Free Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor Page A

performance—aren’t a problem.
    I was running late and racing downstairs to grab something to eat before Jake picked me up and drove me to the rec center in downtown Newark where—while I taught ballet and the cheerleaders taught tumbling—he and a bunch of the other guys on the football team would be teaching kids how to bench-press or tackle or rape or whatever it was that football players knew how to do well. I’d no sooner stepped foot in the kitchen than Calvin Taylor’s car pulled up in front of my house, and I thought, I now have objective proof that the universe is determined to screw with me .
    I yelled good-bye to my parents and ran out the front door, blaming Calvin for my missing the most important meal of the day.
    “Hi,” I said, sliding into the backseat of Calvin’s vintage BMW.
    “Hi,” said Jake. Calvin didn’t say anything.
    “Oh,” Jake said, “I’m supposed to give you these.” He reached between the front seats and handed me a bag with the shoes inside.
    Calvin backed the car out of the driveway. His car had soft leather seats. It was maybe ten or even fifteen years old, but it was in beautiful shape. It was one of the things that semiannoyed me about Calvin, how in addition to everything else he had this cool vintage car. Still, he was giving me a ride.
    “Thanks for driving me,” I said.
    “Sure,” said Calvin. His tone was clipped. I couldn’t tell if it was I’m-mad-at-you-because-you-laughed-in-my-face clipped or It’s-eight-thirty-and-I’m-not-a-morning-person clipped. Jake said something to him that I couldn’t quite make out, and Calvin responded, “Not if he’s still injured.” Then Calvin turned up the music so I couldn’t hear them at all, and I leaned back against the seat and stared out the window.
    When Calvin turned into the parking lot of the rec center, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, I figured the facility would be as awful as the rest of the block, but it was actually a pretty nice three-story brick building. There was a huge mural on the wall by the parking lot that had a black teenager guy being frisked by a cop. All around them were people holding cameras directed at the boy and the cop, and above the picture were the words LOVE YOUR CITY. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS . It sounds depressing, but the colors were bright and the whole thing felt somehow energized and optimistic.
    Calvin parked the car and the three of us got out. Jake put his arm around me as we walked toward the building.
    “You doing okay?” he asked, squeezing my shoulders.
    I loved Jake. Whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Greco saw me as family, Jake had always treated me like a little sister.
    “Yeah, I’m okay,” I said, squeezing him back. “You okay?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “This is seriously fucked up, you know?”
    There really wasn’t any other way to put it. “I know,” I agreed.
    “Jake! Calvin! Zoe!” Jake and I turned around. Stacy, Emma, the Bailor twins, and Hailey were piling out of Stacy’s Lexus SUV.
    “Come here, guys!” Emma called. She was gesturing us over frantically, as if the parking lot were on fire and she had discovered the only escape route.
    Despite how annoyed he always seemed by Emma, Jake took his arm off my waist and headed toward the girls. “We’ll give you a ride home,” he said over his shoulder to me.
    “Whipped much?” I teased him.
    Laughing, he spun around in a full circle, pausing in my direction just long enough to give me the finger. “Just meet us back here after, okay?”
    I shook my head, laughing also. “My dad’s getting me. I think he thinks we need some father-daughter bonding time.”
    “Got it. See ya later.”
    “Later.”
    The girls literally swarmed Jake, and I watched him be engulfed by them. Emma managed to nuzzle in closer than all the rest, and when I saw him put his arm around her, I wondered if she felt triumph or just relief.
    Stacy waved enthusiastically in my direction, but