Singled Out (6 page)

After two rings, I got a brusque “Hello?” She sounded annoyed.

“Hi, Gabby.” I was going to say, “It’s Taylor,” but l knew that she knew that, so I just took a pause. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
And I’m afraid they’re coming after me next and I need your help, so please tell me what happened.

“Uh, yeah, I’m okay. Least I’m home and things are back to normal.”

She didn’t sound okay. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just let it come out. “Listen, I just want you to know I know you didn’t steal anything and—”

“Damn right I didn’t,” she said, cutting me off.

I continued. “I overheard some of the guys talking about setting you up and I was hoping you could tell me what happened exactly.”

“What’s the point, Taylor? It’s done now.”

“I was going to tell Dr. Rich about it and I thought, maybe . . . Don’t you want to come back?” I said.

“I wouldn’t come back for a million dollars,” Gabby said. “I don’t want to spend one more minute with those fools.”

“Can you just tell me what happened? Did they say anything about a guy named Mike?”

“What? No. Listen, what good will it do you to hear all this?”

I wasn’t sure if she would care that I was next on the chopping block, but I gave it a shot. “I think they’re going to try to set me up next, and I just want to avoid it if I can.”

“What do you mean?” Gabby said. She sounded shocked. “What makes you think that?”

“They called you ‘girl number one.’ I assume that means me and Kwan are next.”

“Why would they want to get rid of you?”

“I guess because we have breasts—same reason they didn’t want you here. It’s an all-boys club, and we’re uninvited.”

She paused for a few moments, and then said, “I thought it was because I’m black.” There was relief in her voice.

“You sound happy to hear they’re gunning for me and Kwan,” I said, now feeling confused myself.

“No, I’m not happy. But I thought they did it because they didn’t want a black person playing with them. That’s all,” she said. “Kind of restores my faith in humanity.”

“Humanity? What about equal rights for women?”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry they’re after you. I don’t mean to downplay what could happen to you. I just always feel black before I feel female. I guess that’s hard for you to understand.”

There was no way for me to completely understand what Gabby was feeling, but I knew how it felt to be isolated. “My dad always says everyone has to walk in their own shoes,” I said, “which I translate as everybody has crap to deal with. It’s just that different people have different crap.”

Gabby half-laughed and said, “Never thought about it like that. You got a point, I guess.” There was warmth in Gabby’s usually tough voice. “So what are we going to do about not letting those boys get the best of you?”

“Let me talk to Dr. Rich and see what he says first. Maybe he can at least clear your name, even if you don’t want to come back.”

“Okay,” said Gabby. “Call me back ASAP.”

After the call ended, I heard Dr. Rich coming through the front door. I hustled down to greet him. “Can we talk?” I said, reaching the bottom step slightly out of breath.

“Of course,” he said, leading me toward his office. Upon entering the wood-paneled room, he tossed his jacket over the
leather wingback chair and sat down behind his desk. “So what seems to be the trouble, Taylor?” he said, looking concerned.

I took a deep breath and tried to settle myself before speaking, so the words wouldn’t come out so fast they would tackle one another. “Gabby didn’t do it,” I said confidently.

“What?” he said.

I picked up the pace. “I heard some guys talking outside today by the dorms, and they didn’t know I was there. They were joking about how they set Gabby up, and they were talking about how they were going to get rid of me and Tara.”

Dr. Rich’s face twisted into confusion. “Set Gabby up? Taylor, I know you’re upset about Gabby, but is it possible you misinterpreted what the boys were talking about?”

He doesn’t believe me.
“Who else could they be talking about?” I said, thinking it silly I’d have to defend myself.

“I’m unclear about that at this point,” he said. “Let’s start over. Who did you hear exactly? Do you know who the boys were?”

Yes, yes I do.
“I know one was Sam Barrett, and I also heard the name Tuttle. I’m not sure who the third guy was.”

