Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move Page 5

  “He was following too close,” I said.

  “No—I’m a moron.” She switched off the ignition and dug her hands through her disaster of curls. “I’m just totally stressed. I shouldn’t even be driving.”

  “Now’s a great time to tell me that,” I said drily.

  “I’m sorry! Are you okay? Did you hurt your knee again?”

  “I’m fine, Kar.” I looked around but I didn’t see Gretchen’s green Mazda anywhere. She’d said to meet her at 4:30 and it was only 4:20. Coach had let the team go early because nobody was focusing. I had a minute to calm Kara down before I sent her home.

  “Are you stressed about practice?” I said.

  She nodded, face miserable. “We were horrible. I mean, don’t you think we were?”

  How was I supposed to answer that? Fortunately I didn’t have to, because she gurgled on.

  “M.J. can’t ever find anybody to pass to, even when we’re like ‘woo-woo’ practically in her face.”

  True.

  “And Hilary’s guarding okay, but she missed every single shot.”

  Also true.

  “Nobody ever passes the ball to Emily—especially not Selena. She acts like Em’s not even out there.”

  True again.

  “Here’s the thing, though,” I said. “You’re seeing all that, which means you can totally be a leader.”

  “Me?” Kara’s blue eyes widened big as Frisbees. “You mean like you were—are?

  “Hello, yes. Who taught you how to play basketball before you ever tried out for a team?”

  She didn’t have to answer. She was the one who decided we were going to be friends ten minutes after she came to our middle school church youth group for the first time, back when we were in sixth grade. I probably wouldn’t have picked her— she was even ditzier in those days. But once it was clear she wasn’t going to leave me alone, I was the one who decided the terms for our becoming BFFs: she was going to have to learn to shoot, dribble, and pass. Personally, I think she would have learned to commit armed robbery if I’d told her to.

  It turned out that even though she wasn’t the best athlete to ever put on a pair of high-tops, she was coordinated and worked hard, and once she and I got on a team together, she was all about that. Give her a gang of girls and she was happy. Except for right now. Her hands were jittering on the steering wheel like she’d OD’d on caffeine.

  “You only have to get through district,” I said. “I’ll totally work with you before my surgery. And I’ll be there for state—probably not playing, but I can help you.”

  I didn’t add that it might be even better than that, depending on what Gretchen had in mind. I snuck another glance at the parking places, but she still wasn’t there.

  “You should go in,” Kara said. “You want me to help you?”

  “No. I want you to tell me what else is going on with you.”

  She didn’t even deny that there was something. She just dropped her forehead to the steering wheel. A whine would be next.

  “It’s not just what’s happening on the court,” she said. “It’s all the other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?” I said. And why didn’t I already know about it? My neck prickled.

  “Okay—we asked Selena to go to lunch with us today and she made up this lame excuse about having to take a makeup test.”

  “How do you know it was an excuse?” I said.

  “Hello! How could she have missed a test? She’s never absent!”

  True. Selena came to school when she had strep throat and a fever of a hundred and one. It must be as hard having a father who was a doctor as it was having one who was a lawyer.

  “Besides, in the locker room I asked her how her test went and she goes, ‘What test?’”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. What’s that about? You always say we have to have trust off the court or we can’t trust each other on it. Right?”

  Right. Trust. It took all I had not to blurt out everything about Gretchen and invite Kara to sit in when I talked to her.

  “I’m probably blowing the whole thing out of proportion,” she said. “I’m just freaked out because you’re not out there with us.”

  “Maybe I will be,” I said.

  Her eyebrows sprang up. “Really? Are you serious?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Look, I can’t tell you everything right now, but … just trust me, okay? It’s all gonna be fine.” I opened the car door before I could say any more. “I’ll call you later. Everything’s cool, okay?”

  She nodded because she was obviously going to cry if she said a word. I hugged her hard around the neck and pretended to be all involved in getting myself out of the car and up the steps. She waited until I was inside to pull away, and even then it took her forever. I prayed she wouldn’t end up in a ditch.

  Gretchen wasn’t inside either, so I fumbled into a chair at a table and dropped my backpack onto the floor beside me. I unzipped it to stick my hat inside and was about to close it when somebody behind me stuck his arm out almost in my face.

  I whirled around, ready to foul the dude if I had to, and I felt like a moron. It was a large dummy, dressed to look like a Native American. Of great wisdom, evidently.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. I giggled nervously and turned around to make sure nobody had seen me make an idiot out of myself. The only person in there at the moment was a guy behind the counter, rearranging the flavored syrups on the shelf on the back wall. He didn’t even look up. He was probably used to people thinking they were about to be assaulted.

  I leaned back and took in the rest of the shop to get my mind off of the anxiety poking me in the chest. It was kind of quaint, actually, with benches made of carved wood and antique-looking knickknacks. Plaques lining the walls said things like “Overworked, Underpaid.” My personal favorite was immediately “There Will Be a Five Dollar Fee for Whining.” I took it as a sign that I was right not to bring Kara in with me.

