The Lateral

Chapter 3

I stared at myself in the mirror, unsure, and I tugged on the hem of my skirt. It wasn’t like I had to worry about showing too much skin, because this guy had already seen a lot more than what was visible right now. But I was concerned about him getting the wrong idea. I wanted to look the part; tonight I was a date and not the dancer he’d watched. I leaned forward and worked on my mascara, trying to take some off.

“I don’t understand why you have to do this,” Meadow said from the bathroom door. It was a small space, so she was about six inches away from me. “Why do I have to go to stupid Calandra’s with her smelly son?”

“Phoenix has to be back at work tomorrow so he’ll drive downstate tonight. I have today off, and you don’t have school until Tuesday. This is the best time for it,” I explained.

“His name is Phoenix? Isn’t that a place? How dumb.”

I didn’t say that her name was also a place, and that my name meant something burnt. “I don’t mind it,” I answered instead.

“Why don’t you go out with Jake Koval?”

“What?” I put down the contour and looked at her. “Why would I go out with him?”

“I know he was here the other day. I heard him,” she explained. Then she made some deep, growly noises in the back of her throat and I laughed, happy that we were getting along so well.

“That does sound like his voice! But he only came over to drop something off.” I considered. “I would go out with him, though. I think he’s cute.”

“No, he isn’t!” she told me. “He’s big and ugly.”

“He’s big, but ugly?” I shook my head. “I don’t agree.” He didn’t look much like the boys I saw her gravitating towards, though, because they were just that: boys. Jake Koval wasn’t a boy anymore, and I wondered if he’d ever looked so young and soft, like a delicate, fuzzy peach instead of a rough, stony mountain.

“He’s old, too,” she went on.

“How old is he?” I wondered, and she went and got her phone to look him up.

“Jake Koval,” she announced, and showed me the page she had found. It was his Woodsmen football biography. “He’s twenty-seven, and that’s close to thirty. Damn, he’s really tall,” she said, and I saw her eyes get big as she kept reading. “Is that right?” She glanced up at the ceiling, judging how high he’d reached, and then nodded. “He weighs a shit-ton, too.”

“It’s important for football,” I said, as if I had a clue. “Also, don’t swear.”

“He’s from California but he went to college in Florida. He played for the Rustlers before they traded him here. His interests are fly fishing and raising animals.” She looked up at me, interested. “What kinds?” I was monitoring what she looked at on her phone, an old one that her mother must have given her that was on my plan, now. Her search history was almost all about animals, wild and domestic, and also some questions about drug varieties and their abuse. But that made sense, unfortunately.

“I don’t know anything about his life,” I answered. “I don’t think we’ll see him again to ask, but I bet there’s a lot of information about him if you keep looking.” I pointed at her phone, and she nodded. If she asked anyone around this area about him, she’d probably also get an earful. The people here were crazy about this flipping football team, as Calandra had demonstrated when she’d almost passed out as I’d talked about meeting him. And yes, it was pretty exciting. He was rich and famous and all that. I’d also met some stars in Los Angeles, actors and big-time movie people, but they hadn’t been half as nice as he had been. I still couldn’t understand why he’d given back the money I’d paid him—more than the money I’d paid him.

Meadow wandered off toward the couch. “I wonder if he has a barn,” I heard her say, and I smiled at myself in the mirror. This was the nicest conversation we’d had in days, ever since the terrible experience at the community center when we’d been thrown out. Although, that hadn’t ended so badly. Jake Koval had helped me clean up and had returned the money, and later, Meadow had emerged from her room to eat dinner before I’d left for work. I’d been able to tell that she’d felt bad, and it wasn’t only about blowing the chance for a new backpack. She’d told me that what I was cooking smelled good and she hadn’t said it only because she’d missed lunch due to being angry and hiding. Down at the heart of her, she was a sweet girl, but it was buried under so much anger. That also made sense, and it was also very sad.

