When You Believe (12 page)

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she said, clearing her throat. He could see her hands shaking.

And so they both understood it. Now, being alone together, there wasn’t anything left to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you apologize. When you apologize, it makes you sound like you’re
wrong.
”

He stepped past her.

“I’ll come with you out to the car.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“I can’t leave it this way, Charlie.”

“Maybe you ought to.”

“No.”

“Someone will see you with me.”

“Do you think that really matters to me right now?”

He didn’t say
Suit yourself.
He just plodded past her, out toward the parking lot and let her make her own decision. He sensed her behind him and knew
she was still there.

He didn’t have the boat attached to his truck anymore. He had unhitched it and chocked the tires with rocks in his yard, where
he had decided it would be safe. He jammed the computer box inside the truck bed and shoved a tool chest up against it so
it wouldn’t stand any chance of blowing out. “What I want to know is this,” he suddenly said to her with censure. “Only one
question I have to ask you.”

“What?” She uncrossed her arms.

“I want to know if you believe that girl or if you believe me. I want to know which one of us you think is telling the truth.”

She stood looking at him as if that question had come too fast, as if he had nailed her to the wall.

“Lydia?”

She started toward him again, taking up the last few steps between herself and the truck.

“Stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t move any closer until you answer.”

She fumbled around for a moment. “Why would you even have to ask what I think?”

“You know why.”

“Don’t do this. Charlie, please.”

He yanked open the driver’s side and climbed in.

“You’ve agreed to commit your life to me. I need to know where this leaves us.”

He held the door open until she answered. He gave her no time to fabricate a story or to temper her thoughts with careful
words. Lydia had nothing else in mind that she could say; the words came blurting out. “No. I don’t think that
girl’s
telling me the truth, and I don’t necessarily think
you
are, either.”

“That’s what I thought.” After he slammed the door, Charlie cranked down the window like he was reeling in a fighter fish,
as hard as he could. He popped the gas pedal, so frustrated he didn’t stop to think that it would flood the engine when he
tried to start it. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

“Don’t you go yet,” she said, taking the steps two at a time. “Look, you can’t expect me to not question this. I’m just
human.
”

“That’s the problem with the whole world, isn’t it? Everybody’s just human.”

“Charlie—”

“Don’t you know I could have dealt with this, Lydia, if I knew that you were behind me?”

Lydia grabbed the door and opened it. “How could you say that? How could you make me be the responsible one?”

Like mist that settled heavy in the bottomlands and rose when sun warmed the air, all the things they could have said to each
other and all the things that, to both of them, were unspeakable—
I can’t stop thinking of the things Shelby said . . .

I thought I could count on you to trust me.

Some doubts are too big to overcome, Charlie.

I needed you, Lydia, and you aren’t there for me—
disclosures, denials, admissions, guilt, shame mounted between them. There wasn’t anything that could save what they had been.

Charlie stumbled up out of the truck and seized her, hauling her against him, locking his mouth against hers so hard that
she tasted blood. Hip to hip, thigh to thigh, leg to leg, their shoulders straining.

“Stop it,” she cried against his lips. “Just stop it. This doesn’t make anything different.”

“Lydia, you’re shaking. Are you that afraid of me?”

“I want you to leave.”

“From that kiss, it was hard for me to know it.” His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a smile.

She slapped him, hard. He lurched back. Overhead the breeze came up and rattled the limbs like rake tines. “I won’t be manhandled
by you,” she said.

The set of his jaw tightened. “That so?”

It took a tough man to stand before her without reacting, letting her see him broken and strong. But Charlie could be as tough
as a log chain. As strong as a thick, broad white oak.

When he stumbled back into the truck and slammed the door, he couldn’t stop his chest from heaving. On the sidewalk, the damp
leaves smelled like steeping, pungent tea. And Lydia just stood there, her eyes closed, as he ached to say her name.
Lyddie.

He keyed the engine instead. The radio awakened with static. He stared at it a minute, expecting a Shadrach football rundown.
When the radio didn’t give it to him immediately, he took his frustration out on the knob, twisting it. AM stations crackled
up from everywhere.

