Title: We're Sunk
Author: ness
Disclaimer: They're not mine. . . note: This was written ages ago. I wanted to see how far into the story the reader would need to work out who was telling it. Also, I disliked this character then, and this forced me to think about his point of view. I dislike X less now, so to that extent this story helped me. Reposting it because the paragraphs and such fouled up on the screen last time.
. . .
Crew meets. It's a time of hope, a time of aspirations. It's a time of intense focussed struggle both physical and mental. Finn taught me that. The chaos and disaster angle I got by myself. Our second meet away from Rawley there was this five boat pileup on the water while all the teams were out practising. We were getting a feel for the currents where the factory outflow hit the river the race would be on.
The guys from Hereward College were all over the place and their cox panicked, and gave some totally surreal orders, and next thing you know, their boat bulldozed into the sides of three other shells starting with us. The fifth boat capsized when some of the guys in the water tried to climb aboard. Our team had the sense to just swim to the bank once our boat was holed. Ham tried to drag it in but it sank. That's got to cost a bomb to fix.
Luckily there was a set of steps built into the river embankment so we squelched up them. We passed this bunch of local kids laughing their asses off at us. Happy happy joy joy.
Weird to think that from their angle I'm another wasp elitist snob.
So, anyway, our cox is looking totally pissed off - he hates getting wet, he's like a cat - and Finn is saying to him, "You couldn't have done anything." Finn is so supportive.
"I was supposed to do something. Times like that are what I'm there for. Otherwise I'm just ballast." Jake peeled the hem of his top away from his hip and wrung out the edge.
"You didn't have time; none of us had time. They just barged right in to us." Hamilton's emotional side is a bit girly if you ask me. But, maybe I only think that because of the rumours about him.
"Who pays the costs? our insurers or Hereward College?" I asked.
Finn pursed his lips. "Good point. I need to talk to their adult supervisor -"
"- over there, surrounded by angry yelling guys" said Eric.
"Gentlemen, get back to the hotel and change into dry clothes." He looked round at us all. "Any of you swallow much water?"
We shook our heads and he left.
"We're lucky. The Cam's so dirty that it's university policy to stomach pump anyone who falls into it, on principle." Brian's part English. He comes out with arcane stuff sometimes. It's cool.
"Whether they want to or not? What kind of principle is that?" Scout wondered.
"I think they sign a form."
We'd got to a junction. We all stared at Jake while we waited for the lights to turn. He was trying to wring out his top while wearing it.
The rest of us had taken off as many clammy garments as possible.
Theo was starting up a bruise on his ribs, I noticed.
Jake is so strange. He caught us looking. "What?" he snapped.
"So!" goes Ham to Brian, overly interested. "Tell us more about Cam University."
"Here's the hotel" said Theo. "Man, the receptionist's gonna love us."
Brian said "Pretty soon the Rawley crew are going to be the Typhoid Marys of the rowing circuit.
"Yeah" said Eric. "Remember the fire at our first away meet?"
I didn't say anything. You know, Jake has huge body issues. He goes to amazing trouble not to reveal an inch of skin. I've seen him sweating in coverup layers on the hottest days. He's small, skinny, pallid. I've seen the way he looks at Hamilton. He obviously wishes he was built like that. I'd guess that's why he likes him. It can't be a meeting of minds; Hamilton is the slowest thinking mammal on the eastern seaboard. Eric says they're both creepy.
Ham and I grabbed all the towels we could find out of the bathroom while Scout got a change of clothes together. He got first go of the shower because he washes disturbingly fast. It must be down to total social self confidence. Jake stood by the window shivering and plucking at the leg of his jeans.
"Baby you've got to get out of that wet stuff." Hamilton told him.
I decided to ignore the baby part.
"Um." Jake glanced at me.
"Use the wardrobe door as a screen to change behind." Ham is incredibly matter of fact about people's strangeness. He's home schooled you know. He told me once that everyone in Rawley seemed kind of weird from his angle. That, and the group dynamic of class was freaking him out. He didn't use the term "group dynamic".
I took a peek at Scout's watch on the nightstand. Mine stopped in the river but he had one of those upsidedown waterproof works-in-outerspace models. Wouldn't you know. I told them I had to phone Rawley and turned away. I couldn't phone my Mom because Dad might pick up. But I don't want to get into that can of worms right now.
I'd promised Bella a phone tutorial so that's what I did.
Bella wanted to tell me all the Edmund High gossip. Sean and Grace had had a fight. A basketball tournament was planned. There was a witch hunt on about graffiti on the bike shed. The graffiti got cleaned off so fast it must be x-rated, and there were rumours ..
I kept hauling her back to Jude the Obscure. I felt like a total joyless rat doing it. I like the sound of Bella's voice, I want to listen to her chatter, but I want her to do well in class too. I wonder does Finn get this when we zone out on Emerson or Whitman.
