Page 100 of The Bright Lands
All week long, Kimbra had thought she wanted to know what secrets were eating her poor beautiful boyfriend so badly he’d started using (again). She’d been certain that if she knew, she might be able to help him, like always. She’d thought she could find a solution to it the way she had found the paint can and the half brother and every other answer she’d come up with when KT had come running to her, crying because the world was so hard.
It was confounding, the loathsome gravity at work in her heart. Kimbra knew that she was clever, reasonable, cautious, and yet against this one footballer with the little freckle on his upper lip, his careful hands, the glimpses she sometimes caught of the better, gentler boy who lived inside him, none of Kimbra’s caution did her a bit of good. Look at them, the girl with the bankrupt family and the eighteen-year-old footballer with the drug habit and a sideline servicing men for money. The town’s tabloid sweethearts, Dylan Whitley and Bethany Tanner, seen through a busted filter. With some mixture of relief and resignation, Kimbra had lately begun to tell herself that she and KT were made for each other. A part of her—a grotesque, powerful part—would always be the plain girl who had been stunned two years ago when that handsome, funny, dangerous boy had first privileged her with his attention.
Kimbra sealed the paint can shut, readied herself to go. A thought finally occurred to her: maybe she had other options. Look at all she’d uncovered by herself this week. Think of all she could accomplish without a man dragging her down. Of how much further a single person could stretch twelve thousand dollars in sunny California.
Maybe—maybe—when she reached the turnoff for KT’s house Kimbra would carry straight on.
But at that moment she noticed something glinting behind an old can of spray paint deep in the back of the shelf.
Because she noticed the glinting thing, Kimbra didn’t hear the faint sound of the door opening wider behind her.
The top shelf was very deep. She balanced carefully on the tips of her sneakers, braced one hand on the lip of the shelf and was just able to grab the little glimmer of green that rested against the far wall.
It was a Bisonette’s singlet, just like the one she was wearing now. Just like the ones she was always misplacing.
Kimbra turned the singlet over. Sure enough, the name LOTT was printed on the back.
How on earth had it wound up here, covered in dust? The singlet had been in a pile near the wall, like it had been tossed atop the shelf and forgotten. But who would have stolen one of her singlets and misplaced it way up here?
Who else had access to this room?
B-B-Benny Garcia stuttered in her head:“I h-heard it was your d-d-dad runs that p-party.”
Kimbra didn’t want to know what this was about. There were some rumors she didn’t want confirmed.
She turned.
She saw the man waiting behind her.
JOEL
His jaw throbbed where Wesley Mores had struck it last night. His head ached in the heat. And, worst of all, the skin of his ankle burned where the knife had been strapped all day. He wondered if it was some kind of allergic reaction, something his sweat had drawn out of the Velcro. Maybe a response to adhesive, just like Jason Ovelle had suffered.
By the time he reached Lott’s Hardware he was still clawing at the skin through his sock. He tugged loose the strap of the knife, just for a moment.
The store, Joel saw, was already closed. Of course. The president of the booster club would leave for the field hours before the start of the game. GO BISON GOOD LUCK EVERS read a handwritten sign in the window. Joel climbed from the car, pressed his hands to the door’s glass, saw a little strip of light way in the back of the store.
South Street was silent. No cars, no music leaking through cracked windows. From the ruined bank came the steady drip of a busted pipe. Joel’s feet made the old wooden boards of the storefront’s porch pop.
He saw light spilling through an open door in the alley. A man emerged from the back of the hardware store, a man whom Joel had no reason to suspect of anything.
The man looked panicked. He shouted, “The girl! She’s bleeding bad.”
“What? Who?”
“Kimbra! Hurry, please, she’s—”
But Joel was already running, fueled by a sudden swell of guilt and shame. He’d put her in danger, just as he’d feared.
Out on the quiet street, there was only a soft thump when Joel was struck on the back of the head. Another thump when he hit the ground. The boards of the storefronts rattled and squeaked when the ground shifted, when something beneath them rose a little closer to the surface, let out a rumble of what just might have been satisfaction at these fresh drops of blood, at this sudden splash of fear.
And then silence again.
LUKE
Luke had never heard anything so loud. The drums rattled the lights of the field house. The roar of the crowd floated, trapped, in his open locker like the ocean in a shell. His ears still rang from the screams that had gone up when he’d correctly called heads at the coin toss. All of last night’s misgivings had left him when that coin had slapped the ref’s palm. Luke could see the future: glory, state championships, his face tagged in other people’s Instagram feeds. Friends.
The hip-hop on the field house’s soundbar was cranked down. Coach Wesford and Coach Ruiz shouted their speeches, and now big Coach Parter stood in the center of a ring of boys and said, “I ain’t a man to tell you what Jesus wants. I’m a man to tell you whatIwant and whatIwant is for you to take these goddamn Stallions to the grass andkeepthem in the grass.”
