Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move

by Nancy N. Rue

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  I did, but I was sure it wasn’t the answer he had in mind.

  “You’ve clearly made your choice, Cassidy. After everything I’ve said and done, you’ve still ‘decided for yourself.’” He deposited a glare on my mother before he turned on me again. “Well, it’s definitely over now. You’ve ruined any possible chance you had left of getting back into basketball. I might as well cancel the appeal hearing—I’m not going to fight in a battle I know I can’t win.”

  I stared at my knees. The most athletic part of your body, Ben had said, and the most vulnerable. I felt both.

  “I want to hear it, Cassidy,” Dad said. “I want to hear you say you have no problem with the fact that you have wrecked what could have been a great career. I want to hear it in your own voice.”

  My voice? My voice?

  I looked up from my knees. “Dad, I don’t have a voice,” I said. “Why did I need one? You always told me what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how well I just did it.” I swallowed, hard. “If I say what I think my voice wants to say, you’re not going to hear it, so what’s the point?”

  I watched the color completely drain from my father’s face until it matched his white hair and he was no longer “striking.”

  “I suppose there is none then,” he said. And he left my room.

  “Are you okay, Cass?” Mom said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I’m going to go …”

  I nodded, and she closed my door and hurried down the hall.

  “Good luck with that, Mom,” I whispered. Please, please, please.

  *

  I heard the up-and-down murmurs of a fight behind closed doors, and then the strained silence, during which I took a shower so I wouldn’t have to hear any follow-up. I was pretty sure Dad was gone when I got out. Mom was somewhere talking softly—probably on the phone—and the air was free again.

  I was starving by then and ventured out in the direction of the kitchen. I stopped cold when I found Mom and Ben in the family room.

  “Good morning, Boss,” Ben said. “I hear you had a busy day yesterday.”

  For the first time since that “busy day,” the voice of the ER doctor barged into my head and brought the Frenemy with him. “You might have blown the graft but I can’t be sure,” he said. I kicked both of them aside and sank onto the couch.

  “I did everything I could not to mess it up,” I said. “But I had to do it. I had to be there.”

  He nodded without grinning. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  The bending-touching-frowning tests he did didn’t show that I’d torn the graft completely, but he still wasn’t sure it wasn’t damaged.

  “The ER doc was right, you do need another MRI. I know you hate to go back into that storm drain …”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “I’m going to make more coffee,” Mom said.

  When she’d padded into the kitchen, I let Ben put my brace back on me. “Are you disappointed in me?” I said.

  His face came up quickly. “Why would I be?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve messed it up twice now. That doesn’t exactly make me your poster girl anymore.”

  Ben patted the brace for me to lower my leg. “Let me tell you something, Boss,” he said. “I admire the tremendous commitment you’ve made to becoming a great athlete. But what inspires me more is your commitment to becoming a great person.”

  “I wish my father thought that,” I said.

  He gave a grim nod. “I wish he did too. But it looks like it’s up to you now.”

  I was thinking about that when he’d left and Mom was washing out the coffee pot. She and Dad must have had it out if she was cleaning everything that didn’t move. I propped my leg on the opposite kitchen chair and picked my words carefully.

  “Do you think I could go ahead with the appeal without Dad?”

  She stopped scrubbing. “Seriously?”

  “Bad idea?”

  “No.” She left the rag on the counter and sat down to face me. “I was actually going to suggest it. Unlike your father, I don’t think this incident with Rafe necessarily has to work against you.”

  “Do you think I can do it, though? I’d have to talk in front of a whole bunch of people, right? I’m not sure I even know what to say, or how.”

  Mom leaned toward me, hair untucked. All the lines in her face showed today.

  “What you said earlier about not having a voice? I don’t think that’s true, Cass. What was that I heard yesterday when you were telling that police officer how it was going to be? I don’t think Rafe’s friends came to you to help him because you don’t know what to say or how to say it.” She took my shoulders in her hands. “You’re right—your father has spoken for you for years. He probably could still represent you as an agent—for basketball. But your scoring average is not who you are—your sport doesn’t complete you—it’s not your identity. And I think that’s what you need to tell the appeals board, because that’s what’s going to show you what Cassidy Brewster is made of.”

  I looked into her eyes for a long time, until I had every crease memorized.

  “Will you make sure he doesn’t cancel the hearing?” I said finally.

  “Done.”

  “And will you be there?”

  “A truckload of chocolate couldn’t keep me away,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  *

  I was dying to see Rafe and make sure Officer Meadows hadn’t been feeding me a line about him being at Tank and Uma’s just to get me to shut up. But I couldn’t go to school Monday, because Dr. Horton’s office got me in for an MRI. If it turned out I needed more surgery, it probably wasn’t going to matter what happened at the appeal hearing.

  I was shooing the Frenemy out for about the third time that day as Mom and I turned the corner onto our street.

