Tubman High School put on a spring school dance every year, and Kevin asked Carissa right away. “I didn’t want somebody else to beat me to it,” he admitted, grinning. He was smiling a lot more these days.
“Like I would’ve gone with anybody else,” Carissa chided. “If you hadn’t asked me, I woulda asked you. Sami said there’s no reason a girl can’t do the asking. It’s a whole new world out there. Yeehah!”
The theme of the dance was Green Glory, a tip of the hat to the local flora that didn’t require a lot of water. The school auditorium was going to be decorated with flowering ice plant, cactus, and different succulents.
Some of the parents volunteered to help with the dance, including Alonee’s parents, Sami’s parents, and Trevor’s mother.
“Maybe you should get your grandparents to come and help, Kevin,” Marko said snidely. “Only they’re so old they’d have to come in their wheelchairs.” Marko laughed and his friends joined in dutifully.
Kevin gave Marko and his friends a dirty look and continued helping Alonee compile the list of parent volunteers.
“When are your grandparents gonna go to the nursing home, Kevin?” Marko persisted. “I seen your grandfather the other day, stumbling around the front yard, and he looked confused like he has Alzheimer’s or something.”
“You know, Lane,” Kevin said, “why don’t you mind your own business? We’re trying to get this dance organized, and all you’re doing is standing around making stupid comments.”
Marko laughed. “Don’t be so touchy. I guess guys from Texas have shorter tempers. It comes from being around nasty steers so much. I guess the fragrance of cow manure gets into your attitude,” he nagged.
“Yeah,” Tyron Becker joined in, “Texan dudes are mean and ornery, Marko. Don’t get Walker mad, or he might pull out a big Bowie knife and slice us up.”
“I don’t carry a knife,” Kevin snapped. “If you guys weren’t so stupid, you’d know it’s against school rules to carry weapons.”
“Tyron, he’s calling us stupid,” Marko said. “He’s got a baaad attitude.”
“Mom’s gonna make sure we got good stuff to snack on,” Sami remarked. Sami’s mother had volunteered to organize the refreshments.
“I bet she does that real good,” Marko told her. “She’s sure got you stuffed with enough food to feed a herd of hippos.”
Kevin turned sharply. “Lane,” he asked directly, “instead of standing there making freakin’ comments, why don’t you ask your parents to help with this dance? I’d sure like to meet your parents. I’d like to meet the kind of people who raised a son without manners or compassion. I’d like to ask them what they think went wrong.”
The smile left Marko’s face. “I got great parents,” he snarled. “You should talk, Walker. You got a mother living in Texas who shipped you out here to live with a doddering old couple. That’s how much your mother cares about you.”
Carissa looked at Kevin. Her eyes asked the question, “Why don’t you tell him the truth? Why do you let him go on believing you’ve got a mother who has chosen not to be with her son?” Kevin thought to himself that he didn’t owe anybody any explanations. Then he noticed the uneasy expressions on the faces of his friends.
Nobody came right out and asked Kevin why he was out here with just his grandparents, but Alonee and Jaris looked puzzled. Why would the mother of such a wonderful son not want to be with him? Why would a mother not want to share in the life of such a wonderful son?
Kevin took a deep breath, then faced them all. “When I came here from Texas, I didn’t know anybody. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to talk about my life. I thought, if people knew the whole story, I’d get a lot of attention I couldn’t handle. So I just made it easy for myself. I said my folks sent me to live with my grandparents because the schools out here are better than we got in Spurville. I should have been up front in the beginning.”
They were all looking at him. There was a deep silence, almost a hush. Kevin spoke briskly. “My parents are dead. My dad died when I was very small, and my mom died a few months ago. I came here to live with my grandparents because they are the only family I have. So now you know, and that’s the end of it. Don’t anybody tell me how sorry they are. If you’re one of my friends, then I know you’re sorry and that’s all I need to know. If you’re not one of my friends, then you don’t care and that’s okay too. Don’t anybody make a big deal of it. Let’s just finish this list of parent volunteers.”
Everybody got quietly back to the business at hand, but the atmosphere was different. Even Marko decided not to say anything until Kevin and Carissa were almost done walking out the door. Then Kevin overheard Marko say, “I don’t believe what that dude told us. He just made that up. He’s got some deep, dark secrets from Spurville, and he made up that sob story. He’s afraid we’ll find out who he really is.”
