5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Elise
T he next morning, I showed up fifteen minutes early to practice. A cool breeze whipped at my ponytail, and I shivered, wishing I had thought to bring a jacket. Despite the cold, I was glad to have made it here before anyone else to spend some time in my favorite place and process my thoughts.
Why hadn’t Dad or Grandma told me about their disagreements with our back door neighbors? Aside from the fact that they considered our backyard their personal trash receptacle, I’d had no idea there was any problem with them.
Alright, I did wonder why they insisted on dumping every spare bit of garbage over the fence, and why they’d let their once decent home deteriorate into a glorified cesspool of filth and waste, but I thought maybe they were just grumpy slobs.
Last night, Grandma had shuffled into her room and returned with a copy of an offer to purchase our lot, the home included, for a staggering amount of money. Apparently, they wanted to build a gas station on ours and the back door neighbor’s properties.
Grandma said the neighbors were furious when Dad told them he wasn’t going to take the offer. Of course, they knew they would make way more selling to the gas company than they would if they tried to sell their dump of a house any other way. And that’s around the time when the garbage started getting chucked over the fence.
Detective Fulsom had been right about the regular withdrawal of large amounts from Dad’s bank account. It hadn’t taken long to figure out his password—a combination of Mom’s name and my birthdate—and view his account history.
For years, a one-thousand-dollar withdrawal had been made the first of every month. Until a couple of months before Dad’s disappearance when the sum changed to one thousand, two hundred and fifty. Then, on the first of the month he went missing, no withdrawal. Why? Was that somehow the reason for his death? I hated the detective’s theory, but what if someone had been blackmailing Dad? Then again, what could they have possibly blackmailed him about? Dad was so conscientious he never even missed a day of church.
So, what was the money going towards if not blackmail? Dad never paid for anything with cash.
“Hi Coach!”
I jumped. “Oh, hi Rose.” Smiling, I lowered my fists, as if I hadn’t been ready to punch the freckled freshman in the face. Bessey trotted over to the girl and gave her fair skin a lick.
“I made you this.” She held out a cupcake covered in lopsided frosting and sprinkles.
“Thank you.” I took the treat. Technically, I wasn’t eating sugar, but that didn’t make the offering less meaningful. “That was really thoughtful of you.”
“Avery says hello. She feels super bad about what’s happened. We all do.” Rose lowered her eyes.
I took advantage of the momentary privacy to absorb the pain before twisting my features into another polite smile. “Thanks.” I cleared my throat, then continued. “You ready for today? I hope you brought your water bottle.”
Should I tell her how brutal today’s training was going to be? Her older sister had craved that kind of a challenge. Would she?
With a nod at one of the other kids that approached, I set the cupcake beside my clipboard on the cool bleachers.
Bessey sniffed at the treat.
“I don’t think so.” I moved the cupcake to the concrete wall dividing the bleachers from the track to keep the garbage-gut dog from devouring the treat and puking all over the track.
Carrying a large black speaker and extension cord, Dylan walked onto the track’s gritty black surface. Not surprisingly, he was already shirtless, which meant I would have to spend the whole workout looking anywhere other than at him.
Great.
Why couldn’t I have an assistant coach who followed the norms of society and didn’t walk around with their blindingly perfect physique on full display daily?
“What’s that for?” I called to him.
“Motivation.”
This couldn’t be good.
Dylan arranged the equipment on the side of the track, then went back to his car for more. Some of our older boys who had been his teammates gave him high-fives as he headed toward the track with more speakers and gear.
“You guys are going to love this,” he told them.
Not good at all.
Most of our kids had arrived and were fully stretched by the time Dylan had his sound system set up. They all crowded around him, the girls giggling, the boys shouting out names of songs he should add to his playlist.
“It’s time to get started,” I called.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the moment has arrived.” After pressing a button on his laptop, Dylan flicked his wrists as if wielding invisible drumsticks to the opening beats of “My Hero” by Foo Fighters.
Ugh. I pressed my fingers against my temples. Why did karma dislike me so thoroughly?
This practice was going to be horrific.