"How can you invest in creepy Jude? The only good thing in the movie was Christoper Eccleston's cheekbones."
"Have you read the book at all? Or are you planning to pass the exam on a vague memory of some actor's face? Jude is seminal. Peasant genius gets done down by classridden establishment." All right. When I read the book, I took it personally.
When Bella's voice spoke again, she sounded concerned. "Will, are y-"
Scout came bombing out of the bathroom. "Jake? Huh?" I heard.
I looked across the room. Jake had some bizarre bondage thing on his torso.
So, we're standing there staring at Jake. His shirts rucked at the waist and there's white bandage showing.
"What's that Jake" says Scout.
"Gotta go Bella" distracted Scout for about a second. Which is some sort of record.
"It's a prophylactic."
I looked at Scout. I wasn't the only one who didn't understand the word. "A What?"
"It's - medicine is what you take to get better; a prophylactic stops you getting sick in the first place."
Scout's forehead puckered. "It's medicine."
"It's a back brace Scout." Jake looked awkward. "I have this genetic disposition toward slipped discs and stuff."
"That must be a trauma for someone dedicated to 24hour cool." I didn't mean to say that out loud.
It annoyed Jake. "Well lets say it's not conducive to a babe-filled social life." It must have killed him to agree with me.
"You might get pity dates" Scout offered brightly.
My eyes slid over to Hamilton. He was pretty much devoid of expression which I would never have thought possible. Normally every thought he has is written in clear print. He was messing with Jake's book on the bedstand, some stupid crime novel by Janet Evanovich. Did he know this stuff already?
"If you've health issues, I can see rowing and swimming but should you play ball?" I said suddenly. I'd just thought of it.
"Huh?"
"Football. You're kinda small, you get thrown to the ground the whole time" (mostly by Ham, but let's not go there. Oh. Wait. He can't have known about the bad back then.) "It can't be good for your spine."
His eyes widened. "I love playing football."
"I'm just saying. You should be more careful. You can still play on your little-" I pointed to it on Ham's bed "-console."
His lip curled.
"Why do they let you?" I didn't get it.
"The back thing isn't in the Rawley database" Jake mumbled.
"What?" I snapped.
"You hacked in." If I didn't know Scout better, I'd think he was impressed. "Wow."
All right, he was impressed.
"That's so stupid" I couldn't help saying.
Scout raised his eyebrows at me. "What, illegal use of a computer when entering Rawley?"
I got his point. Hopefully, Jake and Hamilton didn't. Wait, Jake wouldn't listen to me, but Hamilton could maybe persuade him. "Hamilton! You talk to Jake about football and his back."
Hamilton and Jake exchanged more unreadable looks, in that annoying way they do. Can't they use words? It's not complicated. "Later" Ham said at last.
"Yeah, later" said Jake, then said to us "Guys. Look, don't tell anyone about this. 'Cause it's stupid, and it's private, and," he smirked sideways at Scout "I don't want any pity dates. Okay?"
"It's none of our business man" said Scout.
"What he said" I agreed. I suppose this explains about Jake being so defensive. It's a shame, but we'll probably never find out any more.
Finn got back to the hotel in a filthy mood, though he hid it better than some. I had been right about the cost of getting our shell off the riverbed, and Hereward's insurance didn't cover it, or were arguing about liability, or something. Cautious questioning at breakfast next morning got this out of him. Oh, and the race was off.
"Not our problem, man" said Scout. He was fighting off Hamilton for the last of the fried mushrooms. Hamilton let him win.
"Speak for yourself. I'm going to hear all about it." Hamilton is the dean's son.
"He can't hold you responsible." I thought about how my dad would react. "Can he?"
Brian pointed out that it could be worse. "Check out the Hereward crew."
Everyone at our table took a good, long stare. They looked suicidally depressed. "Which is the cox?" Eric asked morbidly.
"Down the far end. Not eating" said Jake.
"Not being spoken to either" said Eric after a moment. "A leper's leper." He has a vindictive streak.
"Gentlemen." said Finn. "Our opposite numbers from Hereward are already suffering enough."
Eric snorted, and got a glare.
"I don't want to hear of any kind of uncivilised behaviour from any Rawley men." Finn turned the glare on the rest of us.
"What?" said Scout.
"Retribution" clarified Theo, rubbing his side.
"Oh, right." Scout helped himself to grilled sausages.
"For godsake it's just a sport fixture" said Jake.
Everyone looked at him weird, but it seemed to reassure Finn who got up from table. "I'm going to make another phone call to the Dean."
Hamilton grimaced sympathetically. "The coach comes for us at noon. Please have your bags packed."
