One Shot Away Read online

  “Jimmy,” he says, thrusting his hand forward.

  “Hi, sir.” Mr. Sweetapple’s hand is almost mushy. “Hello, Mrs. Sweetapple,” he says.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure?” She smiles. “I hope nothing’s wrong?”

  Jimmy glances at Roxanne. “I was running and figured I’d say …”

  “You do realize this is a school night.” Mr. Sweetapple raises his bushy eyebrows.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then let’s not make it too late.” He sort of smiles.

  Roxanne tugs him from the room, down the hall. “My parents, they’re like my private Volturi,” she whispers. “They ask me what I’m doing, where I’m going. Why are you wearing that? Who’s on the phone? What time are you coming home? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but they already know the answer.”

  “Volturi?”

  “From Twilight, the vampire coven.”

  “Oh, right.” Jimmy only saw the movie. “Maybe they just really care.”

  “That’s what they both say. It’s really annoying.”

  She leads him into a wood-paneled room. The walls are coated with law books and framed degrees. “These are all your father’s?” asks Jimmy.

  “Yeah, he has a PhD in economics. Sometimes people call and ask for Dr. Sweetapple. It’s totally weird.” She smiles.

  “My father has his PhD in Post Hole Digging.”

  She laughs, then shuts the door. The floor is covered with photos, pages of stickers, colored paper, and scissors arranged around a large album. “I’m into scrapbooking,” she says. “I’m doing our entire senior year.”

  He is about to kneel and look, but she takes his arm. “No one sees it until it’s done, that’s my rule.” She puckers her lips and kisses him. She smells like strawberry shower gel. “It’s not completely safe in here,” she breathes in his ear. “I’m not allowed to lock the door.”

  They share a desk chair. He twists his body until she’s half on his lap. Her laptop and schoolbooks are spread across the desk’s glass top. “I heard you made captain. Are you going to get it sewn on your jacket?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “You should. I mean, I wouldn’t mind showing it off. I know a place that does embroidery. I could get it done and make it our one-month anniversary present.”

  “Is it one month?”

  “Next week.” She sprinkles his face with kisses, then gently kisses his mouth. “I guess I should get you something,” he says.

  “Your jacket is enough.” Her cheeks are already red from his shaved face. His leg is falling asleep, but he doesn’t care. He goes on kissing her, running his tongue across her chipped front tooth. Roxanne is so soft and delicious.

  A door closes somewhere in the house. Roxanne freezes. “You better pull up another chair.”

  He sits on a low stool next to her.

  “I was checking on my early applications,” she says, turning on her laptop.

  “To college?”

  “Yes, to college.” She laughs. “Did you apply?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You want to do it?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. I’ll show you.”

  He presses his lips on her neck. Having her help is like God coming down from heaven and showing him the secrets to the universe. Half of her classes are advanced placement, the other half are honors courses. He’s always studied just to earn his B-minus average.

  “What’s your dream college?” she asks.

  “East Stroudsburg,” he says.

  “Really? Isn’t that a Pennsylvania state school?”

  “Coach Greco went there. He’s writing me a recommendation letter. It’s division one wrestling,” says Jimmy. “If I can win like I did last season, I’m in.” Saying these words out loud makes his stomach feel heavy.

  “What major?”

  “Physical education.”

  She smiles. “What are you going to do with a degree in physical education?”

  “Teach phys ed and coach.”

  “Do you know what a teacher makes? Don’t you want nice things?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know, like a house with four bedrooms.”

  He wonders if she’s seen his house. “I never thought about it.”

  “If you’re good at math you could major in accounting.” She says this like she has it all figured out. “Undergrad, my father majored in accounting.”

  “Too bad I suck at math.” He wants to say that in his family being a gym teacher would be like being elected president.

  “I guess all I’m saying is, I wouldn’t be able to major in phys ed.” She looks at the PhD degree. “But forget it. We can do the entire application tonight and save it. Okay?” She finds the college site and clicks “Applications.” They go through all the biographical questions, then read the essay question aloud together:

  “Imagine yourself at the end of your freshmen year in college. What do you see? How do people see you? What are you doing?”

