Chapter 6
Regionals are a total disaster, right from the opening tip. Having split our two regular season contests against Tusculum, each team winning in front of their home crowd, our first-round game would not only determine who would play in Friday’s Regional final, but would also crown a definitive victor in our cross-county rivalry for the season. Unfortunately, our Regional was long ago scheduled for Tusculum’s gym, and they manage to pack an entire side with rowdy fans, the visitors’ bleachers consisting of the usual meager Titusville turnout.
Not that the lack of a home court advantage is what ultimately does us in. We sucked so hard our junior high team could’ve beaten us tonight in Titusville’s gym in front of a full house. Marcy and I spend most of the game tossing up bricks from the three-point line, the ball bouncing off the rim with a clunking sound I’ll hear in my nightmares for weeks. And even though I’m fouled almost every time I drive to the basket, the refs don’t call anything. In the second quarter, after one of the Tusculum forwards pretty obviously hacks my wrist when I blow by her, causing the ball to go out of bounds instead of up to the hoop, I lose my mind and turn to the referee as Coach calls a time out to stop the carnage.
“Come on,” I yell, careful not to get in the ref’s face. “She’s killing me down here.”
The ref shakes her head to indicate she didn’t see a foul, and I turn away muttering “Okay. Whatever. You’ve got to be kidding me.” Unfortunately, I don’t mutter quietly enough, and the ref makes the sign for a technical foul before walking over to the scorer’s table to give my number. I jog to the bench, head lowered, never having had a meltdown like that during a game before.
“Grab a seat until you cool off, McKee,” Coach tells me as I slink to the sideline and put a towel over my head, listening to her scold the starting five for our sloppy play before reminding us that we’ve still got two and a half quarters left. The team breaks the huddle and Tori Sandowsky, our sophomore guard, takes over for me at point for the rest of the quarter. I assure Coach at halftime that I can keep it together, so she puts me back in for the second half. But it’s too late—despite a surge in the fourth quarter, our season ends with a 32-27 loss.
After the buzzer, we all drag ourselves to midcourt to slap hands and tell the victors “Good game.” Back on the bench, the standing ovation we get from our fans doesn’t do much to ease my pain, especially considering their applause is mostly drowned out by the celebration taking place on the other side of the gym. I search the crowd for my family and finally find them near the top of the bleachers, their smiles and waves quickly forgotten at the sight of Kieran standing next to Mom, waving at me and grinning like a maniac. I hold out my hands and cock my head in a sort of silent “What are you doing here?” pose, because tonight’s a school night and Kayla doesn’t seem to be around anywhere. He keeps grinning and shrugs his shoulders as if his being at the game is no big deal, and I have to put the mystery on hold temporarily as I jog off to the locker room to deal with the Most Depressing Post-Game Meeting Ever.
Coach makes the expected speech about how tonight we weren’t the better team, but we made a good effort and she’s so proud and blah, blah, blah. “Hold your heads up,” she says, pointing her clipboard at us in the stuffy locker room, sweat beads standing out on her forehead. “You accomplished more than any other basketball team in Titusville history—boys’ or girls’. Because of that, you’ll all live forever in the halls of Titusville Senior High School.”
Hearing how our first-round loss will live forever doesn’t make me feel any better—in fact, it kind of makes me want to throw up. Coach’s attempt at a big budget movie-level inspiring speech doesn’t seem to be helping anyone else, either. Candace, Marissa, and Kelsey Markey are sobbing their eyes out as Marcy and I hug on a bench in front of the lockers, Marcy crying on my shoulder. None of them has gotten scholarship offers anywhere yet, so unless they decide to try out wherever they end up for college, they’ve played what could potentially be their last competitive basketball game, which reminds me that next year, I’ll be one of the sobbing seniors. My teeth grind against each other, and I make myself a promise: Next year, we’re taking everything—we’re winning State. And if I’m crying, it’ll be because I’m so happy I can’t stand it.
My vow for my basketball future steels me until I get to the bus, where I almost break down when I find my mom waiting among the other parents for a quick goodbye before we all caravan back south to Titusville. “Honey, I’m sorry,” she breathes, gathering me into her arms. A sob works its way up from my stomach, and I take a deep breath to calm myself. Having never cried in public before, I don’t intend to start now.
“It’s okay,” I mumble, not in the mood to relive the game at the moment, and luckily, I’ve got the perfect topic change. “Did Kieran come with you?”
“No. He just sat with us. He rode up on the spirit bus.”
My head jerks in surprise. “The spirit bus? You’re kidding.”
“I’ll let him explain when we get to town—I’m driving him back,” she says, my grandparents once again having taken a separate car since they drove over from Sumner, where Gramps drives Gram to a poetry class three days a week and then hangs around for coffee with some of his professor friends.
