Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move Page 6

  “Really?”

  “I’m not lying to you, Brewster. You can do pull-ups, squat a hundred pounds, bench-press your weight. You have absolutely no fear. You’re going to be the same fierce warrior in physical therapy that you are on the court, so quit feeling sorry for yourself.” He pretended to kick my calf and stood straight up. “I want you to watch Selena today—see if you can figure out a way to get her to pass more instead of hogging all the shots.”

  “Okay.”

  “But you don’t have to get in her face.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  They weren’t out on the court two minutes before I saw exactly why Selena was going for the point instead of passing the ball. She was a lousy passer. I’d never really caught on to that before.

  “Don’t pass it to where she is, Selena!” I called from the sideline. “Pass it to where she’s gonna be when the ball gets there!”

  She didn’t appear to hear me.

  “Be ready to change direction, Selena!” I shouted, a little louder. “Don’t shoot—fake her out! Come on—it’s a game of deception!”

  Selena stayed where she was and went for a shot from too far out. It bounded off the backboard. Coach blew his whistle long and hard and waved everybody over to the sideline. They stood in front of us, redoing their ponytails and breathing like freight trains.

  Coach drilled his eyes into Selena. “Why did you take that long shot when Kara was open?”

  “I would have made it if Cassidy hadn’t been yelling at me,” she said. I think. It was hard to tell since she was barely moving her lips.

  “That isn’t the point. Didn’t you hear what she was saying to you?”

  Selena stared at the top of the bleachers. “Was I supposed to be listening to her? I mean, is she the coach or are you?”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Coach asked me to watch you because you’ve turned into a ball hog. It’s not all about you, you know.”

  “Well it has to be about somebody since it’s no longer all about you.” Selena’s eyes were in such tight slits I could barely see them. “I figured I was next up.”

  Fury raced right up my backbone. I jerked the tip of my crutch in the air and flailed it at her. “It was never all about me!” I screamed at her. “It’s not all about any one person, it’s about the team.”

  Selena grabbed the crutch with both hands and pushed it toward me, but I shoved it back. She dropped to the gym floor—and I stood over her. “That’s your problem—you’re not even thinking about anybody else! What is going on with you?”

  “With me? Look at you—you’re losing it.”

  “All right, that’s enough.” Coach Deetz stuck his arm between us, and something crazy in me knocked it away with my crutch. The next thing I knew he and I were nose to nose, and I was sucking in air.

  “Sorry, Coach,” Selena said from the floor.

  I whipped my head around to look down at her. That was clearly not true. I’d never seen cheekbones poke out like that.

  “I just won’t be coached by her,” she said.

  “You’ll be coached by whoever I tell you to be coached by or you’re out of here,” Coach said. “We don’t have time for girl drama.” He turned to me. “And you—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just frustrated.”

  That was clearly not true either. What I felt leaking out of me went way beyond frustration.

  Coach gave me another long look. “All right. You two work out your personal stuff outside the gym. Right now—Selena, I don’t want to see you take another shot today, you got that? Every time you get the ball, you pass it.” He smoked smoldering eyes over the rest of them. “And I want you passing the ball to Selena every chance you get. Except M.J. If you have defenders on you, Alamo, I want you to practice rising up in traffic and shooting—no fear. You’re warriors—turn it loose!”

  Heads bobbed at him, but most eyes were on me. Everybody looked confused, like they wanted me to say something. I started to, but Coach blasted the whistle and they retreated to the court.

  “I know this is hard for you, Brewster,” he said when they were beyond earshot. “But you either lighten up or I’m not letting you back in my gym.”

  I nodded. But I knew it was going to be hard. I could actually feel the energy racing through my veins with my blood. If I could just slam a basketball against a wall a couple of times, I might be able to calm down.

  Instead I propped myself up with my crutches and sought out Selena with my eyes.

  “What you have to remember,” Coach said, close to my ear, “is that you can’t coach heart and you can’t coach passion. If it ain’t there, it ain’t there.”

  I nodded and pressed my hand to my still-heaving chest. Itain’t there, I wanted to tell him. It’s here.

  *

  By the time M.J., Hilary, Kara, and I got in M.J.’s car after school, my urge to blow up had done a pivot, and I was up for a fit of giggles. None of them were.

  We weren’t even out of the student parking lot before Hilary was twisting around in the front seat to face me. Even her freckles looked stressed out.

  “Okay, so what’s with you and Selena?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I was just doing what Coach told me and I guess she couldn’t take it.”

  “He told you to scream in her face?” M.J. said.

  “She didn’t scream in her face.” Kara’s eyes shifted. “I mean, not that much.”

  “It was about to turn into WWE.” Hilary got up on her knees so she could look at me full-on over the front seat.

  “Put your seat belt on or you’re gonna get me pulled over,” M.J. said, but Hilary was apparently on a mission.

  “You need to be careful, Brewsky. You can totally see how mad she is. She didn’t say a word to any of us the whole time in the locker room.”

  “She was talking to you.” M.J. looked at Kara in the rearview mirror.

  I looked at her too. She was squirming in the seat like she needed a restroom.

  I nudged her. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are such a liar!” Hilary said. “Tell us.”

