Monday was a blue pill day.
Nia crushed half of it between her molars on the walk from school, letting the bitter powder coat her tongue so it would hit faster. By the time she cut through the greenbelt behind Sorin Street, her fingertips had gone soft and buzzy, the way they did when the world agreed to loosen its grip on her.
Skylar’s car was already in the driveway. No other cars. Good.
Nia crouched behind the hedge across the street, the same hedge she’d crouched behind Thursday and Friday, and pulled her hood up even though the weather was warming. The stroller wheels clicked against the concrete as Skylar came back from the park, phone tucked between shoulder and ear, bag slung over the opposite arm. James was asleep. He was always asleep when they came back from the park. T
The front door shut.
Nia counted. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. She’d gotten all the way to one-eighty-three on Friday before the sliding glass door in the back rolled open. Today she got to one-sixty-seven.
The smell came a minute later, drifting over the fence line and the lilac bushes and the neighbor’s recycling bin. Fifteen minutes, give or take.
She crossed the street.
The grass at the side of the house was soft from yesterday’s rain. Nia kept low, skirting the A/C unit, ducking under the kitchen window, moving toward the blue room. She’d been further back a few days ago, watching through the gap between the fence slats. Friday she’d made it to the rosebush. Today she pressed her shoulder to the siding right under the window.
She could hear him. Nia closed her eyes and let the pill do its work. The sounds washed over her. She raised her head.
James was awake. He laid on his back in the crib, one sock off, the other half-on, kicking at the air like he was pedaling a bike. His mouth worked around nothing. His eyes were that deep slate color that babies had before they decided what they wanted to be.
“Hey,” Nia whispered.
James’s head turned. Not toward her, not really, but in her direction, toward the sound or the shape or whatever babies could see through glass when they were six months old. His mouth opened in something that wasn’t quite a smile but was trying.
“Hey, you,” she said, a little louder. The window was cracked an inch the way Skylar always left it. “Look at you.”
His foot kicked. The sock came the rest of the way off.
“I knew you’d come back.”
James made a sound that might have been a laugh. Might have been gas. It didn’t matter.
Out back, Skylar couched. Nia heard it but didn’t move. The smell thickened, curling around the side of the house.
James stared at the ceiling. His fist went into his mouth.
The sliding door rolled. Once. Then nothing.
Nia dropped.
Her knees hit dirt. She stayed there.
Nothing. No footsteps. No voice. Skylar must have gone back inside the other way.
She crawled until she reached the edge of the house, then stood, knees shaking, and walked down the sidewalk with her hood up and her hands in her pockets.
At the corner, she let herself look back.
The house sat there, plain, beige, the kind of house nobody would remember. The blue room’s window was a pale square in the siding. She couldn’t see him from here. She knew he was there.
“Tomorrow, Jimmy,” she said under her breath, and fished the other half of the pill out of her pocket.
…
The private jet touched down at Portland International, the familiar swoosh logo emblazoned on its tail catching the early rays of the day.
“Mr. Colton, thank you for flying with us today. Your car is waiting.”
Brice nodded, grabbing his phone from the seat beside him.
A black Escalade waited on the tarmac, driver standing at attention beside the open door. As Brice descended the stairs, a man in chinos and a quarter-zip Nike pullover approached, hand extended.
“Brice! Brandon Thompson, we spoke on the phone. Flight okay?”
“Can’t complain,” Brice said, shaking his hand. “Appreciate you guys flying me out.”
“Anytime and I really do mean anytime,” Brandon gestured toward the SUV. "Excited to show you around today."
The Nike World Headquarters sprawled across 286 acres like a college campus designed by someone with unlimited resources and a fetish for architecture. Buildings named after athletes rose from manicured lawns and artificial lakes.
“This is insane,” Brice said as they passed the Serena Williams Building.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Brandon replied.
They toured the innovation lab where prototypes of shoes were being tested on treadmills, the design studio where artists sketched concepts on tablets, and the athlete performance center.
