Stepping Up to the Plate

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

Long lunch tables stretched around one half of the cafeteria, the kind that brushed the ceiling when folded up, not in use, and had small disc-shaped stools attached to them every two feet or so. Men and women sat behind the tables, laptop computers open in front of them like stations. These were the counselors, then. Students were already seated in front of most of them, squeezed onto the stools like overgrown children. In the center of the room folding chairs had been set up, and more students sat in those, leafing through their folders or hunched over to fill out the registration forms. Behind them the kitchen was roped off and dark, the serving line empty.

Stacy stopped in the middle of the cafeteria, right near the doors where the trash cans would be set out during lunches. The serving line divided the room into two—to his right, where the counselors were, was unofficially the freshman side. No one ate over there but new or unpopular students, no one. Even Stacy had opted for the other side of the cafeteria while he was in school, the senior side. It had been noisy and crowded, true, but eating with the freshman—even if you were one—was asking for it. Despite his reputation, Stacy had never gone looking for a fight, though they still seemed to find him all the same.

Behind him someone grumbled, “Just stand there, will you?” Stacy stepped aside, away from the doors, as an older man stormed into the cafeteria. The folder in his hands hinted that he too was a student. At the first empty chair he plopped down, shuffling through the papers in the folder with an irritation Stacy could understand. There was no way he planned to sit here and read all afternoon. What the hell kind of program was this, anyway?

That made him grin, though he cleared his throat and twisted his lips so no one would see him smirking at himself. Again he wished one of his friends was here—even Colin would laugh at that lame joke, mostly from the way Stacy said it and not because he actually got it, but still. Stacy didn’t want to read the course descriptions, he didn’t want to fill out the damn form. He wanted to do whatever he had to do to get in the classes he needed and then go home.

He hated it here. Too many demons from his past haunted these empty corridors, rattling the lockers like noisy ghosts. At least registration wasn’t held in the gym—he would have never been able to walk through the baseball diamond around the back of the school, or past the stands of bleachers folded against the gym walls, or by the doors that led to the locker rooms. Too many memories there. Too much pain.

A girl his own age stood up from the counselor’s station closest to him, and before she could even move aside Stacy slid in her place. To the counselor he said, “Hey,” ignoring the hateful look the girl shot his way. He laid his folder on the table between them. “They told me I need to get into a class.”

Behind him the girl swung away, her purse catching Stacy in the back. “Watch it, b***h,” he growled over his shoulder, but she either didn’t hear him or pretended she didn’t—she walked briskly through the cafeteria, heading for the senior side, and didn’t spare him another glance. When he turned around the counselor stared at him as if she couldn’t figure out just what it was he expected from her. “Hey.” He gave the folder a nudge in her direction.

Upside down she read his name on the registration form. “Stacy Evans. Didn’t you pitch JV a few years back?”

Finally, someone who remembered him for something good for a change. “Yeah, a bit. Who’re you?”

“Jodi Frye.” Her voice was husky, smoked out, an androgynous voice that didn’t go with her heavy makeup and frosted hair. She had long red fingernails, shiny in the overhead lights like polished sports cars, which made Stacy think of Ange. Maybe if he got out of here sometime before noon, he could take the bus over to his friend’s garage apartment instead of going home. Lamar was off today, and as soon as Stacy came in, he’d rag on him about the classes. He didn’t need that s**t. Ange worked ‘til one, but Stacy knew how to pop the garage padlock. He could strip down and lie naked on Ange’s fold-out sofa bed, surprise his friend when he came in. An excellent idea…what was he doing here again?

With a throaty laugh, the counselor told him, “I was Jodi Mayes back then. Two years ahead of you, I think. Remember Price Frye?” Quarterback for the varsity football team, how could Stacy forget? Wiggling her Porsche-red fingernails, she showed him a wedding ring, as if he cared. “I’m due in October. Our first, a girl. What about you?”

“I’m not pregnant,” Stacy muttered. Couldn’t they just get this over with already? Who did Jodi think she was? So she had been a senior the year he dropped out, so she knew he played ball, so what? He didn’t want to see her ring or talk about her baby or her husband or her life—she never once spared him a thought back in the day, why start now? “Look, is this going to take all day? Because I have other s**t I could be doing, you know?”

