The Underdogs (5 page)

Teenage boys aren't always so perceptive, though, and I don't think Patrick noticed his best friend, Goran, had a budding relationship. Patrick stood up, stretched, and stared shamelessly after Annabel sashaying into the women's locker room, no doubt to change into her bikini for an afternoon in the sun. “Yes, boys,” Patrick pronounced. “It's gonna be a great summer.”

 

After

The first thing Evie and I noticed as we skulked in the detective's wake the day after Annabel died: he either was a tennis fan or would be by the time he was done with this case. He'd stopped in the crowded lobby, and as Evie and I jockeyed for position, we could see he was staring at the elites. They were out on Court 1 early today, practicing their short balls. They moved in a rhythm as if choreographed, one after the other, never missing a shot. Sure, Ashlock could've been eyeing a potential suspect out there, but I could see he was fascinated.

Goran ran up and slammed the ball crosscourt, smoothly turning and jogging back to the line afterward; Serene, long black ponytail flying behind her as she came up right behind Goran, was already nailing her forehand down the line with one silky stroke before Goran was back in line; and the rest of the kids followed.

“Go! Go! Go!”
The elites' head coach, Will Temple, was feeding them balls as fast as he could. After they each went one more time, he shouted, “Okay! Volleys!”

And so the elites had to move faster, running closer to the net, crouching, and lunging to pull off crisp volleys from Will's feeds. The three of us, with twenty feet separating Evie and me from the detective, stood behind the glass and watched them play like they were zoo animals. They were exotic, youthful, and full of promise. Special and elusive and rare. All of them—only five to ten at a time trained during a given week in the summer—held high rankings in their age groups in the New England junior tennis world. Today, their play, while perfect as usual, felt robotic and joyless. If you'd watched them enough over time, you could just tell they were rattled by Annabel's death.

Pretty soon Ashlock snapped out of it and weaved his way through the packed lobby. We scurried behind him, dying to know who he was looking for at the back end of the club. It wasn't a manager at the front desk and it wasn't a tennis player, because he'd just passed them all by.

 

Before

I headed for the café to find Evie. She should be grabbing lunch right about now, while the campers were munching on their first helpings. Evie's M.O. was to hit the buffet when the fewest number of people were around to see her eat. And yep—I found her there alone, building a yummy-looking sandwich. She often helped out in the mornings by setting up the lunch spread, chopping tomatoes and onions into stackable rings, organizing bottles of mustard and piles of bread, and spreading it all out over three oblong folding tables. The lunch lady knew Lucky never packed Evie wholesome meals, so she let her slip into the line in exchange for a little light labor.

Evie practically lived at the club because there was no one at home to watch her. Her mom packed up her yellow Hyundai almost two years ago and took off. She avoided telling Evie she was going until it was too late to protest. This terrible event happened after an awkward meeting only one year before, when Evie's mom first told Lucky he had a daughter. Up until then, Evie had been told her dad lived in Europe and simply “couldn't be found.” Basically, Evie had explained to me later, her mom had lied to her for nine years. “Eh.” Lucky had shrugged when Evie's mom dropped then-ten-year-old Evie off at the club for her new life. “How hard can it be? She's a mini-adult by now. Practically old enough to take care of herself. We'll have a blast.”

Evie explained to me that her mom was just tired. She needed a break. She'd be back. I never met her, but from what Lucky said it didn't really sound like her mom had wanted kids at all. I think she went to Oregon or someplace that was far away from St. Claire.

I hung back while Evie began to load her plate. Right then, tennis camp villain and little twerp Tad Chadwick decided he needed seconds. He and his crew—Marcus Reilly and Fat Stan, who wasn't overweight but whose nickname lived on because he'd been chunky in third grade—fell in behind Evie, which was bad news. I moved closer to eavesdrop.

“What do you
do
?” Tad was saying. “You're here every day but I never see you
do
anything.”
(Cue loud, cackling laughter from Marcus and Fat Stan.)