  “Whose car is that in the driveway?” She lowered her sunglasses. “It can’t be.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I said. “Is that Gretchen’s car?”

  Mom slowed down like we were doing surveillance, but it was definitely the green Mazda. And Gretchen was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Have you even talked to her since—”

  “No,” Mom said.

  She pulled up next to the Mazda and turned off the engine.

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “What we always do,” she said. “Break out the chocolate.”

  We all got out of our cars and exchanged the most awkward greetings ever. Mom somehow got us into the house without anybody smacking anybody. I noticed that Gretchen’s hair wasn’t as full and luscious as it used to be, and that she was so thin, the bones in her wrists stuck out like knobs on kitchen cabinets. Mom left us in the family room while she went to make hot chocolate, and I was frantically searching for something to say when Gretchen blurted out—

  “I know you must hate me, Cassidy. I hate me too.”

  Now I really didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t seem to need for me to say anything. Everything came out like she’d practiced long and hard.

  “I heard what happened, and I had to come over, because I just want to say I am so, so sorry for what I did to you. You have absolutely no idea.” She piled her hair up to let it drop, which it did in a mere listless shadow of its former self. “I had this mindset then, like ‘I can fix anything. I’m in control. I know more than the people who are teaching me.’ I really did want to help you—and your family—but I did it the wrong way. Totally the wrong way.”

  I still couldn’t respond. She’d said everything I would have said anyway.

  “I didn’t come here to ask you to forgive me.” Gretchen’s voice was winding down. “I just had to tell you that if I could undo it, I would.”

  A noisy group of answers called out in my head. You can’t now, can you? Feels pretty lousy to lose everything, huh? You
blew my chances, so why don’t you just blow right out of here?

  I slammed the door on all of them—because there wasn’t one that didn’t sound like something my father would say. It never solved anything to hear them. It sure wasn’t going to solve anything to say them. And besides—

  “Y’know what?” I said. “All that stuff you said about yourself—it fit me too, back then.”

  “I don’t get that,” she said.

  “I had a mindset too, like the team couldn’t do anything without me and I had to be in control, and I couldn’t just wait and do it the right way.” I looked at her with my whole self wide open. “Doesn’t it just totally bite to find out that stuff?”

  “Yeah.” Her face was still fighting something. “And if you admit it, you still lose everything.”

  It was my turn not to get it.

  “I’m so close to getting back into med school, Cassidy.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me, misery pouring from her eyes. “Not when I have to give up everything to make it happen.”

  “You mean Aaron?” I said.

  She only half nodded. “Not just Aaron. My own self-respect. And you.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Because, y’know what? I forgive you.”

  Her swollen eyes widened. “Why would you?”

  “Because one mistake doesn’t make you who you are.”

  Gretchen shook her head. She didn’t believe a word of it.

  But I did.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When Gretchen left, it felt like she took a chunk of the past with her, a chunk I was more than happy to let go of. I didn’t even ask Mom what went down between the two of them when she walked Gretchen out to her car. All I wanted to do was look ahead.

  So I read the RL stories over again. I went to the Center like always the next morning, and did the exercises I could. I chatted it up with Boz during first period and at lunch, where I told him and Ruthie everything that happened over the weekend. I had to keep going forward.

  Funny how just a few weeks before, I would have considered that moving backward.

  But fifth period was going to be hard, I thought, as I headed to the art room after lunch. I hadn’t seen or talked to Rafe since Saturday, which had to mean he was back with Uma and that they, too, were going forward. It was all right, really. They came from the same world. He needed Uma now—she understood where he’d been. I was totally okay with it.

  Uh-huh. Then why did I feel like I might fold if I didn’t hear—

  “Hey, Roid.”

  There he was, right inside the art room, wiggling his eyebrows and greeting me like he had a shopping cart and a sales flier waiting just for me. Although, Walmart didn’t usually hire people who looked like they’d just gone a couple of rounds on Smackdown.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m always okay.”

  “Liar. Seriously—are you?”

  “That would be a yes. Except for sharin’ a room with Tank. The dude snores like a Harley.”

  I almost melted into a puddle, right there in front of the chalks and paintbrushes.

  “So—are you?” he said.

  “Am I what?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “Liar.” Rafe looked down at my knee, and I saw something different in his eyes. “Did I hurt it?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aw, man—”

  I shook my head at him. “No. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  The bell rang, and Mrs. Petrocelli-Ward pointed at us, wrist jingling.

  “Just because you’re artists doesn’t mean you have to be flakes. The bell has rung. Have a seat.”

  Rafe wiggled his eyebrows at her. It got him nowhere.

  *

  The next hurdle I had to get over was seeing Uma. As it turned out, I didn’t have to jump very high.

  The weather was warm, and that was such an oddity for a Colorado April that Ms. Edelstein announced that we were having study hall outside. The minute we were out of the building, Uma broke from the kindergarten line we were in and threw her arms around my waist. I looked down at the top of her head with what I knew had to be total bafflement.

