Josh

After practice on Thursday night, I begin to get really concerned about Kendall. She still hasn't been at school and nobody, not even Destiny, has truly talked to her. Destiny has gone over to drop off homework, but Kendall shoos her away before she gets the chance to start a conversation. Kendall never misses school or practice. This is her livelihood. Everything in her life has been about being the best she can be so she can get a scholarship to college, because without a full ride, she won't be able to go. For her to miss three days is shocking and means that she is truly hurt.

I don't even know that I'm doing it when I start driving. I think that I'm going to my house, but my hands are steering my car in a different direction. I drive past the large, wealthy homes of Pittsburgh and into the more realistic houses that your everyday people live in. I keep going and find myself turning into the only trailer park in this part of the city.

I pull my black Ford into the driveway of a slightly off-white trailer with a screened off patio off to the side and a beaten up Kia in the front. I hesitate before stepping out, knowing that the chance of Kendall actually wanting to talk to me is slim to none and the possibility of her parents letting me even if she wants to are practically nonexistent. Yet I still do it and before I know it, I am standing outside the rusted metal front door after knocking, waiting for someone to open it.

I hear voices coming from inside what I presume to be the kitchen and I see two people moving about. Neither of them come to the door and I don't really expect them to. If our positions were opposite, my mother and father certainly wouldn't open the door for Kendall.

But I still stand there, hoping that maybe the door will swing open.

Right when my hope is almost completely gone and I make up my mind to leave and act like I never came, the silhouette of a woman appears behind the thin curtain covering the window of the door. The door swings open and I see Jill, Kendall's mom, standing there. Her red hair is half pulled into a ponytail, the other half hanging loose to her shoulders. Her green eyes narrow at me, as if the mere presence of me outside her house is despicable.

"Hello Josh." She shifts uncomfortably on her feet before deciding to lean against the door frame.

"Hi Mrs. Freed," I reply. I usually call her Jill, but it doesn't feel appropriate now. Since Saturday night, everything that Kendall and I built for nearly three years diminished.

She sighs loudly and I'm not sure if it's because she doesn't know what to say or she is just in disbelief that I am here. "Kendall won't want to see you."

"I figured." I shove my hands into the pockets of my sweaty gym shorts and look down at my slides. "Sorry I bothered you."

I begin to walk away from the door and towards the exit of the patio when Mrs. Freed stops me again.

"Josh," she says, "get her back."

I tun around to look at Kendall's mom, shocked at the words that have just left her mouth, but she is already gone. She has retreated back into the small kitchen area, closing the door behind her.

Why would Mrs. Freed tell me to win her daughter back? I mean, it's reassuring to hear because that's exactly what I want to do but I didn't expect anyone else to support me. The whole school practically hates me and hopes that Kendall finds someone that will treat her better than I did. My mom is still trying to set me up with Kimmy, telling me that it was a gift for her to show up at school to break Kendall and I up. The last person I expected to hear support from was Jill. This is her daughter we're talking about. Her only child. Why would she want someone to be back in her life after breaking her heart not just once, but twice? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I ponder my questions the entire ride home and come up with no reasonable explanation for it. I'm still trying to think up an answer when I step inside my house to see all the lights off except for one in the kitchen. Underneath the light, sitting silently at my kitchen counter, staring off into space, is Michael Corbin.

I stop dead in my tracks and look at him. At the sound of the heavy front door closing, her snaps out of his daze and shoots his eyes over to me. "You have about ten seconds to get out of my house before I beat the living hell out of you."

"You wouldn't want to do that. Then I'll never tell you the whole story."

I step cautiously toward him. "What do you mean?"

"The whole truth. Everyone who was involved. You couldn't have thought that it was just me." His black eyes reflect the fluorescent lights from above as I sit on the stool across from him.

"It wasn't just you?" I ask. What the heck is this psycho talking about?

Michael lets out a rueful laugh. "Oh Thompson. You never were the brightest Crayon in the box. Obviously it wasn't just me. Some of the things that happened, there was no way I could have possibly done them without help. You never wondered how someone got into you school in order to spray paint your lockers? Or how those notes got inside? I didn't know which lockers belong to your lacrosse team, especially you and your little friend. I still don't know. And you didn't really think Kimmy was one of your mom's coworker's daughters, now did you?"

I never even thought of that but now that he's said it, I realize how stupid I am for having not. Obviously nobody from Pittsburgh Hills could know that. But that only means one thing... "Wait, do you, do you have spies?"

"There you go kid." Michael speaks in a tone that a dad uses when their son finally can catch a baseball. "Now you're getting it."

"Who?"

"Now why would I tell you that?"

"Why would you come to my house if you didn't plan on telling me?"

"Let's play a little game. Two spies in your school, one outside of school."

"Do I get any hints? There are 3,200 kids in my school and I know plenty of people who don't go to Lincoln Central."

"I'll narrow it down for you. The two spies from school are out of the fifty kids on your teams. Well, we know it's not you or Kendall, so that leaves forty-eight. Outside of school but inside every detail of your life from the very second you were born. Before birth too." A smirk covers Michael's bruised, scarred, and cut-up face as his clues sink in. He can tell that I'm adding things up and he's taking joy in the fact that I didn't figure it out earlier.

I practically choke my words out. "My- my mom?"

"Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!"

"But you didn't even know her. How did you convince her to do this to me?"

"You never looked through the whole envelope now did you?"

The envelope. The freaking envelope that contained the background check on Kendall and her family. The pictures. I saw the other papers inside of it but I never even thought to try to figure out what they were. I just kind of assumed that they were more dirt on Kendall.

"What was inside of it? No more riddles. Just straight up."

"That takes all the fun out of our game though," he whines. I reach across the table and grab him by the shirt collar.

"I nearly killed you once and now there's no one here to stop me from going through with it," I hiss. I see genuine fear cross through his eyes and I release him.

"I ran a background check on the Freed family and dug up all sorts of dirt. I figured if I ran one of the Thompsons, I could find something juicy there too. Once I found it, I couldn't help but use it to my advantage. What could have been so bad as to cause a mother to betray her only son you ask? Mommy has the tendency to get a little to tipsy before getting behind the wheel of a car and Daddy uses his lawyer powers and a little extra portion of his paycheck to make it go away. If that got out, your family's good reputation would be tarnished."

"What about from school? They're on the lacrosse team. Anything else to narrow it down?" I don't even continue to comment on my mother because it all just makes too much sense. Everything about her is about how she looks on the outside. She dies her hair and gets surgeries to keep her youth going. She wears designer clothes in sizes teenage girls dream of fitting in to. If anything could screw that up for her, she'll do anything to stop it. My dad, he's a total lap dog. My mom has him in the palm of her hand and he's totally infatuated by her. He has been since they first met. He will do anything she wants and/or needs him to do.

"Boy and a girl. If you think hard enough about it, you know. Think about team bonding. Things seemed weird from the beginning. I mean, Kendall and you, nobody messes with that. If someone tried, you would notice. And someone tried. It wasn't a coincidence that they chose the same number. It wasn't a coincidence that it happened. You know what I'm talking about."

With these final words, Michael Corbin stands up and walks to the front door, leaving me in the empty house with only the one light on, thinking so many things at once.

And he's right. I do know who the spies are. I knew it was too suspicious when they did it but it took me too long to realize it.

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Hey Guys!

Anyways, who do you think the spies are? Remember that everything happens for a reason in Lacrosse and while you might have thought that this detail was insignificant and random drama at the time, it is very important.

Comment your guesses!

Xoxo,

Sydney