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Rage drives me forward and I reach for the door.
“Wait,” she whispers. “Will, don’t—”
I slip free from her grasp and barge into the gymnasium, instantly catching the attentions of people in the back row. A wave of silence passes through them all one-by-one as they each realize I’m here.
“William,” Coach Rogers greets me from the front. “What, uh… what brings you here?”
I make eye contact with a few of them as I walk between the scattered groups of folding chairs. They all turn away from me; Lucky, Mrs. Clark, even Marv. Faces I’ve known and looked up to since childhood now slink away with hateful, cowardly eyes.
All because of my Jovie.
“I was just passing by,” I say. “Didn’t realize there was a town meeting tonight. Guess I didn’t get the e-mail.”
“Well, this was just an impromptu gathering of local business owners to discuss new policy changes.”
“Then, where are my parents?” I ask, glancing around. “They run a business here, don’t they?”
“Medical practices will not be impacted by the new changes,” he says quickly.
“Oh.” I nod. “Okay, then.” I find the nearest empty chair and sit down. “Please continue. I apologize for the interruption. What was that you were saying about Jovie?”
He sighs. “William…”
“Because I find it strange that her name would come up at all in discussions about local business policies.”
“That girl is a menace!”
I look to the front row to see Mrs. Clark’s wrinkled eyes boring into me. “Why?”
“She is rude and disrespectful and I don’t want her in this town!”
Her voice echoes throughout the gym, slowly dying as all eyes shift toward me.
“Okay,” I say, keeping my calm. “That’s one opinion. Anyone else want to chime in?”
Lucky turns in her seat. “That’s not just one opinion, Will. We’re all in agreement here.”
“Show of hands,” I shout. “Who here thinks Jovie Ross should board the next bus out of Clover?”
Several palms instantly fly into the air. A few stragglers join them, most of them with their heads down.
“And who here thinks you’re all nuts and that we should all leave Jovie Ross alone?”
I raise my own hand. One other palm rises from the back corner. I look to see Mr. Trin sitting there, shiny head and all. People fire looks of disgust at the both of us but neither of us back down.
“Over what?” I ask them. “Because she called out an old woman for being blatantly rude? Because she took offense to people stalking her around town, spying on her? What is it about Jovie that has the rest of you so hell-bent of casting her out?”
Coach Rogers walks to his laptop. “It’s not about our feelings towards her, William. It’s about cold, hard statistics.” He taps the mouse a half-dozen times, flipping through the slideshow until it stops on a line graph.
Clover Crime Rates,it reads along the top.
He clears his throat and uses a long pointer to indicate a sharp dip on the line between February and March 2013. “The week Jovie left, crime in Clover shrunk seventy-nine percent.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “Clover doesn’t have any crime.”
“Not anymore.”He clicks to the next slide. “As soon as she left, vandalism dipped twenty percent, street drugs all but disappeared, and the biker gangs never came back.”
I scoff. “There were never any biker gangs here.”