  Except that it wasn’t all that comforting. The Frenemy was starting to freak out now that I was alone, and I did not want to be chewing my fingernails up to the elbow when Gretchen arrived. Not that I had any left. My toenails were the next candidates.

  So instead, I put my hand on a Sports Illustrated from the table, one with Apolo Ohno on the cover. Good grief, how old was the thing? I picked it up and exposed a messed-up-looking leather book somebody’d left underneath it. What was up with that?

  It didn’t strike me as the kind of thing you had to hide so nobody would know you were reading it. Plenty of other people obviously had read it because there were crease marks and initials carved into the cover, all around what appeared to be two letters that were actually engraved: RL.

  What was that about? Rude Language? Rockin’ Lyrics? Radical Literature?

  I looked around, but the guy behind the counter didn’t look like he was missing a secret document. Where was Gretchen, anyway? The Frenemy had left me alone for a minute, but the quills were starting to poke again. My knee was also throbbing.

  I looked down to lift my foot onto the opposite chair. The leather book was open flat in my lap, and either I was really losing it, or the thing was actually pressing into my thighs.

  Not only that, but the words on the page were staring me in the face, like a guard on the court getting all in my business. I almost said, “What?” out loud. Until I read.

  So you want me to get you on your feet again? the words said. Your life’s falling apart and you want me to build you up?

  Oh. One of those self-help books. Twenty minutes a day, three times a week, and you’ll have firm glutes, strong arms and legs, and a toned, sexy core.

  Wrong.

  I stared at the word.

  Wrong. Different kind of strength altogether. This you can’t do on your own. Let me lay out the course for you. Then you can run.

  “Run?” I heard myself whisper. “I can’t even walk.”

  “Cassidy—hey!”

  I jerke
d my head up. Gretchen was swivel-hipping her way among the tables, oblivious to the fact that her bag was nearly taking out every antique in her wake. I swept the book off my lap, and it landed in my backpack, but there was no time to fish it out. She was already parking in the chair next to me.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” she said. “You want something to drink? I love their Smooth-Talkin’ Irishman.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I just want to know what your idea is.”

  She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “Good choice,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I didn’t take my eyes off of the two miniature Tupperware containers Gretchen put on the table, but I couldn’t pick them up yet.

  “So what are they again?” I said.

  Gretchen put her fingers up to her mouth, but not soon enough to cover a smile. “It’s okay, Cassidy—they’re not poison.” She folded her hands halfway between me and the pills and leaned in. “They’re supplements,” she said. “You’ve heard of creatine?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, well, they’re similar to that. These will bring your swelling down like that.” She pulled a hand out to snap her fingers. “And they’ll strengthen the supporting muscles, which should shorten your rehab considerably.”

  “So it’ll happen really fast?’ I said.

  “That depends on what dosage you take. The higher you go the more side effects you’re going to have, but for the short time you’re going to be using them, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”

  I brushed past the word “issue” and locked my eyes back onto the pills. “What kind of side effects?”

  “You might be restless at night. Maybe a little cranky during the day.”

  I had to grunt. “I don’t think anybody’s going to notice a difference there.”

  “You look nervous about this,” Gretchen said. “It’s perfectly safe. I wouldn’t be offering it if it weren’t.”

  “That’s what I don’t get. Why isn’t my doctor offering it to me?”

  “Who’s your surgeon? Horton?”

  I nodded, and Gretchen rolled her enormous gray eyes. “He’s not one to take any risks—”

  “Risks?”

  She erased that with her hand. “What I mean is that this is experimental. Most doctors stick with traditional treatments. It’s the teaching hospitals that are willing to try new things. Besides, surgeons in private practice make their living with a little piece of steel. They couldn’t care less about any meds beyond painkillers.”

  That kind of made sense—as much as anything could right now. The Frenemy had totally dried out my mouth and was pouring sweat from my palms. I hoped I never had to be interrogated by the police; I would probably be the youngest person ever to have a stroke.

  “Talk to me,” Gretchen said. “I want you to be totally comfortable with this.”

  I looked up into a face that was so completely focused on me it made me catch at my breath. The only movement was the blink of her thick lashes.

  “I’ve heard a lot of stories about athletes taking supplements,” I said. “Some people have gotten really sick.”

  “Oh, yeah—because they read about them in some magazine ad or let the clerk at the ‘health store’ sell it to them. I’m a medical professional—and your future sister. I’m trying to make you better, not worse.”

  “I guess I don’t see why we have to keep it such a secret,” I said. “My dad’s going to take one look at me and know I’m hiding something.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, and you know what? Your father doesn’t strike me as being that sensitive. Especially when it comes to you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It looks like he’s into your every mood, but essentially he sees what he wants to see, and what he wants to see right now is you dedicating all your energy toward getting back into the game.”

  “That is what I’m doing.”

  “Yes. Just not for the same reasons.” She did the hair thing. “Never mind—it’s definitely not my place to be psychoanalyzing your father. I just get my hackles up over the way he treats you sometimes.”

