I didn’t care. Let them stare.
Coach Timmins wasn’t in the waiting room. Maybe he’d gone somewhere else to wait for news. Tray’s friend would’ve been there if I hadn’t sent him off on a needless errand, but otherwise, I didn’t recognize anyone. Surely someone had come to see if Tray was okay?
Apparently not.
Hopefully the injury had looked worse than it was—getting knocked out by a punch could happen relatively easily, and a nosebleed made anything seem worse—but we just didn’t know that yet. As young, strong, and fit as Tray was, stuff happened every day. I’d heard of fighters who’d been paralyzed in the ring, and others that had suffered brain damage—
Shuddering, I rose to pace. No, not going there. I would wait to hear. Not think the worst.
I needed to be doing something productive. I tugged out my phone and realized I’d had it off all night. Shit. As I swiped it back on, I noticed the time. Past eleven. Almost eleven-thirty. Much later than I’d thought.
Carly.
Almost on cue, her texts popped up on my screen.
Home now. Where r u?
U didn’t leave a note. R u a
t the store? I need cornflakes, baking powder & coconut flakes.
That one made me smile. That was my sister the chef, with her random food needs.
Y aren’t u answering me?
R u w Fox? I won’t make fun of u, promise, just want to know u’r ok. Pls reply.
The last one had come in five minutes ago. Ame, I’m scared. Pls be ok.
God, we were a pair. Worry first, think later. But in our defense, we both had reason to know that sometimes people were late for reasons that were far from innocent. Sometimes the bogeyman was real. And once you knew that, you never, ever forgot.
She answered my call on the first ring. “Ame, oh, thank God. I was about to call the police.”
I didn’t want to know if she was serious. We both had our neuroses, and acknowledging her very understandable ones would mean I should rightly examine mine.
That wasn’t happening tonight.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I turned off my phone, then stuff happened and I forgot to turn it back on. I’d planned to be back home before you got back from the gym but—”
“But what?”
I pressed my finger to my ear to block out the drone of voices and walked toward a relatively quiet corner. Yet again my voice failed me when I attempted to speak, so I changed tracks entirely to avoid what I couldn’t say. “Car, I need you to look something up for me online.”
“My laptop’s not turned on.”
“Since when? You’re on that thing day and night. Watching movies at all hours, playing games when you should be reading up on colleges.”
I waited for her to light into me about the whole college thing again, but she only sighed. Evidently her worry had subdued some of her usual spitfire.
“Yeah, yeah, Mama Bear. What’s up? I can tell something is going on.”
“I need you to find the number for Tray’s parents.”
“Tray?” She paused. “You mean Fox? You never call him that.”
“Yes, Fox. I have no idea what their names are, but I know he comes from Long Island. I’d guess they’d be named something fancy. His dad’s middle name begins with a T and he’s a lawyer. What’s the abbreviation for that?” I bit my lip and answered my own question. “Esquire.”
“Who actually uses Esquire after their name?”