Freshman Year

by Annameekee Hesik

  “That’s all I am to you? Pretty?” Another tear rolls down my cheek.

  “Come on, Amara, let’s not do this. You know what you are to me.”

  My ears start to ring and I can hardly hear the rest of what she says.

  “Chale, don’t cry.” She steps closer and touches my shoulder. “I guess I thought we had an understanding. I mean, I was dating Stef for a long time. I’m not ready to settle down again with one person. Can’t we just be…I don’t know, special friends?”

  I wipe the tears off my face with the sleeve of my special occasion T-shirt, since there’s no point in trying to look nice anymore, and my mascara leaves a black smear on the yellow material. “Keeta, I thought you said I was like no other girl and that when you are with me, you lose track of days and months. I don’t understand.”

  “Amara…”

  “Don’t call me that if it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “This is who I am, Abbey. I thought you understood.”

  I hear the distant bell and realize I have to hurry to get to algebra. But how can I leave things like they are? I stare at her (with eyes that I am sure are mascara-raccooned) and ask the one thing I have never dared to ask before. “Keeta, do you love me?”

  I look at her and wait. I wait for that smile that’s only meant for me. I wait for Yes. I love you, Amara.

  Instead, Keeta puts her hands in her jean pockets and looks sheepishly at the floor. “Abbey, I really love being with you, and I want to keep on seeing you, but…”

  As she speaks, I tune her out and finally see how right Garrett and Stef have been all along. “Here,” I say and hand her the cookies and the Valentine and then leave the room. She doesn’t try to stop me.

  Thirty seconds later, I end up collapsing on the front steps of the school, sobbing into my hands. I know…dramatic. But if any other girl were in my Converse, she would have done the same.

  The tardy bell rings, but I’m in no condition to go to algebra, and I can’t hide in the bathroom because I will surely get caught, get a detention, and get escorted to class anyway, which would make my mom freak out again.

  As a last resort, I consider ditching school. I pick my head up to see if there’s anyone at the front gate. Dammit. Remembering Jenn’s advice, I know there’s no way of smooth-talking Mr. Cowen.

  All hope is lost, so I start to cry again.

  “Abbey, let’s go talk in my office.” Ms. Morvay’s voice is like an angel’s. “It’s freezing out here,” she says, as she lifts me up by my elbow.

  I wipe my nose on my sleeve again and try to act like I’m fine, but there’s no point in hiding it. I let her help me up and I follow her inside.

  In the safety of her warm office, sitting in her comfy chair, I cry and cry until my head feels like it’s been pounded with bricks. By the time I can actually talk to her, there are about three dozen soggy tissues in my lap and my eyes are nearly swollen shut.

  “It’s just, I don’t understand what happened,” I say between sobbing gasps.

  Ms. Morvay gets another box of tissues from her cabinet and puts it in my lap. “Take your time.”

  I blow my nose and try to breathe like a normal person. “I mean, I don’t know why we can’t just be together. Why doesn’t she love me?” I know I sound pathetic, but I really didn’t think anything could hurt as much as when I lost my dad, which is a thought I’m too embarrassed to tell Ms. Morvay.

  “I should have listened to my friends. I should’ve listened to Stef. I’m so stupid.”

  Ms. Morvay reaches out to touch my hand. “Oh, Abbey, you’re not stupid. I can see that you really love her.”

  I look up stunned. “How did you know?”

  “Well, let’s just say I put two and two together. Anyway, you can’t beat yourself up for falling in love with someone. Falling in love is a natural part of life, and sometimes we get hurt.”

  Hurt? This is more than that; my heart feels like it’s been dragged over a cheese grater. But I don’t know how to explain that feeling to her, so I nod.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Besides Garrett, Ms. Morvay is the only one I seem to be able to really talk to about this.

  I nod again but can’t seem to gather any words.

  “Just start with the beginning, Abbey.”