When I got back to our room Hamilton was ahead of me. He was picking up the phone and saying to Jake "Yes I can choose not to do this any time I like. Any day I want to be rechristened Beelzebub and have a picassoesque voodoo doll made of me, I can just forget to check in with Mom."
"Picassoesque?" I repeated. I don't take art with Mrs Fleming. Maybe that's what she does. "Is that an art teacher thing?"
"Nah. It's my mom's craft skills."
I went over and set about folding Tshirts. There was background noise in the room, Jake tap-tapping on his computer game and some jedi swordfight type soundeffects from the game itself. Also, there was Hamilton, being embarrassed.
"Yeah, .. no, I'm fine .. no I didn't catch cold .. Mo-om" (a drawnout wail)"don't CALL me that .. I mean it. How's Dad taking this? .. uh-huh .. Yeah, I know. I heard Hereward's boat came through without a scratch .. Mom, it's annoying. Because it's their fault ..I don't know anything about that .."
I turned round. Jake was flashing Hamilton a rueful, amused smile and he was rolling his eyes back at him. - when Ham gets off the phone -
I thought - I'd better take the chance to talk to Bella and explain about last night -
FLASHBACK
The sky was overcast on the evening of the accident and it got dark early. Finn was busy. We were kind of left to ourselves. Jake checked out the town's nightclubs via internet and then he and Ham vanished for several hours. The rest of us had a grudge to pay off.
Scout and Eric went looking for a hardware shop and when they got back Eric called a council of war in his and Theo's room. It was very crowded with seven bulked up guys jostling for space in there. I found a perch on top of a chest of drawers. Theo was taking charge.
"Did you guys hear" he said "that they've scooped the boats off the river bed? And Hereward's boat is in perfect condition. Not so much as chipped paint."
"Aww man, that's so not fair" noises from all.
Theo's voice dropped. "I think we owe them, and I want ideas on what we can do."
I don't remember all the suggestions that came up. Ronald, (yeah, I know, crap name. It's a family thing. A lot of the guys at Rawley have that problem), Ronald said we should tell Hereward the pollution was toxic and they were going to get really sick.
"And why would they believe us" inquired Brian. "Wouldn't that kind of info come from a hospital?"
"Fake letterhead" suggested Eddie after some thought. "Off a laptop."
"No." Theo cut him off.
"Chop the boat up with an axe" said Eric. Brutal and direct, that's him.
"Overkill" said Brian. Theo didn't look so sure.
"We could use this." Scout proudly waved his purchase from the hardware store, a can of spray paint.
"Scout" I said nervously. I see myself as the voice of reason in Scout's life. God knows, he needs one. He gets caught up in the moment a lot.
"What could we spray?" Eric asked, not being the voice of reason.
"Uh .. this way up. Only, we'd write it upside down."
"Lame" said Brian decisively.
"It's no use just sitting there being laconic and shooting down every idea" I told him. "You come up with something."
"Alternatively, we could dope the Hereward cox, dump him in the boat with a whole load of flowers and re enact the lady of shalott by shoving the entire thing downstream."
We all stared at him as if he'd come from another planet. "Man, Finn has been overdoing the Tennyson" murmured Scout.
"I'm being sarcastic" Brian yelled.
The meeting went on for ages and I'd have to say it wasn't conclusive. By the time we were through, I had more hostility toward the other people in the room than toward the Hereward crew. One positive thing we were glad of later, Eddie did think to distract the receptionist so she never knew we all left the building. He went to her with some repulsive story about the hotel kitten coughing up furballs all over the buffet table and she was off to investigate in a flash. But the meeting, God, the meeting rambled and got hostile and ended only because we were sick of batting round ideas and maybe I'm really still there and only hallucinated ever getting out.
So. We're sneaking through the hotel, stealthy. It's like a war movie, from shadow to shadow, down the stairs, unnoticed, silent, across the lobby. Then, voices. We all scattered and threw ourselves behind various bits of furniture. Scout and Eric and Theo behind an overstuffed sofa, Brian crouched by an armchair, Ronald and Eddie on hands and knees under a table of Vogue backissues. I found a horrible frond-y plant in a brass bucket to lurk behind.
It was only Jake and Ham, anyway. They were laughing and joking around, on their way back from the clubs. "Where's the receptionist?" Jake wondered briefly.
Hamilton jangled a set of room keys and he forgot about it. "Oh, is that what was in your pocket all evening?"
"Jake!-"
Quietly at first then louder and louder a horrible electronic tune started up. At moments like this you ask yourself why it ever seemed cool to download the Addams family theme as a ringtone. The other guys were giving me the stinkeye. The cell got even louder as I pulled it out. The screen showed Bella's number. I flipped it open, hissed, "Later" and turned the damn thing off. I looked round. They were all glacial.
