Aftermath

Ch 120: Casting Doubt

Silas

When I walked into the locker room after school to change for practice, Jay was standing just inside the entrance, tapping away on his phone. "Hey, Korba," he said, finally looking up. "No practice today."

"Again? It's not raining yet, so why not?" We hadn't been on lockdown. We hadn't had a bomb threat or an actual bomb. There had been a couple of fights this afternoon, but we had put an end to those fairly quickly. Nothing unusual there.

"What do you think? It's the basketball game." Jay rolled his eyes. "Some of the players are on both teams, and the coaches don't want to tire them out before tonight. Too bad they didn't think to tell us before everyone got here."

For Jay, this might have been a waste of time, but I still had a mission: to keep an eye on Mitch, who remained our prime suspect. Right now, my target was across the locker room, laughing and joking with a couple of his friends as he pulled a few things from his gym locker.

"Korba! William!" Coach Young bellowed from his inner office. "Get in here!"

Jay gave me a questioning look.

I just shook my head. No idea. I turned and followed him in, almost walking right into his back when he stopped short.

"Uh, Coach?" Jay stepped forward. "What's the bat for?"

Inside the tiny coach's office, Coach stood behind his desk, a baseball bat in hand.  He paused for a moment, then slammed the bat against the wall. "Got him," he grumbled, tossing the bat down. "It's been weeks, and there are still freakin' crickets in here. I swear, it's like they wake up when I'm moving around." 

Jay let out a weird cough that might have been a laugh.

Coach shot him a look of suspicion, then sat back down. "Sorry about practice. Right now, basketball is king, and we can't have the players get injured in practice for another sport."

"I understand." Though I didn't necessarily agree with it, given the number of players on the team. We had enough players to staff at least four basketball teams.

"Glad someone does," Coach said. "But coming in wasn't a complete waste of time. I'm not sure if you heard, but we got our letter jackets early this year. Principal Hendricks thought it might promote school spirit if we gave them to you a little earlier than usual."

"You mean we get them today?" Jay asked, his mood improving. "We don't have to sit through a big dinner or awards thing?"

"Yep, that's right," Coach replied, the waist of his tight shorts drooping as he bent down and began sorting through a basket of parcels on the floor.

I averted my gaze. North had called this plumber's crack, one of the weirdest American colloquialisms I had ever heard. No one at my father's plumbing company had ever exposed themselves like Coach did on a regular basis. Shouldn't it be called coach's crack instead?

"We used to have a formal letter ceremony," Coach went on, still bent over. "But athletics hasn't had the funds for that in a couple of years." He pulled out a plastic wrapped package and put it on the desk with a thump. "William, here you go. And Korba, yours was the biggest one we ordered, so it should be over here." He moved to get another box, going straight for the one at the far end. "Here it is. Wear it with pride."

"Thank you." I accepted the bundle. The clear plastic wrapping showed a brown and orange letter jacket with a large "AW", much like the ones I had seen teenagers wear on television.

"Don't unwrap it in here," Coach warned. "The pleather they use on those things stinks to high heaven. You'll want to air it out first."

"That happened with my JV jacket," Jay recalled, grinning widely. "It's too bad about the ceremony, but I'm glad to get the jacket early enough to wear it. In another month, it will be too hot to wear them."