Front and Center (3 page)

Looking at those
D.J. IS #1!!
balloons now, the numbers the girls had drawn in bubble letters, I felt a little sick to my stomach. Like I said, the girls didn't intend anything mean I'm sure, but those
#1
signs just reminded me of how I'd failed in the past. How many times coaches had told me I could do it, and how many times I'd proved them wrong. Now, I couldn't help but suspect, Coach K was going to try one more time. And I was going to disappoint them, Coach K and Kari and all the rest of the team. Disappoint them again.

All day long everyone asked a million questions about Win—the same million questions, over and over, until I actually thought about writing something on my forehead with a Sharpie, just to save my breath. The teachers were just as talky, asking the same questions but in a quiet, you-can-tell-
me
voice. And you could tell they were pleased I'd gotten so much homework done, and I didn't get any grief—not yet, anyway—about how maybe the quality of that homework wasn't so great. It's not like I had anyone in the rehab hospital to chat with about
Ethan Frome,
and anyway, who'd want to talk for two seconds about such a depressing book. And let's not even get started on algebra.

Mrs. LeVoir, the Spanish teacher, even said she'd have lunch with me to help me review. Which should have been nice—I mean, it
is
nice that she volunteered to give up her free time like that, make her own little contribution to the whole Schwenk Family Tragedy. But it's not like I could say,
That's okay, I'd rather flunk Spanish and let you eat your cottage cheese with the grownups.
So I just thanked her, and all the other teachers, especially Mr. Larson, who I actually really do like and who in three minutes explained small intestine membranes so that I finally understood what the anatomy textbook was talking about.

Plus Amber finally showed up.

Amber's the one who had all that awful stuff done to her locker last fall—that's how I know how bad it can get, how locker stuff can get really hurtful. It got so bad for her finally that she and Dale (which explains the meanness on some people's part, the fact she has a girlfriend) left town altogether. They'd spent a month living in Dale's truck camper, which is barely big enough to turn around in, especially for two people like Amber and Dale who aren't exactly size zero. (Did you know that zero is actually a
size?
Who the heck is a size
zero?
Do they walk around all the time saying I fit into nothing," ha?) Then they moved in with a friend of Dale's in Chicago but apparently that place wasn't much bigger than the camper and Dale hadn't ever been too pleased about Amber dropping out of school, so when they found out I was coming back to Red Bend, they came too, and Amber more or less made up with her mother, who was as big a jerk about Dale as the biggest jerks in school, and now Amber's trying for her diploma.

Which meant Mom—my mom, who has much more important things to worry about than
sexual perversion,
which Amber's mom actually said out loud even though that's a laugh coming from her—called a bunch of school administrators, administrators other than herself, and worked it out so Amber could show up for classes and nothing else. Because she was being bullied. Which somehow ended up as Principal Slutsky lecturing me about how I should have reported it. To which Mom said, "I guess no one has been pulling their weight like they should have, wouldn't you say?" Just to make the point that Mr. Slutsky had dropped the ball last October. Sometimes, you know, Mom can really shine.

So there I was answering the eight millionth question about Win when Amber shows up still in her coat, I'm sure to rub it in to everyone that she has permission to come in late, and gives me a big hug and starts complaining about the work
she
has to make up.

To tell you the truth, if I hadn't known her so well, and Dale, who's about the coolest girl ever, that hug would have wigged me out just as much as it seemed to wig out the kids around us. There was a time over the summer when just the thought of Amber gave me the shivers, particularly seeing as we'd spent years as best friends on sleepovers and everything without me knowing about her particular, you know, preferences. But it didn't bother me so much anymore, because I was smart enough now to know it isn't disgusting when a girl who likes girls touches another girl. It's just, you know, life. Like just because a guy who likes girls touches one, it doesn't mean they're going out. Like me and Beaner ... although now maybe that wasn't such a good example. Anyway, it sure felt nice to have my oldest friend there, complaining in a way that just cracked me up and also blocking me from all the Win questioners, because most kids weren't rude enough to interrupt, and the ones who were weren't brave enough or dumb enough to interrupt Amber.

