The Underdogs (22 page)

“
See?
Did you see that? Of course you can get under the ball with this grip. And you can hit it much harder when you do.”

One of the most fun things about Will was his passion. And also the way he yelled to Evie with just the slightest flavor of a Boston accent when he was teaching her, like when he got really excited:
Come owan, Evie. Try it again. Yoa almost thee-ah
.

At the end of the lesson about aiming for the lines, Evie was frowning as she walked to the center post, and she kept frowning as she slipped her Volcano X into its case.

“Your forehand is coming along nicely,” Will said, zipping his own stuff in his bag.

I thought again how lucky Evie was to have him. The guy now had a full eight hours of coaching elites ahead of him.

“I guess,” Evie said. “I can't seem to get that grip.”

“What are you talking about? You're doing great. It's going to take time. It'll come.”

He smiled briefly at her and together they started the walk across four courts to get back inside the club. “Let's focus on what's going well. Like your serve. Not many people your age can hit it as hard as you. Someday you could have one of the most powerful serves in your age group in New England.”

“Okay,” she said, mostly to herself. “I know I can do it. I
know
I can.”

I knew then that she, too, had been reminded of what an amazing thing it was to have Will coaching her. “Thatta girl.” He smiled, waving goodbye in the café area as he bounded up to the lobby to start his day.

Even Evie's bad days on the court were better than our previous life. Our story changed when Will Temple came on the scene, our days no longer made up of slinking through the lobby so Evie wasn't noticed, or killing time in the back room she'd turned into a dungeon. Now the day was broken into segments of how Evie could do better at her training. Could she find time to do the stationary bike? Could she and I get Harmony to let us hang out at the pool to catch some rays, if we promised to stay on the lawn? And when could she slip onto the court to practice her serve? She'd found the perfect hiding place for her Volcano X, stashed against the back wall behind boxes of pineapple juice that had cobwebs on them. It was the best time ever.

 

After

I wanted to jump up and down with excitement at our luck. A major revelation was walking right toward us—you could feel it. Evie, my mom, and I were having lunch and catching some rays out on the lush lawn by the pool, reflecting on how weird it was that Lisa wasn't here today because she was, as far as we knew, still in jail, when Gene circled through the revolving door and approached us.

“We need to talk,” he said to my mom, nervously clasping his hands in front of him. She tilted her head toward me and Evie, and Gene said, “They can stay. No more secrets.”

A glob of tuna plopped out of Mom's sandwich and fell onto the grass, and as she picked it out, Gene sat down on a corner of her quilted blanket.

“Lisa is innocent,” he pronounced. Evie almost choked on her tuna.

“How could you possibly know that?” Mom grew alarmed and laid her sandwich back in its Saran wrap.

“Because I'm her alibi,” Gene said. “And it's time I cleared this up.”

My mom put both her hands up, as if to stop an assault. “Whoa.
What?
”

Gene took a deep breath. “I was with Lisa the night Annabel died. She came to my house around midnight, desperate to talk. What was I supposed to do? She was crying. I couldn't turn her away. She was upset about school, her future, her life. She was so insecure and was always comparing herself to Annabel. It was so late, I couldn't send her home. She crashed on my living room sofa bed. She has no one else to go to for guidance. You know what her parents are like.”

Yes, we all knew. It wasn't like they beat her or anything, but apparently they liked to drink a
lot
even when she was a little kid. Gene had no kids of his own, and he'd always let the teenagers around here know they could trust him if they ever needed help—and they did.

“So how do you know she didn't sneak out?”

“Because,” Gene revealed, “we were up talking until three a.m., after Annabel was killed. There was no way. Look, Beth—the girl's lost. She has brains and ambition, but no direction. I wasn't going to turn my back on her.”

“Okay,” Mom said crisply. “I guess we were wrong about Lisa. But why didn't she say all this when she was arrested? She could've avoided this whole mess entirely.”