“John Ashcroft… if we pray… down three to two… new dessert menu… Joe knows… made the Anaheim Angels
so… music up… in store for you… the problem with illegal game-bird baiting… believe Christ… it’s
Taco-riffic!… the Carnahan platform… final close-out sale, cash and carry…”

The sound stopped in one long hum as if the dial had honed in by itself.

“In other statewide news today, Missouri officials are continuing an investigation this hour after a St. Clair County student
made claims that a high school teacher allegedly abused her—”

Charlie punched it off.

That radio report was the last sound between them. When he drove away, he left only the leaves at the curb behind him, whispering
that he had been there.

Sam Leavitt played into the third quarter of the homecoming game before the team trainer diagnosed his broken rib.

When Coach had lined them up in a two-point stance for warm-ups and assigned them to catch balls while they ran at half speed,
Sam had forgotten everything except the battle-call to defeat the Abednego Blazers. His muscles were itching to burn.

The decibel level at the earlier assembly couldn’t compare to the uproar from Shadrach fans now, their arch rivals in plain
view and listening across the field. Rolls of crepe paper soared through the air and unfurled before the opposite team like
gauntlets. For all the encouragement and hollering and passion, the two sides might as well have been tribal villages in a
life-or-death standoff instead of students at a game.

By the time the Fire-Rattlers met helmet to helmet in the huddle, there wasn’t time for Sam to think about the bizarre journalist
invasion or the angry pain in his side. The corncob burning had incited a riot atmosphere among his classmates and his team.
Sam wanted to perform.

Every time he thought about Whitney and the questions she’d asked him—
Where’s Shelby?—
he wanted to hit something. And so that’s just what he did.

In the first quarter he made three bone-crushing blocks, one that laid a kid out and opened a hole for Will Devine to make
a thirty-two-yard run up the left sideline for a touchdown.

During the second quarter, with the sky fading to black and high banks of stadium lights streaming onto the field, Coach Fortney
called his number for an inside release. On Josh Dailey’s snap-count, Sam took one short jab step off the line of scrimmage,
escaped from the Abednego defensive end with a brutal forearm blow to an inside shoulder, and sprinted upfield.

Josh rocketed him a ball that hit square between the 8 and the 4 on his jersey. Sam wrapped his arms around it and took off.
Two plays later Adam kicked his first field goal of the game.

At halftime in the locker room, which sounded like a barnyard and didn’t smell much better, they were already high-fiving
and exchanging victory grunts.

“Way to let ’em have it, Dailey.”

“Did you see that hit Leavitt laid on the cornerback?”

“Those guys are going home with their
tails
between their
legs
.”

“What is this?” Coach bellowed at them. “You think you’re finished for the day? You think it all ends here?”

“Well—”

“You’ve got the entire population of Shadrach out there in the stands depending on you and you think it’s time you can stop
and celebrate along with them?”

They plopped their helmets on the benches, heads bent, and let him rage at them. He showed them diagrams, gave each one of
them individual criticism. By the time he was finished they felt like they’d fallen ten points behind instead of the other
way around. In one connected, surging unit, they blasted up out of the locker room and smashed through the red paper banner.

Four minutes into the third quarter, Coach called Will Devine’s number again and Sam stutter-stepped into a perfect fake,
drawing off a 225-pound Abednego linebacker. The linebacker rushed at him while Josh shoveled the ball toward his teammate.

At the last possible second, an Abednego player caught on and wheeled in Will’s direction. Sam blasted forward, throwing his
right forearm into a brutal left-shoulder block.

The play unfolded just the way they’d practiced it. The Abednego defensive line piled in on top of Sam while Will broke free.
Somewhere in the distance, Sam heard the crowd going wild. Above him, above everything else, above the massive dinosaur of
pads and sweat and bodies that pinned him into the ground, above the crepe paper flying and the blinding glare of the lights,
hovered the pain.

