Sometimes having a perceptive, logical friend could be a pain in the butt. “Just . . . keep hiding,” I said, pressing the books against my chest and scooching farther behind the tree because the library door was opening, revealing a glimpse of a chartreuse sleeve.
Ms. Parkins.
I watched her step into the fading sunlight and thought my former librarian seemed washed out, too. Sure, her sweater was trademark bright, as were her pink stilettos and her floral tote bag, but her shoulders drooped and there was no spring in her step as she walked to her car.
“You came to see her, didn’t you?” Laura asked quietly. “Because you’re worried about her.”
I didn’t answer. I just kept spying on Ms. Parkins, who sat in her little Mazda like she wasn’t in any hurry to leave. Maybe because she has nobody to go home to . . .
“Millie,” Laura said gently. “If you’re so concerned about Ms. Parkins and your dad, why don’t you give them your blessing? Tell them to go ahead and be happy together?”
I kept observing, avoiding those—also very logical—questions.
How could I tell Laura that I wanted to do those things, but that every time I tried to open my mouth, to my dad at least, my usually uncontrollably flapping tongue froze up?
And how could I explain that my desperate desire to consult with Ms. Parkins about the upcoming dance was turning my tongue to marble?
How could Laura ever understand that while I wanted Ms. Parkins’s advice about picking a dress, because she had a crazy, but wonderful, sense of fashion, and wanted to ask her what to say to Chase if things got stilted, because she always knew how to keep a conversation going, I just couldn’t.
Those are things I would’ve asked Mom about. I shouldn’t crave somebody else’s guidance that much.
Ms. Parkins finally started her car, and I withdrew my head, telling Laura, “I guess she’s okay.”
Fibber! Big, white-lying fibber!
Laura also clearly knew that I wasn’t being truthful, but she didn’t press the issue. “Can we go in now?”
“Yeah . . .” I came out from behind the tree—then stopped. I still didn’t want to go inside the library. And maybe I wasn’t ready to return the books, either—and not just because Ms. Parkins’s replacement at the desk might be stricter about overdue fines. “You know what?” I said. “I think I’ll come back later. I’ve gotta get home, anyhow. Ry’s picking me up in a few minutes, giving me a ride back to school.”
Laura’s eyebrows shot up. “You? You’re going back to school? After hours?”
I almost told her that I not only was returning to Honeywell High, but meeting Chase. I knew that would make up for dragging her to the library parking lot, and she’d probably squeal for vicarious joy. But—just like I hadn’t told her about the dance yet—I hedged. “I’m doing something for the paper. Covering a late meeting.”
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t mention Chase—whom I hadn’t exactly mentioned to Ryan, either. But later that evening, when Chase and I were alone in a dark and secluded space, after pretty much everybody else had gone home for the day, I’d sort of wished I’d told somebody what I was up to.
Chapter 57
“Jeez, this is like a shrine to sweat!” I cried as Chase escorted me into the guys’ locker room, which was, as he’d promised, empty of athletes by seven forty-five. I kept gawking around, my jaw hanging open. “A freakin’ Taj Mahal—discounting the damp towels.”
“The girls’ locker rooms aren’t this nice?” Chase flipped on lights to reveal a corner that housed a metal tub that looked like something livestock would eat from. Yet I instinctively knew that vat was a good thing—and denied to us girls. “You don’t have hydrotherapy tubs?” he asked, following my gaze.
“In spite of Laura circulating a petition, sophomore year, we don’t even have a tampon dispenser,” I muttered.
All at once, although still dazzled by the guys’—or, let’s be honest, football players’—facilities, I realized that word was finally out there.
I kind of wished it wasn’t.
“How come you guys get such great stuff?” I asked, turning to face Chase. “Whatever happened to Title Nine? Equality for the genders, in terms of sports?”
“Don’t be naive, Millie.” He led us deeper into the room, toward a dark alcove. There’s more? “Honeywell might be a small town, but its football program is big business. Don’t you see the corporate ads in the stadium? Who do you think pays for turf upgrades and things like that? Girls’ field hockey doesn’t draw crowds—or, by extension, money.”