  “No, go ahead,” I said. My own hackles were actually smoothing down, as if she’d just stroked them with her hand. “I want to hear.”

  She pressed her lips together for a second. “Okay—not that he doesn’t care about you and your career, but I sometimes get the impression that you being a basketball star is as much about him as it is about you.”

  “Ya think? He didn’t make it into pro ball so now he wants to live through me making it.”

  “Right—but it’s more than that. He thinks you becoming a WNBA star is going to make him look really good.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “That’s just my opinion, and my own experience.”

  “Did you play basketball?” I hoped I didn’t sound as doubtful as I felt. Gretchen was only about five-five and way girly for a pair of high-tops.

  “Soccer. I was on my way to playing for the University of North Carolina, for Anson Dorrance—he coached Mia Hamm, April Heinrichs, legends of U.S. women’s soccer.”

  “Wow.”

  “But I blew both my ACLs in high school and tore the meniscus both times. I lost my scholarship. My mother was so bitter because I took away her glory, she wouldn’t pay for me to go to college. I got this far totally on my own. If I’d made the Olympic team, she would have been right there with me on the front page of my hometown newspaper, telling everybody how much she sacrificed as a single mother to get me there. She pretty much sees me as a failure.”

  “You’re becoming a doctor!”

  “Doctors don’t make their mothers famous.” Gretchen gave her head a small shake, as if she were bringing herself back from someplace. “Anyway, I never played soccer again, even for fun. I don’t want to see your father take the joy of your sport away from you like my mother did from me.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. Because of that, I can help you. For one thing, you have a chance to do this on your own, without your father taking the credit. And for another—” She picked up one of the containers and jiggled it. “I didn’t have this when I was where you are. You have a chance not only to have that knee healed, but to keep the other one from going.”

  I gripped the seat of my chair with both hands. I had to. For all the Frenemy’s pokes and prods and stabs, telling me there was something wrong buried under this, I was close to snatching the container from her and downing the entire contents. There was one more thing I had to know.

  “What?” she said. “I can see the wheels turning in your head.”

  “Is that the only reason you’re doing this?” I said. “Because you know what it’s like?”

  She looked down at the tabletop. “I wish I could say I was that unselfish. I also—look, I love your brother.”

  I stifled the urge to comment.

  “And as much as I hate the way your father is with you, I still love your whole family. Whatever your motives are and however sarcastic you can be with each other, you all do care, and I never had that. Ever.”

  I was startled to see the gray eyes start to spill over.

  “I can do something to help your whole family, and that includes me, since I’m marrying into it. By doing this for you, I can take pressure off your dad, I can see that Aaron gets the house he wants for us, I can ease the tension for your mom, and I can do it without anybody knowing except you.”

  She gave me the inevitable arm squeeze. “You’re going to be my sister-in-law, but I want it to be more than that. Who knows—this could create a bond that’ll be there forever.” Gretchen pulled her hand away and picked up her purse. “I’m going to get us some coffee. You think about it.”

  “I don’t have to,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  The smile she gave me didn’t look like she smelled something suspicious. It looked like a smile one sister gave another
.

  I smiled back.

  *

  I’d expected the next few days to crawl past while I watched my knee for signs of shrinking, the way you wait for grass to show signs of growing. But they blew by, starting twenty-four hours after Gretchen gave me the supplements.

  “You’re going to pyramid starting Tuesday,” she’d told me, “which means you’ll increase the dosage each day for a few weeks, and then we’ll decrease and then start over. But as you build the dosage, you’ll start to see results. Plus, I’m stacking them, so you’re taking two different types, which should speed things up.”

  She wasn’t kidding. By day two I had so much energy I could have hopped from class to class without my crutches. I texted Gretchen, just to make sure this was the “speed” she was talking about, and she texted back, You’re right on track. I was definitely getting a ton of homework done because I couldn’t sleep that much, and I was right on it during basketball practices. It was like I could be all over everybody at once. Too bad I had to do it from the sidelines.

  But even that didn’t bother me as much, because the swelling was actually starting to go down by Friday, day four. When I texted Gretchen, she texted back: Score.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t have my moments of doubt. That afternoon when everybody was dressing out and I was sitting in the gym, waiting for them, I couldn’t help staring at my knee. Sure it was shrinking, but what did that really mean? I was still going to have to have surgery. Didn’t Gretchen say she lost her scholarship because of her ACL injuries? Was the University of Tennessee seriously going to want a player with the evidence right on her flesh that she didn’t know how to land?

  “What’s your problem today?”

  I looked up at Coach, who was standing over me with both hands on his hips and his head rocked to one side. That was his “I don’t want to hear any whining” look. Kara got that one a lot.

  I whined anyway. “Is this gonna ruin everything?”

  “Only if you let it.” Coach put a foot on the bottom bleacher and parked his forearm on his thigh. “Look, if college recruiters stopped recruiting girls who suffered ACL injuries, their pool of talent would dry up.”