I gave myself one last check in the mirror and decided that I was ready. Meadow seemed ok about going to Calandra’s place, or at least, she didn’t complain too much about it (especially when I said that I was having pizza delivered for everyone). Calandra’s mom Petrise acted happy to see us when we arrived, smiling widely when she opened the door to their trailer. I quietly asked her if things were ok, if they were getting along and if everyone was behaving, and Petrise answered that everything was fine! She and Meadow and Calandra’s son Dreyden got along great together, she promised, and I’d hoped that it was true.

I had to hurry because I was meeting my date at a bar that was kind of out of the way and the weather was taking a turn for the worse. The sky was dark grey and the clouds seemed to be dropping down lower as I rushed along the roads in my little car. I had never been to this place—I had never been to very many places in the area, which was what I told Phoenix when I got there, finally.

“I moved here in October,” I explained. “I’m from the Detroit area originally, from Taylor, but I’ve lived all over. Years ago, I left home and drove across the country and I led a nomadic life for a while. Since I came up north, I’ve been too busy with work and with Meadow to spend time exploring. I love going to the lake and I really want to swim next summer. I have to learn, first.”

“Great,” he said. He looked at his phone, and I thought that possibly I’d been talking too much.

“What about you?” I asked. “Did you enjoy your vacation here?”

“Yeah. Are you done?” He pointed at my glass, which was half-full.

“Oh, do you want to go somewhere else?” It felt like we’d just arrived, but I was game to try something new. As I’d just said, I hadn’t seen much and now would be a great time to look around.

“Let’s go,” he urged, and handed me my mug of beer. He’d paid for it, which was nice, and it would have been rude to waste it. I took the glass and chugged, a talent I’d always had.

“Nice.” He smiled. “Follow me in your car.”

I did, but we didn’t go to another bar or to a restaurant, either. Instead, he pulled into a parking lot alongside an older-looking apartment building. “This is my buddy’s place, but they’re all on the road driving home. I have the key,” Phoenix told me as I got out.

I walked slowly to join him as he opened the front door. “What are we doing here?”

“Let’s continue this in the condo,” he answered, and went into the small, dim lobby.

I followed to get out of the cold, but I needed a better response. “I thought we were going out.”

“We did. I got you a beer,” he told me, and then he pushed me up against the wall and started kissing me. He kissed hard, smashing our mouths together and grinding his teeth against my lip.

It was a while before he came up for air. “Slow down,” I said, pushing on his chest.

“Let’s go to the condo.” He gripped my upper arm and started walking me toward the dark staircase.

“No, I don’t want to go upstairs.”

“Yeah,” he told me and kept moving, pulling me along.

“No,” I repeated, but he didn’t want to listen. Why were men like this? Why did they do these things? Why had I thought that a date with this guy was a good idea? I didn’t know the answers, but a few things were obvious. One of them was that he had a plan, and something else that was clear was what he thought about me. Taking off some mascara hadn’t made me anything like a date in his mind; I was there for one reason only.

Later that night, when I picked up Meadow at Calandra’s place, it was dark enough that no one really saw the aftereffects of what had happened. But she did the next day and so did the woman who interviewed me at the trinket shop in our town. They’d called me in after I’d applied but I wasn’t going to get a job there now, no way.

“Thank you for your time,” I told her, and she looked sympathetic but also firm. She didn’t smile and she didn’t suggest that anyone would be in touch. I didn’t blame her, but I was sorry. I put on the big sunglasses that I kept for this purpose, tugged up the collar of my jacket, and ducked my chin into it.

There was a slight commotion outside on the street, right in front of the store that had farm kind of stuff. Meadow and I had gone in once because she’d said that they sold baby birds, ducklings and chicks. I’d gotten the feeling that she was going to guilt me into buying some, but luckily they only had them in the spring so we’d left bird-free. If I was having trouble taking care of one semi-grown human, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to manage my own flock.