  So that’s what I do. I tell her about the deal Kate and I made about basketball. I tell her about making friends with Garrett and Stef. I tell her about how I flirted with Keeta behind Stef’s back and about the kissing, the poetry, the necklace, and the special name Keeta has for me. I tell her about Kate and why we stopped talking and how I’ve been lying to my mom about every little thing. I even tell her about ditching fifth period but leave out the part where Tai abuses her office aide powers.

  “It’s like, I feel so far away from everything that was once familiar to me. You know, getting good grades, wanting to please my mom, and acting like my best friend’s pet. At first, it was really cool, but now I feel like I’ve lost everything that used to really matter.”

  After I tell her all that, she furrows her brow a little. “Hmm,” she says, in her counselor sort of way, then asks, “Abbey, if you could have one thing back that you think you have lost, what would it be?”

  I tear apart a wet Kleenex in my lap and think about it. Maybe Ms. Morvay knows what I’ll say, but it comes as a surprise to me that the first person to pop into my head isn’t Keeta. I look at her when I finally say the truth. “My mom and Kate.”

  “It’s not too late to get them back. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” And I know exactly what I have to do.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  As I put on my ugly jersey before the game, I tell Garrett the tear-by-tear details of what happened between me and Keeta earlier in the day. She listens like a good friend should but seems pretty unsympathetic to my situation. After all, it isn’t the first time a friend of hers has been flattened by the sledgehammer of Keeta’s love.

  “So, you guys never officially became girlfriends, huh?”

  “I guess not. I just sort of went along with falling in love with her. I thought that was what she was doing, too.” I put on one sock and then stop to rest my head on my knee. “I miss her so much.”

  Garrett rubs some of my vanilla-scented lotion on her legs. “Well, at least you know where you stand now. So are you guys still going to see each other?”

  I’ve already spent the whole day in a hazy fog of despair because, in my head, Keeta and I broke up. And now Garrett’s asking if Keeta and I are still together? “Did you not just hear what happened to me today?” I ask her like she’s crazy.

  “Well, you don’t have to stop dating her just because she doesn’t want to see you exclusively. It’s not that unheard of, Abs. Get with the times.”

  “But I thought Keeta loved me. I thought I was, I don’t know, special.” I look in the mirror to make sure the word sucker isn’t written across my forehead. Special? Ha.

  “Abbey, Keeta does care about you.”

  “And how would you know?”

  “She told me. We talked at lunch. She feels pretty badly about the way things ended with you guys this morning. Oh, I was waiting for the right time to give this to you. Here.” She pulls a folded letter from her gym bag and tosses it on the bench. “She wanted me to give this to you, and you don’t have to read it to me. I already read it.” She gathers her hair into a ponytail, which is always perfect on the first try because that’s how things are for beautiful people like Garrett. “Keeta still wants to see you. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I pick up the letter from the graffiti-laden bench and put it in the small pocket of my backpack with my guitar pick and A pendant. I have a game to play, and as much as I want to read Keeta’s letter right this second, I know I have to get focused on kicking some butt on the court.

  Garrett and I join our teammates on the bleachers to wait for our game, and I silently wonder how it would be to sh
are Keeta with someone else. At least then I wouldn’t have to hurt so much. Maybe I could live with the idea of only hurting a little.

  As I watch Kate running the court during the freshman game, I’m reminded of my talk with Ms. Morvay. I hadn’t noticed before tonight, but Kate is getting pretty darn good at basketball. I imagine how cool it would be if we were on the same team next year. We could dominate the entire city! But mostly I imagine how cool it would be if we could just be friends again. Then the buzzer signals the end of her game and the JV teams start to warm up.

  During the first half of our game, I am a total embarrassment to my Nikes because I get three fouls for trying to snag rebounds over the backs of my opponents. Those are cheap fouls, but I can’t help it if everyone on Sabino High’s team is height challenged. Nevertheless, a foul is a foul and now I only have two left before getting benched for the rest of the game. But, seriously, me trying not to attack the basketball each time it’s loose is like telling someone to not close their eyes when they sneeze: it’s impossible.