“Because,” Gene replied, “she's more decent than any of you give her credit for. She was worried how it would make me look.” He looked down. “I should have spoken up right away.”

My mom, who had calmed down some, said, “I have to admit I'm relieved. I heard her screaming at Annabel the night she died and thought … Well, it was a pretty awful fight.”

Evie and I had kept quiet as Gene confessed everything. “So now you know,” he said. “Someone else got there after Lisa left.” And off he went to get Lisa off the hook. I just hoped he didn't end up in jail himself for his lies of omission.

 

Before

The court surface was still cold early in the morning, but the sunshine was warming me up as I sat on the sidelines and watched Evie train. She was doing side-to-sides. Will would feed her a forehand, then a quick backhand, then a forehand, and so on. The ball rolled off her racket as she moved in a smooth rhythm:
Smack, run, shuffle, smack, run, shuffle.

Evie was getting
good
, and she was moving like a real tennis player, lighter on her feet, more confident. It took me a minute to identify the most important difference of all today, though. She was wearing shorts! Her oversize pink shirt looked cute now that it was paired with her new white stretchy Champion shorts. Her legs were suddenly tanned, and they were smooth and shapely. She looked great.

Will called time on the side-to-sides, and Evie nodded and walked to meet him at the net, wiping her brow with her shirtsleeve, tucking her racket under her arm. She had blond highlights from the sun, clear eyes, and a straighter posture. She was standing taller than ever.

He started to rewrap his sweat-absorbing grip tape, and as he did, he told her, “Your backhand is looking great. You're going to be a real threat, you know.”

Evie—I could see her mind working—wanted to shrug it off but fought the instinct to turn his compliment into a negative.

“Thanks,” she said. “It feels pretty good.”

Will finished wrapping and secured the velvety tape. He checked his watch.

“We've got five more minutes,” he said. “Let's finish up with some sprints.”

Evie nodded and laid her racket down next to his. I knew this moment was coming, but I didn't know if Evie could handle it. She'd seen the campers do it many times. She and Will ran the lines for five full minutes, each moving at their own pace, with Evie holding her own as she managed to keep going no matter how bad she wanted to quit, even once when I caught her gagging from the exertion. She sucked it up and kept running. So Evie wasn't the skinniest person ever, and she wasn't the fastest kid on the block, but all of a sudden she was fit and healthy and awake, and to me that made things pretty darn perfect.

 

After

Lisa came back to work the day after Gene confessed everything to Detective Ashlock. One would think being accused of murder would be horrifying. For Lisa, though, it seemed to be a fun way to get more attention. She sashayed into the club at nine in the morning in her workout gear and what looked like professionally blown-out hair. She grinned at us like nothing had ever happened. She stood at the front desk and was approached by one person after another, all of whom fawned over her and proclaimed some form of the phrase
I knew you were innocent the whole time …

Evie and I watched this homecoming from behind the desk with my mom, who I knew felt absolutely terrible about what Lisa had gone through. But I also suspected she'd secretly hoped Lisa might learn something, too, maybe a modicum of humility or subtlety. No such luck. At one point we heard Lisa say, “Detective Ashlock had to practically
grovel
when he let me out. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him
anytime
if I thought of anyone who could have planted the necklace in my locker.”

My mom listened to this and said to Lisa, “It's a shame you were caught up in this, Lisa. But let's not celebrate quite yet. If it wasn't you, then the killer is still walking around free.” That quieted everyone down real quick.

*   *   *

Later that day, I was alone in the lobby when Evie plopped down next to me on the sofa. She whispered a secret meant only for me:
Ashlock's back.

I sprang up off the sofa.
What now?
We walked at a normal speed toward the club's entrance; I had to force myself not to run. As we rounded the corner and caught sight of the great granite reception desk that was the heart of our club, I stopped short. Ashlock was here, all right. He was talking to my mom. They were standing facing each other, whispering, at the far end of the desk. Evie frowned at me, like,
When did they become pals?
I had no clue. I tried but couldn't hear a single word they were saying. We saw Ashlock hand my mom a mysterious manila envelope. I had to know more. I inched closer to the desk, one step at a time, to try to hear something. Evie followed, but we couldn't get any closer without being noticed.

