The Underdogs (19 page)

When he arrived, I could see he was distracted and Evie didn't have a clue how not to take it personally. He greeted her with a quick hello and briskly walked ahead of her, carrying two full ball hoppers like they were pieces of fluff. His eyes were red-rimmed and he was yawning. I would estimate Will appeared exhausted 75 percent of the time. Evie followed, head down, taking his lead. No chitchat, no
how are you
s, no
good to see you
s. Just tennis. When they hit Court 9, Evie went to her side of the net and Will commanded, “Crosscourt forehands,” then yawned again.

He started feeding her and she nailed a beautiful, hard shot at a perfect angle.

“Where's your topspin? Try again,” he yelled.

Evie approached the next ball with fierce concentration, this time sending it flying into the court's back netting. “Check your grip,” Will urged. “Come on. Concentrate.”

She
tried
to concentrate, but I could see she was panicking. She repositioned her grip, held it tight, but when she came into contact with the next ball she went for the topspin so hard that she barely followed through, which made the ball whip up and land just before the net on her side. Plus, the kids' racket was way too light to give the ball any oomph.

Will beckoned her with three quick flicks of his index finger. Evie ran up and met him at the net. He took her right hand and adjusted it to the correct position on the racket handle.

“Line up your V here,” he reminded her.

The V between your thumb and index finger is very important in tennis, no matter what grip you're using. A tennis racket grip is an octagon whose edges provide a guide for how to hold it for various shots, and depending on what edge your V is on, you can hit flat, topspin, or underspin. Will was so tired he hadn't noticed her racket. Yet.

“Yes, you have to get under the ball,” he said to her, “but you also have to follow through or it'll slam into the net every time. Let's go again.”

Evie turned to walk away.
That
was when Will figured it out: Evie had shown up with another bad racket. Whether he understood why she had to disobey him, I couldn't tell. His eyes flitted to her undersized racket, then back to Evie, then down at his ball hopper. He frowned, took a deep breath, and let it out as if to calm himself. Evie was braced. I was braced. He said only, “Keep that grip firm. Remember to flick your wrist as you get under the ball.”

Evie got it and walked back to her position on the other side, taking a deep breath of her own. Will was pretty much irritated for the rest of the session, though when Evie started hitting some killer topspin backhands he was quick to praise her. She was coming along nicely, in my opinion. I couldn't tell what Will was thinking, but I thought he liked my friend and her prospects, today's hiccup aside.

Then again, I'd been wrong about stuff before.

 

After

In the hours after Patrick confessed his sins to Ashlock, Evie and I suffered from low-energy syndrome. In an effort to cheer ourselves up, we took in some sun outside the club's entrance, warming our buns on the hot concrete steps. We had to head back in when we started to overheat, which didn't take long on another sweltering August day. When we walked back into the club, my mom was giving me a weird look from her perch at the front desk.
Oh, crap.
It was clear then that she totally knew.

“Come here, Chelsea.”

Evie tightened her ponytail and waved goodbye to me with a half smile as she headed to her haven to read. I dutifully walked over to Mom. She had
that look
on her face, and I felt a stab of dread. I didn't want things to change. Not now.

“Sit down,” she said, sliding off her stool.

Yep.
She'd seen me limping. I saw in her eyes she was fighting the inner battle she always did when my injuries acted up. It was a clash of profound sadness and powerful anger I worried might get her into trouble one day. She sat on the scratchy, well-trafficked gray carpet with me and took my right leg gently in her hands.

“Let's see…” she said, as she worked my knee. I cried out and she shook her head. “And the ankle?”

She rotated it gently and man, it hurt.
Ouch
. Maybe I'd overdone it this summer. Maybe running around on the court with Evie and the Pee Wees had been too much.

“I'll get you an ice pack from the café.” She met my eyes, and then she said in a happier voice, “Well, then. Time to go see Dr. Mac again.” I love Dr. Mac. He is known as “the best” in our little part of Massachusetts. We certainly couldn't say he hadn't warned us. Last checkup he'd said,
Chelsea, you're going to have a long and happy life. But you have limitations. Don't overdo it, okay?
My mom had pounded it into me:
No overdoing it
.