  “She was just stressing,” Kara said. “She didn’t mean any of it.”

  “Any of what?” My need to giggle hysterically had long since disappeared. I didn’t even care that Kara’s face was draining of all color and that any minute now she was probably going to open the window and throw up.

  “She just said she hates it that you act like you’re so perfect. And she said that even though she learned a lot from you when she first came on the team, she would never admit it to you because you already have an ego the size of Russia.” Kara lowered the window an inch. I could see beads of sweat on her upper lip. “She just needed to vent.”

  “So what did you say to her?”

  Kara blinked at me.

  “Did you defend me or what?”

  “Of course she did,” Hilary said. “You need to chill, Brewsky.”

  But I didn’t take my eyes off of Kara. I could hear her voice spiraling into a whine inside her head.

  “I said we were all under a lot of pressure and we probably need to go have pizza together or something.”

  “And?” Hilary said.

  Kara shook her head.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “What did you expect me to do, Cassidy? Why are you getting all over me? I didn’t even do anything.”

  “No,” I said. “You sure didn’t.”

  Hilary turned back around and changed the radio station. Kara stuck the earphones to her iPod into her ears and closed her eyes. M.J. took a different route than usual and dropped me off first.

  *

  I was on the phone to Kara thirty minutes later, crying and apologizing.

  “I don’t even know why I said all that stuff,” I told her. “Everything’s just so weird right now.”

  “It’s totally fine,” she said. I could tell she was crying too. “I shoul
d have told Selena you don’t think you’re all that—but I guess I was just trying to keep the team from falling apart.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I think it’s all gonna be okay.”

  I could say that, because at that moment I was looking at my leg. I could see my kneecap again.

  *

  Coach wasn’t as excited about it as I thought he’d be when I went to his office before school Monday to show him. He said, “Yeah, great,” but it was like he was thinking about something else totally. I had no idea what that could be. The team had made it through the district finals that weekend, with me going ballistic from the bench. They were going to state and I was going to be there to help them. What was his deal?

  “Are you okay, Coach?” I said.

  He shook his head and came around to the front of his desk and sat on the corner. I noticed that the cup of coffee near his thigh didn’t have steam coming out of it. He must be preoccupied if he’d let his morning java get cold. Usually he winced when he drank it, like it was burning his taste buds off.

  “I got a tip that somebody … I need to do a drug test on everybody on the team.”

  Frenemy quills stabbed me right in the heart. Was this about the pills I was taking? No—I wasn’t taking drugs. I was taking supplements. Right? I forced myself to speak slowly.

  “Somebody’s doing drugs?” I said. “Who?”

  Coach shrugged. “It was an anonymous tip, but Mr. LaSalle thinks I need to follow up on it. He’s having the boys’ team take one too.”

  Even as I shook my head I knew I was doing it harder than I had to. “Somebody’s just messing with you, Coach,” I said. “Nobody on our team’s using—I’d know about it.”

  “I hate having to do this. It makes the team think I don’t trust them.”

  “Nobody’s gonna think that,” I said. It came out as a shout—as if it came from somebody who would actually yell at her coach—but I kept on. “Everybody just needs to calm down. If anybody says anything like that about you, I will seriously—I don’t believe this!”

  I heard my crutch crash into the side of his desk before I even knew I was swinging it. The coffee cup jittered and fell over, splashing its contents across the scatter of papers. I stared at it—but I wanted to throw it against the wall.

  When I brought my eyes up, Coach was using a look I’d never seen him give me before. His mouth was halfway open, and he was pulling his chin all the way into his Adam’s apple.

  “What is going on with you, Brewster?”

  “Nothing—”

  “That was not ‘nothing.’ Now talk to me.”

  “Y’know what, I think I need to just go and get my act together—”

  “No. Why don’t we just do your drug test now?” he said. “I think I’ll do them one by one. There’ll be less drama that way.” He looked me straight in the eye. “We’ve got enough of that already.”

  He had no idea. There was a full-length tragedy going on in my head—with me center stage trying to explain the supplements that showed up in my urine. Maybe they wouldn’t. And it shouldn’t matter if they weren’t illegal, like Gretchen said.

  She did say that, didn’t she?

  Or did I ever ask her?

  *

  It was a good thing I gave my urine sample then, because Dad picked me up in the middle of third period for my appointment with the surgeon.

  “I got you in early,” he said. “The way that swelling’s gone down, there’s no sense putting this off.”

  For once I agreed with him.

  “They didn’t believe me when I called in.” Dad reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “I told them they don’t know Cassidy Brewster.”

  They still didn’t seem to believe it even when Dr. Horton examined my knee for himself.

  “I have to say I was skeptical when I saw you were coming in,” he said. He adjusted his round glasses and peered at my leg again as if it were going to grow right before his eyes. “But we’re there. Let’s schedule the surgery.”

  I so wanted to grab my phone and text Gretchen. This was turning out even better than either of us had expected. Maybe that was because I’d increased the doses of the supplements a little faster than she said to.

  “You’re still going to want to limit your movement.”

  I looked up at Dr. Horton. “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re jiggling your legs. That’s going to aggravate the inflammation.” He grinned halfway. “You a little hyper?”