The commotion there now centered on a big man who stood outside the shop doors. He was surrounded by a crowd of people, and three of them were women who smiled and tossed their hair as they spoke to him. He was backing away, one step at a time, but every time he moved? They followed. I watched, shivering, as they slowly progressed down the sidewalk until they were directly in front of my car. He turned and spotted me, and I thought I saw relief on his face. I also saw that he was red, like he’d been out in the sun or maybe he had windburn.

“Ember,” he said, and detached from the crowd. They lingered but he walked quickly over to me.

“Hi, Jake,” I answered, and he noticed the problem as quickly as the lady who had interviewed me in the tourist trap store.

“What happened to you?” he immediately asked. “Did Meadow do that? If she’s putting her hands on you—”

“No, no,” I assured him, and I touched the split in my bottom lip. “She didn’t do it. I had a date.”

“A date? A man hit you?”

“He headbutted me and it hurt my mouth and gave me a bloody nose.” That was swollen and my eyes had gone a little black and blue, but not too bad. Unfortunately, none of it was totally invisible, even after the pancake of makeup that I’d put on this morning.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sidewalk, where the throng had mostly disbursed but the three women were still there, and still smiling at him. “I want to talk to you more. Follow my truck to my house,” he said, and I thought of the last time I’d followed a guy home. “I just want to talk,” he told me.

But as I continued to hesitate, he seemed to understand—at least, he didn’t get mad that I wasn’t agreeing. “Is Meadow at school?” he asked suddenly.

“No, she goes back tomorrow,” I answered.

“Bring her over to the stadium later,” he said. “I’ll text directions for how to get in.”

“You have my number?”

“You gave it to me, Ember Easley.” He nodded and then walked back to his car, and I remembered that yeah, I had given it to him. He had remembered, too?

Meadow was excited to go to the place where the Woodsmen played, but she was still acting cautious and weird around me. That had started when she’d seen my injuries. “I’m fine,” I had assured her, but she’d avoided looking at me and hadn’t talked much, either, up until I said that we’d been invited to Woodsmen Stadium. Jake Koval texted like he’d said he would, and wrote that security would meet us at the main gate and then would escort us in. But still, I kept glancing over at her as I drove, more than a little worried that this plan would go wrong.

People could mess you over. In some cases, they didn’t even mean to—Jake Koval probably thought that it was no big deal to invite us to the stadium. He wouldn’t have considered how disappointed Meadow would be if we drove all the way there and then the security guard said nope, you guys aren’t on the list. Go home.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye enough times that she finally told me to stop it. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Why do you keep staring like a creep?”

“I was just thinking about the star,” I admitted.

“What star?”

“The one for the top of our Christmas tree. I really tried to find it,” I said. “I looked everywhere online and I went to a bunch of stores. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care about that.” She was looking out the window as she spoke and I couldn’t see her face, so I wondered what she was thinking.

“Maybe we’ll have it for next year,” I said. “I’ll keep looking.”

“Next year I’ll have the real one. I’ll be back with my mom,” she stated flatly, and I didn’t have an answer. I hoped more than anything that the people at the stadium would have our names and we’d be able to get in.

“I’m Ember,” I said after I’d made the turn into the broad road and stopped at the little guardhouse at the end of it. “Easley,” I added. “I’m Ember Easley, and this is Meadow Pruett.”

“Pruett-Weiss!” she yelled, but the security woman in that little house didn’t blink.

“Welcome. Jimmy’s going to direct you,” she told me, and pointed to a guy in a golf cart who smiled and waved.

I followed the orange cart down a long, wide drive that led to the stadium. Even from far away, you could see how huge it was, just a massive building and parking lots that stretched for acres. Those were mostly empty but there were enough people here that I whispered to Meadow, “Is there a game?”

“Today? No!” she told me in a normal voice, which made me clear my throat. I had just been a little awed by this place. “The Woodsmen are in the playoffs and they have a game on Wednesday this week. I think they’ll win,” she mentioned.