  “I see my father driving up in his rust-bucket truck,” says Jimmy. “Probably drinking a beer.”

  “Let’s make it a BMW and we’ll sober him up.” Her fingers fly over the keys:

  Finally, the end of my freshmen year has arrived. In the distance I spot my father’s BMW coming onto the campus.

  “How’s that?” she asks.

  “Cool.”

  She goes on typing:

  By Thanksgiving of my first semester, I was ready to start my wrestling season. I had developed study habits and forced myself to stay in the library until all my college work was completed. Near the holiday break, I looked forward to the next semester.

  “See,” she says. “It’s easy. You just have to give them what they want to hear.”

  She goes back to the keyboard. In five minutes it’s finished. She reads it back to him, ending with:

  On the ride home, I tell my father about my professors and how interesting my pre-law classes are. His face glows with pride. I explain that my four years in high school wrestling really paid off. I learned the importance of teamwork and dedication. Wrestling at Stroudsburg enabled me to make the college proud. My father takes my hand and squeezes it. “It’s going to be a great summer,” he says.

  Jimmy laughs. “Pre-law?” The essay and her efficiency blow him away, but she has taken his ramblings and turned them into something that sounds like some character in a Nickelodeon show. “My father’s never held my hand in my life,” he says.

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s a college essay, not your life story.” She clicks to another website.

  “You’re going to need a credit card to submit the application,” says Roxanne. “You go to this screen, and then you press ‘Apply.’ It will take you to the cashier and you can add your attachments here.” She clicks the mouse and opens a box marked “Your essay here.”

  No one, not even his guidance counselor at school, had explained how to complete the online application.

  She stares into his eyes. “James O’Shea, did I ever tell you I like you?”

  He smiles. “Oh yeah, and why’s that?”

  “You’re my work in progress and you’re going to look great in a tux,” she says, laughing.

  “Me, in a tux?”

  “The prom,” she says. “It’s only like four months away.”

  “I didn’t even ask you yet.”

  “I’m hoping that you do.” She kisses him. “Besides, I’ve already told my parents I’m going with you. You’re my decision.”

  “Would you go with me?” asks Jimmy.

  “I’ll think about it,” she says, then laughs.

  They sit on a love seat that faces another flat-screen television. She turns on VH1’s “Top 100 Songs of the Nineties.” Number 26 is Eminem doing his Slim Shady video. She slides her hands over his back. Her face in the dim light is pink and glowing. He slips his hand beneath her T-shirt. She’s not wearing a bra
.

  The door opens. Jimmy scrambles across the couch.

  “We were doing college....” Roxanne’s voice drops to a whisper then disappears.

  Mr. Sweetapple narrows his eyes on Jimmy. “Let’s go, it’s late. You can see each other at school tomorrow.”

  Trevor

  A U-HAUL TRUCK BACKS INTO THE DRIVEWAY, CLOSE TO THE walkway. Trevor watches from the porch rail, knowing in a few hours he will no longer be living in this house. His room will be empty. His window over the yard will be bare. The house is already rented to a couple with no kids. The rent has been raised by $200. None of this seems fair.

  London arrives in his pickup truck. He slams the door, then walks straight to the stoop. “Your mother got a call from the police,” he says. “Did she tell you someone wrecked your father’s truck?” He places his hands on his hips and cocks his head. “The truck is virtually worthless now, good for the junkyard. Do you know anything about it, maybe something you’re not telling me?”

  “Is it any of your business?” Trevor stares at him.

  London grinds his teeth, then pounds across the lawn to the U-Haul.

  After a huddle in the driveway, the movers follow London into the house.

  Trevor walks Whizzer to the lawn and glances at the headless deer. His father touched up the deer with paint every year. Now the deer will never be fixed.