“Maybe there was a crime down there,” Tyron said. “Maybe like his parents were big criminals, drug dealers or something. You hear about stuff like that all the time. Kevin is a creepy guy. He’s got some skeletons in his closet, that’s for sure.”
Kevin’s hands involuntarily hardened into fists. He wanted to grab Marko and Tyron and bang their heads together. He could almost hear the knock of their skulls echo off the gymnasium walls, and he could almost see them drop unconscious to the floor.
Carissa put her hand over Kevin’s. “Just ignore them,” she urged. “They’re not worth it. Let’s just pretend we didn’t even hear them. Everybody knows what they are. They just want to hurt people.”
Kevin and Marko both continued to improve on the track team as they prepared for the next meet against El Capitan. They were both running in the 100-meter race, and Marko was determined to win this time. Marko wasn’t sure he could win against a Kevin Walker at his best, but he hoped he might unearth something in Kevin’s path to throw him off his stride.
Grandpa Roy Stevens was out working his vegetable garden one day, when Tyron Becker came along. Grandpa already knew Marko Lane as a troublemaker, but he didn’t know Tyron.
“Looks like you’re putting in your tomatoes, eh sir?” Tyron asked in a respectful tone. He thought a man of old age would appreciate respect from a boy.
“Yep. Always been proud of my tomatoes. I don’t like to brag, but folks tell me they’re tastier than anything you can get in a store,” Grandpa said.
“I go to Tubman High,” Tyron told him. “Your grandson is well liked there. He’s a fine athlete.”
The old man grinned proudly. “Well, that’s nice to hear. We sure are proud of him. His mama called him Twister ’cause he’s always been quick as a Texas tornado. You a friend of Kevin’s?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Tyron lied.
“What’s your name boy?” Grandpa Roy asked. He had a pretty good memory, and he was familiar with most of the names Kevin mentioned as his friends.
“Uh . . . Bill,” Tyron finally answered. “We just got to be friends. He probably hasn’t said much about me. I think it’s great that you guys are making a home for Kevin, him being an orphan and all. That’s rough.”
“Well, the boy is a pleasure to have around. He lights up our old age. Gives us a reason for going on I guess. When you get to be almost eighty you’re apt to want to sit in your rocking chair, but the boy livens things up,” Grandpa said.
“It’s really awful what happened to Kevin’s parents down there in Spurville,” Tyron remarked, moving into his fishing expedition. He wanted to trick the old man into thinking he already knew some terrible truth. Tyron figured that, at his age, the old man could be easily tricked into revealing the whole story.
“Well,” Grandpa said vaguely, “we don’t understand why these things happen to good folks. We just got to trust in the Lord that He knows what He’s doing and it’ll all turn out right in the end.”
“Yeah, but it must have been a big shock when it happened,” Tyron said.
Grandpa Roy carefully planted the tomato deep in the ground. That was the secret of his good tomatoes. Put the plant down deep enough. He tamped the good black earth around it. Then he looked up at the boy. “Say what?” he asked.
“I was just thinking it must have been horrible when the thing happened like that, I mean, when your lives were like shattered by the . . . you know.” Tyron stumbled over his words, trying desperately to lure the old man into revealing something. Tyron valued his friendship with Marko. It meant going to places you couldn’t afford on your own. Marko’s father had deep pockets, and Tyron benefited too. He had to bring Marko something—something he could use against Kevin.
“We were expecting our daughter to pass on,” Grandpa Roy said. “It just about broke our hearts. Our daughter was our only child. When she got sick, we had a lot of hope and the doctors tried hard, but it was not to be. We had to let her go into the Lord’s hands.”
Tyron was worried now. Maybe there was no deep, terrible secret. “Your son-in-law was already dead then?” he asked. “How did he die?”
Grandpa Roy planted another tomato deep. He tamped the earth. He got slowly to his feet and brushed the dirt from the knees of his overalls. He straightened his arthritis-crippled body a little. “You ask a lot of questions boy,” he stated sternly.
“Yeah,” Tyron said nervously. “I like Kevin and I’m real interested in his . . . uh. . . life, you know?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Boy, the more I look at you, the more I don’t like the looks of you. You got eyes like a snake I once found hiding under the chicken coop. He was looking to eat my chicks. What are you after?” Grandpa Roy demanded.
Tyron gave up on the first plan, soft-soaping the old man in the hopes he’d release the information. Now Tyron turned to Plan B. “There’s something awful in Kevin’s past, isn’t there? We don’t know all the details, but we’re pretty sure he’s hiding something real ugly and some of the kids at Tubman are afraid of him. You better tell me the truth, mister, ’cause some of the kids want to run him outta school.”