“Okay.” I nod, looking over my shoulder at my teammates entering the bus. “I’d better go.”
Mom smoothes some loose hair behind my ear and presses her forehead to mine, ignoring the gumminess of dried sweat on my face. “I’m proud of you, you know? I don’t care how many basketball games you lose. You’re still my kid and you rock the free world.”
“Thanks, Mom, but any sentence with the word ‘lose’ isn’t helping me right now.”
“How about ‘No matter how many games you don’t win’?”
“Nice try.” I smile, reaching out to ruffle her hair.
“I do what I can,” Mom says. “See you at home.”
I hitch my gym bag up on my shoulder and get on the bus, ignoring my teammates as I head for the back, all of us so trapped in our individual grief that we’re taking advantage of the fact the bus is big enough that we don’t have to share seats. Once I’m settled in the last row, I put my headphones on and search the music player on my phone for the copy of the Nirvana disc I burned from Mom, the grungy rhythms and angry lyrics the perfect musical accompaniment to my bad mood. The bus groans and shudders, pulling away from the battlefield where we went down to defeat, and in a few minutes, we’re on the highway, chugging back to Titusville.
With Nirvana’s Nevermind blasting in my ears, I pull my legs to my chest, lower my forehead to the crevice between my knees, and let loose, hoping no one can hear me bawling even though I’m sure most of my teammates are probably doing the same thing. When the bus slows down as it pulls into Titusville, I take several deep breaths and start drying my eyes with the back of my hand, the effort involved in trying to stop crying almost enough to make me cry harder. We lurch over the traffic bumps in the school parking lot as my deep breathing finally manages to slow the flood of tears, and I’m confident I can get off the bus and not look like a total moron. I wait a minute or two after we’ve parked behind the locker room so I’m the last one off, the crying over but my eyelids swollen, the world in front of me little more than a black nighttime blur.
“Hey.” Kieran’s voice catches me as I step down and start walking forward, my attention focused on finding Mom’s car so I can go home, crawl into bed, and hopefully wake up tomorrow morning to find this whole evening was a bad dream.
“Hey. Sorry—didn’t see you.” I sniffle, and I hope he thinks it’s because of the cold weather.
“It’s okay.”
Lifting my hand to my face, I wipe some tears away, praying he doesn’t notice. “So, um, where’s my mom?” I ask, voice shaking.
“She drove me back and went home with your grandparents. She thought you might want to be with a friend.” Kieran’s brow wrinkles. “Are you crying?”
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Another sniffle. I don’t know if I’m more embarrassed over the tears or because my mom’s engineered this situation in which Kieran and I can be alone. I’m grateful that I have such an amazing mom who wants to look out for me on The Worst Night of My Young Life, but I’m also a little frustrated that she’s essentially forcing me to share this occasion with The Guy I Sort of Kind of Think I Might Like, which could potentially make this The Most Embarrassing Night of My Young Life.
“No—it’s just…” The tears start again, mostly out of frustration at not being able to come up with a good lie. Kieran responds by stepping forward into the space between us and wrapping his arms around me. My body is so limp and exhausted I can’t return the hug, and so I just stand with my arms at my sides, indulging in a long, heavy sob on his shoulder, the vinyl of his coat cold and rough against my cheek. As much as I’d like to over-analyze this moment in which Kieran’s holding me for the first time, I’m too numb, too wracked with sobs to think, and my coat’s so thick I can barely feel him holding me anyway, both of us in our puffy black winter wear probably looking from a distance like a gigantic burnt marshmallow with two human heads.
“Cry as much as you need to,” Kieran says, and I hear his hand rubbing up and down the back of my coat. “Don’t be embarrassed, okay? I understand.”
I pull away because my nose is starting to run and I don’t want to get snot on him. Dropping my heavy gym bag to the ground, I fish around in my coat pocket for a tissue. “We didn’t get past the first round,” I moan, wiping my nostrils. “I played as hard as I could, but I just couldn’t bring us back.”
Kieran breaks into that now-familiar grin. “Basketball’s a team sport, right? So don’t put this all on yourself. I don’t know much, but that other team looked pretty good.”
“They were. Tonight they were, anyway,” I grumble, kicking my tennis shoe against the pavement.
“Well, this was the first time the team had been to Regionals, right? So you guys have already done more than anybody else. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, allowing myself a little smile at how much better those sentiments sound coming from him than from Coach Denton. “You’re a pro at cheering people up, you know?”
“Well, when you’ve spent most of your life being told to suck it up and get over whatever embarrassing thing you’ve done this time, you figure out what works and what doesn’t.”