  “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou,” she said.

  “I guess you’re welcome,” I said.

  She tilted her head back to look up at me, mascara streaming down her face, as well as the front of my shirt. “You saved Rafe’s life.”

  Rafe took hold of her arm and peeled her off me. “She gets it, Uma. Don’t go emo.”

  I laughed. “Okay, so I saved him for you. You can owe me.”

  She shook her head and gave Rafe a look so full of sheer longing I could feel it in my own soul. “You tell her,” she said to him. And then she turned and headed back to the building.

  “Where are you going, Uma?” Ms. Edelstein said.

  “Bathroom.”

  I looked at Rafe. “Should I go after her?”

  “No,” he said.

  I was considering it, though, when Ruthie came up on the other side of me.

  “Will you be okay sitting out here?” she said.

  We’d reached the track by then, and Tank and Ms. Edelstein were already settling in on the bleachers. Ms. Edelstein pulled her red pencil from behind her ear. Did she go anywhere without those papers?

  “It’s okay,” I said to Ruthie. “Why?”

  “Aren’t those, like, those girls?”

  I looked where she was pointing. Coach Deetz stood at the other end of the track with that obnoxious whistle in his mouth, while the entire girls’ varsity basketball team loped past him and rounded the bend to come toward us. He always made us run outside on days like this.

  “What girls?” Rafe said.

  “Girls I used to know,” I said. “I need to sit.”

  Rafe and I parked on the second-to-the-bottom row so I could prop my leg, and Ruthie sat behind us and was soon immersed in the inevitable paperback. I felt a pang when I realized it was The Scarlet Letter. I was ready to bury my own face in a book, just to keep from watching the long legs that took the track like antelopes. Especially Kara’s.

  “Hey, Roid.”

  I turned to Rafe. Okay, for lack of a book, he would do.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “What you said to Uma—you were right. I owe you.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I was just trying to get her to stop crying.”

  “No—for real. You risked it all for me. I’m scared to ask what your old man said about it.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I wish I could do something to, I don’t know— be there for you like you—”

  “Oh, nuh-uh.”

  I glanced back to see Ruthie staring round-eyed at the field.

  “What?”

  Ruthie used the book to cover the track-ward side of her face. “Look at that one girl—that Asian girl.”

  “Dude,” Rafe said.

  “What?”

  Rafe physically turned my head to face the track. Selena was just passing us, and Emily. If she got any closer to her she was going to—

  “Did you see that?” Ruthie said.

  I did. I saw Selena step into Emily’s path, just as Em’s foot came off the ground. To keep from landing on her, Emily had to jerk sideways. When her foot went down, it went down flat. And so did Emily.

  Selena turned and ran backward a few steps, and then stopped. She was on Emily, hand down to help her up, before I could decide whether I’d actually seen what I’d just seen.

  And whether it was the first time I’d seen it.

  I stared at my knee brace.

  “Did she do that on purpose?” Ruthie said.

  Before I could answer, Rafe crooked his elbow around my neck and pulled me in so he could talk into my ear.

  “I’ve seen that chick before,” he said. “That Asian chick.”
r />   “She goes here,” I said.

  “No—”

  “Enough with the PDA down there,” Ms. Edelstein said in her usual dry voice.

  Rafe let go, but he kept his voice low and close. “You remember that day I hit on you outside LaSalle’s office?”

  “You were hitting on me?”

  He gave half an eye roll. “Yeah. It worked so well on you, I tried it on her—same place—about two weeks later.”

  I rolled my eyes all the way. “I bet you got farther with me than you did with her. What was she doing at LaSalle’s office anyway? The girl’s, like, the perfect student.” I put my hand to my forehead. “Tell me you didn’t say you and she were there for the same reason.”

  “If a line works for me, I stick with it.”

  “No way it worked with Selena.”

  “Nah. She said she wasn’t a loser—she was there to take down a loser. The chick’s a—” He shrugged one shoulder. “A snot.”

  Thoughts suddenly lined up in my head so brightly and sharply that I had to close my eyes to keep from being blinded by them.

  Coach Deetz is totally biased. If somebody else hadn’t tipped LaSalle off, you never would have gone down for it.

  That’s what Selena said that day in the cafeteria. I’d been so stung by her calling me a druggie and saying she would never play on a team with me again, I’d missed it.

  “Rafe, will you help me walk down there?”

  He let one eyebrow go up. “You gonna take her down right here? You oughta at least wait until after school.”

  “I’m not going to fight her,” I said. “I just have to talk to her. Now.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Selena was on the grass stretching when I hobbled over to her. Rafe stood at the edge of the track like a bodyguard.

  “How did you know?” I said.

  She looked up with a jerk, but she recovered quickly to the smooth, cold face I knew so well.

  “How did I know what?”

  “How did you know Coach Deetz wasn’t the one who went to Mr. LaSalle?”

  Her eyes shifted to the left. “What are you talking about?”