“Really? Is the other team bad?”

“No, but the Woodsmen are better,” she stated confidently. To my surprise, she told me exactly why. She used a lot of terminology and I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but it sure sounded like she knew what she meant. I listened and tried to absorb it as I continued slowly behind the vehicle that was even smaller than mine, all the way up to the side of the giant stadium. We parked and the driver walked to a door that he unlocked and held open for us.

After that distance in the open cart, he was red with the cold, but he smiled nicely. “Ladies, right this way.”

“Thank you,” I told him, and he smiled bigger. We followed him again down a hallway and into what looked like a large living room, with lots of couches, bins of children’s toys and books, and TVs on the walls.

“This is where the players’ families come after the games,” the guy explained. “There are lots of kids.”

“It’s really nice,” I approved as I looked around. It seemed very cozy to me.

Meadow seemed less than impressed, though. “I thought that stuff for the Woodsmen would be fancier,” she said. “Like…gold. Shiny stuff.”

“I think they were trying to make it homey,” the golf cart guy explained. “They want everyone to be comfortable and to relax. Sometimes it’s tense in here after a loss. Oh…” He had been smiling at me, but he stopped and looked serious. “Hello,” he said to the man who’d just joined us.

Jake Koval nodded back at him and the guy took off. “Thank you,” I called, but he was moving fast.

“You made it,” the Woodsmen player said. He was eyeing Meadow, and I nudged her. We’d had a little discussion on our way over, or at least, she hadn’t told me to shut up and sprinkled in swear words as I’d issued instructions about her behavior.

“Hello,” she mumbled and his blue eyes opened wider. They were a beautiful color, light under his very dark brows that were the same shade as his hair. That, as usual, was pulled back into a ponytail, but today a piece had snuck out and was brushing against his cheek. It looked soft and silky, and really out of place.

“Hello, Meadow. I heard you’re a fan.”

She looked up and met his eyes. “Yeah. I guess,” she acknowledged, and then shot a glare at me. Obviously, I’d been the one to clue him in on that, because I’d texted him back earlier today to say thank you and that Meadow was going to be so excited.

“She knows a lot of stuff,” I said, thinking of what she’d told me on the way over here. “She was talking about defensive packages, and I bet you know what that means.”

“I do,” he agreed.

“She says that the Sierras might not use their quarter against you,” I added, nudging her.

She stepped away, out of reach of my elbow. “I said the nickel,” she reminded me. “I don’t see them moving out of their base package very much at all.”

“Yeah?” Jake asked. “What makes you say so?”

She knew exactly, and she told him as he walked us back into the hallway. We went in the opposite direction from the door and through about twenty miles of passageways, and the two of them talked football the whole time. I listened and understood nothing, but it was very exciting to hear them speaking like normal people and not insulting each other and viciously swearing. I did realize again, though, that I needed to exercise. I was getting tired…

Jake finally halted. “Here’s the tunnel,” he announced. “I took the long way around because you’re not allowed in the locker room area.”

“This is the tunnel to the field?” Meadow asked. “The actual field?”

“It’s the only one inside this building,” he answered. He swept his arm toward it, like an invitation.

She didn’t move, though. “I can go on it?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nobody’s stopping you,” he said.

“Hold on!” I ordered, and got out my phone. “Now I’m ready.” I recorded her walking out and I got the shot of her face as she stepped onto the turf. I’d never seen her so excited and happy, not since she was a baby.

“Does it hurt that bad?”

“Huh?” I asked, looking up at Jake briefly before returning my gaze to Meadow. I didn’t want to miss any of this.

“Does your face hurt? Is that why you’re crying?”

“Oh, no. No, that’s fine. I’m emotional because I’m really, really glad that she gets to do this. Look at her!” I said. We both watched Meadow carefully cross the area at the end of the field, then turn to smile at the white letters spelling “Woodsmen” in the orange grass.

