Chapter Twenty-Seven
Zack
First thing I did when I woke up the next morning was to text Kelli. I’d started doing it a few days ago, and now it was becoming a morning habit.
Hey doll, I said,
Thanks again for joining me yesterday. I know it took a lot of courage to walk into that room, but I hope it was worth it. Bonus: you made me the envy of every man there. [kiss-and-wink emoji]
She texted back while I was putting in my contacts:
Thanks for that. I’m still wondering if I should have gone. I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much .
I texted her back as soon as I had finished:
Hey, what are you on about? Any man there would’ve been lucky to have you as a date. You didn’t embarrass me at all, silly. If anything, you made me look better.
I kept the phone in one hand as I brushed my teeth and washed my mouth out with mouth wash. Kelli wrote back:
If you say so. I don’t always know how I come across to others, so it’s nice that there’s someone I can trust who doesn’t think I’m a complete idiot.
To which I replied:
Baby, I think the world of you .
I waited a few minutes to see if she would respond, but she never did.
I was running low on breakfast items, so I made myself a milkshake and fried up the last of the sausages in the skillet. There was no use going out and buying more groceries when I’d be leaving in a few days for my mother’s. They hadn’t always been the greatest parents, but one thing they had excelled at was making sure we were well-fed. I was looking forward to sitting down to another one of her breakfasts.
After my morning workout, I threw on a blue Polo shirt and a pair of khakis and went over to Carson’s apartment.
“IT’S OPEN!” I heard him holler the moment I knocked.
I found him lying on the couch in the living room with a comforter wrapped around his waist; he was naked from at least the waist up. “Cover your eyes for a sec,” he said as he sat slowly up. “I need to throw some pants on.”
“God, Carson, couldn’t you have done that before you told me to come in?” I replied.
But Carson didn’t seem phased by my complaints. “What are you all dressed up for?” he asked as he wriggled into his blue jeans. “You and Kelli about to go golfing?”
“Carson, you and I were supposed to go golfing,” I said, trying my level best not to sound irritated. Being friends with Carson could be exasperating at times. “Remember, we started planning it before we even left Libya?”
“I wish I could go, man,” said Carson, fumbling around in his pockets for his phone and finding it on the coffee table. “I’ve got things I’ve gotta do this morning. You’re welcome to come along if you want.”
“What things?”
Carson glanced around as if afraid of being overheard, despite the fact that the apartment was empty. “So I was making out with some chick last night, and she stole my wallet.”
I stared as if I hadn’t heard him correctly. “She stole your wallet while you were making out? Like a pickpocket?”
“I went out to Murphy’s Bar and met this beautiful girl, Kayleigh. She’s young and funny, and she seemed really into me, and we got to talking and I asked her if she wanted to come back to my place. We came up here and messed around for a bit, and I think she must’ve slipped something into my drink, because when I woke up it was early morning, Kayleigh was gone, and I couldn’t find my wallet.”
“She drugged you?” I shouted.
Carson glared coolly at me, his ears burning red. “Didn’t say I was proud of it.”
“Well, how are we supposed to find this girl? Do you know anything about her, other than her name? If that even is her name?”
“Yeah, I know some things about her,” said Carson, sounding offended. “I know where she goes to school. I think I might drive over there and hang out in the gym until she gets out of class. You wanna come with?”
“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked as I followed him downstairs to his car. “If this girl thinks you’re stalking her, she could call the police.”
“Let her!” Carson shouted. “I’ll tell ‘em the bitch stole my wallet.”
I made a series of quick mental calculations. Carson was going to stake her out whether I came along or not. But at least if I went with him, I could keep the situation from escalating and maybe save him from going to jail.
I didn’t even bother to ask where we were going, figuring we would probably end up at some community college in the Bronx. So naturally I was surprised a few minutes later when we pulled up outside of Fillmore Public High School.
“Carson,” I said slowly. “Carson, I think there’s been a mistake. This is a public high school.”
“Yeah,” said Carson, putting the car into park. “And it’s just about lunch time, so she ought to be getting out of class soon.”
