Chapter 19

I wiped sweat from my forehead as I yanked another weed from Eduardo’s mom’s vegetable garden. In west Texas, October is still in the nineties ... or, if we were lucky, it might drop into the eighties.

I actually didn’t mind it, though. Maybe it was because of all the time spent practicing outside in the heat, but it seemed that spending time without the pads on felt a lot cooler. Then again, maybe it was remembering what it felt like to do construction with the foreman breathing down your neck because you have two other jobs to finish that day.

True, that last one was not from my actual life, but the memory of the dream was so strong it still gave me a point of comparison.

Also, I got to hang out with Eduardo. I’d started this off with the goal of keeping him from ending up in gangs, to protect my father, but surprisingly, I found that I really liked him. Past the shy, quiet exterior, he was a really great guy, worried about others as much as himself, funny and sarcastic.

So much so that it had started making me second guess if the dream was actually any kind of predictor at all. Yes, a few things in the dream matched real life, but those could have been coincidences. It just seemed impossible that the guy I was getting to know would end up initiating into a gang and ultimately killing someone.

That was the farthest thing from the Eduardo I was now friends with.

“It sucks she hasn’t had time to deal with these,” I said, pulling another handful of weeds out of the ground and tossing them into the pile I was making. “They’re bigger than the vegetables.”

“She was out here three weeks ago,” Eduardo said. “They grow really fast.”

“Damn.”

“I know. She loves her garden, though, says it reminds her of her grandmother’s garden back home. It’s why I wanted to do this today while she was out with Alex. With Dad stuck in bed or making the drive back and forth to Midland every week, she doesn’t have time to stay on top of it. I figured if we could at least keep up with the easy manual labor part of it, the weeds and whatever, it would take the pressure off her, so it can still be fun.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We were at the game yesterday,” he said after a few minutes of silent work.

“We?”

“Yeah, me and Tyrell.”

“I didn’t realize you two were hanging out,” I said.

“That’s the first time we did something after school. He was trying to explain some of what everyone did on the team and offered to go with me to your game and point stuff out, although I think that was an excuse. I think he wanted to go and everyone else was busy.”

I knew they were getting along at lunch, but thinking of the two of them hanging out at the game was strange. They were very different people, both physically and personality-wise. It was good though, seeing him making friends.

“Or he wanted to hang out with you. You two have been hitting it off.”

“I guess. He’s a good guy. Anyway, he was saying the coach was really holding you back and playing right into the defense by running the ball the whole game.”

It was nice to know that someone else could see that, too.

“I don’t know about holding me back, but he isn’t wrong. We were running the ball all damn night and Whyatt knew exactly what we were going to do every damn time. It was frustrating as hell.”

“You should talk to your coach.”

“Ha,” I said, not able to stop the laugh from coming out. “That would be the day. I mean, I did say something about us playing into their hands, and he basically told me to shut up and do what I was told. He’s the coach and I’m a freshman, so it’s not like I have much pull.”

“That isn’t right, though. I mean, you’re there in the middle of everything, who else would know better? But maybe I’m wrong. Alex may watch a lot of football, but that was the first game I’ve ever watched the whole way through, let alone been to.”

“You’re not wrong. Or I guess, I don’t think you are, but Coach Holloway has been coaching for a long time and that was my first game at this level.”

“Well...” he started to say, and then stopped talking as we heard what sounded like a car with the loudest exhaust I had ever heard pull up out in front of the house.

It was loud enough that the windows were rattling a little bit, and it didn’t just sound like a bad muffler. Living in a rural area, I heard a lot of old trucks with shoddy mufflers. I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but this sounded more like someone had gone out of their way to make it sound like that.

That wasn’t the thing that had my attention, however. Eduardo had not only stopped talking, but he’d gone stock still, his hands around a bunch of weeds still in the ground. His facial expression had gone from relaxed to as tense as I’d ever seen it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, his eyes darted from the side gate to the front yard to the back door, like he was expecting someone. And he wasn’t wrong.

Before I could say anything else, the back door of the house swung open and a tall guy in his mid-twenties stepped out. The way he carried himself was with a confidence that bordered on cocky. He was dressed in a loose flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans that looked too new to be casual. Tattoos snaked up his forearm, disappearing under the cuff of his shirt, and his hair was slicked back.