“What happened to you? What man did that?”

“Just someone I went out with,” I said briefly. “How did she learn so much about football? Is it taught in the schools here?”

“It could be. What guy did you go out with?”

I focused on him for a moment. “It was someone I met at work. You don’t have to tell me that I shouldn’t have dated anyone from the club because Calandra said it enough. She’s my friend, also a dancer,” I explained. “But he seemed nice, so I tried it. Oh, well.”

“Oh, well?” he echoed. “That’s all you have to say about somebody beating you?”

“It was only a headbutt,” I explained again. “When I started bleeding, he got disgusted, and I was already fighting a lot. He let me go.”

“He was keeping you somewhere?”

“He was trying to pull me into an apartment. I have no idea how he thought that was going to work, up all those stairs,” I said, shaking my head. “I screamed, too. Somebody would have reacted eventually.”

“You’re pretty fucking calm about a man—”

“Ember!”

My head snapped around at the sound of my name. Meadow had used it to get my attention! What a win! “What’s up?” I called back, trying to maintain my cool.

“Take a picture of me with the upright,” she ordered. She stood against the white pole in one of the modeling poses I’d seen her practicing, and honestly, she was just as pretty as the women she admired online. She had her mother’s looks for sure and Christal had been so beautiful before…before.

Meadow flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and smiled at me. “I can’t believe we’re here!” she said, and I smiled back, ready to cry more tears of happiness.

“Come on,” Jake Koval ordered. “I’ll show you more.”

“More” meant introducing her to a few players who were in the building, and she turned pale with excitement as I took more pictures. We also ran into a group of the Woodsmen dance squad and they came over to say hello. They were so nice to her, and when she said she wished that one day she could be like them, they took it very seriously. They told her where to take classes, what to focus on. I listened too, and I also watched Jake Koval. He didn’t seem to care much about these beautiful women. In fact, he was actively ignoring them, not looking at all even though they were extremely cute in their little shorts and spandex stuff. He had turned the other way.

“Is it like how the bouncer at B-Dzld isn’t supposed to mess with us?” I asked.

He’d been checking his phone, frowning at it, and now he seemed confused. “What?”

“Do you have to pretend like you’re not interested in the Wonderbra Girls because you’d get in trouble if you went after them?”

“I don’t want to go after them. You know how many laws your date broke?” He showed me his phone like it was proof, but the text was very small and I didn’t have my glasses.

“There are probably a few, but I don’t have to worry about him,” I said. “He lives downstate.”

“What the fuck difference does that make?”

Meadow and the women looked over at us, because he’d asked me pretty loudly. His normal voice wasn’t quiet, not by any means, and it was even louder now because he seemed angry. I saw them frown at him and I understood.

“He didn’t do this,” I said reassuringly, pointing to my face. They just stared and I watched Meadow’s expression turn stony. She said thanks to the Wunderbar women and walked down the hall.

“Where is she going?” I asked, but Jake Koval followed her without answering me.

“Come on and I’ll show you the equipment rooms,” he said to Meadow. “In the offseason, we can go in the training rooms and the locker room. There are guys in there right now.”

Both of them ignored me and I understood why. I had been trying to make things better, but I’d embarrassed Meadow and probably him, too. That was never, ever my intention. As they picked up footballs and talked about inflation, I apologized.

“I’m sorry for saying that,” I told them. “I made those girls uncomfortable with my lip and it definitely didn’t help me get the job today, either. I should probably just stay home until I’m all healed. I’m really sorry.”

Meadow shrugged and stared at the floor. Jake didn’t say anything in response, but his emotions were much easier to read, because he was glaring at me and shaking his head.

“It’s time to go,” he announced, and now she looked up at him, momentarily stricken. Then she stared at the floor again but she was angry, too.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Meadow has school tomorrow.” As soon as I said those words, I could have bitten off my tongue. Was that really the way to make friends with her, by reminding her of a place where she was miserable? “Sorry,” I repeated, but no one seemed to care that I really was.

