Apples Never Fall

“No, you don’t,” said Savannah pleasantly.

“Nah, mate, it was out,” Savannah’s brother used to say, so innocently and convincingly, so calmly, when questioned on one of his calls. Harry Haddad was a natural on the court, and also a natural cheat. His flagrant cheating had enraged Troy to the point of lunacy whereas it baffled and unbalanced Logan. He saw the ball go in, yet Harry said it was out. That called everything into question: right and wrong, the laws of physics.

Lying clearly ran in the family.

Stan met Logan’s eyes and lifted his hands hopelessly. Logan didn’t think he’d ever seen his father so defenseless, even when he’d been in the hospital for his knee.

“You were there that day too, Logan.” Savannah looked at him coolly, and his heart lurched.

“I never met you,” said Logan. He was one hundred percent confident of this.

“You threw your racquet at me,” said Savannah. “Like I was a stray dog.”

“I did not,” said Logan. “Why would I do that?”

Troy was the racquet-thrower. Yet another lie.

“I would never—”

He stopped. He saw himself walking off the court the day he first lost against Troy, the same day his father told him to watch Harry’s kick serve, the day he understood that if he could lose against his younger brother, and if there were players in the world like Harry, there was probably not much point in continuing, although he did, for another five years.

“Wait a minute, I wasn’t throwing it at you,” he told her weakly. He’d lost the advantage. He’d always felt bad about that little girl jumping clear of his racquet.

“So you do remember me,” said Savannah sweetly.

She had her brother’s ability to play offensively, pushing his opponent further and further back.

She turned her attention to Troy. “What about you, Troy? Do you remember me?”

“I don’t care if I did meet you,” said Troy flatly.

“Someone left the back sliding door open,” said Savannah dreamily.

It would have been Logan. He was forever in trouble for not closing that sliding door properly because it jammed.

“I walked in through your back door and went into the kitchen,” said Savannah. “I thought maybe just … if I could just get a glass of milk. Anything. I was so hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. I was only nine. I felt so sick and dizzy. All I could think about was food. I was obsessed with food, and there was food everywhere, there were people eating, everywhere, all around me, walking down the street eating ice creams, sitting at a bus stop eating pies, stuffing food into their mouths, but I had no money. I couldn’t get any food.”

Logan’s mother put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my goodness, Savannah.”

Please let this be someone else’s story, thought Logan, because his family were not bad people. They would have fed a hungry child. They sponsored hungry children on the other side of the world. “Think of the poor starving children in Africa,” their mother used to say if they didn’t like their vegetables, and then Amy would become completely inconsolable, sobbing for the poor starving children in Africa, unable to eat, and Logan’s dad would sigh and reach over to stab at her broccoli with his fork.

Savannah said to Troy, “You chased me out of the kitchen like I was a beggar. You’d just got out of the shower. You were all wet, you had a blue bath towel around your waist. You called me a vulture.” Her lip lifted again on the word vulture.

“If I said that, I was right, because that’s exactly what you are, a vulture,” said Troy. He’d never been a defensive player. When attacked he attacked back, twice as hard. “You just stole a lot of money from me.”

“I didn’t steal anything,” said Savannah. “You gave me that money of your own free will.”

“Under false pretenses!”

“What’d I do, Savannah?” said Logan’s father. “What’s my role?”

“Nothing,” said Savannah. “You looked right through me. All you saw was Harry. I didn’t even exist to you because I didn’t play tennis.”

“So this is about revenge, then?” said Troy. “Because our father made your brother a tennis star? Because none of us would give you food? But why didn’t you just, I don’t know, ask?”

“She did ask,” said Amy from the doorway. “She came into the dining room and asked me to make her a sandwich.”

Then she did the strangest thing, the thing that only Amy would do, would even think to do.