Class Favorite (18 page)

Shiner scrambled out the door, and Coach looked at me.

“They called in the police. Everyone thought it was a bomb.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.”

“You okay?”

“I guess. I think there's something in my eye, and my ears are ringing.”

“We'll get Coach Wendell to take you to the hospital, get you checked out.” He let out a big sigh and a little laugh. “Whew! You had us scared there, Thurman. I thought it was some crazy ex-student, back for revenge; maybe ol' Enzo finally came back to show us. Well, so long as you're okay. A basketball can certainly be replaced. After all,” he chuckled, “it's not as if you blew up The Ball.”

My eyes widened, and I felt sickness creeping up in my throat. Still, I gave a little laugh, then asked, “How can you tell if it's The Ball?”

He bent down and picked up the pieces. “Well, we didn't want to put a bunch of writing on The Ball, you know, mess it all up.” As he spoke he examined the orange and black scraps of leather. “So old Coach Randolph”—his eyebrows scrunched together—“put a little ‘#1' right . . . by . . . the . . .”

14

Does He Like You . . . Like That?

Testing the waters, you tell your friend and heart's desire, Stefan, that the new guy in history is totally cute. He:

a) scoffs and says, “You can do better!”

b) nods and says, “Yeah, he's like the female version of that smokin' Brazilian babe in our homeroom.”

c) doesn't even look up, just mumbles, “Whatever.”

 

When Coach Eckels saw that little #1 by the black rubber insertion thing, he went totally ballistic. Suddenly he didn't care that I was okay, or even that I really
wasn't
okay because my eye was twitching more and more with every curse word Coach Eckels tossed around the storage room, despite his policy of not cursing around “the womenfolk.” He eventually told me to get out of his sight, which I did, and gladly.

Coach Wendell drove me to East Side Memorial to get
my eyes and ears checked out. He sat with me in the waiting room while we waited for a doctor to see me and for my mom to come get me. He didn't say anything, just sighed and scratched the back of his head a lot, then rested his hands back on the rounded belly that spilled over his coach shorts. The silence made me so anxious for a word of encouragement that I finally couldn't take it anymore.

“Coach Wendell, I'm so sorry,” I implored. “I didn't mean to do it.”

He sighed again as he stared off at the muted TV high up in the corner of the room. “Well . . . I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm sure it's . . . well, there's nothing much we can do about it now.” He never even looked at me.

If anyone should be upset, it should have been me. After all, that Ball inspired my existence. If Bowie hadn't won that game in 1989, my dad might never have summoned the courage to ask my mom out—he might not have even noticed her in the first place. But when I went daydreaming about some boy (even a totally lusty boy), I let The Ball—my existence—explode into four ripped pieces. One for each member of my broken family. How nauseatingly poetic.

An eternity later, Mom showed up looking disheveled. Her hair hung as if exhausted against her cheeks, her ears poking through.

“Good God, Sara,” she said, tilting my chin up so she
could look at my twitching eye. She took in my outfit, cocked an eyebrow, and asked, “What happened now?” Her mascara had run a bit with the long day, and her blouse was slightly untucked beneath her skirt.

Out of the corner of my good eye, I could see Coach Wendell shaking his head.

“I accidentally blew up the basketball at half-time.”

“It wasn't The Ball, was it?”

Didn't I say the story was legendary? I could only look down at the floor.

“Sara!” she gasped. “Not
The
Ball?”

When she said that, I started to cry. There I was in my too-short skirt and clunky boots, the green-ish lights of the waiting room casting weird shadows on everyone's faces. I felt like the kid who always gets picked on at school, except the only person picking on me was . . . me. I had wanted to blame my bad situations on someone else ever since the day I got the roses, but there in the hospital, I realized it was all on me.

I bawled, and Mom immediately pulled me to her shoulder as Coach Wendell slipped discreetly toward the vending machines.

“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “Hush, now.” She squeezed me tight.

Up to that point, the only person who had genuinely tried to tell me it was okay was Shiner—which made me want to cry even harder. I wanted Arlene to be the one who said it
was going to be all right. Kirstie had been a good friend to me so far, but she wasn't my best friend—nothing could replace Arlene. She would have calmed me down after the blow-up and then would have made me laugh about the whole thing. Arlene would have told me it was just a stupid ball. I missed her. I felt betrayed, but I still missed her.

And poor Mom. Standing there in her heinous Dress Barn clothes she'd had since Elisabeth was a toddler. The black and white blouse was coarse and nubbly, and I couldn't imagine that she had once considered it nice enough to buy. The last time I remember her getting all dressed up was the time she and Dad went to the Bighorn Sheep Foundation dinner a couple of years ago. They had come home laughing and talking loudly, waking me up. Mom's diamond necklace had tickled my face when she bent to kiss me good night, and she had held her high heels in her manicured hand.

“It's gonna be fine,” Mom assured me back in the waiting room. “Don't you worry about a thing.”

Those simple words made me feel better. I'd blown up The Ball and that was it. Just like Coach Wendell had said: There wasn't much we could do about it now. What was done, was done. I'd probably get expelled tomorrow, so let's just get on with it.