The people I lived with before weren't my actual mom and dad. I don't remember my real parents, but I was okay with that because Beth was my mom now. Those people used to tie my legs together with a frayed old rope that smelled of gasoline. Then they'd hang me upside down from a sturdy branch on an ancient oak in their backyard. Sometimes, they said, they were just “fed up” with me and I had to “
learn
.” Of course they used to hit me, too, and they liked to kick, but that didn't leave any long-term scars (on my physical being, anyway) and they got bored of that after a while. The rope left permanent marks behind, stretched tendons in my knees and ankles, wrecked cartilage, and jiggled some things out of joint inside me. Struggling only made it worse, because I'd be bobbing around, off balance, and it hurt everything from my back to my head to my hips. The ropes were so thin. I never thought I'd wish for thicker rope, but the way this rope wrapped around me stretched me all the more and made my legs numb, like, immediately. Whenever they got the rope out I knew what was coming, and I had nowhere to run. We had a tiny house set among a big stretch of open fields, so I didn't even have woods to hide in or anything.

Gene came out of his office and said, “Everything okay out here?” He gazed at me with concern.

“She'll be okay,” Beth said. “She just needs some ice and an aspirin. It just makes me so angry, what they did to her. And they're still out there. That makes it even harder…”

“I know,” Gene said softly. “To this day I can't believe the cops never caught them.” To me he said, “I'd like to get my hands on them myself, if I'm honest, Chelsea. But I'm afraid of what I might do.”

I knew Gene and all the rest of the crew here would go to battle for me if the time ever came. But I didn't need that, really. I was okay with the way things were. The important thing was that the police found me, and that Mom took me in and made us a family.

Gene shuffled back into his office, shaking his head. I was pretty sure it would make them all even more worked up if they knew the entire story. The grownups in my life think I don't remember a lot of it. My mom doesn't know exactly what those people did. She knows I'm afraid of rope, and horrified by the smell and sight of bourbon, but she doesn't know why, and I think it would send her off the deep end if she knew. I just can't tell her, and I hope she never learns about how, sometimes, those people would drink bourbon and laugh at my cries. No one seemed to hear me, no matter how loud I cried out. No one came for me, anyway. Then I'd pass out, and as I was coming to, they'd be yelling about how it's not as fun when I'm not struggling and crying, and they'd take me down.

There was always bourbon. Always. Luckily I rarely come across that smell nowadays because my mom doesn't drink it, so it isn't a factor in my life anymore.

 

Before

It was the dog days of summer, a dead zone in late July when the buzzing of the cicadas signaled another scorcher was coming. It was so hot at seven in the morning that Evie had to wipe her palms on her shirt every few minutes so she could keep hold of her racket. She was practicing her serve out on Court 9, far away from prying eyes.

She stood sideways at the baseline, her feet firmly planted right behind the white painted line. She stared at a spot on the other side of the net like it was her mortal enemy. She bounced her ball slowly, over and over, and then, abruptly, she tossed it up in the air, whipped her arm around, and nailed a serve into the corner of the service box, her ponytail flying.

She did a little hop and turned to me. “What do you think, Chelsea? Does it look like one of Celia's serves, or what?”

I thought it was darn good. That serve had a serious bite to it. I would definitely not count the ten or so serves before that one that had not made it anywhere near the box.

“That hit the spot,” she pronounced. “I'm getting pretty good, right?”

Oh, yes.
She sure was. She'd kept to Will's nonnegotiable training prescription with the determination of a pit bull. She had to be at the club four days a week by seven thirty a.m. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings she dragged a ball hopper outside and practiced her serve. On Mondays and Wednesdays she'd have private lessons with Will, with another evening or morning session during the week if he could fit her in.