“You git your hide off my property boy. I got me a shotgun, and, if you ain’t long gone before I have time to git it, you’re gonna be picking buckshot out of your behind for a good long time. So git!” Grandpa Roy commanded.
Tyron hurried off the property and jogged down the street away from the house on Iroquois Street. He had nothing promising to tell Marko, but the old man did seem pretty riled up, as if there were a secret of some kind. If there were nothing to it at all, would he have gotten so angry?
Roy Stevens went into the house and told Lena about the boy. “He was up to no good,” he concluded.
“It wasn’t that Marko Lane was it?” Grandma asked.
“No, I know that skunk by the sight of him,” Grandpa said.
When Kevin got home from school, Grandpa told him about the visitor.
“I bet it was Tyron Becker,” Kevin guessed. “He does Marko’s dirty work for him. Was he kinda flabby in the middle?”
“Yep, that he was,” Grandpa Roy affirmed. “A lazy-looking boy. I told him to git if he didn’t want his rear end filled with buckshot.”
Kevin grinned at his grandfather. Right now, with his eyes on fire, Grandpa Roy didn’t look almost eighty. He looked like he must have looked years ago when he came courting Lena Grady or when he fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea and earned a medal for valor.
During track practice on Wednesday afternoon, Coach Curry pitted his four fastest boys against each other in the 100-meter trial run. Trevor, Marko, Matson, and Kevin all ran. Sami stood on the sidelines wearing a T-shirt that read, “Go Matson #1.” She and Matson had become inseparable, and Matson was basking in the glow of having a first girlfriend—and someone who really believed in him. Kevin thought that the way Matson had been training, there was a chance he’d win the race.
The four boys waited for the signal and then charged out of the blocks. Matson took the lead at once, followed by Marko. Kevin was third, and Trevor brought up the rear. Once again Marko was so frantic to win that he was tight. Everything about him was tense and unnatural. His arms weren’t swinging at his sides as they should have been. Instead, he made fists of his hands as he ran.
Trevor overtook him, leaving Kevin and Matson running side by side. They were setting a torrid pace. Matson slipped over the finish line a second before Kevin.
Both Kevin and Matson embraced at the end of the race. “Matson, you were awesome,” Kevin cried. “You’ve improved so much I can’t believe it. You were greased lightning!”
Matson grinned happily. “You go, Twister,” he said.
Trevor passed Marko, who came in last in a wretched performance, stumbling over the finish line like a drunken man. His face was transfixed with rage. It was not about running anymore. He had to beat Kevin. He had to. When Carissa flew into Kevin’s arms and Alonee was hugging Trevor, Sami clutched Matson. Marko turned his back on all of them, hurrying off the field. Coach Curry followed him. “Marko, we all have bad days. You’re a much better runner than you just showed. Don’t let it get you down,” he said. Marko ignored him, quickening his pace off the field.
Kevin was getting to like Carissa more with each passing day. He enjoyed being with her no matter what they did. Just stopping for a burrito with her was a big deal. Kevin was usually a quiet person, but he wanted to pour out his heart and his dreams to Carissa.
One evening, Kevin and Carissa walked down to a little pizza place and sat there talking.
“I had my first boyfriend when I was fourteen,” Carissa said. “I was really stupid. He was like sixteen. My mom, you know, I love her so much, but she wants to be my pal. We’re more like girlfriends than mother and daughter. She’s really young. She never wants to boss me around, you know. My dad, he’s even worse. He acts really young. He loves my music. He calls me “Daddy’s little girl,” but he doesn’t, you know, protect me. . .”
Carissa looked sad for a moment. Then she went on. “This guy I dated . . . he took me to the beach one night. Big party going on. What did I know? I was fourteen. Everybody drinking beer and smoking dope too. I didn’t even know what those pills were. I mean, I drink wine at my house, but they were chug a-lugging beer and some whisky too . . . I never drank so much like that night. . .”
Kevin felt sorry for Carissa. He sensed where this was going. Her parents shouldn’t have let her date a sixteen-year-old. They shouldn’t have let her go to an all-night beach party. But they did.
“I was so drunk. . .” Carissa continued, “I didn’t know what was happening. Some people called the cops from a house. The cops took me to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. I was so ashamed. I shouldn’t even be telling you this, Kevin. You’ll think I’m a bad person. . .”