beings. We simply can’t help it,” Nico says, cutting me off and breaking the rules of decorum. Mr. Huffman insists we follow some basic rules of respect when discussions heat up in his classroom. He likes his students engaged, and even when we veer into taboo topics—politics, religion, the weird place where they intersect—he never stops us. I’m fairly certain that’s why he assigns reading subjects like Ayn Rand and topics that are so two-sided that a debate is inevitable.

“Go on,” Mr. Huffman says, giving Nico a short glance in warning.

He meant for me to continue, but Nico, of course, talks over my words, reiterating his point. Most of the class is behind him now, half because he’s a good arguer, and half because, despite his arrogance, he’s mesmerizing to look at. Taller than most of the guys in our school, he has this one lock of dark hair that hangs over his right eye, and he smiles when he blows it out of his face. There’s a dimple when he grins—the same dimple he gets when he speaks. That small dent in his bronze skin is deeper when he’s sure he’s right. His expressions are the kind that are bolstered by confidence, and as easy as it would be for me to chalk that up to his broad shoulders that seem to fill out every T-shirt he owns, I know it really comes from his beautiful mind—quick wit, nearly photographic memory, and a way with words that leaves me tongue-tied and slightly spellbound.

His perfection pisses me off.

I feel the enamel on my back teeth crackle with the harsh grinding motion while I clench so hard I may in fact break my jaw. After a two-second breath and pause to think, I open my mouth the second Nico stops talking and begin to speak just in time to halt Mr. Huffman mid-spin of the heels on his way to the board where he keeps notes during our classroom debates.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, though I do see your ego is in rare form today,” I say. My remark gets a smirk from my teacher, and I catch Nico’s shoulder lift with a single-breath chuckle. I bet he’s smiling. I’m sure the dimple is there. I wouldn’t know for certain. He doesn’t turn to look at me. He never looks at me when he speaks—when we spar. That, more than anything, usually gets me so angry that I end up losing my train of thought. But there’s enough time left today, and today—
today…
I’m not as angry as I usually am. I’m on point.

My lips part just enough for my tongue to slip through and wet the dry skin. I should probably take a drink from my water bottle, but I don’t want anyone in here to see it as a sign of weakness. I’m right on this one. Not Nico Medina.

“You argue that we, as humans, only do kind things for others because of the pleasure it gives us,” I say, pausing when I hear the noise of Nico’s pencil tapping rapidly against his leg. He’s like a snake coiled and ready to strike.

“We act because doing good makes us feel good,” he blurts out, his voice full of that condescension I’ve come to expect every day from two fifteen to three o’clock. “We act in every way because it feels good. We seek thrills for pleasure. We avoid pain—
for pleasure!
And we do favors for others, we make donations, we give someone a piece of our body—an organ—because saving someone else makes us feel good. I’m not saying it isn’t a good thing. I’m just saying we don’t do it because we’re good people. We do it because we like the feeling we get
when
we’re good people.”

“Not always,” I swallow before continuing, my eyes firm on my opponent’s form three rows across from me and one chair ahead. I lean forward, hoping to catch his periphery, and grip the edge of my desk. He doesn’t turn a tick. “On occasion, we act because of duty. We self-sacrifice for the greater good of the community—even when it breaks our hearts to do so. I cannot believe that the pleasure from sacrifice is always part of the equation. I know it’s not.”

Nico’s feet shuffle, crossing underneath his desk. His pencil has stopped moving, and the lines in his jaw flex. I’ve made him nervous. The dimple is gone.

Yes! I’ve erased the dimple!

I revel for a full three seconds, but my breath catches the moment my eyes are square with his.
He’s turned around.
The deep brown is offset by flecks of gold, and they’re wide at first, narrowing the instant he knows he has me caught—he’s the sniper, and I’m on the run. He didn’t face me out of weakness; this is a kill shot. His body is squared with mine as he turns in his seat, leaning forward slowly to settle his elbows on his denim-covered knees and rub his hands together as his smirk grows steadily along with his confidence.

I know exactly where he’s going. He thinks he has me trapped—that I’ll fall right in. My honesty is about to surprise him.

“Last year…” he begins, “we had a competition for our junior class. Our best debate team against the best team from St. Augustine.”

The junior debate with our rival school is an annual event. It’s a way to show off our academic prowess, which of course makes the parents who are writing ten-thousand-dollar checks to the school feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. It’s also a way to show off scholarship kids—like Nico—and prove to those same boosters and parents that they’re
making a difference.
I suppose Nico is right in one case—those checks aren’t selfless acts. Those people want to feel good about helping kids from tax brackets well below their own, and they strut for compliments on debate night as if the scholarship kids were actually their flesh and blood.

“We won,” I answer Nico, my voice strong and certain as I turn in my seat, mirroring him. His nostrils flare, but I’m sure only I notice.

