Page 83 of Out of Bounds

"Kassie!"

To my surprise, the supervisor ran up and chatted excitedly with Kassie, asking her a million questions in a span of five minutes. None of the other volunteers recognized her but a few of the other people with badges on the floor walked over to say hello too.

Kassie motioned me closer and introduced me to the supervisor. "This is Happy, she was here when I first started."

"Good lord." Happy whistled between her teeth. "Four-A-Cross. My husbandlovesyou. If he left me for anybody, it’d be for you. We’re big MU fans."

I shook hands but once that was done, they hurried back to Kassie. It was…different. Usually, people mobbed me and I had to keep Kassie off to the side, now we had the opposite going on. Cameras flashed behind us.

A hundred photos were taken by the professional photographers in our crew. Twenty minutes passed before we could even start sorting the donations. Kassie explained everything to me while I signed the last of the autographs and we got to work.

Along with the ride, we had a student reporter writing about us. He walked away to talk to the supervisor and I glanced back at my girlfriend, dutifully stacking fruit cups across the table from me.

"Hey?" I called her, my voice low. "You came here a lot?"

She nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"I didn’t know that."

For a moment, she hesitated over the next box and started stacking again. "Uh…my grandmother and I used to volunteer here all the time. If you put in extra hours, they give you more to take home."

My eyes flickered back to hers again. "Got it."

"Yeah." She shrugged. "We used to volunteer at every place you can think of. Churches, shelters—there’s a cultural center on Parkside Avenue that she babysat for every Friday—because if you give your time, people feed you. I’ve been around the block here."

I didn’t know what to say. The more I listened, the more I realized why Kassie had such an odd relationship with money. She badgered me atGianna’swhen I didn’t order her food from the daily deals, even if she wanted something else even more. When I tried to throw an old Marrs hoodie with a hole in it, she yanked it away from me. It was hung up in her closet now, sewn up by one of her temporary roommates. Not to mention, the bracelets she wouldn’t let me buy.

"That wasn’t in your files," I said.

"Well, I don’t really talk about it." She shrugged. "It did get me into college though. That college essay wasfantastic."

I chuckled. "I bet it was."

"And I bet you’ve never had to fill one out in your life."

"Yeah. You’ve got me."

It was quiet while we stacked more boxes and I carried the heavier ones off to a van. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There was another question that was sitting on my mind.

"What about your immediate family?" I finally asked.

Kassie put a hand on her hip. "What aboutyours?"

My answer was immediate. "My mom plans weddings, dad’s a retired firefighter, older brother’s in San Antonio, older sister’s in Port Arthur."

There was more to it than that. My dad worked a hell of a lot when I was a kid and my mom had to juggle two jobs and raise all three of us almost single-handed. It’d been difficult on them but when I received my first football scholarship in sixth grade, everything smoothed out.

None of that was important to the conversation. My interest was solely in Kassie’s story. I gazed at her. Waiting.

"My parents weren’t in the picture," she admitted.

I nodded slowly.

"They just didn’t have the—" Kassie stopped herself. "It just didn’t work out. Most of the time, my grandma kept me around."

"She must be pretty proud," I said.

For a moment, Kassie hesitated. "Well…uh…she’s not here anymore…"

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