Jodi’s bright eyes narrowed. Her hand dropped to his folder, her fingernails like claws tipped in fresh blood. “Fine.” Then, noticing his blank registration form for the first time, she noted, “You’re supposed to fill this out.”

“You’re just going to type it up anyway,” Stacy countered. “I’ll tell you the answers and you put them into the computer, how’s that? So I don’t waste any more time here than I have to.”

She didn’t answer, just frowned at him, waiting. For what, he couldn’t guess. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to make any move to leave, she sighed dramatically. He kept quiet. “Fine.” With a flick of her wrist she pushed the folder his way, then turned to the computer as if dismissing him. Her fingernails clacked over the keyboard at such an angry pace that it sounded like she was using an old fashioned typewriter instead of a laptop. Her voice was chipped in ice when she spoke. “Last name?”

“Evans,” Stacy replied. He leaned over the table, trying to see the screen, but she caught him looking and angled the computer away. “First name Stacy. You know this.”

“Stacy,” she echoed. Then, in a pissy tone, she asked, “What kind of name is that for a guy?”

She wanted him to bite back, give her some reason to pawn him off on someone else, but Stacy didn’t take the bait. “Ever heard of Stacy Keach?” All his life he’d heard the same question, and he had answers ready for it. “He’s an actor. Or George Stacey Davis, in the Baseball Hall of Fame?”

“No,” Jodi snapped.

Stacy shrugged. “Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they ain’t famous.”

She chose to ignore that. “Middle initial?”

“Davis.”

One corner of her mouth lifted up in a smirk. “I assume you meant d. Address?” With a slight movement she shook the hair back from her face and raised her chin just enough to look down at him as she struggled to hold onto her frown. She expected him to name a street in the bad part of town, he knew it, and he hated the fact that he wasn’t able to disappoint her. Lamar’s apartment complex was notorious, always in the paper for skirmishes with the police or drug busts, cable theft, gunshots. His mother’s neighborhood wasn’t so bad but the homes there were small and old and emptying out as their tenets died and the meager lots of land didn’t sell. Ange lived near the rail yards and Colin in Section 8 housing, government projects.

And this lady, Jodi? With her diamond ring and painted nails, silver highlights through her blonde hair? This girl who used to be head cheerleader, he remembered now, married to her quarterback husband and expecting her first child, where did she live? Sherwood Hills no doubt, or over off of Johnson Road, in one of those stately subdivisions with a name like Camelot or Shangri-la. Someplace otherworldly, somewhere unreal. Stacy would even bet that this was charity work for her. And the moment he blurted out that he lived over on Lee Street she’d grin, smug, cat-like, because of course someone like him would live in a place like that. Of course.

Before he could answer, a woman edged through the space between the table and the wall, behind Jodi. Stacy saw stretched polyester pants and knew it had to be a teacher with fashion sense like that…he looked up to see Mrs. Wilson, who taught politics or government, one of the two. He’d never had her—government was a upper-classman course, but she had detention duty from time to time and he knew her from there.

If she recognized him, she didn’t show it. In fact, she didn’t bother to look his way. “Any new ones for me?” she asked Jodi, brandishing a handful of registration forms. Like they weren’t busy here. Like he didn’t even exist.

Stacy wondered which trade course she taught so he’d know which one not to take. “New what?”

“Right here,” Jodi said, ignoring him again. Was he that easy to blot out?

“New what?” he asked a second time, as Jodi handed Mrs. Wilson a couple more forms. To the teacher, Stacy said, “Which course do you teach?”

Mrs. Wilson didn’t answer. “Any more?” she asked, glancing around the table but never raising her gaze to include him on the opposite side.

“Any more what?” Stacy wanted to know. But Jodi shook her head and turned back to her screen, and Mrs. Wilson slid between her and the wall as she continued down the table. Stacy hunkered into himself. “Don’t answer me or nothing.”

“We weren’t talking to you,” Jodi replied. Then, as if she couldn’t be bothered with him much longer, she asked again, “Address?”