For the rest of the week, Will told her to hit the stationary bike or take a walk. On Friday mornings, nice and early so no one would know what she was up to, she'd ride the Exercycle like a mad girl for forty-five minutes. It was heaven because she could read at the same time. I knew Will was going easy on her, though. If things went well, Evie would be running the lines and doing tortures soon enough. But Will seemed to realize she wasn't only a beginner at tennis—at the age of twelve, she was a beginner at life.

I knew Evie was worried about autumn. She'd have to come clean with Lucky and Will because there were no free courts in the wintertime. She'd have to pay or she couldn't play. Plus, Lucky, like so many other summer tennis camp coaches, would go back to teaching the game only part-time at the club. Lucky made ends meet with his second job as a part-time salesman of those cool stairlifts for senior citizens. But that was a worry for another time. For now, Evie was blossoming, and I was having a blast observing her. And through it all, not a soul at the club knew what she was up to, and that's the way Evie wanted it.

 

After

“Look at this adorable pink coat,” my mom said to Evie. “I mean, how wicked cute would this be on Chelsea?”

My mom was flipping through L.L.Bean's Christmas catalog. (“Seriously? In August?” Lisa had sneered when she walked by earlier.) Mom folded the catalog over and held the glossy page out for Evie, who was sitting up on a stool next to her.

Evie stretched her T-shirt down over her knees and leaned sideways to take a look at the jacket. “Pretty,” she said.

“It would look
so cute
on you,” my mom gushed, shoving the page in my face.

Oh, please.
Totally not my style.

“For winter!” She would not stop. “It's so pretty and look—it's totally
in
this season. You can't even get it in stores.”

I thought it looked uncomfortable. Who thinks about coats in the summer? My mom was always planning ahead for those bleak New England winter days, when the snowdrifts rose so high we couldn't get out our front door in the morning without help, and the windchill hovered around ten below. I preferred to live in the now, when it was boiling.

Evie said, “Let me see that again?”

Beth was thrilled to have validation and handed the catalog to her, crinkling the pages in her excitement. Evie squinted at the page like she was confused or something.

“Pink. Pink. Pink …
hmm
…”

Evie handed it back to my mom, saying to herself again, “Pink…”

I'll be honest, she was worrying me a little bit.

“Pink,” Evie said. Again. “Pink! That's
it
.”

Evie hopped off the stool and smiled at my mom. “Thanks, Beth.”

She raised her eyebrows at me and I was
in
. We took off and I looked back to see my mom watching us go, shaking her head like we were both wacko. “Slow down, Chelsea,” she reminded me in her best Mom voice, and I did, but not enough to lose Evie. I knew my friend, and I could see she had something up her sleeve.

*   *   *

Evie sat on her usual crate in the back room and I clambered up next to her. She twisted her torso and reached behind her, whipping out a notebook from behind a tub of wholesale generic ketchup. “This,” she said to me as she opened the notebook with a flourish, “is how we're going to help Detective Ashlock solve this mystery.”

I raised my eyebrows.
Really?
How were we going to do that?

“Annabel's necklace,” Evie said, taking her favorite purple pen from the notebook's spine. “That's the key. I'm sure of it. We've heard nothing about the dog with the pink sapphire eyes since she died, and yet that charm was her most cherished posession. It
has
to be the missing item. I'm sure of it, Chelsea.” I guess writing helped Evie think, because she was scribbling away, à la Ted Ashlock. “When your mom was talking about the pink coat, it made me think about the necklace. Annabel was always wearing it. Remember?”

I did remember. Annabel was always fiddling with that dog charm, the one she'd never take off.

“I bet you if we can find that necklace,” Evie said, “it will have fingerprints or maybe even DNA on it that leads to the killer. I bet you anything. But where
is
it? And who sent those evil notes?”

I looked over Evie's shoulder and saw she was doodling now. She'd drawn a face in the
P
for Patrick's name, and put hearts over the
i
in “Lisa.” “That note to Annabel was so awful,” Evie said. “Patrick added to it, but Lisa has to be the prime suspect for the person who actually wrote it in the first place—before Patrick slipped it into Annabel's locker.”