Chapter 38 The School Called

Chapter 38 The School Called

Cole

I waited until after practice to find Tyler.

Most of the guys had already cleared out by the time I walked to the back of the locker room where Tyler was still sitting on the bench with his phone in his hand. He looked up when he heard me coming and he didn't look surprised, which told me he had been expecting this conversation.

I sat down across from him and kept my voice low. "The food on her tray. That was Jade."

"Obviously," Tyler said.

"You knew it was going to happen."

He set his phone down on the bench beside him. "Cole, I don't manage Jade's lunch plans."

"You sat at her table all morning," I said. "You knew and you didn't say anything."

"And what was I supposed to say?"

"Anything," I said. "Leave it. Don't do it, she's not worth the problem. Anything."

Tyler leaned back against the locker behind him and looked at me. "I'm going to be honest with you. The reason I didn't say anything is because I didn't think you'd actually do what you did. I thought you'd walk in, see it happening, and make the smart call."

"The smart call," I said.

"Sitting anywhere else in that room," he said. "Not making it into something the whole school watches and photographs and talks about for the next two weeks."

"She had someone else's food dumped on her book."

"And that's rough," Tyler said. "I'm not saying it isn't. But you sitting next to her didn't undo it, all it did was make you the story."

"Good," I said.

He stared at me. "Good."

"If the story is me sitting next to someone instead of her getting a tray dumped on her, that's a better story," I said. "So yeah. Good."

Tyler was quiet for a moment. He looked at his phone and then looked back up at me. "The scouts, Cole. Two months. That's all I'm asking you to think about."

"I am thinking about it," I said. "I think about it every day. It doesn't change what I saw in that cafeteria."

"Jade's father knows people on the school board," Tyler said, and his voice went lower and more deliberate. "He knows people in the athletics program.”

“If she decides to make noise about your home situation and why some girl is living in your house, it stops being a personal thing and starts being a school thing. You understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand that you're threatening me with someone else's threat," I said. "I also understand that you sat in that cafeteria and watched it happen and you're still here trying to tell me I was the one who made a mistake." I picked up my bag. "Her name is Wren. I've said it twice now."

"I know her name."

"Then use it," I said. "Because every time you say the babysitter it sounds like you're trying to remind yourself she doesn't matter and that's getting old."

Tyler stood up. "You're going to lose a ten-year friendship over this girl."

"I'm not losing anything," I said. "You're leaving because I won't agree with you. Those are different things."

He looked at me for a long moment and I looked back and I could feel the weight of ten years in that silence, every game and every bus ride and every stupid conversation in this exact locker room, and I could also feel it separating from me like something that had already been decided.

"When it falls apart," Tyler said, picking up his own bag, "and it will, don't call me."

He walked out.

I sat in the empty locker room for a while. Coach Reyes came through on his way to the exit and stopped when he saw me still on the bench.

"Hensley," he said. "You good?"

"Yes sir," I said.

He looked at me the way coaches do when they don't fully believe the answer but they're going to let it go. "You played clean today. Keep that up through the week." He moved toward the door. "Don't sit in here all night. Go home and eat something."

"Yes sir," I said.

He left. I sat there until the last overhead light flickered and went steady and then I got up and drove home with the radio off. The whole drive I kept trying to find the part of the conversation where I had been wrong and I kept coming up empty and I didn't know if that was supposed to feel better.

I pulled into the driveway and sat in the car for a minute before going in.

The house was warm. I could hear Mia before I opened the door, telling someone a story and dragging it out past all the interesting parts the way she always did. I pushed the door open and dropped my bag near the stairs.

Wren was on the couch with Jake on one side and Mia on the other, listening to Mia the way she always did, like whatever Mia was saying was the most important thing in the room. Jake was drawing in his notebook and not listening at all.

I stood in the doorway.

Wren noticed me. She looked over and then looked back at Mia and I got the feeling she had been doing that all evening, looking somewhere else when I might be looking at her.

I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

Mia ran in two minutes later. "Cole, Wren helped me finish my whole history project. The title page looks really good."

"Nice," I said.

"She also showed me how to make the heading bigger without making everything else bigger."

"Good to know," I said.

"Do you want to see it?"

"After dinner," I said.

Mia ran back out. I stood at the counter and listened to Wren's voice from the living room, quiet and even, asking Jake what he was drawing.

"A spaceship," Jake said.

"It looks fast," Wren said.

"It's the fastest one ever built," Jake told her.

"What does it run on?"

"Fire and electricity," Jake said, like that was obvious.

"Smart design," Wren said.

"It can go to Mars in three minutes," Jake added.

"Even smarter," Wren said.

I stayed in the kitchen.

About an hour later I heard the front door and then my mom's voice, which was wrong because she worked until eleven on Tuesdays. I came out of the kitchen and she was in the entryway still in her jacket, keys in her hand, looking tired in a different way than usual.

"You're home early," I said.

"I switched shifts with Donna." She looked at Mia and Jake on the couch. "Go get ready for bed, both of you." She waited until they moved down the hall and then she looked at me and her voice was careful and even. "The school called today, Cole."

Wren had gone very still on the couch with a book open in her lap.

"They said there was an incident in the cafeteria," my mom said. "Something about you and Tyler and someone else." She paused. "What happened?"