“Not with me,” Tay-Roy says. “I’ve got both at home. My mother lives from one Kodak moment to the next. Why?”

“Wanna buy a couple,” Mott says.

“What?” Tay-Roy seems confused. “I don’t sell pictures of myself.”

Mott reaches into his wallet. “Sure you do. You’ve just never had the opportunity. Give you twenty apiece for them.”

Tay-Roy laughs. “Forty bucks for two pictures? Why don’t you threaten me, and I’ll give them to you free?”

Chris reaches into his wallet, extracts a bent school photo that has to be four years old. “You can have this one,” he says. “You can have it for two dollars.”

“I got this girlfriend,” Mott says to Tay-Roy. “Lives in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Tay-Roy says. “That’s great. I can’t even get one in Cutter.”

“Well, you could get one in Birmingham, Alabama,” Mott says. “Because I sent this one your picture, and she’s dispensing serious drool.”

“You sent a girl my picture and told her it was you?”

“Yeah,” Mott says. “I scanned your yearbook picture. Told her I’m a bodybuilder, so now I need to scan her some muscles.”

“That’s crazy,” Tay-Roy says. “What will you do when you meet her?”

“She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, for Christ sake,” Mott says. “I’m not going to meet her.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Mott smiles and leans back on the seat, closes his eyes, and simulates whacking off.

Jackie Craig is sitting forward in his seat, completely engrossed and silent as a stifled yawn. Dan is strangely quiet. In the driver’s seat, Icko laughs quietly and shakes his head. The lights from an oncoming car highlight Mott’s pockmarked cheeks, his hawkish nose. He is not what you’d call classically handsome.

“The Internet is a great equalizer,” he says. “A guy can be anybody he wants.”

I say, “Yeah, well, so can a girl.”

“And the sweeter thing she wants to be, the better I like it,” Mott says.

“I don’t know if I can go along with this,” Tay-Roy says. “Somehow it doesn’t seem honest.”

“It’s not honest,” Mott says back. “It’s cybersex. Come on, Kibble. If she ever does show up, think of that treat you’re in for.”

“I don’t know,” Tay-Roy says. “This kind of thing can backfire.”

In a far more timid voice than I’ve heard him use, Dan says, “I fear it could backfire more times than once.”

“Meaning what?” Tay-Roy asks.

“Meaning you are a Gentleman’s Quarterly item not only in Birmingham, Alabama.”

All eyes swing to Dan.

“I’m afraid so,” he says. “Evansville, Illinois. I was hoping for something in one of these.” He stands and flexes, his fists nearly touching at his belt buckle, imitating a gorilla.

Tay-Roy’s eyes widen. “A crab,” he says. “Jeez, you guys.”

“I’ll sign a waiver,” Mott tells him.

“I’ll draft it right here,” Dan says. “If discovered, you can disavow any knowledge. An innocent victim of our lasciviousness.”

“That’s it!” Icko hits the brakes. The aisle is too narrow, but he opens the doors, and Dan racks off ten push-ups in the snow.

“Well worth it,” Dan says, “if Tay-Roy yields to our pleas.”

Tay-Roy smiles and sighs. “Okay, but if this comes back to bite me, you guys are going to pay.” He turns to the others. “Simon, what do you think, you want in on this? Jackie?”

Simon’s head shakes in what is almost a vibration. “Naw, I’d probably get confused and send a picture of Mott.”

Mott grimaces. “Jesus, a fat kid pretending to be an amputee. Dare to dream.”

“You’re the new Fabio,” I tell Tay-Roy later when everyone else appears to sleep. “Roll with it.”

CHAPTER 11

It’s eleven-thirty when the bus pulls up in front of the school. The parking lot is three-quarters filled with cars of kids attending the aftergame dance, and I decide to check out the action, or, more specifically, to check out Carly. Coach Benson is among the chaperones and meets me at the door.

Benson says, “How’d you guys do?”

“Good,” I tell him.

“Everybody hit a personal best?” There is a hint of sarcasm, which I ignore.

“All the way around,” I say. “Chris Coughlin took almost fifteen seconds off his four hundred free. Three more meets and we invade Cutter’s Crystal Cathedral.”

Coach nods and smiles. “Pretty clever how you pulled that off,” he says. “Who figured it out, you or your coach?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which one of you figured out everyone would improve this much?”

“Why can’t you accept that we gave ourselves a really hard job to do, and did it?”

“I’m going to have a talk with Coach Simet about this,” he says. “I have a lot of respect for the athletic program here at Cutter and the excellence of the athletes who succeed.”

“I know,” I say. “Me, too.”

“I wish I thought that were true, Jones.” He changes the subject. “So did you take the sprints?”

“Yup.”

“Well, I suppose that’s the up side to all this. You place high at State and that will put us up in the standings.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem with sprints, though. No matter how fast you are, some unknown guy hits a perfect dive and turn and takes you out.”

“You best concentrate on hitting all your dives and turns,” he says. “Things are pretty even around the conference this year, and we’re going to need those points. You don’t want to be putting the Athletic Council through all this and then come up empty.”

I make a mental note to call Simet over the weekend to make sure he knows they’re on to us. Benson wields a lot of power around here.

“I’ll bust my butt, Coach. I really will. And you have to admit, that’s a pretty good trade-off for the rest of these guys earning their jackets. They may not be racking up the points, but I’d die of boredom if they weren’t there with me, so they’re pulling their weight.”

Carly motions to me from across the gym, and I tell Coach I’ll catch up with him later.

She says, “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it.”

“Icy roads and a zoo full of swimmers couldn’t have kept me away.”

She touches my hand, switching on the electricity that has been building between us, and we move onto the dance floor and get lost in the beat of a long slow Celine Dion song. Carly’s dark eyes and half smile tease me, and I think how lucky I am to have this uncomplicated relationship with somebody smart to talk to, and hot to the touch. We move closer, eyes closed, feet barely moving, swaying more than dancing. This girl gives me a hummingbird’s heart palpitations. I feel her entire body against me, her forehead touching the crook of my neck, the pressure of her hips.

A commotion by the entrance plummets me back to earth, and we look over to see Kristen Sweetwater jerking her wrist out of Mike Barbour’s grip, yelling, “Leave me alone, you asshole!” Kristen is the head varsity cheerleader and one of Carly’s good friends.

Carly drops my hand, and I follow her toward them. She says, “I told her to stay away from him.”

Barbour glances at the staring crowd and releases Kristen. “Come on, goddamn it, let’s talk about it.”

“You bastard, Mike Barbour! Look at my arm! Get away from me!” That is not language you hear out of Kristen Sweetwater.

Coach Benson hustles toward them, but Barbour sees him and storms out.

Kristen drops to her butt on the bleachers, face in her hands, sobbing. Carly sits beside her and puts an arm around her shoulders, waving Benson away and firing threatening looks at anyone who approaches. “What happened?”

Kristen doesn’t answer, just shakes her head and cries harder.

“Kristen, what happened? Did he hurt you?”

She pulls the loose sleeve of her blouse up to her shoulder. Her entire arm is red, beginning to darken.

“That son of a bitch,” Carly says.

“He said he had some beer stashed out by the river,” she said. “He and some friends were supposed to have a little party out there.”