He looked suddenly serious. “Sam Barrett has an outstanding reputation at Hazelton. His family is a legacy here. I doubt he would be up to anything suspicious. Maybe what you overheard was what we call around here ‘boys being boys,’” he said. “Did you ever hear Gabby’s name mentioned . . . or your own, for that matter?”

“Not exactly,” I said, feeling defeated.

“Listen, Taylor, I’m glad you came to me with this, but I think I should share something with you that might make you choose to distance yourself from what happened with Gabby.” “What do you mean?” I was confused.

He reached into his desk and removed a manila file folder. He opened it and began, “These are your records from your previous school. I have read them, as has Dr. Colton, so we are both aware of your history.”

“My history?”

“I am not telling you this to upset you, but we do know that you were in counseling your freshman year, and it says here you had a history of violent behavior, specifically vandalism.”

Oh my god. That’s in a file? I never thought anyone else would know. I thought it was just between me and my guidance counselor.

When I was just starting high school, having had a little too much to drink, I hurled a brick through the window of my school’s new science building. It was the first and last time I’d had alcohol, and I’d never done anything like it since. My counselor was the only one who knew about it, and he never involved the police, but I guess he wrote something down at some point during our sessions. It was just one bad night from my past that I thought would stay in the past. And here I was, having to explain it.

“Sir, that was a really long time ago, and I’m not like that anymore. Also, it was just one—”

“Taylor, you don’t need to explain. You’re not in trouble; we knew about this before we invited you here,” said Dr. Rich. “I just wanted you to know that the headmaster knows about it, and if I were you, I would not want to be associated, in even a minor way, with any other criminal acts.”

“Like stealing,” I said.

“Precisely.”

I thought about all he had said, but I still knew something was up with Barrett and Tuttle. I believed Gabby, but I couldn’t risk Dr. Colton not believing me. I couldn’t risk my scholarship.
And judging from what Dr. Rich said, I wasn’t going to get support from the headmaster anyway. “Okay, Dr. Rich,” I said, “I get what you’re saying.”

He pushed away from his desk and put the file back in the drawer. “I’m sure the boys don’t mean either you or Miss Kwan any harm. All right?”

I nodded. “Thanks for listening,” I said, then sulked out of the room. Maybe I had blown everything out of proportion. Not that it mattered. He didn’t believe me anyway.

I went back to my room and called Gabby back. I sighed when she answered. “He didn’t believe me,” I said, leaving out the part about my screwed-up past.

“Kind of figured something like that would happen.”

“So now what?” I asked.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” she asked suddenly.

“Uh, the usual. Not studying,” I said.

“I’ll meet you downtown. There’s a little restaurant by the square.”

“Rodman’s?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ll have Jordan drive me over. Like seven o’clock?” she said in a serious tone.

“Okay.”

“See ya then,” she said.

“Oh, wait, Gabby.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

T
he next morning, I realized I had a bigger, more immediate problem than being set up and tossed out of Hazelton, or being embarrassed about the headmaster knowing about my vandalism incident. I had to keep from flunking out. I had conveniently forgotten about my first quiz in Trig—well, not completely forgotten. I remembered all of a sudden when Mr. Moesch said, “Clear your desks.”
Oops.
This was going to be bad, as in, “I’ll be lucky if I spell my name right” kind of bad.

I stared down at the ten problems in front of me.
Why haven’t I studied? Why can’t I get serious?
The whole reason my dad wanted me to come to this snotty two-faced prep school was so I could get into a good college, and here I was, making the same old mistakes.
I’m going to make it easy for these guys to get rid of me.

I looked around after a few minutes and cracked my knuckles out of nervous habit. Ben Barrett heard me, looked back at me, and smiled. I didn’t react. What a big phony, acting like we’re friends when he and his buddies and his evil twin were trying to get rid of me!