Sam couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t stand up. He tried, and went down on all fours. “Hey, Leavitt,” he heard someone calling
through the blood pounding in his ears. “You okay?”

He rolled over onto his back. The stinking bodies were gone and he could see banks of lights blaring down on him from every
direction. They whirled above him, moving, drawing circles. He had no sense of time passing until Deanna Woodruff, the team’s
trainer, floated over him with her six-pack of Gatorade bottles and a sports towel. Somewhere far away the band played. And
the next thing he knew, someone was shoving his ribcage, bulldozer pressure. He came up out of himself. He snarled at everybody
standing within ten miles. “That’s
it.
You
found it, okay?”

Faces swam in and out in front of him. He squeezed his eyes shut. And heard, “Thing’s already been swollen. It isn’t a new
injury. Leavitt, has this been bothering you before?”

Sam winced and opened his eyes again. “Just since”—he grimaced—“yesterday’s powder-puff.”

They lifted him, their shoulders thrust beneath his armpits, human crutches bearing him along. A smattering of polite applause
erupted from the stands.

Deanna rummaged through the first-aid box on the Fire-Rattler sidelines, helped him off with his jersey, and began to girdle
his middle with tape. She had him halfway bound up like a mummy when, suddenly, he lifted his eyes to the stands and there
she was.

“Shelby!” he hollered, jerking away from Deanna, not making it very far. He left what felt like most of his epidermis on a
scant ten inches of athletic tape.

Sam couldn’t be sure whether it was the pain or the Vioxx he’d just downed or the way he could see Shelby clutching the railing
that made him woozy. Deanna batted his elbow out of the way. “Get your arm down, Leavitt. Stop moving.”

“Shelby. Down here!”

“Fortney wants me to get you back out there. I’ve got about two more minutes to tape this rib.”

Shelby either wouldn’t or couldn’t hear him. Five or six rows of people turned in answer to his voice, but Shelby wasn’t one
of them. She stood exactly where she had appeared, between Joe Rex Hannibal, who made his living cutting meat at Winn-Dixie,
and Sharla Crabtree, head bookkeeper at the Shadrach Bank and Trust, looking out across the Shadrach football field as if
she gazed out over an endless nothing. He tried to unwind himself like a spool of thread. “Dee, let me go a minute. She’s
right there.”

“Tough luck.” Deanna grabbed one end of the tape and rewound him, forcing him to the bench. “Get your head in the game.”

By the time he was able to stand up again and pivot toward the bleachers, she was disappearing. She backed away, stepping
down into the aisle behind Joe Rex and Sharla, a solid row of standing loyal fans. She didn’t appear again.

“Leavitt.” Coach gripped his shoulder and held it a minute with concern. “You gonna be up to this?”

“Sure I am,” Sam said without turning. Then said it loud enough again to convince himself. “Sure I am.”

“Okay, then.” Fortney whacked him on the butt. “Get on out there. You’re in.”

And the only thing Sam could think about as he ran to join the huddle was Shelby’s face; the number he thought he’d seen painted
on her cheek. Not her senior season like the rest of the girls, no. A football number, a tight-end number. 84. The jersey
number he’d been wearing all year.

INSIDE THE HIGH SCHOOL
during the football game, Riley McCaskill had his floor polisher cranked up full speed. It wove back and forth across the
gym floor, vibrating in loud circles, as Riley polished the boards for the dance.

Earlier this evening, there had been plenty of people around. Volunteer parents had been busy arranging tables, flopping open
tablecloths and carrying finger foods to the Home Ec refrigerator. Student-council members had spent hours balancing on ladders,
hanging disco balls, and draping black paper from the light fixtures. But now, except for Riley and the disc jockey who had
been testing his sound system, most people had finished their jobs and had filtered away.

Because so many had been coming and going, the downstairs side door just outside the gym had been left unlocked. Above the
constant whine of the floor polisher, no one could have heard as this door clicked open and someone slipped inside.

Every light in downstairs C-hall had been left blazing. A figure moved into the stairwell and began to climb the steps into
darkness.