Fadeaway Read online

  Everybody knew there were no more boxes—except Kmart. He stared Jake down for what felt like forever, but Jake didn’t look away, even though Kmart was twice his size and ten kinds of unpredictable.

  “Waste of my time,” Kmart finally muttered. He stumbled back to his truck, brushing past Jake’s shoulder hard enough to knock him off balance.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be driving,” somebody said, but Kmart just gave the whole parking lot the one-finger salute before slamming the door and swerving away.

  “Where’s your mom?” I asked, feeling ready for that ride and too grateful to actually say thanks.

  Jake looked toward Dollar Depot. “She’s at work,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t usually lie, I just…I think we’re walking.”

  “Nonsense,” Coach B said. “I’ll take you as far as my place if you’ll help me get these boxes into the house.”

  So that’s how we ended up at Coach B’s house the first time. That old Jeep had a motor so loud it was almost impossible to hear anything else, but I knew I had to say what I had to say before I lost the guts to say it.

  “Thanks,” I told Jake. “My brother’s the worst.”

  “Your brother reminds me of my dad,” he said. We had to practically shout to hear each other as we rattled down the road, but something about that felt right. Like the words hurt less when you didn’t have to whisper them.

  “Your dad’s addicted too?” I asked.

  “Was,” Jake corrected, and I wondered for half a second if he’d gotten clean, until I looked at Jake’s face and realized what he meant by “was.”

  “Just alcohol,” he said, then corrected himself. “Well, not just.”

  After that, there wasn’t anything else we needed to say about either of them. Not even when Kmart got caught selling and had to go to jail, or when he moved away without a word the day he got out.

  We loved them and we hated them and we were never, ever going to be like them.

  Jake is awake more of the time now, but he wishes he weren’t. All he wants is sleep.

  His stomach cramps and clenches. He runs for the toilet in the corner, but not fast enough, and vomit splatters the floor, splashes his bare feet and the cuffs of his pants. The stains around the toilet tell him this has happened before, but he barely has time to register that fact before he’s throwing up again, leaning so far into the bowl that it spatters back in his face.

  Afterward, he rinses the taste out with water from the faucet and wipes his mouth with the back of his arm. The wave has passed, but something—a premonition, maybe, or a hazy memory—tells him it won’t be long until the next one comes. His body gives one great shudder, and suddenly his skin crawls with goosebumps and his limbs begin to shake.

  It hurts. Everything hurts.

  The only light comes from one small window and one bare bulb, but the window is high and has bars over it, and the bulb buzzes in a way that makes him want to pull his ears off.

  And what is there to see down here, anyway? A small, dirty cot and an old blanket. A folding chair. The toilet and sink and shell of a shower in the corner, all rimmed brown, and the remnants of studs and Sheetrock that tell him it must have been an actual bathroom once, before this place fell apart.

  Jake worked construction last summer. He’s pretty sure, anyway. It’s hard to think about anything but the thing he misses most.

  “Hey!” he shouts into the locked door, his heart racing. “Where’s my poison?”

  But he’s alone.

  For now.

  Tell me how you know Jake Foster.

  We’re friends.

  Only friends?

  We were together for two years—beginning of sophomore basketball to the beginning of the season this year—but we’re not together anymore.

  Did you talk to him Saturday night?

  We ran into each other in the training room before the game. I went to get ice for my ankle, and he was in there, looking for a trainer to help with his knee. I didn’t even know it was bothering him again, but there he was.

  Did he seem nervous?

  He’s been nervous all season, and the whole town’s hopes were riding on that one game. Of course he was nervous.

  Have you heard from Jake since then?

  No. Wait—why? Where is he? Is he okay?

  That’s what we’re trying to find out, Ms. Sharp.

  Seth checked on him Saturday night after the party. I think Jake was with Kolt. Have you talked to Kolt yet?

  We have.

  What about Jake’s mom? What about Luke? Are you saying nobody has seen him since Saturday night?

  We’re still working on that part too. Did Jake ever talk about hurting himself?

  No. Never. Jake wouldn’t do that.

  Did he ever talk about running away?

  No. Why would he run away right after they won state? Jake wouldn’t run, and he wouldn’t hurt himself….But where would he be? You don’t think something happened to him, do you?

  At this point, we’re investigating all those possibilities.

  I’m sorry for asking so many questions. I know that’s your job. This is just…

  Hey, that’s okay. Keep asking questions—around school, with your friends—and let me know if you hear anything, okay? Oh, and say hi to your dad for me.

  The first time I ever saw Jake, he was sitting in my dad’s courtroom in a collared shirt and khakis, trying to blend in. I just looked over, and there he was, this guy from my English class, sneaking in right before the hearing on some drug case where the defendant didn’t even show.

  “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

  “That’s my dad,” I said, nodding toward the bench. (Dad came to enough of my games and recitals that I liked to return the favor once in a while, so sometimes I’d go watch court and just be there for him while he did his thing.) “What are you doing here?”