“We did,” he says, the left side of his mouth rising as his eyes lower more. The rest of the class has grown quiet to the point of breathless. I know most of them don’t really care about our little point-counterpoint; they care about drama. They love it; it’s what keeps life at Cornwall Prep going—a mini society fueled by rumors and innuendos, sex scandals and rivalries. Nico Medina and I are small time, but we’re hot enough to fill the last two minutes of class. Our drama will do.

All I want to do is win.

Nico leans back in his seat, resting his back on the small curve of wood behind him, crossing his right leg over his left knee and folding his arms with satisfaction over his chest.

Conceited prick asshole.

“And why did we win?” he asks.

“Because I let you be captain,” I say, my eyes blinking out the words slowly because, yes, they are painful to say. But I don’t pause in saying them. I answer quickly.

“That’s right. You made me captain, sacrificing your own desire to be a leader for the good of the team,” he says, his words patronizing and dripping with condescension. “I’m pretty sure that falls into the category of
duty,
would you agree?”

“I’ll agree,” I say, my expression still flat as it was when he began. Nothing he’s saying is surprising me. It won’t.

“Then let me ask you this—your sacrifice…how did it make you feel?”

He’s so sure he has me. I could cave so easily. I would look better if I caved, better in the eyes of my best friend Izzy who is sitting next to me. She’s the one who asked me to let him be captain. She wanted to win, to carry home a heavy golden cup engraved with the word CHAMPION, to have a line on her resume that she was preparing for expensive colleges back East that said the same. Out of duty to my friend, I voted for Nico. Raising my hand felt like swallowing acid, and if I had it to do over, I would never make that mistake again.

“Well?” he prompts.

“It made me feel ashamed. It made me sick with regret. It’s the worst mistake I’ve ever made, and I took absolutely zero pleasure from it.”

The chuckles from the back of our classroom are faint, and Mr. Huffman’s warning with the wave of his hand and finger-hush over his lips does little to quiet them. The bell rings, and our teacher begins to recite out page numbers for our next reading. Nico and I don’t bother to write them down. I’m sure, like me, he’s finished his already.

The rustling of papers and chatter—about the weekend’s party, about tonight’s game, about my quarterback brother and whoever he’s dating—takes over the present, but Nico and I remain in our seats in the very-near past. We’re locked in our duel. My stomach is twitching with the nervous patter of my racing heart. It isn’t because of his eyes or smirk or tight T-shirt and somehow unbelievably-masculine seated position. I notice those things, but I dismiss them. It’s because I’ve been in the ring with him, and I’ve come out victorious. I want to cheer! I want high fives. I want to whisper
yes,
and clutch my fist to my gut in celebration.

Neither of us moves or speaks until Mr. Huffman calls our names, stirring us from our locked positions as he kicks down the stop on his door, signaling he has hall duty. I’m the first to break. I tell myself it’s because I have things to do. I need to get to the video room, to gather my equipment and make it to Dad’s coaching office before the football team files in. I have a deadline that Nico doesn’t have. But that’s not why I’m moving. I’m moving because I know he won’t. He’ll just sit there and continue to stare, and no matter how right I believe I am, he’ll make me think I’m wrong.

“I think I need to ask my question again, Reagan,” he says, and my chest seizes under the rush of numbness pouring through both it and my veins like morphine. He’s tapped into my nerves by just saying my name. He’s trying to make me angry. He wants me to emote. But I won’t. I won this time, and he’s going to have to swallow that pill. I’m not going to play a war of words that doesn’t matter.

My lips pursed, I raise my brows as I look at him and stand, my bags gathered over my shoulder and my books clutched against my chest. I look away when he doesn’t speak immediately, moving to the opened doorway, ready to disappear into our crowded high school hallway. His voice at my shoulder slows me down.

“Your confession—just now—that you only admitted, for your own pleasure of beating me in some silly, meaningless, classroom debate over a book that’s older than the bricks that built our school…” he slows, and I turn just enough to catch the dimple. “How did that make you feel?”

I part my lips to answer, ready to reject him, to refuse to walk down this path, but I can’t. A small breath escapes me, and my heart beat slows into a steady, obnoxious drum. I close my mouth, because there’s really no need for me to answer. Nico doesn’t wait to hear one. He pushes his hair from his eyes and tugs his bag tight against his shoulder, tucking his long board against his side. His lip ticks up just enough to push the dimple even deeper as he takes three or four steps backward before turning away and becoming lost in the crowd before me, always a step ahead.

I wait for nearly a minute, leaned against the doorway, my mind retracing every word I said, looking for the flaw in his argument, until I realize just how obsessed I’ve become over the last hour, over beating him. I chuckle to myself, glancing at his seat and mine, then shake my head while my teeth saw at my lip.

I answer his question in my head as I begin my trek to the football locker rooms. Beating Nico in a debate felt great. It felt amazing in those small breaths of a moment where I thought I had. But I hadn’t really.