Chapter 2

For the rest of the week, all Nick could think of was basketball. By Friday, his stomach was a jumble of nerves at the promise of playing in his first varsity game that night.

Okay, so he probably wouldn’t get much actual playing time, if any.  He may have been starting power forward on the sophomore team, but on varsity, he would just be a back-up for starting senior Doug Richmond, one of the best players on the team.  Barring injury, the only way Nick would get into the game was if the Sanctuary Sharks found themselves with a commanding lead over their opponents.  But as they would be facing their biggest rivals in the conference, the Lincoln Ridge Copperheads, the chances of a big lead were slim.  It would likely be a close game.

The excitement caused Nick to wake up early, early enough to catch his parents before they left for work.  He found them in the kitchen, fixing their coffee.  His father, tall and blonde like Nick, also shared his sweet tooth and liked to doctor his coffee up with milk and cream and sugar, to the point where it was light brown instead of black.  His mother, her dyed blonde hair pulled into a tight French twist at the back of her head, drank hers almost black, with only a bit of cream.

“Morning,” he greeted them, boosting himself onto one of the bar stools at the kitchen island.

His mother turned, arching one perfectly-plucked eyebrow.  “You’re up early.”

Nick shrugged.  “Couldn’t sleep anymore.  Got the big game tonight--are you guys coming?” 

His parents may not have been around much during the day, but they came to see him play whenever possible.  Basketball was important to the Harper family.  His father had also played in high school, though never with as much talent as Nick showed, and his mother had cheered.  They had been high school sweethearts who dated for years before marrying after college, and Nick suspected that high school basketball games held a lot of good memories for them.  They had pushed him into the sport when he was young, paying for him to play in the top junior leagues in the area, buying him the best shoes and equipment, hoping all along that he would make something of himself.  A decade later, their efforts were paying off.  Rex and Lynn Harper took great pride in being the parents of Sanctuary’s “most promising player of the season.”

“Of course we’re coming,” answered his father with a broad grin, playfully slugging Nick in the shoulder.  “My son playing varsity?  Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Alright… cool.”  Cool… that was how Nick played it, not wanting to seem too eager, too excited, too anxious for their approval.  He tried to act like it wasn’t a big deal to be dressing for his first varsity game, like he didn’t care whether or not they showed up to watch.   

But it was, and he did.

He thought about it the whole way to school… about the possibility of playing in the big game, with his parents rooting him on in the stands, and Leah cheering from the sidelines…

The fantasy carried him all the way through the school day, interrupted only when his teachers called on him, or when his friends talked to him, or when the lunch lady snarled, “Two milks is twenty-five cents extra!”  Nick just smiled, slapped the quarter for his extra milk into her hand, and went on daydreaming about the game.

After school, he stuck around for the team meeting and meal, and at five o’clock, instead of heading into the locker room to change into his jersey and warm-up gear with the other sophomores, he stayed behind the varsity squad.

It felt strange to sit in the bleachers next to Logan and watch his team warm up and start their game without him.  A part of him still itched to be out there on the court with Rob and his other teammates, running their plays, scoring points.  He wouldn’t be doing any of that in the varsity game.

But no matter.  He reminded himself that, for the rest of this season, he’d sit on the bench and pay his dues to the varsity squad, and next year, it would be his time to shine.

The JVs won without him, although it was close, and the varsity game was even closer.  The scores stayed within five points of each other the entire game, with the Sanctuary Sharks never pulling more than a couple of shots ahead of the Copperheads.  A few times, when the Sharks did have a four-point lead and Doug Richmond was getting tired, Nick was allowed to check in and play in his place.  But as soon as the Lincoln Ridge team started scoring, there would be Richmond again, clapping Nick on the shoulder and sending him back to the bench.

At the end of the game, Richmond’s jersey was drenched, and Nick’s was completely dry, but it didn’t matter.  Sanctuary had won by a mere two points, and that was all that counted.

In the locker room, amid the high-fives and adrenaline-fueled recap of the game, Richmond said, “Yo, Harper!  Kacey’s having a party over at her place tonight; we’re all headin’ over there after this.  You wanna come?”