Before we drove out, I searched for a different destination on my phone and directed us there instead of straight home. Meadow, hiding in the back seat, didn’t notice what was happening until we stopped.

“What are you doing?”

“I think we should go in here and get a new backpack,” I said. “To start off the new year, you should have it.”

“I thought you said I would only get it if I did the exercise thing or the Helping Hands.”

“Yeah, well…I decided that you also deserve it for being such a gracious guest on the Woodsmen Stadium tour,” I said, as inspiration struck me. “You really impressed Jake Koval with all your football knowledge.”

“And you really embarrassed him by making it sound like he was the guy who beat you up,” she snarled.

“I didn’t mean to do that.” And if that guy had beat me? I would have suffered a lot more damage. But he had seemed pretty infuriated by the whole deal, and I bet that he wasn’t the kind of man who hit the women he dated. That was good, except it always felt awful to be accused of something that you didn’t deserve.

“Are you seriously buying me a backpack?” she asked suspiciously.

“I seriously am, if you still want it.”

In answer, she got out of the car and went briskly toward the sporting goods store. I followed after putting on the big sunglasses and putting up the collar of my coat. As I walked, I also ducked my chin to hide the split in my lip, which I considered to be the worst injury. You might have thought that my nose was a little big for my face, or that I hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep which had caused deep, dark circles around my eyes—but you wouldn’t have been confused about my lip. It was a dead giveaway.

Pretty soon, she was very involved in choosing between light blue and light purple backpacks. “A few people have the purple one,” she mentioned. “Blair has it.”

“Blair” was a name that had come up before, both from Meadow and from the school counselor during my meetings with her. That lady had called Blair “a standout in the classroom” with “a strong personality,” a student who felt “comfortable in a leadership position” and who was “really admired by the other girls—the vast majority of them.”

I thought I knew what that meant, so I’d asked straight out: “She’s the biggest bully?”

No, according to the school, but yes, according to Meadow. “Do you want the same color that she has?” I asked, and Meadow bit her lip, thinking. “I like the green,” I mentioned. “It will bring out your hazel eyes.” I coughed, pushing my chin deeper into my collar to muffle it.

“My mom has the same color eyes as me,” she said, and glanced in my direction. “I guess you do, too.”

I nodded. “I like that you and I both have them.”

She rolled those eyes as she turned away. “My mom and I have blonde hair. Yours is only brown,” she pointed out, which was true. But everyone had always said that her mom Christal and I looked just alike, which meant that Meadow and I did as well. I didn’t say that because I didn’t want to make her madder.

But she’d listened to me, because she did pick up the green backpack to look at it. That was the one she carried to the sales counter at the front of the store.

That night I went to work, where Calandra was upset about my injuries but bit her lip and didn’t make any statements like “I told you so” about how I shouldn’t have gone out with a customer. Good things continued when I managed to wake up the next morning and got Meadow off to school on time with her new winter coat and her new backpack. I watched her get on the bus and I hoped she would have a good day—it was very possible that she would. I stayed at the window until the bus disappeared and then I picked up my phone.

“Sorry,” I texted, which was something I’d been thinking a lot about, and I knew that this day wouldn’t continue to go well without me trying to fix this.

“For what?” Jake Koval wrote back. He was awake early, too, but maybe he was getting ready for that big game that Meadow had mentioned.

I thought for a moment about the best way to say it before I wrote, “I’m sorry that I embarrassed you at the stadium. You were doing a really nice thing for Meadow and I shouldn’t have talked about my bruises in front of the Superwomen dancers. Thank you for inviting us. We both loved it.”

“I got it.”

I frowned at the screen. What did he get? My text? My thanks?

“Come to the game tomorrow.”

What?“Really?”

“Really.”

Well! I had been right and this day was shaping up to be one of the best in history. It didn’t even bother me that my lip was bleeding again because I was smiling so big.