  “She hasn’t been able to get any exercise,” Dad said, as if it were Dr. Horton’s fault I’d ripped open my ligament.

  Dr. Horton flipped through the pages of my chart. “You just seem more restless than you did the other day. I guess you’re used to being on the move.”

  “Twenty-four/seven,” I said, hoping the Frenemy wasn’t creeping into my voice. Gretchen had used that exact word— restless—when we talked about the side effects of the supplements. I calmed myself down with the other things she said—about Dr. Horton not being one to try an experimental treatment.

  “So—how about Thursday?”

  “This Thursday?” Dad said. “You can do it that soon?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “That’s great—”

  “No,” I said.

  They both looked at me as if I’d screamed. Maybe I had; I wasn’t sure.

  “That’s the first night of the Final Four. I have to be there.”

  Dr. Horton turned to me. “You realize you can’t play, even with the swelling gone—”

  “No kidding? You don’t understand—I have to be there to help. Coach is counting on me, the team will fall apart—”

  “And so will you if we don’t take advantage of this opportunity—”

  “No! Make it Monday.”

  “All right, stop.”

  Dad’s nostrils were flaring and he had his hand up, but not to me. He bore down on Dr. Horton. “I don’t think you appreciate the importance of this. Cassidy has UT Knoxville looking at her. Pat Summit.”

  “I have star athletes in here on a daily basis,” Dr. Horton said. “And I get the majority of them back into their game in a timely fashion. But that’s because they let me be the doctor.”

  I almost screamed that I had a doctor who was already better than he was, and she was only a third-year medical student. But I was too surprised that Dad was actually standing behind me on this. I chomped down on my lip and waited.

  “Friday is the best I can do,” Dr. Horton said. “I’m out of town for two weeks after that. The longer we hold off on physical therapy, the longer it’s going to take to—”

  “Okay—Friday,” I said. I could at least get the team off to a good start. And they could bring the state trophy into the hospital room and we could celebrate together.

  “You okay?” Dr. Horton said.

  “She’s fine,” Dad said.

  Yeah. I was fine. The tears running down my face were just another emotion that came out of nowhere.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Is it just me,” Hilary said, “or does this pizza smell like the inside of my gym locker?”

  M.J. sniffed her slice and shook her ponytail. “I think that’s you you’re smelling.”

  “It is gross, though,” Kara said. And then she gave me a nervous look across the cafeteria table. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “What would you call it, then?” I said. “If you guys wanted to have lunch off campus, why didn’t you just go?” I felt myself squint. “It’s not like I can’t entertain myself. I blew my ACL, not my personality.”

  I got the same reaction from them I’d been getting all day. Come to think of it, the last several days. Eyes bulged and then darted to some random location. Shields came down over faces. Kara opened her mouth and then closed it—probably because she couldn’t find a way to make it okay. What was the deal? I was just speaking the truth.

  Hilary put up a freckled hand and rubbed at the air like she wa
s erasing everything we’d said in the last five minutes. “Okay—so what I want to know is, who said somebody was taking drugs? I mean, how humiliating was it to hand a cupful of pee to Coach Deetz?”

  “Yes, hello!” Kara looked like she could have kissed Hilary’s feet at that moment. “That was, like, so embarrassing.”

  “Why?” M.J. said. “Everybody’s pee looks the same.”

  “Hopefully.”

  We all turned to Hilary.

  “What if somebody’s was different?” she said. “What if somebody is using?”

  “Don’t be stupid!” I said.

  “Yikes, Cassidy.” Kara’s voice dropped like it was toppling off a cliff. She glanced over her shoulder, face going scarlet. “Do you have to tell the entire world?”

  “Everyone drop the drama,” Hilary said. “Here comes Coach.”

  “Good,” I said. “He’s gonna tell us everybody’s clean, and we can get focused again. What do you want to bet the anonymous tip was from some other school we’re playing, just trying to throw us off?”

  Hilary narrowed her eyes at me. “I think it’s working.”

  Before I could demand to know what she meant by that, Kara chimed in with, “Hi, Coach!” and dazzled him with one of her “I have to fix this” smiles.

  It didn’t “fix” him. From the expression on his face, I figured that would have taken a lot more than a Kara smile. His look clearly said somebody had died. I hoped it wasn’t me. I hadn’t been able to get the vicious circle in my head to stop all morning: What if they found something in my drug test? So what if they did? I hadn’t done anything wrong—besides wave my crutch at people and scream.

  “You okay, Coach?” M.J. said.

  He didn’t answer her. In fact, he didn’t even seem to know anybody else was at the table, except me.

  “We need to talk, Brewster,” he said.

  My stomach turned inside out, and it wasn’t a Frenemy attack. It was genuine fear. Somebody on our team really was using cocaine or smoking marijuana. Nothing else could have made Coach Deetz look that way. Not even somebody taking secret supplements.

  I turned to Kara. “Could you—”

  “I’ll watch your bag,” she said.

  I grabbed my crutches and followed Coach out of the cafeteria at a double-swing. He didn’t look at me until we were around the corner and headed for the gym wing.