“Speaking of embarrassing,” I start, reaching up to wipe away the last of the tears at the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want you to think I do this all the time—crying, I mean. I can’t remember ever crying in front of anyone besides my mom. And maybe my grandparents when I was little.”
Placing a hand over his heart, he says, “I’m honored. I think. Should I be honored?”
“Go ahead and be honored,” I tell him, kicking at the pavement again. “And I’ll go ahead and be embarrassed.”
Kieran steps forward and puts his arms back around me. “What do you say we be honored and embarrassed in your car? I’m freezing.” He pulls away and nods over his shoulder, and I follow his gesture to the Camaro sitting alone in the parking spaces at the edge of the lot. “We should start home because the longer I’m out here the longer I’m probably grounded, so…”
“Yeah,” I say, shaking off the sadness long enough to remember my confusion over seeing Kieran standing next to Mom in the Tusculum bleachers. “So what’s the deal with you sitting with my family at the game? I didn’t think you could go out on school nights. And I hear you took the spirit bus up to Tusculum?”
Kieran takes the keys from his coat pocket and tosses them to me as we start for the car. “I wanted to come and Kayla didn’t, so there was no way I’d get permission if she wouldn’t go along with it,” he says. “So I told Kayla I mouthed off during algebra and had detention, and she waited for me in the library.”
“But you never came to get her because you got on the spirit bus,” I finish for him.
“Exactly.”
“So how did that go?” I ask, trying to imagine Kieran sitting on a bus with about thirty people who were probably freaked out by his presence.
“You know, I was kind of worried at first. But while we were loading up, I found Brad Wallace and asked if I could sit with him.”
“Brad’s cool.”
“Yeah. I mean, I know he’s supposed to be nice to everybody since he’s Student Body President and all, but he never seems like he’s just faking, so I took a chance. And he was totally cool and said he’d look out for me. I slept most of the way, but he woke me up when we got there and when I saw your mom and your grandparents, they insisted I sit with them.”
“Of course,” I say, as I unlock his door and he gets in. “And was riding back with my mom okay?”
I probably seem calm, but I’m dying inside. Knowing Mom, she’d be blunt enough to pump Kieran for information about any feelings he may or may not have for me, in which case I may have to punish her by running away from home.
“Oh, yeah. She told me lots of embarrassing stories from when you were little.” Kieran laughs as I get in on my side and start the engine.
“Great,” I mumble, pulling out of the parking space. “Did she tell you these stories before or after she figured out your parents didn’t give you permission to be at the game?”
“It dawned on her around halftime that I might be lacking parental consent to travel to the other side of the county. She made me call my mom and explain, and I promised I’d be home as soon as possible after the game ended.”
I put the Camaro in gear and steer us out of the parking lot, the school’s nightlights all that illuminate Main Street on this end of town. “So how much trouble are you in?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m dead, basically.”
“I’ll drive slow, then.”
We ride together in silence for about two minutes in an almost exactly replay of our trip home after the Sumner game, but when my grandparents’ house comes into view up ahead of us, Kieran surprises me by saying “You know what? I don’t want to go home yet.”
“You sure?”
“Well, I’m in trouble no matter what, right? So who cares? Can we go hang out somewhere?”
“Like, with other people?”
“Alone, preferably.”
Allowing myself a quick glance at him, I notice he’s all hunched up in his coat, as if trying to hide his face. “I mean, like, alone alone, if possible” he continues. “I…I’ve got something I need to tell you.”
Okay—I’m totally panicking. Today’s Valentine’s Day. I think of the cherry heart lollipops I bought from the Student Council before first period and slipped into his locker at lunch, the lollipops he enthusiastically thanked me for during another Crumpled Paper Note Passing session in history class. Those suckers probably rank as the World’s Worst Valentine’s Day Gifts in comparison to the rose drawing he gave me the other night, which I hung above the desk in my room.
And now he’s got something he needs to tell me. On Valentine’s Day.
Should I take him to the lot at the abandoned Buckley Refrigeration plant out by the interstate, where half the school’s probably headed to make out right now? Or I could drive us to the boat launch that’s down a gravel path off the road we live on, about four more miles outside town. The boat launch isn’t a place people usually go to hook up, mostly because no one knows about it unless they like to fish. And while I definitely don’t like fishing, Gramps does, and so I’ve been there with him several times over the years to keep him company.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I know somewhere we can go.”