An odd sensation of panic came over me as I followed Carson across the commons toward the gym in the center of campus. Carson hadn’t shaved in a few days, and he looked much older than his twenty-three years. “Hey, don’t you think we need a visitor’s pass for this?” I said quietly, trying not to draw more attention to us than we were already getting.
“Alright, you go to the principal’s office and tell ‘em we’re here to find this girl who stole my money,” muttered Carson.
I followed along a few feet behind him as he pulled open the door of the gym and went inside. I could hear the scrape of sneakers on the basketball court, and for a moment I was transported back to my own high school days. With a pang of guilt, I remembered how I had turned down Sergeant Armstrong’s offer. If I accepted the position I would be going around to schools just like this one, talking to young men about how they could better themselves by serving their country. Being back here was almost enough to make me reconsider.
Clear at the other end of the gym, a couple of boys were shooting hoops. Carson, who had no sense of shame at all, ran straight up to them. “Hey, you mind if we join you?” he asked.
“No, not at all,” said a lank, mop-haired guy who couldn’t have been older than sixteen. “Two against two?”
“Me and Zack against you and your buddy,” said Carson. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Heath.” He motioned to his friend, who was at least a foot shorter but spectacularly built. “This is Tony.”
We got to playing, and I think for a few minutes Carson forgot why we had come, he was so caught up in the game. We’d spent so many hours out on the court in the last year or two that we won the first game, and the second, without a lot of effort. At some point, we stopped scoring and started playing just for the joy of it. Tony and Heath, who had looked annoyed at first, now watched us with a begrudging sense of awe.
“Where you guys from?” Tony asked when we’d been playing for about twenty minutes and had worked up a good sweat.
“We just got back from Libya,” I told him, tossing the ball and sinking it effortlessly into the net. “We’re both SEALS who somehow made it through four years of deployment without drowning or dying of exhaustion or getting our legs blown off.”
“Oh, yeah?” Heath swept his long, wavy hair out of his face. “Were you on SEAL Team Six?”
“Are you one of the guys who caught bin Laden?” asked Tony. Turning to Heath, he added, “Did you know The Rock’s brother was one of the guys who helped catch bin Laden? And The Rock found out about it before anybody else.”
“No way!” Heath exclaimed, turning to look at us with his eyes aglow.
“No, we weren’t with those guys,” I replied. “We were fighting terrorists in the deserts and jungles of Africa.”
“I’ll tell you somethin,’” said Tony in his thick Bronx accent. “I’ve actually been thinkin’ about joining the Navy. I really appreciate what you guys do over there. I heard a SEAL speak recently at a Fourth of July celebration, and it made me feel like maybe I haven’t done enough to support my country.”
“Well, if you stay in school and get a good education,” I told him, “you’ll be serving your country just fine.” Reaching into my pocket and pulling out a pen and a loose sheet of paper, I added, “Tell you what? Why don’t I give you my number, and you call me if you ever need to talk about this?”
I wrote down my number and handed it to him. “Thanks, man,” he said, grinning shyly, as he folded it up and tucked it away in his shoe. (“It’ll fall out of my shorts pocket,” he explained, as the rest of us watched him curiously).
At that point, two policemen entered the gym, having apparently been warned that there were a couple of older guys walking around campus without permission and questioned us for a few minutes before asking us to leave. But even the humiliation of being escorted off-campus by the school police wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits.
“Did you see that?!” I shouted as we climbed into Carson’s car. “Those kids were fascinated. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony ends up joining the Navy.”
“I told you you ought to have taken the recruiting position,” said Carson. “Now you’re recruiting, and you don’t even mean to.”
Carson seemed to have accepted the fact that his wallet was gone forever, though he hadn’t ruled out hanging around Murphy’s that night to see if Kayleigh showed up. “Just don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone,” I told him as we stood out on the green an hour later, clubs in hand.
“Are you really leaving?” Carson asked.
“I am. I’m heading out tomorrow, and I’m taking Kayleigh—I mean, Kelli—with me for a couple weeks. Just so you can’t hit on her in my absence.”
“Dang, I was really looking forward to that,” muttered Carson, and he took another swing with his club.