Kacey Aldrich was Doug’s girlfriend; she lived in Nick’s subdivision, across the lake.  She was the kind of girl whose parents had too much money and gave her too much freedom, and her parties were legendary among the Sanctuary High crowd.  “Sure,” replied Nick, glad to have been invited and eager to be included.  “Sounds good.”

He met up with Leah outside the locker room.  She was thrilled with the idea of going to Kacey’s party, and so they left her tiny Dodge Neon in the parking lot as they sped away in Nick’s Jaguar.

#

The Loch Lindsay Heights subdivision was the butt of many jokes in Sanctuary.  It was the wealthiest neighborhood in town, home to Sanctuary’s richest and most prominent, and it was named for Robert Lindsay, the developer, who had envisioned the neatly-arranged spiral of mansions, all built around his man-made lake.  Lindsay had died several years ago, but people still laughed at his pretentiousness in calling the lake a “loch,” as a tribute to his Scottish roots, and naming it after himself.  “Home to the only Scottish loch in Illinois” was their joking tourist slogan for Sanctuary.

Of course, with the title “Loch” came a lake monster, and the Loch Lindsay monster, otherwise known as “Linds,” had been legend in Sanctuary ever since the lake’s creation.  No one really believed in her, but little kids liked to scare themselves with the idea of her while out swimming and boating in the summer.  They said she resembled some sort of prehistoric shark, to explain Sanctuary High’s mascot, which otherwise made no sense at all, since Sanctuary was at least three states away from the nearest ocean.

There were no mythical mountains to explain the addition of “Heights” to the name of the subdivision; Sanctuary didn’t even have hills.  That was another joke.  The truth was, it had been added because it sounded good, because it sounded wealthy.  Outsiders quipped that the only “heights” in the subdivision were the towering, two- or three-story mansions.

The houses all looked basically the same:  slate roof, light gray siding, gray brick façade, and as many windows as possible.  The layouts differed slightly, but only the addresses and the people who lived there separated one home from the next.

At close to ten o’clock on a Friday night, as Nick drove Leah through the Heights, most of the windows were starting to dim, but the Aldrich house was blazing.  Nick had to park on the street in front of the next-door neighbor’s house, for the driveway was already packed.  When he got out of the car, he could already hear the music.

“Kacey throws the best parties,” Leah gushed, stepping out onto the curb.  She had changed out of her cheerleading uniform into a pair of tight jeans and a low-cut top, and her stiletto-heeled boots clicked sharply against the sidewalk as she led the way up to the house.

“Harper!  Come on in,” Doug Richmond greeted Nick at the door, as he walked in with Leah.  “You guys want a drink?”

“We’d love a couple of them,” Leah jumped in, flashing her flirty smile at Doug.  “Please.”

“You got it.”  Doug disappeared into the crowd that had gathered in the Aldrich house and returned a few minutes later with two plastic cups sloshing with beer.

“Thanks,” said Leah as she took hers.  Nick nodded.  He took a slow sip of his.  He’d never really drank beer before, but everyone around him had a red cup in hand, and he told himself it was no big deal.  One beer wasn’t going to kill him.  It wouldn’t even make him drunk.

He’d never seen Leah drink either, but as she led him around the party, stopping to talk to people they knew, she nursed her beer as if it felt perfectly natural there in her hand.  “Hey, there’s Calvin!”  Leah motioned to the tall, dark-haired captain of the basketball team.  Calvin, Nick noticed, did not have a cup in his hand.  “Is he still going out with that girl Kristin?  You know, the one who does all the musicals?”

“I dunno; I think so,” replied Nick, who didn’t really care who Calvin Scott was going out with.

Across the room, Calvin saw Leah pointing, said something to the guy he was talking to, and strode over to them.  “Hey guys, what’s up?”

“Oh, not much.  Great party, huh?”  There was the flirty smile again, as Leah tossed her bangs out of her eyes.

“You bet.”  Calvin’s smile was only brief, and it faded as he leaned closer to Nick.  “You better watch it with the beer, Harper,” he said, keeping his voice low.  “You know if you get caught drinking, you’ll be suspended… maybe even kicked off the team.”