  Jake sighed. “Racketeering, money laundering, making moonshine in my bathtub.”

  His face was so bright and clean that nobody would have bought it, even if we’d been in juvenile court. I tried to swallow my laugh, but enough escaped that Dad gave me the Look from the bench.

  By then I’d realized that no guy would ever be good enough for Dad, but I didn’t blame him. (Not yet, anyway.) It would be hard to see the best in people if you spent your days passing judgment on a parade of broken laws and lives.

  From the moment the bailiff called “All rise” in Dad’s courtroom, there was no question how you were supposed to behave or who was in charge. In the few weeks we’d been in town, he’d already had to take the whole “Your Honor” business up a level, thanks to a slow but steady flow of defendants (and one idiotic attorney) who thought his being new somehow gave him less authority and tried to push the limits.

  Dad definitely didn’t need his own daughter disrupting things. So once I got the Look, I didn’t even dare ask what Jake was really doing there. I snapped to attention, and by the time I had the guts to glance back over a few minutes later, he was gone.

  But after that, I noticed Jake everywhere. Messing around in the parking lot with friends. At the grocery store with his little brother. In the weight room every Thursday.

  I definitely noticed him there. Not because he looked hot (although, yeah, he looked hot), but because he was so different from his friends. He never lifted in front of the mirror, like Seth; he didn’t make fart sounds when people did squats, like Kolt. He actually wiped his sweat off the equipment before moving along. Sometimes he sang PBS Kids songs while he benched plates.

  (Note: I was very careful not to let him notice all my noticing.)

  Once sophomore football was over, Jake started coming to open gym too. The girls took one gym and the boys took the other, playing pickup games until the coaches left and Mr. Caruso, the creepy custo
dian, kicked us out. There was no official roll, and the coaches weren’t even allowed to talk to us until tryouts, but we knew they were taking note and taking names. Something inside me did the same thing with Jake, wanting to look out onto the court and find him there before losing myself in a game of my own.

  During those weeks, we didn’t play just because of who was watching. We played because we wanted to. We wanted that spot on the roster, sure, but we wanted little things just as much: the sting on our palms of a chest pass fired fast, the rush when a three goes through the hoop with that satisfying snap of ball on net. Those little hits of adrenaline, better than any drug. Or that’s what Jenna told me, anyway.

  “I’ve sampled it all,” she said on the first day of tryouts. We were leaned over, nearly puking after running twelve suicides. “And none of it makes you feel this good.” She was grinning so hard I had to believe her.

  Even though tryouts had me feeling high too, my shot had been off all day. So after everybody else had packed up, I rolled the rack back out and started shooting threes, one after another. When I’d shot them all, I reloaded the rack and moved to a new spot. No way would I go home until I made it all the way around the arc, until it felt natural and they started falling.

  “It’s going to take forever if you do it like that.”

  I spun around to find the source of the voice, and there he was, leaning against the doorway. Hair a mess, a deep V of sweat down his T-shirt, holding a beat-up ball against his hip. Everything inside me prickled alive.

  “Plus, it’s not the same motion as in a game,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for mansplaining that. I hadn’t realized they don’t push these metal racks around during the game.”

  “Well, back in the old days, they did,” he said, dribbling as he walked toward me. “When the baskets were peach buckets and the jerseys were still made of wool.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I’m so lucky to have you here to teach me all this.” I grabbed a ball from the rack and drained a three. Thank goodness.

  Jake caught it with his free hand before it even had a chance to hit the ground. I expected him to make some showboat shot of his own, but he fired it back at me, and there was the sting in my palms again.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll feed you. But you gotta stay on the move.”

  I sent the rack and the rest of the balls rolling for the bleachers, then dribbled toward the baseline, pulled up, and took the shot—totally aware that his eyes were on me.

  Air ball, straight over the rim.

  He didn’t laugh, though. Just grabbed the ball and gave it back with a quick bounce pass. Not to where I was, though—to the next spot on the arc.

  Keep moving, I reminded myself.

  Another miss, but closer this time.

  “Use your legs,” he said.

  “I thought we talked about the mansplaining,” I shot back.

  “Holy crap, Sharp,” he said, putting a little more heat on his next pass. “It’s not because you’re a girl. It’s because you know how your shot feels, but I know how it looks. We’re switching, by the way, once you get to the baseline. And you can give me all the feedback you want.”

  So I did. We did. We alternated between three-pointers and ten-footers (jump shots for me, fadeaways for Jake) until Mr. Caruso came and turned off the lights.

  “Looking good out there, Foster,” he said.

  Jake gave him an up-nod but kept his eyes on me. “You’re going to make the team, you know. They’d be crazy to cut you.” He stood there, dribbling between his legs and behind his back so naturally that I wasn’t even sure he realized he was doing it.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I asked. I hadn’t said the words out loud, even to my dad, but it felt safer to say now that the bright lights were gone and I could only see Jake’s silhouette in the glow of the one small bulb by the door.

