And then there was me: seventeen, finally on the prettier side of that awkward, gangly divide that separates little girls and young women. I had already sketched a plan for after graduation: community college first, so I could be a vet assistant. That was the part I shared with the few people who asked, but there was more. My secret ambition, the part I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to see them snicker when I said it. Once I had the certification, I’d be gone for good, to a city where I could work part-time and pay my own way through veterinary school. It would take time, but I didn’t mind that. After seventeen years in Copper Falls, just the idea of being somewhere else was thrilling. It wasn’t that things were bad; for a little while, actually, they were tolerable. The kids who’d messed with me growing up weren’t doing it anymore, for no other reason than that it had gotten boring, for everyone. We’d all known each other too long. There was no satisfaction left to wring out of bullying me; they’d run out of barbs to throw, and I’d run out of retorts. All that was left was stale, tepid contempt, hardly worth scraping the barrel for. We left each other alone. When I passed them on the street or in the hallways at school, their eyes would skate right over me, like I was a boarded-up window, a doorknob, a weird stain on the sidewalk. Just part of the scenery.
That’s why it was so incredible when Dwayne noticed me. Chose me. Growing up next to someone is funny that way, all the ways they change and all the ways they stay the same. He both was and wasn’t the same boy who had killed Rags all those years ago, who pushed a toe into the junkyard dirt and told me he was sorry. He’d gotten tall by then, broad through the shoulders, with thick brown hair and a strong jaw that was starting to overtake the little-boy roundness of his face. His teeth had little gaps in between that would show when he smiled, which he did a lot; he had no reason not to. He was cocky the way that beautiful teenagers are, so sure that people would either love him or forgive him, depending on what he’d done. We’d barely spoken since that day in the junkyard, but sometimes I’d catch him looking at me, and it finally occurred to me that we shared a secret. Something special. Something he had with nobody else. I was sure he’d never told anyone about what he did to Rags, and I had nobody to tell even if I’d wanted to. I wondered how many other girls had ever seen that side of him. The downcast eyes, the naked regret on his face. The way he flinched at the sound of his daddy’s voice. As far as I could tell, he kept it hidden, even from his closest friends. Maybe that’s why he wanted me. Of all the girls in Copper Falls, I was the one who knew, and kept, his worst secret.
I was the only one who knew what Dwayne Cleaves looked like when he was afraid.
It was the end of junior year, the evenings finally warm enough for a T-shirt, the mood already cheerful in anticipation of summer. Dwayne was the starting pitcher for the high school’s varsity baseball team, and he was good enough that people were starting to take notice. The word spread quicker after someone borrowed Sheriff Ryan’s radar gun and clocked his fastball at eighty-seven miles per hour. Come June and the league playoffs, people from neighboring towns were showing up just to see him play. The last game, one man came alone, sitting off to the side, and by the end of the first inning a whisper was going around that he’d come all the way from Washington state to scout Dwayne for the Mariners. That was bullshit, of course. Actually, he was from the state university down in Orono, and the best he had to offer was an athletic scholarship—which was nothing to sniff at, either, but the prospect of a major-league baseball scout among us put magic in the air. Everyone felt it, including Dwayne. And, God, he gave them a show. I was there, too; the entire town was, I’d guess, so that a stranger happening onto Copper Falls would find the streets empty, all the doors locked, and think it had been abandoned. We watched from the bleachers as he fired off pitches. Strike after strike, strikeout after strikeout, until you couldn’t even hear the umpire’s calls because the sound of the ball whipping into the catcher’s mitt alone would send up a frenzied cheer from the crowd. They stamped and yelled and went completely fucking nuts, and Dwayne stood there on the mound, grinning, ripping fastballs over the plate as the batters swung and caught nothing but air. Somewhere around the fifth inning, you could hear people muttering it under their breaths, low and careful like an incantation: no-hitter.
And then, in the top of the seventh, Dwayne threw a splitter that didn’t break, and a big guy batting lefty got a chunk of it. The ball sailed high into right field. Knees went soft, cheers died in throats, and that was when it happened: Dwayne’s shoulders slumped forward and he turned his head, and his eyes met mine. While everyone else watched the trajectory of the ball, we looked at each other. And although the sun was still up and the air was still gentle, a chill went down my spine.