"Does anybody else need" said Brian in that snotty Brit accent, "to turn their bloody mobile off?" Ronald looked hunted and started patting himself.
Jake and Ham came over to check out the noise. I was trying not to look as if I was more or less standing in a potplant, which was hard, because, you know, I was. Jake was looking faintly amused. He had that I'm all suave and you're out of your depth thing going.
Sometimes the Rawley boys make me feel like an idiot. Sometimes they do it without meaning to.
Of course, other times it's intentional. Ham made such a big deal of my slip up, you'd think he spent his life on covert operations. You switch off in theatres, in hospitals, on airplanes AND WHEN UNDERCOVER. Yeah, yeah. That's a life lesson that'll be totally relevant.
"Is this something to do with Hereward?" Jake asked.
"Of course it is" said Theo irritably.
Jake and Hamilton raised their eyebrows at each other. "We're coming with" Ham announced.
The shells had been carried to a parking lot on the river bank. Fleming gestured to us to skulk a bit before going over. He puts a lot of emotional energy into sneakiness. Silent figures were flitting around the boats, scurrying through the shadows. Too short to be adult, big-shouldered - "It's the other teams that got messed about" Eddie realised.
A distant crashing and splintering let us know that they were beating seven bells out of the base of the Hereward boat.
"Now that's just vandalism" said Theo dispassionately.
"Using baseball bats. Very allAmerican." Brian matched his tone.
Scout was all jittery and nervous. "They're gonna get caught."
Sure enough, a halting figure in a visored cap appeared. His shouts scared them off but he was too slow to catch them. They ran off toward the river and a distant splash told us the guard had
outmanoeuvred them.
After a moment we got the word from Ronald-world. "Why do you suppose private security firms go so overboard on epaulettes?" I reflected, as Finn no doubt would've, that overboard was a cruel choice of words.
"Okay, guys. Show's over" Jake said firmly. We were running to the exit when I realised I'd heard a clatter.
"My cellphone." It was Ronald, and he looked horrified.
I hesitated.
"No. I'll go back" said Jake. "I'm obviously smaller than those guys. "And I'm better at scamming than you are Krudsky. Go." He was using his I'm the cox, don't mess with me, voice. He glared over my shoulder at one of the other guys. "You, too."
There wasn't time to argue. We could hear the arhythmic footsteps.
I'd found a dark corner near the gate before slowly, the successful guard made it to the lot. Jake had got the phone but was standing exposed in the middle of the parking lot.
"Hey" yelled the guard.
"Hey" goes Jake, not running. "You in charge here?"
"You one of those vandals?"
The street lights were inadequate, but I was pretty sure Jake was rolling his eyes at the cunning interrogation. "Yeah, sure, because I'd just be standing here if I were .. They were all big guys, weren't they? I saw the end of it."
"Yeah." The guard came up to Jake. His limp was more pronounced after running. "They left their bats."
"That was stupid" Jake said, expressionless. He squinted up sideways from under his baseball cap.
"Fingerprints" said the guard. I don't think he'd given up on the idea that Jake had done it. Beside me I sensed movement. I hadn't realised Hamilton had waited as well.
"Must've taken some muscle" said Jake calmly. "More than I've got."
The guard looked him over.
"Look." Exasperated, Jake pulled his top away from his belt to expose the brace. "I've got a spinal thing. You think I'd wear this if I didn't have to?"
The guard snorted. "Not if you're anything like my boy."
- he has a son our age - I thought. - Great. Assuming he likes the son, that is -
"He'd hate having this." The guard tapped his bad leg.
"What happened?"
"Injured on duty" he said. "I used to be a cop."
- that's so Martin Crane from Frasier. And his son's unsympathetic - I was dying to hear more but Jake wasn't asking. Hamilton tugged me away from the scene.
END FLASHBACK
And now here we were, on a rainy morning in a comfortable hotel. I was going to have to do some serious grovelling to Bella for refusing her call like that. She must have been worried when I cut off the Jude tutorial so abruptly earlier.
"Bella, I'm sorry." I wanted to phone her while Scout was out of the room. He doesn't mean to, but he hovers invasively.
"Will. Why didn't you tell me?" She didn't sound angry. I didn't expect that.
"Tell you what?"
"I don't mean, I mean, you don't have to tell me. If you don't want to. God! But I would've wanted to help."
"Bella? What's up?" I was getting scared. "What is this?"
Static on the line. I could hear her breathing.
"Bella?" I yelled, panicky. Part of my attention told me Jake and Hamilton were still there but it really didn't matter.
"Bella, what's happened? You have to tell me." I said it as forcefully as I knew how. She was a hundred miles away in Rawley. I couldn't make her tell me a damn thing.
She was crying. "It's your dad, Will. I thought you heard."
