Page 32

THIRTY-ONE

The third time’s a curse.

We’d gotten caught stealing handbags from the mall. I’m not even sure why we did it. We were becoming reckless. Nadia and I weren’t the type to carry designer handbags. Most of the time, I was wearing basketball shorts and T-shirts while she’d strut around in holey jeans and tank tops. Really, I think we just wanted to see what we could get away with.

Not much, as it turns out.

An attendant caught me trying to stuff a Coach wristlet into my backpack. The mall police were called, they searched our belongings, and we were arrested.

Truth is, even when we got caught, there was a thrill involved. Nadia and I were so used to being invisible. There was a power that came with being escorted through the mall lobby by men in uniforms. People would watch us, almost like they were afraid of us, and that feeling was exhilarating.

All fun stopped after my father was called. Because this merchandize was so expensive, my father had to pay to have me released. The whole way home, I worried about the beating I’d receive when I got back. We had an important game at the end of the week; the last thing I needed was to get injured.

What he did hurt more than all the times he’d hit me.

He told me I couldn’t go to the game.

“You can’t be serious!” I shouted at him. “Basketball is all I have!”

“Exactly,” he said. “If I take that away, maybe you’ll stop being such a problem.”

We went back and forth for hours, yelling and shouting. By the time he left for work, I was so distraught, my throat was raw from screaming.

As usual, Nadia came by the house. “What happened?”

“He’s not going to let me play,” I say. “He scared me.”

“That asshole has no right to do this to you.”

Even then, I wondered if that was true. My father was a complicated man. He neglected me, beat me, but somewhere beneath that, I knew there was love. Maybe this was his attempt to try and parent me. Try to keep me from making the mistakes he did.

When the night of the game came, he left for work with a warning: “You better be here when I get back.”

He’d scared me so much over the past couple of days, I had every intention of staying. I flinched when I thought of Coach Phillips’ disappointment when he realized I wouldn’t be at the game.

I almost didn’t answer the door when Nadia came over. Even time with her wasn’t enough to console me.

“I have a plan,” she says, a devilish look in her eyes. “You’re going.”

“I can’t. Dad will kill me.”

“He won’t have the chance.”

She walked past me and went into the kitchen.

“Where’s your dad keep his stash?”

“Under the sink,” I said, pointing.

She opened the cabinet and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She placed it on the counter and unscrewed the lid.

“If you drink my dad’s liquor, he’ll definitely kill us,” I said.

“We’re not going to drink it.” She reached into her jacket pocket and took out three pills. “We’re going to add to it.”

“What are those?”

“Sleeping pills. They’re my mom’s.”

“Why do you have them?” I asked, afraid of her answer.

“We’re going to add them to the bottle,” she said, avoiding the question. “We both know this is the first place he goes once he gets home.”

“He won’t even stop to drink if he knows I’m not here,” I say.

“I thought about that, too. Run the shower. He’ll come inside, hear the water, and think you’re in the bathroom. It’ll only take a couple of sips for him to get drowsy.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked. “We can’t drug my father.”

“He’s not a good man, Cass. He hits you. And now he’s trying to take away the one positive thing in your life.” She looked at the bottle on the counter. “If my plan works, you’ll be back by the time he wakes up.”

“And then what?” I asked. “There are a million other ways he can find out I went, and when he does, I’ll get the beating of a lifetime.”

“Maybe it’s time you tell someone then,” she said. “You already said Coach Phillips asked you about the bruises.”

“He did, but I told him?—”

“He’s not an idiot,” she said. “He knows this is a bad situation for you. You haven’t come forward until now, and that’s okay, but I think you need to start taking control.” She handed me the liquor bottle. “Start with this.”

I stared at the bottle. The idea that we were planning to drug my father was extreme, but would I be in this situation if it weren’t for him? He’d backed me into a corner, and Nadia was right: I couldn’t let him ruin the one good thing in my life.

Nadia grabbed another glass from the cabinet. She poured a small amount of water into it, then added the pills. I watched as she stirred the concoction, the solid capsules eventually dissolving into a chalky mess.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Totally,” Nadia said, pouring the paste into the Jack Daniel’s bottle. “Never been more sure of anything in my life.”

She gave the bottle a good shake, making sure nothing looked out of the ordinary, then she put the bottle back under the sink, in the same place we found it.

For several seconds, I stood there. Part of me wanted to grab the bottle and pour the liquid down the drain. I could spend the rest of my night in my bedroom, obeying the punishment my father had set. Or I could do as Nadia suggested and take my life into my own hands.

“Get dressed,” she said to me, finally. “You have a game.”

Nadia and I ran the short distance between my house and the school. We made it there just before the bus took off. Coach Phillips fussed at me for being late, but that was nothing compared to the upset he would have felt if I’d skipped the game entirely.

On the ride out of town, I tried not to think about my father’s reaction when he returned home. I thought of the running shower and hoped that would be enough to distract him until he passed out.

As the night went on, I quit thinking about him. By the time the game started, he was a complete afterthought. The only world that existed was the one on the court. I played one of my best games of the season that night, and we walked away with a 42-28 victory. I rode the high of another win all the way home, until we pulled into the school parking lot, and I saw the police cruiser.

The officer spoke with Coach Phillips first.

Turns out, our plan had worked, but only for so long. My father drank the Jack Daniel’s, as he always did, but at some point he must have figured out I wasn’t home. When he did, he was so angry he hopped in his car.

What he didn’t know, and what the police never found out, is that he had sleeping pills in his system mixed with the alcohol. He passed out behind the wheel and ran a red light. The officers assumed, given his history, he’d only been drunk.

The officer wasn’t there to arrest me for drugging my father.

He was there to tell me my father was in the hospital, along with the woman and small child in the other car that he hit.