Mark licked his lips nervously. "N-Not until a couple of weeks ago," he said finally. His eyes fixed on the floor a few feet in front of the coach's desk. "I'm kind of small, aren't I?"
Collins wiggled his right hand indifferently. "A lot of guys make up for small size with other things," he observed. "Speed, agility, all kinds of things can make the difference. And there's the basic will to win," he added. "If you have that, it can make up for a lot."
Mark turned the coach's words over in his mind. He knew it was true-knew it if only from the rowing exercises he'd been doing at the sports center, where the sight of other rowers overtaking him had been enough to send adrenaline streaming into his blood, giving him that extra surge of power he needed to catch up.
"I think I'd like to try it," he said finally, and Collins grinned at him, standing up.
"Then I'll see you after school today," he said. "Talk to Toby Miller about a practice uniform."
Mark's eager expression faded. "I'm supposed to go see Dr. Ames today," he began, but Collins silenced him with a gesture.
"It's okay," he said, winking at Mark. "I thought you might want to take a shot at it, so I already fixed it with him. You're rescheduled for later, after practice."
Mark stared at the coach in surprise, then a slow smile spread across his face. "Hey, thanks," he said. "Thanks a lot. See you later."
He trotted out to the locker room, stripped off his gym clothes, and hit the showers. As the hot needle spray stung his skin, he felt a sharp surge of joy run through him.
It was going to be great, he thought. He was going to make the team, and his father would finally be proud of him.
And then, unbidden, an image of his mother came into his mind. His joy was suddenly blunted. He could already hear her telling him he was too small for football, that all that would happen would be that he'd get hurt.
Even as he began dressing, the tiny germ of anger toward his mother that had sprouted in the shower was already beginning to grow.
Chapter Twenty
Sharon Tanner stared dolefully at the list of Colorado mental hospitals she'd copied at the library on Monday. Since then she'd called every one of them, and yesterday had even driven over to Canon City to inquire after CharlotteLaConner personally. But of course she'd gotten nowhere. Although most of the private hospitals had simply denied that they had a patient namedLaConner at all, others had simply refused to answer her questions, citing policies and confidentiality laws.
It was an exercise in futility, and Sharon knew it. Even if Charlotte or Jeff were patients in one of the hospitals she'd called, they might have been admitted under other names, or they might have notations in their records to the effect that no information was to be given out.
And now, on Wednesday afternoon, she was finally ready to face the fact that what she had really been doing was procrastinating, putting off the moment when she would finally have to deal with the mice in the freezer-the one that seemed so normal, the other that was so grotesquely deformed and unnaturally large.
She knew she'd been trying to evade the issue, trying to deny the possibility that the mice had anything to do with the sports center at all. And yet, every time she thought about them, an image of the Silverdale High football team kept coming unbidden into her mind.
Big boys-oversized boys-all of them.
But it wasn't possible, was it? SurelyTarrenTech wouldn't allow any kind of experimentation on human subjects, let alone on the children of their own employees? After all, Jerry and Elaine Harris's own son was on the football team.
And he was big, she reminded herself. Much bigger than either of his parents.
Once more she remembered the skinny asthmatic boy who had left San Marcos three years before. Was it really possible that nothing more than a regimen of vitamins and exercise, combined with clean mountain air, had effected such a change in Robb? It sounded too good to be true.
But if something was going on atTarrenTech and at the sports center, it meant that Mark was already involved.
That, of course, was what she'd been avoiding facing up to. She didn't want to believe that the changes in Mark-the changes she'd tried to deny were taking place until Kelly had talked about them this morning-could be anything except the natural changes that occur in every teenage boy.
But the mice kept coming back to haunt her.
She looked at the phone again, reaching out to pick it up, then hesitated. She told herself there was no reason for her to be worried, that she'd done nothing wrong in calling around, trying to locate CharlotteLaConner. And yet several times as she'd talked on the phone during recent days, she'd heard an odd hollowness, as if someone, somewhere, had picked up an extension. Twice she was certain she'd heard faint clicks, as if someone had either come on the line or gotten off it.
Could her telephone be tapped?
My God, she groaned to herself, I'm starting to sound as paranoid as CharlotteLaConner! She gasped out loud at the thought. Hadn't she herself insisted that perhaps Charlotte wasn't paranoid, that maybe something really was going on and that Charlotte had stumbled onto it?
Taking her fears firmly in hand, she picked up the phone and dialed the county hospital. A moment later she recognized MacMacCallum's friendly voice at the other end of the line.
"D-Dr.MacCallum?" she stammered, still not quite certain what she was going to say. "It's Sharon Tanner-Mark's mother."
"Well, hello,"MacCallum said, then his voice took on a note of concern. "What's going on? Mark's all right, isn't he?"
"Yes," Sharon said. Then, even though she knew the doctor couldn't see her, she shook her head. "I mean-well, I guess he's all right. But I was just wondering if I could talk to you about something."
In his office,MacCallum frowned. He could tell from Mrs. Tanner's voice that she was upset, but if there was something wrong with Mark, why had she said he was all right? "What's the problem, Mrs. Tanner?"
Sharon hesitated, and was just about to try to explain her fears when she heard a soft click and the phone took on that odd, hollow quality she'd noticed before. She felt a chill run through her body, and when she spoke again, she knew she sounded nervous. "It-Well, it's not something I feel comfortable discussing on the phone," she said.
MacCallum'sfrown deepened. What was going on? Had someone come into the room as she spoke? Was the woman afraid her phone was tapped? "I see," he said slowly. "Then perhaps you'd like to come out here," he suggested, glancing at the appointment book that lay open on his desk. "How about four o'clock this afternoon?"
Sharon hesitated a split-second, and tried to keep her voice casual. "That's not very good for me," she countered. "I mean-well, this isn't really a medical matter. It's just something I need some advice about, and… well…"
MacCallumsat up straight in his chair. When Mark had been in the hospital that night, Sharon Tanner had struck him as a strong woman who knew her own mind and seldom hesitated to speak her thoughts. But now she was floundering around, searching for words, apparently unable to tell him what was on her mind.
Shewasafraid her line was tapped.
And her husband was second in command atTarrenTech.
"Tell you what," he said. "I have a couple of errands to run in the village. If you're going to be down there, maybe we could have a cup of coffee."
Sharon felt almost weak with relief. He'd understood and gone along with her. "As a matter of fact, I do have some shopping to do," she said. "Shall we say half an hour?"
"Sounds good,"MacCallum replied. He hung up the phone, sat pensively at the desk for a moment, then headed toward the main doors. As he passed the admissions desk, Susan Aldrich glanced up at him curiously. "Since when do you take the afternoon off?"
MacCallumgrinned. "Since that phone call," he told her. "It seems like we might just have a chink in the great wall of security aroundTarrenTech."