END.
Author: ness
Disclaimer: They're not mine. . . note: This was written ages ago. I wanted to see how far into the story the reader would need to work out who was telling it. Also, I disliked this character then, and this forced me to think about his point of view. I dislike X less now, so to that extent this story helped me. Reposting it because the paragraphs and such fouled up on the screen last time.
. . .
Crew meets. It's a time of hope, a time of aspirations. It's a time of intense focussed struggle both physical and mental. Finn taught me that. The chaos and disaster angle I got by myself. Our second meet away from Rawley there was this five boat pileup on the water while all the teams were out practising. We were getting a feel for the currents where the factory outflow hit the river the race would be on.
The guys from Hereward College were all over the place and their cox panicked, and gave some totally surreal orders, and next thing you know, their boat bulldozed into the sides of three other shells starting with us. The fifth boat capsized when some of the guys in the water tried to climb aboard. Our team had the sense to just swim to the bank once our boat was holed. Ham tried to drag it in but it sank. That's got to cost a bomb to fix.
Luckily there was a set of steps built into the river embankment so we squelched up them. We passed this bunch of local kids laughing their asses off at us. Happy happy joy joy.
Weird to think that from their angle I'm another wasp elitist snob.
So, anyway, our cox is looking totally pissed off - he hates getting wet, he's like a cat - and Finn is saying to him, "You couldn't have done anything." Finn is so supportive.
"I was supposed to do something. Times like that are what I'm there for. Otherwise I'm just ballast." Jake peeled the hem of his top away from his hip and wrung out the edge.
"You didn't have time; none of us had time. They just barged right in to us." Hamilton's emotional side is a bit girly if you ask me. But, maybe I only think that because of the rumours about him.
"Who pays the costs? our insurers or Hereward College?" I asked.
Finn pursed his lips. "Good point. I need to talk to their adult supervisor -"
"- over there, surrounded by angry yelling guys" said Eric.
"Gentlemen, get back to the hotel and change into dry clothes." He looked round at us all. "Any of you swallow much water?"
We shook our heads and he left.
"We're lucky. The Cam's so dirty that it's university policy to stomach pump anyone who falls into it, on principle." Brian's part English. He comes out with arcane stuff sometimes. It's cool.
"Whether they want to or not? What kind of principle is that?" Scout wondered.
"I think they sign a form."
We'd got to a junction. We all stared at Jake while we waited for the lights to turn. He was trying to wring out his top while wearing it.
The rest of us had taken off as many clammy garments as possible.
Theo was starting up a bruise on his ribs, I noticed.
Jake is so strange. He caught us looking. "What?" he snapped.
"So!" goes Ham to Brian, overly interested. "Tell us more about Cam University."
"Here's the hotel" said Theo. "Man, the receptionist's gonna love us."
Brian said "Pretty soon the Rawley crew are going to be the Typhoid Marys of the rowing circuit.
"Yeah" said Eric. "Remember the fire at our first away meet?"
I didn't say anything. You know, Jake has huge body issues. He goes to amazing trouble not to reveal an inch of skin. I've seen him sweating in coverup layers on the hottest days. He's small, skinny, pallid. I've seen the way he looks at Hamilton. He obviously wishes he was built like that. I'd guess that's why he likes him. It can't be a meeting of minds; Hamilton is the slowest thinking mammal on the eastern seaboard. Eric says they're both creepy.
Ham and I grabbed all the towels we could find out of the bathroom while Scout got a change of clothes together. He got first go of the shower because he washes disturbingly fast. It must be down to total social self confidence. Jake stood by the window shivering and plucking at the leg of his jeans.
"Baby you've got to get out of that wet stuff." Hamilton told him.
I decided to ignore the baby part.
"Um." Jake glanced at me.
"Use the wardrobe door as a screen to change behind." Ham is incredibly matter of fact about people's strangeness. He's home schooled you know. He told me once that everyone in Rawley seemed kind of weird from his angle. That, and the group dynamic of class was freaking him out. He didn't use the term "group dynamic".
I took a peek at Scout's watch on the nightstand. Mine stopped in the river but he had one of those upsidedown waterproof works-in-outerspace models. Wouldn't you know. I told them I had to phone Rawley and turned away. I couldn't phone my Mom because Dad might pick up. But I don't want to get into that can of worms right now.
I'd promised Bella a phone tutorial so that's what I did.
Bella wanted to tell me all the Edmund High gossip. Sean and Grace had had a fight. A basketball tournament was planned. There was a witch hunt on about graffiti on the bike shed. The graffiti got cleaned off so fast it must be x-rated, and there were rumours ..
I kept hauling her back to Jude the Obscure. I felt like a total joyless rat doing it. I like the sound of Bella's voice, I want to listen to her chatter, but I want her to do well in class too. I wonder does Finn get this when we zone out on Emerson or Whitman.