“It doesn’t seem fair not to share, though.”
Chase disagreed. “Tell that to the guys doing twice-a-day practices, like the one that almost killed Roy, and the players getting pummeled every Friday night.” He flipped on one more light, revealing a locker room within a locker room exclusively for the football team. It had special niches to store shoulder pads and assigned lockers. The guys’ names were on them. “We earn this stuff.”
I crossed my arms. “Have you ever seen girls’ field hockey? It’s pretty rough.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Chase conceded. “And I didn’t say the system was fair. It’s just a function of what people want to see and support. Americans are obsessed with football, and Honeywell is the bottom rung on a ladder that sometimes leads to the NFL. Companies like Nike and UnderArmour recognize that.”
“It still seems wrong.” I followed Chase farther into the high school equivalent of Batman’s underground lair. “And you . . . Do you want to play in the NFL?”
“I’m expected to be a doctor,” Chase said over his shoulder. “And I want that.” He shrugged. “I am getting scouted by Big Ten schools, though, and I’d like to go that far. Just to see if I could cut it at that level.”
Chase had just described Mike Price’s dream—Mike’s probably former best shot at televised glory and a free college degree—in a way that came off like, “Eh. Whatever.”
No wonder Mike seemed to despise Chase, too. Maybe as much, if not more, than he’d hated Coach Killdare.
All at once, I felt uneasy for Chase, because if Mike really did kill Mr. Killdare, maybe his teammate was next . . .
It wasn’t until I bumped into Chase that I realized we’d reached a door while I’d been worrying. One that had a plaque that I assumed used to read Head Coach Hank Killdare. But that name was taped over, and the sign now said, in handwritten letters, Acting Head Coach Jack Ostermeyer.
It wasn’t my dad’s writing and had probably been put up by Big Pete Lamar, but I still almost tore it down because as Chase led us into the office, I realized that I’d actually underestimated Dad’s potential motives for killing Mr. Killdare. Looking around the clean, well-appointed space, which was nicer than my father’s mayoral digs at the town hall, I fully grasped, much to my dismay, that being head coach of the Honeywell Stingers wasn’t just a nice perk in a small town like ours. It really was kind of like being a . . . king.
No wonder Detective Lohser—and other people—might think Dad wanted complete control of this operation—
“Millie?” Chase’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I saw that he was tapping the keyboard of the sleek computer on Mr. Killdare’s . . . er, my father’s? . . . desk. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Help me hack.”
Chapter 58
“I’ve tried every variation on ‘Stingers,’ ‘football,’ and even ‘Baxter’ that I can come up with,” Chase muttered, rolling back in the sweet leather chair that my dad now got to enjoy. “He wasn’t a very complicated guy. What could his password be?”
“I thought we were here to investigate Mike,” I reminded him. “Not hack a school computer.”
“I’ve heard that Coach kept detailed notes on all his players,” Chase said, eyes still trained on the screen as he tried another password—only to be rejected. “And we will look at Mike’s locker. But we should do this first, in case the cleaning staff comes in. We can probably e
xplain being in the locker area alone together, but not in this office.”
I knew what Chase meant. If they discovered us, the cleaning staff would—like Detective Lohser—just assume we’d been making out.
Would I ever get to actually do that? Because it seemed like I was starting to get a “reputation”—without any of the benefits.
“Millie?” Chase prompted. “Password ideas?”
“Maybe my dad changed it. Maybe it’s ‘mylovelydaughtermillie’ now.”
“I doubt it,” Chase said, so for a second I thought he understood me and Dad’s relationship, because I didn’t really think my dad would call me “lovely,” either. Obstreperous, maybe? Then Chase explained, “The system still signs on automatically as ‘HKilldare.’ And I hardly ever see your dad in here. It would probably look weird, like he couldn’t wait until the body was cold . . .” Chase seemed to realize we were talking about my father, and he glanced at me. “Sorry.”