 

My life had become one of amazing highs and dreadful lows, and I hardly had time to recover from the pain or properly
bask in the joy before something else was hitting me in the face.

Two hours after I arrived at East Side Memorial, I was discharged. Nothing was wrong with me, physically. The doctor who blessed me with his medical genius shined a light in my eye and didn't find anything wrong with it. I had probably rinsed out whatever was in there when I sobbed on Mom's shoulder. Still, he gave me some drops to put in for the next forty-eight hours in case it was still sensitive. As for the ringing in my ears, he shined a light in them, too, and told me there wasn't any permanent damage but if the ringing didn't go away within twenty-four hours to go see my regular doctor. The whole thing took less than five minutes. But he did take time to chuckle when I told him I had blown up a basketball. He abruptly stopped chuckling when Mom added, “
The
Ball.”

I stood bored next to Mom as she filled out the insurance papers. She scribbled in my social security number, which I had yet to memorize, and reached over and patted my back—not making a show of it but just doing it.

Then something amazing, wonderful, exciting, perfect happened. The automatic doors of the emergency entrance opened, and beauty was wheeled in.

“Oh, my gosh, what happened to you?” I asked, stepping away from Mom.

Jason smiled as his mother, who was tall like him, and so
elegant in her straight black pants and heels, wheeled him through the door in a wheelchair, his leg propped up and wrapped in a bandage at the ankle.

“Infamous Ball Girl,” he said, a bright smile on his face. “You okay?”

“Shoot, I'm fine,” I said, trying to act breezy.

“You caused a real scene tonight. I'm surprised you didn't give yourself a heart attack.”

“I wish.”

Mrs. Andersen went to the desk next to my mother to check Jason in. Our moms said hello to each other, and the differences in their appearance was stark: a princess and a pauper.

“Well, what happened to you?” I asked, motioning to his propped-up leg.

“Came down wrong on a jump shot.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Just sort of a steady throbbing. Not too bad.”

“You don't seem too upset about it.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Why should I be?”

Was he crazy? Basketball helped make him what he was today, socially speaking. Without basketball, it was possible he'd morph back into the meek kid he had been all through elementary school. Or maybe, I thought, once you reached the top, it was hard to fall back down? I realized that I had no one thing that would take me to the top of the Bowie social scene, but
I had my list that I was slowly trudging through. Maybe with the right clothes and attitude, I would at least get some positive attention.

“Well, I mean, you're only one of the best players on the team. What are we gonna do if you're out for the season?”

“Eh,” he said. “There's only a couple of games left, and I'm no Enzo. I don't think it's going to be that big a deal, to tell you the truth.”

“How come?”

“You're friends with Shiner, right?”

For a moment, I hesitated. Maybe he was going to say something bad about Shiner and then I'd look like his co-loser if I was associated with him. But then I thought,
What do I care?
Shiner's not as bad as I thought he was—not as bad as Kayla had me thinking he was. So I said, “Yeah, we're sort of friends.”

“Well, it turns out he's an awesome basketball player.”

“Really?” I asked, but I had guessed that already.

“Man, you should have seen it. I hurt my ankle late in the third period, but I stuck around on the bench once they put Shiner in and he started tearing it up on the court.”

“Coach Eckels actually put him in?”

“He could have put Hector in, but he didn't. It was the right decision. Just shows what an awesome coach he is,” Jason beamed. “He knew
exactly when to use that guy, knew exactly when he'd be mature enough to play. But, anyway, you should have seen it. Shiner scored fourteen points in the last period. I mean, we probably would have won, anyway, but he was awesome, like his dad used to be. Really great.”

“Wow,” I said, stunned. “Pretty cool.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking to his mom, who was waving him over.

“Looks like you get to move to the head of the line,” I said. “I had to wait for, like, two hours.”

“Possible breaks always get priority over shell shock.” He grinned. “Guess I better go.”

“I hope your ankle is okay.”

“It'll be fine.” He began wheeling himself away, then stopped and said, “Hey, Sara, listen. I'm having a party next weekend, a bunch of people are gonna be there. My parents included, so, you know, it's not one of those parties. But it'd be cool if you stopped by.”

Okay. This just was not possible. Not only had Jason already approached me in the halls unsolicited, but now he was asking me to his party. Me to his party! These things just do not happen in real life—I actually pinched my arm to make sure I wasn't having some random narcoleptic episode. I was wide awake, though, and beginning to see my name on that ballot.

“Yeah,” I heard myself saying, my insides bursting with excitement, a little squeal of exhilaration squeaking out of my mouth. “That'd be cool.”

 

Back at home, Elisabeth was stretching on the floor of the living room, her face pink and wet, the back of her Revlon 5K T-shirt sweated through.

“Dad called,” she said.

“He did?” Mom and I both said this at the same time. When I looked at Mom, she had the same expectant face that I was sure I wore: excited that he had called, agitated that we had missed it.
Does she think he was calling for her?
I thought. Which made me wonder, Was
he calling for her?

Elisabeth had the same surprised look that I had. She looked at me and said, “Yeah, Sara. And he sent us a package. It's on the dining room table.”