Nick swallowed, but then he looked around again at all of the other basketball players with red cups, Doug Richmond among them, and said, “I know, but who’s gonna get caught?  Everybody’s drinking, and it ain’t like they’re gonna kick us all off the team.  They wouldn’t have a team left.”

Calvin’s green eyes were sharp, warning.  “Maybe not, but that’s not to say they won’t choose someone to make an example out of.”  He looked like he wanted to say more, but he shrugged instead.  “Just be smart, alright, Harper?” he muttered, as he walked away.

Once he was gone, Nick took another swig of his beer, but it didn’t have the same effect.  It was warm, and suddenly, it tasted like backwash.  Its appeal seemed to have faded.

Nick shook his head after Calvin.  Be smart, he had said.  Calvin was smart.  Calvin was a good guy.  He could be here, at this party, as cool as the rest of the team, but not drink.   Nick wished he had that kind of confidence.  He wished he wasn’t stuck in Doug Richmond’s shadow.

Next year, he told himself.  Next year, Doug Richmond will be playing college ball, and I’ll be a starting forward.

Still, he didn’t drink anymore after that, using the fact that he had to drive Leah home as an excuse, and it was a good thing, for by the time he dragged Leah away from the party, she could hardly walk straight.  Giggling, she weaved from side to side, her heels clunking unevenly against the pavement, as he walked alongside her, prepared to catch her if she tripped.  “I’m fine!” she insisted, when he tried to put his arm around her, swatting him away.

But in the car, she was all over him.  “Leah,” he protested, as she kissed his face, his neck.  “We gotta go.  It’s late.  I need to get you home.”

“Why?” she giggled.  “You know I don’t have a curfew.  My mom won’t know if I’m home or not.”

“Well, mine might.”  Nick thought of his mother, either sleeping off the exhaustion of a long day or still up, typing away on her computer, probably not thinking about him either way.  Then he thought of Leah’s, dancing all night at the strip club a town over to earn her living, while her daughter did whatever she felt like.  Leah claimed to love the freedom, but sometimes, Nick felt sorry for her.  Leah’s mom would never make it to a Friday night basketball game to see her cheer.

“Just tell her you were hanging out with the team… you know, celebrating.  Bonding with your new teammates.  She’ll eat it up.”  Leah, even in her intoxicated state, was brilliantly manipulative.  Nick knew she was right.  His parents wouldn’t care how late he got home, as long as he could use basketball to justify it.

“Fine,” he mumbled, his voice soon muffled by her lips.  As they made out in the car, there in front of the neighbor’s dark house, Nick’s mind raced with possibilities.  He thought of starting up the car and driving to the public beach, where people who didn’t have houses right on the lakefront went to swim.  Because it closed after dark, it was the perfect place to bring your date to make out.

But then he looked at Leah, between her eager, sloppy kisses, and remembered how much she’d had to drink.  If they went to the beach and were caught by the cops out patrolling, the fact that she was sixteen and drunk would be hard to hide.  She could be kicked off the cheerleading squad.

He remembered Calvin’s warning.  “You better watch it….  Be smart, Harper.”  He knew he couldn’t take the risk, for both their sakes.  Groaning, he pulled away.

“What’s up?” Leah complained, trying to pull him back across the center console of the car.  “Don’t stop now.”

“We have to,” Nick forced himself to say.  “C’mon, Leah, we both gotta get home.”

“Ugh… fine,” she huffed, pulling her hands off of him and crossing her arms over her chest.  She turned towards the window, not bothering to put on her seatbelt, as he found his keys and crammed them into the ignition.  Easing the car away from the curb, he drove out of the Heights in silence.

A few minutes later, the tires of his Jag were crunching over the gravel of Leah’s driveway.  Nick shifted the car into park and looked up at the house.  A tiny, two-bedroom ranch, it appeared dark and lonely.  He felt bad letting her go in there alone, but he knew she did it every night.  “You okay?” he asked, turning towards her.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled.  “Call me tomorrow.”  Without kissing him goodbye, she climbed clumsily out of the car and stumbled up the driveway in her stiletto boots.

In the glow of his headlights, he watched her fumble in her purse for her house key, unlock the front door, and let herself in.  Then he backed out of the driveway and headed for home, feeling overwhelmingly let down.