"How can you invest in creepy Jude? The only good thing in the movie was Christoper Eccleston's cheekbones."
"Have you read the book at all? Or are you planning to pass the exam on a vague memory of some actor's face? Jude is seminal. Peasant genius gets done down by classridden establishment." All right. When I read the book, I took it personally.
When Bella's voice spoke again, she sounded concerned. "Will, are y-"
Scout came bombing out of the bathroom. "Jake? Huh?" I heard.
I looked across the room. Jake had some bizarre bondage thing on his torso.
So, we're standing there staring at Jake. His shirts rucked at the waist and there's white bandage showing.
"What's that Jake" says Scout.
"Gotta go Bella" distracted Scout for about a second. Which is some sort of record.
"It's a prophylactic."
I looked at Scout. I wasn't the only one who didn't understand the word. "A What?"
"It's - medicine is what you take to get better; a prophylactic stops you getting sick in the first place."
Scout's forehead puckered. "It's medicine."
"It's a back brace Scout." Jake looked awkward. "I have this genetic disposition toward slipped discs and stuff."
"That must be a trauma for someone dedicated to 24hour cool." I didn't mean to say that out loud.
It annoyed Jake. "Well lets say it's not conducive to a babe-filled social life." It must have killed him to agree with me.
"You might get pity dates" Scout offered brightly.
My eyes slid over to Hamilton. He was pretty much devoid of expression which I would never have thought possible. Normally every thought he has is written in clear print. He was messing with Jake's book on the bedstand, some stupid crime novel by Janet Evanovich. Did he know this stuff already?
"If you've health issues, I can see rowing and swimming but should you play ball?" I said suddenly. I'd just thought of it.
"Huh?"
"Football. You're kinda small, you get thrown to the ground the whole time" (mostly by Ham, but let's not go there. Oh. Wait. He can't have known about the bad back then.) "It can't be good for your spine."
His eyes widened. "I love playing football."
"I'm just saying. You should be more careful. You can still play on your little-" I pointed to it on Ham's bed "-console."
His lip curled.
"Why do they let you?" I didn't get it.
"The back thing isn't in the Rawley database" Jake mumbled.
"What?" I snapped.
"You hacked in." If I didn't know Scout better, I'd think he was impressed. "Wow."
All right, he was impressed.
"That's so stupid" I couldn't help saying.
Scout raised his eyebrows at me. "What, illegal use of a computer when entering Rawley?"
I got his point. Hopefully, Jake and Hamilton didn't. Wait, Jake wouldn't listen to me, but Hamilton could maybe persuade him. "Hamilton! You talk to Jake about football and his back."
Hamilton and Jake exchanged more unreadable looks, in that annoying way they do. Can't they use words? It's not complicated. "Later" Ham said at last.
"Yeah, later" said Jake, then said to us "Guys. Look, don't tell anyone about this. 'Cause it's stupid, and it's private, and," he smirked sideways at Scout "I don't want any pity dates. Okay?"
"It's none of our business man" said Scout.
"What he said" I agreed. I suppose this explains about Jake being so defensive. It's a shame, but we'll probably never find out any more.
Finn got back to the hotel in a filthy mood, though he hid it better than some. I had been right about the cost of getting our shell off the riverbed, and Hereward's insurance didn't cover it, or were arguing about liability, or something. Cautious questioning at breakfast next morning got this out of him. Oh, and the race was off.
"Not our problem, man" said Scout. He was fighting off Hamilton for the last of the fried mushrooms. Hamilton let him win.
"Speak for yourself. I'm going to hear all about it." Hamilton is the dean's son.
"He can't hold you responsible." I thought about how my dad would react. "Can he?"
Brian pointed out that it could be worse. "Check out the Hereward crew."
Everyone at our table took a good, long stare. They looked suicidally depressed. "Which is the cox?" Eric asked morbidly.
"Down the far end. Not eating" said Jake.
"Not being spoken to either" said Eric after a moment. "A leper's leper." He has a vindictive streak.
"Gentlemen." said Finn. "Our opposite numbers from Hereward are already suffering enough."
Eric snorted, and got a glare.
"I don't want to hear of any kind of uncivilised behaviour from any Rawley men." Finn turned the glare on the rest of us.
"What?" said Scout.
"Retribution" clarified Theo, rubbing his side.
"Oh, right." Scout helped himself to grilled sausages.
"For godsake it's just a sport fixture" said Jake.
Everyone looked at him weird, but it seemed to reassure Finn who got up from table. "I'm going to make another phone call to the Dean."
Hamilton grimaced sympathetically. "The coach comes for us at noon. Please have your bags packed."