  And Coach Riley yelling at me every time I run by isn’t helping matters at all. “Brooks, hustle!” “Brooks, screen!” “Brooks, rebound!” God, I swear if he doesn’t stop it, I’ll have my own commands for him. And they won’t be pretty.

  I finally get a chance to calm down during halftime because, as if he’s sensed my homicidal irritation with him, Riley actually lets me leave the team meeting a couple minutes early to see the trainer about replacing my knee Band-Aid and to shoot around a bit. Then Keeta shows up to ruin my new relaxed mood.

  She sits up at the top of the bleachers with Tai and Jenn and just hangs out with them like she isn’t a cupid killer. For the first time, I detest the jersey number we share and wish I could trade with someone for the last two games of the season.

  So, thanks to Keeta, I get all angry and crazy again and start off the third quarter by “accidentally” tripping one of my opponents, causing the whistles to blow.

  “White twenty-one, pushing.”

  Then Garrett gets all over my case. “Crutch, get it together!”

  I try to get it together as I have been instructed, but Sabino’s number two is being such a pain in my ass, and part of me wonders if she isn’t another one of Keeta’s exes, which is why I let myself feel free to push her around and attempt to make her look like she’s a sucky b-ball player. When I see my chance, I fake her out, dribble under the basket, and toss the ball over my shoulder showing off my no-look, reverse layup that I have been practicing with Keeta in the park. And I make it! Well, well. Maybe all those afternoons in the park with Keeta weren’t a complete waste of time, after all.

  Then number two starts to fight back. It begins with a little shoving, but then we both pull out all the sneaky moves when the refs have their backs turned. She’s short and thick, so each time she drives to the basket, she lowers a shoulder and ploughs into me like a raging bull, making me hit the floor hard. I look to the ref who surely saw her intentional charge, but the ref claims it was clean. Then, with two minutes left in the game, number two “accidentally” elbows me hard in the face as we struggle for a rebound. A second later, we’re both on the ground like dogs fighting for a bone. Finally, the ref whistles and our teammates break us up. I’m pulled up by Garrett and Eva. Along with my reddening eye, I’m bleeding from my knee again and my braid has totally come undone. I’m a mess, literally and figuratively.

  “Pushing,” the ref says. “White twenty-one.”

  “What!” I scream and throw the ball I won fair and square against the wood floor. The slam and my what echo throughout the gym.

  The ref blows her whistle again and throws up her hands to form a T, a player’s least favorite letter of the game. And there you have it: my first technical foul.

  Coach Riley is too pissed off to even look my way, so I walk to the end of the bench, plop down on the folding chair, and cover my head with the towel Matti hands me. She also hands me an ice pack for my eye, but I tell her to leave me alone because I’m enjoying the intense pain and don’t want it to stop. Finally, something else is causing me to hurt besides my broken heart.

  Meanwhile, my mom, who came to the game to cheer me on and to prove that she still loves me (even though I’m pretty sure she is just spying on me), is probably confirming her drug addiction suspicions and calling the Solstice House this very second. To make things worse, Kate’s actually watching the game, since Derrick got kicked off the team for his bad attitude and she doesn’t have to rush off to watch him play. She’s probably thinking that I suck at basketball and that it should have been her that got moved up to JV. And, to make things even more worse, Keeta is still up in the stands, along with the entire varsity team. She must be so embarrassed to ever have been my non-girlfriend. I hide my face until the game ends. We lose by ten.

  On the way home, while we’re stopped at a red light, my mom turns off her talk radio program and says, “Abbey Road.”

  I can’t look at her.

  “What happened to you out there? It’s not just basketball making you so angry, is it?”

  But I can’t speak either.

  By the time I get home, my head is killing me and, instead of heading straight to my room, I walk into the kitchen with my mom to get some water to wash down some ibuprofen. That’s when she sees how bad it is.