  He picked up his dribble and stepped toward me, close enough I could have touched the soft hem of his T-shirt. “Spill it, Sharp,” he said.

  “I don’t want to make the sophomore team,” I confessed. “I want to make varsity.”

  He stepped even closer, and suddenly we were face to face, his arms around me, holding the ball as it curved into the small of my back. He leaned in to whisper into my right ear.

  “Secret number one: me too. That’s half the reason I stayed after.”

  And then into my left.

  “Secret number two: you will.”

  Then he walked away, putting the ball in the rack and wheeling it back to the equipment room for me. “Get some rest, Sharp,” he called over his shoulder. “Tomorrow’s going to hurt.”

  He was right. The next day at tryouts, every muscle in me screamed, “Didn’t we do this yesterday?” But my shots fell, again and again, and I saw the head coach point at me as the assistant scribbled something on her clipboard. And by the end of the week, when the rosters were posted, our secrets had turned into promises kept.

  I made varsity.

  And so did he.

  I was the only sophomore on the girls’ varsity roster, but Jake wasn’t the only boy. Seth and Kolt got called up too. Everybody knew exactly what Coach Cooper was doing: giving the sophomores varsity experience, going all in on a chance at a championship his son’s senior year. And Jake was as smart a bet as you could make on the basketball court.

  The lists were posted together, boys and girls, on the bulletin board outside the gym. I wandered back for one more look before I headed home, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.

  Jake was there, bag slung over his shoulder, staring at it too.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Hey, you too,” he said. “It was probably all that extra shooting practice, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I agreed. “You would’ve been cut otherwise.”

  He laughed, and I felt something slide into place inside me, like two magnets finally close enough to click together. He’d made me laugh the very first time he’d spoken to me, back in the courtroom, and now I’d finally returned the favor. It was an easy, low laugh, and already I wanted to hear it again.

  I shifted my gym bag to the other shoulder, and as my free hand fell back, Jake locked a finger around my pinkie.

  “We should probably keep staying after, then,” he said, swinging my hand back and forth the littlest bit. “So I don’t lose my edge.”

  “Probably,” I agreed, spidering my fingers along his until they were all interlocked.

  He looked down at our hands, then up at me with a shy, sideways grin. “Okay,” he said. “Get some rest, Sharp.”

  “Because tomorrow’s going to hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, squeezing my hand as he leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “Because you earned it.”

  Seth is waiting outside the school counselor’s office when I come out of my interview with the police. He folds me into his arms as I bury my head in his chest.

  “He’s gone,” I say. What else is there?

  I guess that’s the question the cops are trying to answer too.

  We stand there, totally silent, until I can feel the damp circle my tears have made on his shirt.

  The door opens, and somebody comes out.

  “Seth Cooper?” Officer Vega asks. Like he didn’t just walk in with us. Like he doesn’t know exactly who Seth is.

  Seth squeezes me even tighter, then lets Vega lead him into the room. I’m alone in the reception area, my mind looping between replaying the interview and my last conversation with Jake in the training room before the game.

  The things we said and didn’t say. The ache in his words. The moment I still can’t tell Seth about.

  If the police had asked me what happened in the training room, I would have told them. But even as I think that, I’m not sure it’s
true.

  And now the interview’s over and Jake’s gone and I’m here, totally helpless.

  No. Not totally helpless. I will not be the crying girl who waits around for things to happen. Even though everything fell to pieces between Jake and me months ago, even though he turned into someone I hardly recognized by the time we broke up, I have to do something. Because there’s no doubt in my mind he would be the first one to start searching if anything ever happened to me.

  I pull my phone from my pocket and dial him for only the second time in months, knowing he won’t pick up but hoping for it anyway.

  “This is Jake. Leave a message.”

  “Call me,” I say. “Please.” It’s all I’ve got, and when I hang up, I know I don’t want to do this alone. I need Jenna.

  I don’t know if she reached out to me that day at sophomore tryouts because she felt like an outsider too, but we’ve been tight ever since. She’s my person now—and pretty much the perfect partner in crime (fighting) to call up in this moment anyway. She’s a lot smarter than her GPA suggests and is especially good at getting information out of people. I shoot her a text.

  Jake is missing.

  I wonder whether I should add something more, but then the dots on my screen tell me she’s already writing back. When the words come through, they confirm that she was the right person to pull in.

  Holy freak. Like MISSING missing?

  And seconds later:

  What’s our move?

  I’m still searching for the answer when Seth comes out, looking so focused that I have to ask the same question to get his attention.

  “What’s our move?”

  Confusion wrinkles his brow. “Our move?”

  “Jake is missing. What’s our move?”

  “We made our move. Go in there, answer questions, let the police do their job. They said they’d let us know if they need to organize a search party, but it seems like they’re thinking he ran.”

  This surprises me. “They barely mentioned that in my interview. They think he ran…based on what?”