  A skinny mover clomps down the stoop carrying the television, the trailing wire clicking against each step. They slide the television onto the bed of London’s pickup.

  “Why isn’t that going in the U-Haul?” calls Trevor.

  “Everything in the U-Haul is going to auction,” says London.

  “What?”

  “Your rooms are furnished, but I can use the TV as a spare. I’m giving half the money from the auction to your mother and putting the other half toward back rent.”

  Trevor feels like he’s just been struck. The kitchen furniture and Trevor’s maple dresser wait to be loaded into the U-Haul. The movers maneuver through the front door with a china closet that once belonged to Trevor’s grandmother.

  Trevor remembers his father’s tools in the garage. Some of the carving chisels and stone-splitting hammers must be a hundred years old. He jogs the driveway and lifts the garage door. He lugs a bucket of tools from under his father’s workbench.

  His mother is at the back door wrapping a box with tape.

  “Mom, we can’t leave these,” he calls.

  She straightens, then shakes her head. “We can’t take them.”

  “I’ll put them in my room. I don’t care.”

  “Leave them for now,” she says. “We’ll figure something out with Harry.” Trevor knows it is hopeless. Harry will sell them for back rent. Trevor carries the bucket back. This cannot be happening.

  “What about grandpa’s trunk?” he calls. The trunk, battered and unpainted, is piled with newspapers in the back of the garage.

  Camille shakes her head. “I don’t think there’s anything in it. Your father was going to have a locksmith look at the lock. He thought the lock might be worth something.”

  Trevor pushes the newspapers to the floor. The wood is dark from age. The lion-faced lock has a mouth that serves as the keyhole. He tips the trunk one way, then the other. Nothing rolls or bangs around inside. He drags the trunk to the driveway. “It belonged to grandpa,” he says.

  “But it’s filthy.” Camille wipes her finger in the dust.

  “I’m taking it!” He storms into the back door and karate-kicks the kitchen wall. His foot cracks the plaster. He stares at the shoe-shaped impression and doesn’t feel any better. He leans over and grabs his kneecaps with his hands. Nothing here was perfect, but now things are going to be plain wrong. My father is dead. The words pummel his brain. My father is dead. Joe Crow is dead. After Trevor and his mother leave the house, there’ll be no trace of his father.

  The puppy jumps on Trevor’s leg. London’s idea. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Trevor kicks a box across the room. Whizzer runs into the living room.

  Trevor flips on the lights in the basement. The weightlifting gym casts a shadow on the cement floor. He slides two forty-five-pound plates on each side of the Olympic-size bar and leans back on the bench press. He can hear his father telling him, “You do back and abs, rest a day, then work chest and biceps.”

  Trevor lifts the bar off the rack. His last set in this basement, in this house.

  Jimmy

  JIMMY PACES FROM THE KITCHEN INTO THE FRONT ROOM, remembering the gleaming copper pots in the Sweetapples’ kitchen. He stops at the Bruce Springsteen T-shirt under glass. “Ma, you sure this shirt is worth something?” he asks.

  “I saw one on eBay for fifty dollars.” She sticks her tongue out at him.

  He puts his hands up. “Okay.”

  His mother did the dishes, vacuumed the living room, dusted, sprayed the bathroom with Lysol, and cleaned the kitchen floor on her hands and knees. Jimmy packed as much junk as he could into the pantry and shut the door, but it hardly makes a difference. It’s still four rooms and an alcove.

  The doorbell sounds just after seven o’clock. Roxanne enters with a big smile, holding a pumpkin pie covered with plastic wrap. “I made this for you.” She hands him the pie and pecks him on the cheek.

  Jimmy knows he can’t have a piece.

  “Don’t worry, it’s low fat,” says Roxanne. “I made it with a fat-free crust, egg whites, and I used half the sugar.”

  “He’ll have to keep this away from his brother.” Trish takes the pie from Jimmy. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she says.

  This isn’t true. Jimmy barely spoke of Roxanne.