When I got back to our room Hamilton was ahead of me. He was picking up the phone and saying to Jake "Yes I can choose not to do this any time I like. Any day I want to be rechristened Beelzebub and have a picassoesque voodoo doll made of me, I can just forget to check in with Mom."
"Picassoesque?" I repeated. I don't take art with Mrs Fleming. Maybe that's what she does. "Is that an art teacher thing?"
"Nah. It's my mom's craft skills."
I went over and set about folding Tshirts. There was background noise in the room, Jake tap-tapping on his computer game and some jedi swordfight type soundeffects from the game itself. Also, there was Hamilton, being embarrassed.
"Yeah, .. no, I'm fine .. no I didn't catch cold .. Mo-om" (a drawnout wail)"don't CALL me that .. I mean it. How's Dad taking this? .. uh-huh .. Yeah, I know. I heard Hereward's boat came through without a scratch .. Mom, it's annoying. Because it's their fault ..I don't know anything about that .."
I turned round. Jake was flashing Hamilton a rueful, amused smile and he was rolling his eyes back at him. - when Ham gets off the phone -
I thought - I'd better take the chance to talk to Bella and explain about last night -
FLASHBACK
The sky was overcast on the evening of the accident and it got dark early. Finn was busy. We were kind of left to ourselves. Jake checked out the town's nightclubs via internet and then he and Ham vanished for several hours. The rest of us had a grudge to pay off.
Scout and Eric went looking for a hardware shop and when they got back Eric called a council of war in his and Theo's room. It was very crowded with seven bulked up guys jostling for space in there. I found a perch on top of a chest of drawers. Theo was taking charge.
"Did you guys hear" he said "that they've scooped the boats off the river bed? And Hereward's boat is in perfect condition. Not so much as chipped paint."
"Aww man, that's so not fair" noises from all.
Theo's voice dropped. "I think we owe them, and I want ideas on what we can do."
I don't remember all the suggestions that came up. Ronald, (yeah, I know, crap name. It's a family thing. A lot of the guys at Rawley have that problem), Ronald said we should tell Hereward the pollution was toxic and they were going to get really sick.
"And why would they believe us" inquired Brian. "Wouldn't that kind of info come from a hospital?"
"Fake letterhead" suggested Eddie after some thought. "Off a laptop."
"No." Theo cut him off.
"Chop the boat up with an axe" said Eric. Brutal and direct, that's him.
"Overkill" said Brian. Theo didn't look so sure.
"We could use this." Scout proudly waved his purchase from the hardware store, a can of spray paint.
"Scout" I said nervously. I see myself as the voice of reason in Scout's life. God knows, he needs one. He gets caught up in the moment a lot.
"What could we spray?" Eric asked, not being the voice of reason.
"Uh .. this way up. Only, we'd write it upside down."
"Lame" said Brian decisively.
"It's no use just sitting there being laconic and shooting down every idea" I told him. "You come up with something."
"Alternatively, we could dope the Hereward cox, dump him in the boat with a whole load of flowers and re enact the lady of shalott by shoving the entire thing downstream."
We all stared at him as if he'd come from another planet. "Man, Finn has been overdoing the Tennyson" murmured Scout.
"I'm being sarcastic" Brian yelled.
The meeting went on for ages and I'd have to say it wasn't conclusive. By the time we were through, I had more hostility toward the other people in the room than toward the Hereward crew. One positive thing we were glad of later, Eddie did think to distract the receptionist so she never knew we all left the building. He went to her with some repulsive story about the hotel kitten coughing up furballs all over the buffet table and she was off to investigate in a flash. But the meeting, God, the meeting rambled and got hostile and ended only because we were sick of batting round ideas and maybe I'm really still there and only hallucinated ever getting out.
So. We're sneaking through the hotel, stealthy. It's like a war movie, from shadow to shadow, down the stairs, unnoticed, silent, across the lobby. Then, voices. We all scattered and threw ourselves behind various bits of furniture. Scout and Eric and Theo behind an overstuffed sofa, Brian crouched by an armchair, Ronald and Eddie on hands and knees under a table of Vogue backissues. I found a horrible frond-y plant in a brass bucket to lurk behind.
It was only Jake and Ham, anyway. They were laughing and joking around, on their way back from the clubs. "Where's the receptionist?" Jake wondered briefly.
Hamilton jangled a set of room keys and he forgot about it. "Oh, is that what was in your pocket all evening?"
"Jake!-"
Quietly at first then louder and louder a horrible electronic tune started up. At moments like this you ask yourself why it ever seemed cool to download the Addams family theme as a ringtone. The other guys were giving me the stinkeye. The cell got even louder as I pulled it out. The screen showed Bella's number. I flipped it open, hissed, "Later" and turned the damn thing off. I looked round. They were all glacial.