“I’m actually glad to know my dad hasn’t been a complete office vulture,” I reassured him. “It’s one of the few things that don’t make him look guilty.”
“Anyhow . . .” Chase returned his attention to the screen. “What could the password be?”
I took a moment to think about all the things I’d learned about Coach Killdare since I’d started to investigate him, and stuff I knew from before that, too. And after dismissing “BeeBee” as a possibility—I still couldn’t picture him as “cutesy”—I came up with what I thought was a pretty good guess.
“Step aside,” I told Chase, pushing his chair, so he didn’t so much step as roll.
Then I started typing, and a few seconds later, we both had access to Mr. Killdare’s private, supersecret football—and personal—files.
Chapter 59
“How did you come up with SirHank16?” Chase asked, rolling back over to the computer and standing up, ceding the chair to me. He rested against the edge of the desk, crossing his arms over a powder-blue T-shirt that made his eyes look even more intensely azure, if that was possible. That shirt did a pretty nice job of spotlighting his chest, too.
And I seriously thought he’d planned to kiss me once!
“What does that even mean?” Chase added. “‘Sir’ Hank?”
“It was actually easy,” I informed him, taking a seat. “I just thought about Mr. Killdare’s interests—and his greatest triumphs—”
“Like . . . seven state championships?” Chase ventured. “But how does that—?”
“Not the stupid football trophies!” I cut him off. “Stuff that really matters. Like—duh—eating the sixty-ounce porterhouse at Sir Loin’s Steakhouse. Which gets you automatically knighted. They put a picture of you on the wall, holding a sword and shield!”
Chase appeared confused. “Millie, what are you talking about . . . ?”
“Mr. Killdare is on Ye Olde Wall of Fame,” I tried to explain. “He’s only the sixteenth person ever to complete the challenge. It’s huge!”
Chase still seemed uncertain. “The steak . . . or the honor?”
“Both!” I said, imagining, as I sometimes did, the day when I’d hold that shield, which featured a mighty griffin, rampant, hoisting aloft a giant slab of meat impaled on a spear. Maybe—because many tried, but few succeeded—I’d be right next to Mr. Killdare on Ye Olde Wall. “Someday, I aspire to be Sir Millie,” I added wistfully. “Sir Millie, the seventeeth Earl of Porterhouse.”
“Uh . . . ‘Sir Millie’?”
I woke up from my fantasy to find Chase giving me a weird look. Weird enough that I kind of wished I hadn’t added that last part.
He is DEFINITELY not attracted to you right now, Sir!
With a sinking heart, I remembered some plans we’d made and hazarded, hesitantly, “Umm . . . Are we still going to that dance?”
Chase didn’t exactly answer. He just leaned past me and opened Mr. Killdare’s email.
I took that for a yes.
And a few minutes later, I forgot all about the formal, anyway, when we found a bunch of emails between Mike Price, Mike’s parents, and Mr. Killdare, some of which were filed in a big folder that was surprisingly—or maybe not surprisingly—labeled “Threats.”
Unfortunately, there were a lot of messages from other people in there, too.
Including a few irate missives from—heavy sigh—my father.
Chapter 60
“Don’t get too excited, Millie,” Chase warned me as I skimmed a long exchange between Mike Price’s dad and Mr. Killdare. “I’m sure Detective Lohser has seen all this stuff, too, and he’s still hounding your father—who also wrote some pretty harsh messages.”
I knew Chase was right. My dad and Coach Killdare had apparently bickered electronically, too. But I couldn’t help getting a little enthused about the notes that had passed between Mr. Price and Coach Killdare, which I was scanning quickly, because we had to be running out of time. The custodians probably spent half their evenings cleaning this veritable replica of Versailles that Chase had revealed to me, right inside my high school.
“Look at this,” I said, reaching back to smack Chase in case he wasn’t keeping pace. Then I read a message from Mr. Price dated from the previous September, shortly after Chase had first been brought in as quarterback.
“‘You stupid son of a bitch . . .’” I glanced up at Chase. “Pardon my French.”