Evie said nothing. She was tensed up, turning red. She reached for a carrot stick, bypassing the crinkle-cut potato chips. Tad was on a roll. “Well, I guess you do
something
. All I see you do is eat and stare at people! Evie
skeevy
.”

He laughed hysterically at his own brilliant rhyme. Tad was the son of Boston Brahmin, old money whose ancestors had allegedly come over on the
Mayflower
. He had the arrogance and self-assuredness that came with that privilege. He had curly brown hair, shocking blue eyes, and was, annoyingly, very good-looking and probably always would be.

I wished there was something I could do, but Evie told me a long time ago that when anyone made a big deal out of Tad's harassment, even to stick up for her, it only made things worse. She finished creating her ham and cheese on rye and we walked toward the little eating area in the pool lobby where there were a few tables—when summer tennis camp wasn't in session, parents could sit and watch their kids taking their swimming lessons or members could relax with their coffee—but it was packed, so Evie had to sit on the steps that led up to the pool lobby. I sat with her while she ate. Normally she'd slip me some potato chips—she always got extra for me, because my mom was on a health kick and wasn't exactly handing out delicious snacks to me on a regular basis—but thanks to Tad she only had carrots today. She gave me one and I munched on it as she ate her sandwich. Things were going okay until Tad finished his latest sandwich and tried to get down the stairs we were sitting on.

“Thar she blows!” he shouted, making sure the campers and counselors, who were still picking at their lunches, were listening to his clever little take on a literary masterpiece. “We've got ourselves a big one, mateys.”

I turned to see him standing one step above us, holding his arm up and pointing an air spear at Evie. “Get out of the way, Moby, or I'll have to harpoon you.”

Marcus cracked up at that. As if that moment couldn't get any more hideous, Serene was watching, too, and while she didn't step in, I saw a flicker of sympathy on her face. I saw Will, the senior coach, tense up like he was ready to intervene if necessary. Tears were welling up in Evie's eyes as she scrambled to get away, upsetting her plate and dropping the uneaten crusts of her sandwich on the floor. I fought every instinct I had to take Tad Chadwick down. I was younger than both of them, but I'd been called scrappy more than once and I didn't give up easily. I didn't know if Evie would ever eat lunch again after this.

The thing is, Evie is fat. That's what everyone said. She would be tall when she grew up, and she might be beautiful, according to my mom, but only if she quits eating. I didn't really see her eat that much except for the occasional Twinkies binge when things get really bad, but something must be going on for her to be that size. That's what the grownups said. For the two years she'd been hanging around here with Lucky, she'd stayed plump.

My mom and her dad agreed we were a good pair.
It's been so great for Chelsea to have a friend like Evie
, my mom had said to Lucky one night when he was staying late and she was closing up the club.
Someone to keep her company. They're like two peas in a pod, those two. It's sweet, really.
Even Lucky, the most absentee parent ever, had to concur.
Chelsea has saved Evie's life this summer,
he said.
I think she's the best friend my daughter's ever had.
My heart soared when I heard that, because it meant we could hang out all summer, and maybe even have a sleepover or two at my place.

Now, it killed me that I couldn't back Evie up, but I had to respect her wishes to stay out of it. Tad never bullied me, and aside from a few snotty remarks here and there to various other kids, he saved his ire for Evie. I walked with her as she retreated back to her safe place behind Court 5, and I thought about how I could possibly soothe the feelings in her that had just been scraped over with a cheese grater. It was going to be a long, hot summer.

 

After

We were hot on Ashlock's heels as he continued to move through the club after watching the elites. Evie and I caught up to him as he reached the end of the lobby, when he stopped again to survey the café area below. Off to the left was the pool and the aerobics-floor-slash-basketball-court. Speaking of which, we could hear the thumping of house music coming from an exercise class. Ashlock walked down the stairs, following the sound, and we followed him. We hung back to see where the detective was heading, which was straight to the scene of the crime: the pool. This was devilishly good news for me and Evie; we could sit on the pool lobby's comfy sofas and watch what the detective was up to without raising a single eyebrow. We perched on the gray love seat and, as we gazed out over the pool area, we were presented with an interesting sight.