“This is where we’d fit you if you ever needed specialized equipment,” a technician explained as they walked through a room filled with pressure plates and high-speed cameras.
“If I ever needed?” Brice raised an eyebrow.
Brandon laughed. “Well, knock on wood but we’ve been able to help athletes that are coming back from injury or rehabbing and maybe need a special cleat or training shoes. Whatever you need, we can make it."
The cafeteria was more like a Michelin food court with every cuisine imaginable. Brice couldn’t decide on one so they rolled out small plates from each of them while he sat through a lunch meeting with Brandon and a few other executives.
“I’ll be honest, we’ve seen what New Balance is doing with their ‘We Got Now’ push, but we think ‘Future Is Now’ with you as the centerpiece will blow it out of the water.”
“Sounds great,” Brice said, taking a sip of his water. The prospect of free Air Jordan’s and Air Force’s was enough to get him to sign on the dotted line. Of course, the couple of zeros helped too. But a campaign center around him? That was just icing on a very fucking expensive cake.
“We’re excited to be a partner of Brice Colton,” Brandon added at the end of the presentation, "We look forward to a very long partnership, beyond your college career. And of course, if you do decide to stick around for another year, I hear the weather in Eugene is great this time of year."
Brice smirked. “I bet it is."
The photography studio occupied the entire top floor of the LeBron James Innovation Center. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the campus, though black curtains had been drawn across most of them to control the lighting.
A team of stylists, photographers, and creative directors swarmed around Brice as soon as he entered. They handed him the first outfit, a training set in black with gold accents.
"The future is bold, the future is unpredictable, the future is madness,” the creative director explained, showing him concept boards that felt more Mad Max and Cyberpunk than Nike. “It might get a little crazy but trust me, it’s going to turn out perfect."
Outfit after outfit, pose after pose. Standing with a football, without a football. Looking intensely at the camera, looking thoughtfully away from it. Brice’s face began to ache from holding expressions.
Two hours in, fatigue settled deep in his bones. His lower back ached from standing. The lights felt hotter with each passing minute.
“Let’s make the last the best,” the photographer called out as Brice emerged from the changing room in a white compression shirt and black training shorts.
Brice rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the white backdrop. His body felt heavy, his mind foggy from the travel and the endless smiling and posing. But as the camera raised, he squared his shoulders and found the look they wanted.
“Perfect!” the photographer called. “Hold that!”
…
The sheets rustled as Tom rolled onto his back, his breathing finally returning to normal. The sound of a phone vibrating against the nightstand caught his attention as he looked over in its direction.
"That’s you."
"It can wait," Britney replied, propping herself up on one elbow to face him.
"I don’t know about that," Tom let out a short laugh, "The County of St. Joseph aren’t paying you to not answer the beck and call of duty."
"The County of St. Joseph ain’t paying me enough for jack shit," she scoffed.
Tom turned his head towards her, "How’s the campaign going? Having second thoughts?"
“Fuck, no,” Britney laughed, running a hand through her tousled hair. “I can’t wait to be done with this. It’s such a fucking thankless job. You land a conviction, you overcharged. You choose to not file charges, you’re part of the deep-state liberal agenda to turn our kids into sex slaves."
“And being a State Senator won’t be thankless?” Tom reached for the tumbler on the nightstand.
Britney sat up fully now, the sheet pooling around her waist. “Yeah, in it’s own way but at least I won’t have to look another sobbing mother in the eye and explain why her son’s killer might only get fifteen years."
Tom handed her the tumbler. “I don’t know, I always felt like you were good at your job."
“I was. I mean, I am,” she took a sip and passed it back. “I’ve just been doing this for too long, I guess. You start to feel like you’re not really making a difference, you know? Just playing whack-a-mole. Can you imagine what I could do with actual power?”
“You’ve already got power,” Tom shrugged. “More than most.”
Britney’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Not the kind that matters.”