The corners of his mouth turned up with amusement. “Millie . . . That’s still not French.”
I shot him a dark look, then resumed reading. “‘Youre killing my sons career he’s NFL material and I think he’s right to hate your guts. I wont tell him to calm down because he’s also right that somebody outta teach you a lesson. I wouldn’t blame Mike if he beat the crap out of you.’”
I spun to face Chase again. “Wow, somebody ought to teach Mr. Price a lesson—in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. No wonder Mike’s the way he is. That apple didn’t fall far from the tree, huh?”
“It’s also not too smart to admit that you’ve given your son the go-ahead to beat up a coach—and to write that down, for the record,” Chase agreed.
I closed out the email and stood up, thinking we’d seen enough on the computer. “Come on. Let’s check Mike’s locker. Maybe there’s, like, a bloody cleat!”
But Chase grabbed my shoulders, gently stopping me. “Millie, I repeat: Don’t get too excited.” He bent slightly, forcing me to meet his eyes before he released me. “That message is pretty old. And in the meantime, I’d say Mike has calmed down. He’s still not happy about playing running back, but most days, he just comes to practice or the game and sucks it up.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean Mr. Killdare didn’t push Mike’s buttons one day and piss him off again,” I pointed out. “Hollerin’ Hank wasn’t exactly a master of diplomacy. I can imagine him taunting Mike, telling him after some mistake on the field, ‘Hey, bonehead!’” I rapped Chase’s skull with my knuckles, illustrating a classic Hank Killdare move, while adding, in my best low, manly voice, “‘That’s why you’re not quarterback anymore, moron!’” I resumed my normal voice. “And the next thing you know, Mike and Mr. Killdare are duking it out, and things go really wrong.”
Chase rubbed his head where I’d hit him, maybe a little too hard. “That was a pretty good impression—and, I have to admit, a plausible scenario.”
“So let’s open the locker,” I suggested with a glance at the small room where the football players stored their gear. “Although, I gotta say, you’d have to be really stupid to stash anything that private in here.”
“I don’t know,” Chase said, leading the way. “These lockers are pretty sacrosanct.”
Most girls—okay, including myself—were probably attracted to Chase’s appearance. For example, the way his butt looked in the Levi’s he was wearing that evening, a sight that was nothing short of perfection. But it was how Chase could toss off a word like “sacrosanct,” out of the blue, that really made my tongue hang out as I followe
d behind him.
A guy with a vocabulary . . . Talk about hot.
And taken, Millie!
“So, if these lockers are so sacrosanct”—seriously, what a great word—“how will we ‘hack’ into Mike’s?”
“I’d say we use the same reasoning you just used to figure out Mr. Killdare’s password.”
“Meaning?”
“We’ll take what we know about Mike, such as his—no offense—basic level of intelligence. Then we’ll consider the things that are important to him—his ‘greatest triumphs,’ to use your phrase—only this time, we’ll interpret them numerically.”
I knew that Chase had a girlfriend, and that he had zero interest in me, but at that moment, I couldn’t help thinking that he was almost irresistible. Who said stuff like that?
And who could deny that we connected on some mental level, at least, when we both looked at each other and said, simultaneously, “Four to the left, four to the right, four to the left.”
Chapter 61
“How did you know Price’s old jersey number?” Chase asked, spinning the knob on Mike’s locker. “You don’t strike me as a sports fan.”
“It’s on those fake Eagles jerseys he wears every other day,” I explained, then admitted, “Actually, I assumed he was still number four.”
“No.” Chase pulled down on the lock, which did open. Neither one of us even registered surprise. “Running backs have higher numbers. Quarterbacks get the pick of one through nine.”
“Lucky you.” By which I mean, “Who cares?”
The locker was just waiting to be explored, but Chase hesitated. “Um . . . Do you know my number? Because I know you’ve covered games for the paper . . .”
Was he still worried that I was stalking him, or fishing for flattery? If it was the latter, I was about to disappoint him. “No clue. For all I know, you wear a pink unicorn on your jersey. Or a big question mark, like the Riddler.”