Ashlock was on his hands and knees at the deep end of the pool, looking more wildly out of place than ever among the crowd of half-naked kids, moms, and a few teens. This was where Annabel's body had been found. The Stormtroopers had combed the deck forever, so I couldn't imagine what he was looking for.

Evie agreed. “What does he think he's gonna find?” She was leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees. “Man … this is surreal.”

Ashlock crawled along the pebbles on all fours, rubbing the deck with his fingers every few inches. His white fedora stayed firmly on his head, like it was glued on. Evie yawned. I yawned. This was like watching paint dry or grass grow—whatever works for you in terms of imagining how boring it was getting. Evie poked me a few moments later as I started to nod off. Ashlock was in the grass now, picking through what looked like one blade at a time. He started rubbing the ground with his fingers and then began digging one finger into the grass. We stood up and pressed our noses against the glass. I realized then he'd snapped on some rubber gloves, and he seemed to be working something out of the ground. After a minute he rose and walked slowly, deliberately, along the pool's edge, toward the exit. He was holding something in one hand, and covered that with the other, like a big clamshell.

I turned to Evie.
What the heck?
She shook her head and widened her eyes, like,
I don't know!
When Ashlock got close to the revolving door, Evie and I hightailed it back to the café to act like we couldn't care less about this detective. We stood casually by the counter, pretending to check out today's yogurt flavor, which was still boysenberry, whatever a boysenberry was. Evie reached down and tugged at the bottom of her oversize black T-shirt, making sure it was covering her belly.

We sensed Ashlock pass by us so we waited a few beats, then turned and slowly headed up to the lobby behind him. The detective was still carrying the mystery item, and he was getting some odd looks. He paused in the lobby to check out the elites again as they pounded tennis balls on Court 1. Goran was still out there, now hitting with Will.

Evie didn't just adore Goran. She loved his skill, too, loved watching what he could do with that ball. It could be very hypnotic, if you appreciated the game of tennis. Nobody cared about what was happening on Court 4, where a handful of regular campers—including Tad—were training. They were clunky, flawed, hapless. See, the tennis class system is absolute. You'll get along fine if you play by the rules. You're either elite, or you're not. Someone once asked head coach Will Temple what separated an elite from a regular player. Will, who was about twenty-eight and resembled a nerdy male model with glasses and a physique that was more Statue of David than lean-and-wiry tennis machine, had replied,
A champion is born, and then made. You can't be an elite without both the talent and the training.

The champions at our club were currently sweating it up. I couldn't prove it, but I swear I saw that detective paying particular attention to Goran, and a burning question began to nag at me: Could Goran know something about what happened to Annabel? Evie noticed too, and I caught her looking terribly sad. I worried this awful thing might turn out to be too much for her to handle.

 

Before

As June got under way, it was time for the annual staff pool party—one of my favorite nights of the whole year. From the minute Lucky pushed through that revolving door carrying his guitar and Patrick followed grasping a big blue cooler, it was all fun and laughter and sultry air. By the end of the night, someone would inevitably get crazy and gallop to the pool, usually fully clothed, to perform a klutzy cannonball.

This year's bash was held on a Friday night during the second week of the season, and when I burst through that door onto the pool deck behind my mom, the smell of summer was so pungent it was like you were inhaling a whole season floating on a gust of wind. As dusk turned to night, an old U2 song in which Bono was screaming out about the streets having no name was playing on Harmony's iPod.

Patrick was holding court on the lawn, perched on the edge of a lounge chair, still in his tennis shorts, laughing at everything Will said but never appearing to really listen; his eyes kept flitting to the door. My mom made a beeline for the other side of the pool, where her friends were hanging out. We doubted Nicholas Harper would be here tonight; he had too much going on to find time for a staff party. Gene always said Nicholas was “going places.” People loved him, even though sometimes when he was really tired he could be snappy. But that was rare. He always had a smile and a hello, and was wicked good-looking, a trait that no doubt contributed to his popularity.