  “Oh my gosh, Abbey. Your eye. That’s it, I’m taking you to urgent care.” She grabs her purse and her keys.

  I take them out of her hands. “Mom, I’m fine. It’s just a black eye. Calm down.”

  “But what if—” she starts, but lets it go. “All right, but let me at least ice it.”

  I succumb and sit down because I don’t have the energy to fight with anyone anymore. She gets a package of peas out of the freezer and wraps them in a soft dish towel, but I still wince when she places them on my face.

  “Oh, honey. It looks so bad.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You know, I’m not sure I want you to play next year. It’s too rough out there.”

  I laugh because I already know there’s no way I’ll let her take basketball from me. Sure, it didn’t seem like it was my favorite activity tonight, but I do love the game. I love the feeling of flying downcourt, working up a sweat, sinking bank shots, seeing the faces of my opponents when I reject their shots, singing our songs of victory in the locker room, road trips to every corner of the desert, and even wearing that funky thirty-year-old polyester uniform. After all, it’s what says I’m on the team. And, despite everything, I loved tonight’s game and making that impossible shot. Then, thanks to my fanatical mind, the thought of loving basketball makes me think of loving Keeta, which makes me think about what Garrett said, which makes me mad all over again. I shouldn’t have to share Keeta. If she cares enough about me, she should only want to be with me.

  “Abbey Road”—my mom’s voice puts the brakes on my manic train of thought—“what made you play like that tonight? Did something happen at school?”

  I don’t answer until I know where she’s going with this.

  She adjusts the peas a little and continues. “And what is it that has become more important to you than good grades, or best friends, or me? Is it basketball or something else?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “It’s all I can say, Mom,” I tell her, being honest. “I’m sorry.”

  She puts my hand over the peas to hold them in place so she can stand in front of me. “Okay, but there is one thing I need to know.”

  I consider fleeing the scene, but I’m also too tired to run from anyone anymore, so I stay. And since my guard is down, I actually consider telling her the truth. I can’t believe it, but I’m actually hoping she’ll finally ask the big question.

  “What, Mom?”

  She puts her hands on my shoulders and says, “If you ever feel like hurting yourself, or turning to drugs or anything like that, promise you’ll come to me fo
r help?”

  All that panic for nothing. I didn’t think I’d feel so disappointed, but I guess this stupid secret has worn me out. Why hasn’t she seen the signs? Is she totally clueless or just too afraid to say it? I wish I could tell the difference, and I wish I had the guts to tell her myself. “Mom, I’m fine. I just got a little PMS-y tonight. Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

  “Promise me, Abbey.”

  I take the peas off my stinging eye and look at her. “I promise.”

  *

  It’s two thirty in the morning and I’m no closer to sleeping than I was at eleven or one. I take another dose of ibuprofen because my head is beginning to hurt again. And since there’s no sign of sleep in my future, I take out the letter Keeta wrote to me and read it one more time:

  Dear Amara,

  I just opened the Valentine you made for me. Que bonita está, Amara. It is by far the sweetest thing I’ve ever held, besides you, of course. I’m sorry we ran out of time this morning. I really wanted a chance to explain things better. So I guess I’ll do it in this letter and hope that I can clear everything up. First, and most importantly, I meant all those things I told you, Amara. You are beautiful. When you’re near me, my body melts like ice. I care so much about you and my heart is aching to see you so I can show you how much I care. I want to kiss you de pies a cabeza; from your head to your toes.

  Please understand, though, that I just can’t commit to you right now. Can’t we just keep on going like we were? Nothing’s really that different. When I am with you, I am yours. I promise. We have something so cool. Why make it end, Amara? Eres mi amiga y mucho más. I still want to be with you, but I guess you need to be the one to decide what will happen now. Asi quedamos. I mean it, whatever you want. But please remember that I never meant to hurt you.

  I’m thinking about you this very second and I’ll be watching you tonight as you run up and down the court (you’re so sexy in those little blue-and-white shorts). Don’t forget, you’re wearing my number. Make me proud.