On the outside, I’m calm enough to keep control of the car. Inside, however, I’m about to come out of my skin. I’ve never hooked up with anyone before—assuming that’s what’s going to happen—and I’ve had only one French kiss, which was a total train wreck. Back in eighth grade, Cassie had a party in her basement when her parents went to the Bahamas and he
r grandmother came to babysit. Grandma Newbaum fell dead asleep upstairs, allowing Cassie to sneak people in. After he asked, I started slow dancing with Billy McCaffery, the grandson of my former next-door neighbors, mostly because he was the only other person without a partner. Billy and I had been rocking back and forth along with five other couples for about a minute when I asked him some question and he used the opportunity to shove his tongue in my open mouth. I was so shocked I couldn’t do anything for a few seconds other than concentrate on the icky sensation of an eel-like mass poking my cheeks in search of my tongue, which at the moment was trying to work its way down my throat, evidently willing to risk choking me to death in order to save me. Finally, I came to my senses and pushed him away, but not far enough that I couldn’t knee him in the crotch. He yelled so loud Cassie’s grandma woke up, and we all had barely escaped the basement through the sliding glass door by the time she came downstairs to listen to Cassie’s lie that she was singing along with a song on the CD player.
So, yeah—I’m way, way inexperienced. Kieran and I have never talked about hooking up—with each other or with anyone else—so for all I know, he messed around with every girl in Asheville, North Carolina, before he moved here, assuming he was able to stay awake long enough to do so. Heart thudding with anticipation, I slow the car to make the turn. From the corner of my eye, I see he’s sound asleep, but not for long, as our rumbling down the gravel wakes him up.
“Where are we?” he asks. “I remember we passed my house…”
“There’s a boat launch down here,” I tell him as we bounce down the hill on a tree-lined road barely wide enough for my car. Not too far from the river’s edge, the path opens up into a larger gravel-covered area that could hold maybe five or six cars. Just in case someone else decides to come down here tonight, I pull over to the far right side near the trees and ease the car forward until we’re a few feet from the water. Before I turn off the engine, I make sure to put on the emergency brake so this evening doesn’t end with the two of us rolling into the river.
Kieran takes a minute to look around. “So when I said ‘alone,’ you took me seriously.”
“You were joking?”
“No, but I had no idea places were this secluded out here. I mean, in North Carolina, you can go out in the woods or up in the mountains and get lost for days.” He pauses again and I join him in taking in the scene outside the windshield, the river’s surface lit an eerie white by a half-moon, the trees and the opposite bank splotchy shadows against the black-blue sky. “I guess I didn’t expect this here. And I’m really hoping tonight’s not the night I find out you’re a serial killer.”
I open my eyes wide like a crazy person, take on a blank expression, and dart my face toward his to scare him. He lets out a yelp, and we both have a good laugh.
“So I hope I didn’t freak you out before when I said I wanted to tell you something,” he says, sobering up.
“Not at all,” I lie.
He takes off his seat belt and swivels around toward me. I do the same so we’re facing each other, both of us leaning our heads against our seats.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he continues. “Anyone I know I can trust with things, I mean. Sometimes it’s hard when all you have is your family to talk with about stuff. You feel so bottled up you think you’re going to explode.”
I wish I could relate, and maybe I kind of do. Other than what my mom’s been able to sort of figure out, I haven’t told anyone how I think I might feel about Kieran, even though everyone at school assumes we’re practically engaged. I don’t want whatever I have with him—even if I’m the only one of us who thinks we have it—to be dragged down to the level of cafeteria gossip and study hall whispers. But sometimes, I wish I had someone to talk to, because I’m so unused to dealing with boys as anything other than buddies and pick-up game opponents and I’m totally lost.
“I don’t even know where to start exactly,” Kieran says. “No one knows about this outside my family, and it’s so out there I’m afraid you might not believe me.”
My nerves get the better of me, so I try some humor. “You’re an alien, right?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. “I knew it.”
Kieran grins, willing to play along. “Nope. Guess again.”
“Okay. You’re a vampire. You’re really a hundred years old.”
He shakes his head against the seat and says, “Not even close.”
“So you’re not an alien and you’re not a vampire. What’s your deal, then, Kieran Lanier?”
“My deal,” he begins, his eyelids drooping a little, “is…well…I have these vivid dreams sometimes. Like I’m almost awake.”
Kieran snuggles into the seat, and I worry he’ll fall asleep before he tells me whatever he’s going to tell me and I’ll have to wake him up to get the reveal. The boy’s basically a human cliffhanger.
“Have you ever had a dream with people you don’t recognize or you’re someplace you’ve never been, and later you meet those people or go to that place in real life and you kind of know everything’s familiar?”
“You mean like a premonition or something?”
“Sort of.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I mean, I’ve heard about that happening to people, but I don’t think it happens to me.”
“Well, it kind of happens to me.” Kieran sits up again and I sit up also, the two of us mirror images of each other in the moonlight.
“What are you saying, exactly?” I ask.
He looks away. “I’m saying I dream things—vivid dreams about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.” He swallows hard, letting his eyes travel to mine again. “And then that stuff happens.”