He laughed. “I don’t know any of them personally. But those guys who do sports are all, ‘Look at me, I’ve got a shirt with numbers on it. Look at me, I can walk in the douche parade at a pep rally.’”
Alice suppressed a grin. “So you think people who are part of an organized team with a common goal are losers?”
“Yeah,” he said, as if she’d stated the obvious.
“That’s what you’ve been part of for the past few weeks,” Alice said, staring out at the glistening lake. “Seems to me, you’ve been pretty damn good at being a team player.”
“That’s different—”
“No, it’s not. Do you think I was the cheerleader, student counsel type in high school?”
“No, you were definitely a loner freak,” Terrance replied approvingly.
“Thanks,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “My point is, you don’t have to become some kind of mindless robot to be part of a team. You can grow stronger as an individual by working with other people. Look at what you guys accomplished on the wall climb. That was all through teamwork, but it made you feel good. It made you smarter, too. Better.”
Terrance grimaced as he stared fixedly at the beach ahead.
“Those guys on the football team aren’
t going to like me.”
“Screw them.” He glanced over at her sharply. Alice grimaced. She hadn’t meant to sound so sharp or bitter. She’d automatically gone into defensive mode at just the thought of cocky teenage athletes being jerks to Terrance. Alice knew how cruel kids could be toward another kid who was different. Grasping for her elusive reasonable calm, she continued more levelly. “Even if they do act like jerks at first, they’ll change their mind when they get to know you. You just have to work through that first difficult phase. It doesn’t mean anything when people say cruel things except that they’re immature and stupid. Let them think what they want in the beginning. Your skills will speak for themselves in the end. And if I haven’t told you enough, you have the skills, Terrance, not just the heft. A coach will be able to polish those skills up better than I can. With some hard work, you could be amazing,” she said sincerely. “Besides . . . those other guys on the team will be scared that you’ll squash them like a bug if they give you a hard time.”
He snorted with amusement.
“You’ve got to believe in yourself, Terrance.”
“I know,” he admitted, his grin fading. “Who else will, right?” Alice thought of his absentee mother, of the fact that he’d essentially been his own supervisor since he first entered elementary school. She didn’t reply. She didn’t think she needed to. Terrance knew better than anyone that if he didn’t step up to the plate and take care of himself, no one else was going to do it. He gave her a pointed sideways glance as they made a turn on the beach and headed back toward camp.
“Did you believe in yourself when you first came here, and had Brooke Seifert staring down her nose at you?”
“Well . . . I might have had a few dark moments when I wavered,” Alice replied with grim honesty after a moment.
“Yeah,” Terrance chuckled. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do what?”
“Go out for football.”
“Really?” Alice asked, breaking her stride to do a euphoric little sideways leap.
Terrance grinned. “Brooke is at least the equivalent of the entire defensive line of Metro Tech varsity. I figure if you can do it, I can.”
Alice grinned.
“Look out,” Terrance muttered under his breath after a moment. “Psychotron ahead.”
“Huh?” Alice asked. She followed Terrance’s stare. Just past the marina, the camp had a small fitness course on the beach. Terrance and she jogged past Sebastian Kehoe, who was doing rapid pull-ups with mechanical precision. Alice had to hand it to him. The guy was in major good shape.
She gave an obligatory wave as they passed. Kehoe never wavered an iota in his pull-ups, but his gaze was fixed on Alice, following her as she passed. The exertion he made in his show of considerable strength made his face look rigid and somehow out of alignment.
“What’d I tell you?” Terrance whispered once they were well past Kehoe. “Psychotron.”
Alice rolled her eyes. Privately, she was thinking that once again, Terrance was demonstrating his typical brilliant powers of social observation.
WHEN she left the kids that night under Crystal’s supervision, she didn’t walk as briskly or purposefully as she usually did. Dylan was halfway across the nation tonight. She reached into her jeans pocket and slid her fingers across the cool metal of the lighter. She’d been doing it all day, finding the sensation reassuring. He’d given her the lighter to remind her of Alan Durand, but instead, it made her think of him. The feeling of the lighter in her pocket reassured her, but it also made her miss Dylan all that much more.
Farther ahead on the path, Alice saw Thad standing face-to-face with Brooke. In the light of the fading sun, she saw their hands clasped together loosely at their sides. Thad’s head dipped and their mouths met.