"Does anybody else need" said Brian in that snotty Brit accent, "to turn their bloody mobile off?" Ronald looked hunted and started patting himself.
Jake and Ham came over to check out the noise. I was trying not to look as if I was more or less standing in a potplant, which was hard, because, you know, I was. Jake was looking faintly amused. He had that I'm all suave and you're out of your depth thing going.
Sometimes the Rawley boys make me feel like an idiot. Sometimes they do it without meaning to.
Of course, other times it's intentional. Ham made such a big deal of my slip up, you'd think he spent his life on covert operations. You switch off in theatres, in hospitals, on airplanes AND WHEN UNDERCOVER. Yeah, yeah. That's a life lesson that'll be totally relevant.
"Is this something to do with Hereward?" Jake asked.
"Of course it is" said Theo irritably.
Jake and Hamilton raised their eyebrows at each other. "We're coming with" Ham announced.
The shells had been carried to a parking lot on the river bank. Fleming gestured to us to skulk a bit before going over. He puts a lot of emotional energy into sneakiness. Silent figures were flitting around the boats, scurrying through the shadows. Too short to be adult, big-shouldered - "It's the other teams that got messed about" Eddie realised.
A distant crashing and splintering let us know that they were beating seven bells out of the base of the Hereward boat.
"Now that's just vandalism" said Theo dispassionately.
"Using baseball bats. Very allAmerican." Brian matched his tone.
Scout was all jittery and nervous. "They're gonna get caught."
Sure enough, a halting figure in a visored cap appeared. His shouts scared them off but he was too slow to catch them. They ran off toward the river and a distant splash told us the guard had
outmanoeuvred them.
After a moment we got the word from Ronald-world. "Why do you suppose private security firms go so overboard on epaulettes?" I reflected, as Finn no doubt would've, that overboard was a cruel choice of words.
"Okay, guys. Show's over" Jake said firmly. We were running to the exit when I realised I'd heard a clatter.
"My cellphone." It was Ronald, and he looked horrified.
I hesitated.
"No. I'll go back" said Jake. "I'm obviously smaller than those guys. "And I'm better at scamming than you are Krudsky. Go." He was using his I'm the cox, don't mess with me, voice. He glared over my shoulder at one of the other guys. "You, too."
There wasn't time to argue. We could hear the arhythmic footsteps.
I'd found a dark corner near the gate before slowly, the successful guard made it to the lot. Jake had got the phone but was standing exposed in the middle of the parking lot.
"Hey" yelled the guard.
"Hey" goes Jake, not running. "You in charge here?"
"You one of those vandals?"
The street lights were inadequate, but I was pretty sure Jake was rolling his eyes at the cunning interrogation. "Yeah, sure, because I'd just be standing here if I were .. They were all big guys, weren't they? I saw the end of it."
"Yeah." The guard came up to Jake. His limp was more pronounced after running. "They left their bats."
"That was stupid" Jake said, expressionless. He squinted up sideways from under his baseball cap.
"Fingerprints" said the guard. I don't think he'd given up on the idea that Jake had done it. Beside me I sensed movement. I hadn't realised Hamilton had waited as well.
"Must've taken some muscle" said Jake calmly. "More than I've got."
The guard looked him over.
"Look." Exasperated, Jake pulled his top away from his belt to expose the brace. "I've got a spinal thing. You think I'd wear this if I didn't have to?"
The guard snorted. "Not if you're anything like my boy."
- he has a son our age - I thought. - Great. Assuming he likes the son, that is -
"He'd hate having this." The guard tapped his bad leg.
"What happened?"
"Injured on duty" he said. "I used to be a cop."
- that's so Martin Crane from Frasier. And his son's unsympathetic - I was dying to hear more but Jake wasn't asking. Hamilton tugged me away from the scene.
END FLASHBACK
And now here we were, on a rainy morning in a comfortable hotel. I was going to have to do some serious grovelling to Bella for refusing her call like that. She must have been worried when I cut off the Jude tutorial so abruptly earlier.
"Bella, I'm sorry." I wanted to phone her while Scout was out of the room. He doesn't mean to, but he hovers invasively.
"Will. Why didn't you tell me?" She didn't sound angry. I didn't expect that.
"Tell you what?"
"I don't mean, I mean, you don't have to tell me. If you don't want to. God! But I would've wanted to help."
"Bella? What's up?" I was getting scared. "What is this?"
Static on the line. I could hear her breathing.
"Bella?" I yelled, panicky. Part of my attention told me Jake and Hamilton were still there but it really didn't matter.
"Bella, what's happened? You have to tell me." I said it as forcefully as I knew how. She was a hundred miles away in Rawley. I couldn't make her tell me a damn thing.
She was crying. "It's your dad, Will. I thought you heard."
END.