I felt the same foreboding chill I'd been feeling for a while now, right down to my toes. My mom put her palm to her forehead as if to self-soothe and kept it there for several moments. Then she reached out to touch Ashlock's shoulder. He nodded as if to say,
You're welcome for this mysterious manila envelope.

She removed her hand and he backed away, so we could at least hear his parting words. “When you're ready,” Ashlock said to my mom, “read it. Then destroy it, because I'm breaking a lot of rules doing this.”

“Then why are you?” Mom asked. The envelope shook in her hand.

Ashlock didn't reply. He tipped his hat to my mom and walked away, so Evie and I didn't get the chance to ask him about the case, about our ongoing safety fears, or about the necklace's reappearing act. On top of that, we now had a new conundrum: What had he given to my mom, and why did she look like she'd seen a ghost? I decided to stick close to her for the day. I had to know what was up.

A couple of hours later, Gene emerged from his office and my mom said to me, “Keep an eye on the desk, Chels.”

Me? Watch the desk? Did she think I was an idiot? She grabbed Gene for a quiet chat, and I could clearly see her clutching the manila envelope Ashlock had given her.

“Let's talk in my office,” he said. I faked like I was gonna stay put, but I waited until Mom and Gene were in his office with the door shut and went to listen.

“I can't do this,” my mom was saying. “Please, keep it for me.”

I heard low talking from Gene, then sniffling from her and some papers shuffling.

“What? What is it?” my mom asked.

I heard Gene say, “It seems to be a lot of what we already know, Beth. She'd managed to get away and made it to a neighbor's house nearly a mile away, where she collapsed on their porch. The first responders were shocked she was even alive, let alone walked a mile on a fractured ankle and that wrecked knee.”

There was another long pause, and now I knew he had to be reading from pages that my mom couldn't bear to read. This was why Ashlock had looked at me oddly a few times. He
did
know about my case. That manila envelope, I knew now, contained the police report they'd never shown my mom, because the fact she'd adopted me “didn't give her the right to confidential police files.” That's what she'd been told every time she'd tried to learn my full story. The thing about my case, famous as it was, was there was only so much information the police made public. The rest was confidential.

“Chelsea was in shock when they found her,” Gene was saying, his voice cracking. “She was malnourished and dehydrated. Clumps of her”—another clearing of the throat—“of her hair were observed to have fallen out or been pulled out in patches.”

Then it sounded like he was reading straight from the report: “‘Upon inspection of the property, authorities found several nooses hanging from trees, bloodied tools including pliers, bloody bandages, and … a cage…'”

“Pliers? A noose? A cage?” My mom repeated his every word. “Oh, God. No. No more. I don't want to know any more. As long as she doesn't remember, it'll be okay.”

Gene said something quietly that sounded like, “I'll cough on the font,” which maybe, on second thought, was actually, “I'll stop if you want.”

I guess it should have been a horrible moment for me, but hearing my mom and Gene talking about it made me feel safer, maybe because letting the light shine on the horror of my past life took away some of its power. Seeing or smelling things that reminded me of that time was a different story, but just hearing about it seemed to make the evil more impotent than ever.

“Beth,” Gene said. “There's more. It's pretty huge. But I think if you face it head-on, it will help you and Chelsea move on for good.”

My mom must have bravely read the part he was referring to because things went deadly quiet, and then she gasped loudly and proclaimed, “That
—that—
oh, there are no words for what that man is. You're wrong, Gene. This isn't over, not by a long shot.”

Gene was talking again but I could barely hear him, and anyway I'd had enough. I already knew what had happened to me. Whatever this shocking new revelation was, it would be dealt with in due time. I got to my feet and walked slowly away to find Evie.