The Blue Zone

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Emily Geller pushed through the doors of her high school, spotting the familiar Volvo SUV waiting at the end of the long line.

He hadn’t even pulled the car up to her.

Weirdo. Emily shook her head. But Dad had been acting a little weird since he’d been back with them. He wasn’t the same person she’d always known-interested and funny and full of life-who always drove her around to squash tournaments and pushed her if she hadn’t finished her homework. Or got pissed at her when the cell-phone bills came in sky-high.

Maybe something had happened to him while he was away. (They’d all decided not to call it prison.) Now her dad always seemed distracted and remote. If you told him something that happened at school or how you kicked someone’s ass on the squash court, he only nodded back with this glassy, half-pleased look in his eyes, like he wasn’t even there.

Nothing was the way it was before.

Emily didn’t like it out here. She missed her friends, her coaches. Most of all, she missed Kate. They didn’t do things the same way now-as a family. One more year and she’d be out, Emily kept telling herself-in college. The first thing she would do was take back her name.

“Dad?” Emily rapped on the passenger window.

He was staring vacantly ahead, like he was deep in thought.

“Calling Dad?”

He finally acknowledged her, unlocking the passenger door. “Em…”

She threw her heavy knapsack into the backseat. “Did you remember my squash bag?”

“Of course.” He nodded. But he had to turn and check to make sure it was there.

“Yeah, right,” Emily snorted, climbing into the front. “Mom probably put it there.”

It was the one thing they could still do together. He seemed to love to watch her play. Of course, they didn’t have a school team where they were now, and the competition wasn’t the same. But there was a club about fifteen minutes away that had some pros she could train with. It was a risk, but she was pushing to get to the nationals in the spring, under a different name.

They pulled out of the school lot and drove down the main road of the suburban town they lived in. In a minute they were on the highway.

“I’m hitting with this guy Brad Danoulis today,” Emily told him. He was this cocky kid who got in early at Bowdoin and who played for a private school a couple of towns away. “He’s always bragging that the guys can whip the girls. You wanna watch?”

“Course I do, tiger,” her father said, distracted. He was dressed in a jacket and a plaid dress shirt, as if he was going somewhere. He never went anywhere anymore. “I just have something I have to do. Then I’ll be back.”

“Try not to be late, Dad, okay?” Emily said sternly. “I have a chem quiz and this take-home on The Crucible. Anyway, you want to watch me kick this guy’s butt.”

“Don’t worry. Look up. I’ll be in my spot. I’ll be there.”

They pulled off the highway and into the business park where the North Bay Squash Club was located. There were a few cars parked in front of the aluminum-sided building. Emily reached over and grabbed her bag. “Next month there’s this regional in San Francisco. I need to enter there. I need a West Coast ranking. We could go. You and me. Like we used to?”

“We could do that.” Her father nodded. “We used to have a lot of fun, didn’t we, tiger?”

“We all had fun,” Emily answered, a little acidly. She reached behind and yanked her squash bag out of the back. “Any last words of advice?”

“Just this.” He looked at her a little cock-eyed. “Always remember who you are, Em. You’re Emily Raab.”

She tilted her head at him. Everything he did now was weird. “Guess I was thinking more like, ‘Keep pressing his backhand, Em.’”

“That too, tiger.” He smiled.

As Emily pulled open the door to the squash club, he shot her a wink, and just for a flash it seemed to have a little of the old Dad in it. The one Emily hadn’t seen for a long time.

“Kick his ass, babe.”

Emily grinned back. “I will.”

Inside, Brad was already waiting on the court, crisply smacking the ball. He had on a T-shirt that read CABO ROCKS.

Emily went into the locker room, put her hair in a ponytail, and changed into her shorts. She came out and stepped onto the court. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Brad nodded. He tried this show-off, behind-the-back “boast” to get her the ball.

Emily rolled her eyes at him, a little skeptically. “You ever even been to Cabo?”

“Yeah. Christmas last year. It was cool. You?”

She started cracking forehands. “Twice.”

They played three games. Brad took a lead on her in the first. He had a wicked cross-court kill and was fast. No slouch. But Emily came back. She tied him at eight, and they alternated game points until she pulled out a win with a perfectly executed corner kill. Brad looked annoyed and bounced his racquet off the floor. He acted like it was a fluke. “Let’s go again.”

She took him the next game, too, 9-6. That was when Brad started walking gingerly on his ankle, as though he had an injury.

“So you gonna play for Bowdoin?” Emily asked him, knowing that Bowdoin was Division I in squash and that he didn’t stand a chance. By the third game, she was sailing. She took it 9-4.

Cleaned his clock.

“Nice match.” Brad shook her hand limply. “You’re good. Next time I won’t hold back.”

“Thanks.” Emily rolled her eyes. “My wrist will probably have healed by then.”

She sat on the bench with a towel over her head and gulped down some bottled water. That’s when it first occurred to her. She looked up at the balcony.

Where the hell is Dad?

He hadn’t come back for her match. He wasn’t sitting where he usually watched her matches. She pressed her lips together in frustration. A little anger, too. It was already after five. She had asked him to be back.

Where the hell is he?

Emily went outside and looked for the Volvo. No sign. Then she went back inside and settled in watching two seniors battle it out for almost another half an hour, doing her math, checking the door, until she was so pissed she couldn’t stand it anymore. She took out her cell and punched in her home number.

“We’re not at home…” The answering machine came on. This was starting to get annoying. Someone should be there. Where was everybody? She checked the clock. It was going on six. She had work to do. She’d told him that. Emily listened to the message and waited impatiently for the beep.

“Mom, it’s me. I’m still at the club. Dad never showed.”