  Trish winks her approval at Jimmy over Roxanne’s shoulder. Jimmy takes Roxanne’s coat and lays it across the back of his father’s recliner. She’s wearing embroidered Lucky jeans and a sweater that shows off her flat belly.

  “Did Jimmy tell you we finished his college application?” asks Roxanne.

  “No, he didn’t,” says Trish dramatically.

  “I was going to tell you,” says Jimmy.

  “He should be applying to more than one college,” says Roxanne. She takes Jimmy’s arm.

  They sit on the couch that’s covered with a brown woven blanket. Trish places a plate of cheese and crackers on the coffee table. “Help yourself,” she says.

  Roxanne smiles and takes a cracker. She seems to be glowing in the grayish light. “Is that your room?” She takes his hand and pulls him off the couch. “You have to show me.”

  She goes around his room, lifting his dried piranha fish off his dresser, touching its white teeth, looking at his framed Derek Jeter rookie card that Pops bought him for his tenth birthday. “This is cool,” she says, touching his replica of the Trade Center.

  “I made it in shop after 9/11,” he says.

  “I thought it was made in China or something.” She laughs. “I mean that as a compliment.”

  The floor under his window is lined one end to the other with wrestling trophies on marble stands. “You won all these?”

  “Yeah, my father and I were supposed to build a shelf. You want to see something else?” He pulls a shoebox from under his bed, then lifts the top. The box is almost filled with gold- and silver-colored medals.

  “You should display these.” She touches the medals as if they were really gold and silver, then carefully places them back in the box.

  “And it all comes down to this season,” he says.

  “You sound worried.” She comes into his arms. She presses against him.

  “I just have the preseason dreads.”

  “You’ll be fine.” She takes his hand and places it on her sweater over her breast. “Have you ever had a girl in your room?” Her voice is dreamy, but she’s smiling.

  “Just my mother.”

  The doorbell buzzes. Jimmy looks over Roxanne’s shoulder. “Ma,” he calls. “Could you get that?”

  “I’m putting the laun
dry in. Just see who it is.”

  Jimmy opens the front window drape a few inches. Two men in suit jackets and loose-fitting neckties wait on the stoop. They are square-shouldered and clean-shaven. One is bald—his head shaved so close the streetlight reflects off it. A dark four-door sedan with no hubcaps and black wall tires is in front of the house. Police. The stolen lumber smashes into his brain. Jimmy feels a line of sweat rising on his spine.

  Trish sneaks a quick view of the stoop.

  Jimmy backs into the kitchen. He’s trying to breathe normally.

  “What’s the matter?” Roxanne takes his hand.

  His mother opens the door. The bald detective is a bull with a thick neck, a large nose and mouth. He’s holding up a gold badge. The other detective is young with a dark crew cut. Trish invites them in.

  “I’m Detective Barnes,” says the bald detective. “This is Detective Santos. We’d like to ask your son a few questions about some missing building supplies.”

  Roxanne stands next to a cutting board hung on the wall that says “Bless This Mess.” Her green eyes flash from Jimmy to the detectives.

  “Maybe you should go,” whispers Jimmy in her ear. He walks her to the stoop and shuts the door behind them.

  “Jimmy, what’s this about?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t tell anyone about the cops being here, okay?” He presses his cheek next to hers.

  “You’re trembling. Are you in trouble?”

  Jimmy takes her hands in his. “Don’t worry and don’t tell anyone.”

  “Is it something serious?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll call you later.” They hug.

  Jimmy takes his place at the table. His hands have turned to ice.

  “James, right?” asks Detective Barnes.

  “I go by Jimmy.”

  “You’re eighteen?” he asks.

  “Next week,” says his mother.

  “You’re a wrestler,” he says. “Varsity, right? What weight class?”

  “One-sixty.”

  “That’s light for your height. I figured you were heavier.”

  “Varsity squad for three seasons,” says his mother.

  “I’ve seen your son’s name in the paper,” says Detective Santos. “You have a lot to be proud of.”