I tried to write something down, but I honestly had no clue what. Eventually, I just started doodling at the bottom of the quiz sheet. It seemed like hours passed before I heard the
sweet sound of the bell ringing to end the period. I put the quiz in the basket on Mr. Moesch’s desk and skulked out of the room.

I then found myself in the hall, face to face with William Tuttle. He was one of the guys I had overheard the day before in the tunnel. He was on the short side, with short blond hair that spiked up in the front. He gave me a big smile with Tom Cruise teeth too large for his small mouth. “Taylor, right?” he said, blocking my way to my next period class. “How’d you do on the quiz?”

“Sorry, late for class,” I said, squeezing against the wall to get by him. Although Dr. Rich had told me I was wrong to think the boys were gunning for me, I trusted my instinct. And I knew Tuttle was a pitcher, which I’m sure added fuel to his fire. I had no intention of being nice or showing him I could be manipulated. I decided to be intentionally rude. “’Scuse me.”

I caught a glimpse of his face as I slipped past. He was caught way off-guard—obviously stunned that I had snubbed a popular senior who hung with the Barrett boys. I figured if I never talked to him, maybe I could avoid his evil plan to take me down.

As I walked down the hall, I felt slightly bad for my rudeness. Maybe he was just wondering how I did on the quiz. But then again, I couldn’t be too careful.

After school that day, I worked out in the gym and kept my eyes open. Although Dr. Rich had told me to distance myself from Gabby, I decided to meet her at Rodman’s. What could it hurt?

I arrived at Rodman’s right at seven that night. I had borrowed a bike from Mrs. Richards that had been left in her garage by a former student. I put it on the nearest bike rack and hoped everyone was feeling honest—I hadn’t brought a lock. As I was parking the bike, a long black car pulled up beside the curb; it looked like the used Cadillac my grandpa used to drive. I was relieved to see it was Gabby.

“Hey, Dresden,” she said, leaning out of the passenger-side window.

“Hey, thanks for coming.” I bent forward and leaned into the car window.

“Taylor, this is my boyfriend, Jordan.”

I crouched down further and rested my arms on the window. “Hey, Jordan,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

He nodded, smacking a pack of cigarettes repeatedly against his palm.

“You guys want to go in and grab something to eat?” I asked.

“No, there may be Hazelton guys in there, and if I see one, I may have to hold Jordan back.” Jordan nodded again and turned the radio down so we could talk. Gabby got out of the car and leaned against it.

“Listen, Taylor, I don’t have much to tell you,” she said. “That day after practice, this guy on the team—Grossman was his name—he unlocked the ladies’ restroom for me so I could change. He handed me a key and asked me to please return it to the top right-side drawer in the coaches’ office when I was finished. So after I dressed, I went into the office and opened the drawer. The coaches came in and asked me how I got the key to the lockbox. I didn’t know what they were talking about. That’s when I knew I’d been set up.” She shook her head. “I
tried to explain, but he must have switched keys. The one he left me with was the one that opened their cash box.”

I crossed my arms. “I’m sorry, Gabby.”

“Why?
You
didn’t do it.”

“I know. I just feel bad that it happened. I know how much you wanted to play ball here.”

“It’s cool. I’m fine, and they’ll lose every game without me. Right, baby?” she said to Jordan.

“You know it,” Jordan said.

“So did the school call the police?”

“No, that’s the weird thing about it. The coach who came in and thought I was stealing said to go back to Dr. Rich’s house, and he would have the headmaster send for me,” she said. “But I just picked up and left. Later that night, the headmaster called my mom.”

“What did he say?”

“He said I could come back to school on probation if I put an apology in writing to the coaches and the students.”

“But you didn’t want to do that?”

“What the hell do I have to apologize for?” she said.

“True,” I said quickly. “It’s weird they were willing to let someone back who they thought stole from the school. I heard something on TV about our being here having to do with some lawsuit. I wonder if that’s why.” I paused. “You sure you don’t want to come back?”