***

The only downer was that she wasn't playing basketball. Not with school, plus all her makeup work, plus her job at the Super Saver. Which really stinks, because Amber is an awesome defender. When she sticks herself to another player, you can just write that girl off. But no matter what I'd said, and Dale too, which was nice considering how much they need money, Amber said no. So it was a real bummer to suit up without her there in the locker room, although at least someone had stuck wrapping paper on my gym locker as well. And then once we were all out on the court, Kari got everyone going on this cheer she'd made up just for me. Even Coach K cracked a smile and said he was glad I was back.

Coach K isn't
the
Coach K—like the Duke coach commutes to Wisconsin for a bunch of girls!—because he's Kibblehouse, not Krzyzewski. But he's still Coach K to us. He teaches shop and he's very strict, which I guess you have to be if you're teaching a roomful of guys about blowtorches. He used to coach boys until his son was a freshman, but then even after his son graduated, he kept coaching girls because he says they create a team automatically. Which I guess we do. I mean, could you imagine a bunch of boys decorating each other's lockers and making up cheers? He says it's a lot easier to train a girl to shoot than it is to train a guy to pass.

You know how our football coach chews his mustache when he's thinking? Coach K always twirls a pen, a special kind of pen that comes with a chain so he won't lose it. All the way in one direction until it's wound tight around his hand, then all the way around in the other. Late in a game it's best to stay to his left if you don't want to lose an eye.

Boy, did I miss Amber. I didn't have someone to goof off with for one thing, but we also flat out needed her. Kayla Frolingsdorf and Brittany Graebel are okay—they're juniors too—and we had some underclassmen I barely remembered, but it wasn't like Amber's shoes were going to get filled by any of them. And Jessica Hudak, who's a senior with Kari, and one more senior as well: Ashley Erdel. What that girl was doing here now, as a senior, I had no idea. Ashley hadn't played hoops since middle school! Just a few minutes into practice, she was red-faced and puffing, her hair stuck to the back of her neck in dark sticky curls. She might get the best grades in Red Bend, but she had benchwarmer written all over her.

You could tell it was a huge relief to Ashley when practice ended, though I could have gone another couple days, I was enjoying it all so much. It didn't hurt that Beaner showed up right at the end, all ready for
his
basketball practice, and the two of us played one on one until his coach told me I was making the boys look bad.

Beaner is really fast, which shouldn't surprise you, and he can jump like just about anything, so when you're playing against him you have to be super alert all the time for his steals. But he's also ... Well, if I was his coach I'd call him lazy, or cocky maybe, because half the time he stole from me I'd steal it right back, grab it when he was still hooting away. The other guys liked that a lot, I could tell. Plus whenever he went in I'd be right there in his face rebounding, which might surprise a guy who didn't know me, but Beaner doesn't get bothered one way or the other. He never treats me like I'm a girl, which means he's not too cautious but he's also not a bully either, just because the person guarding him happens to wear a bra. I've played against guys like that and you just want to dump a bucket of ice over their heads, or down their shorts, which would be more appropriate, just to get them to grow up a little. But Beaner treats me like I'm human. Which means he does everything he can to beat me and then afterward tells me how good I played, no matter who won.

"You still thinking about Friday?" he asked as he was grabbing some water.

"You still got a hoop in your driveway?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy, but I couldn't keep a straight face and we both started laughing. Because hello, this is Wisconsin, where we've already had a couple feet of snow and it's not even officially winter. "I'll get it shoveled for ya," he said.

"Okay then. I'll be there." And I grinned at him and headed off to the showers.

***

Normally after practice I go to the library, hanging out until Curtis's practice finishes because neither the middle school or the high school has enough room for the girls and boys to practice at the same time. But Coach K was waiting by the locker room entrance when I came out, waiting like he'd been there awhile, and before I could say a word he asked if we could talk.

Every time we play an important game, Coach K puts a little tag with the opponent's name and score and the year on his pen and hangs it in his office as a souvenir. Right there in the middle was the pen from last year's Hawley game, where he got so excited that he actually snapped his pen off its chain and it went sailing onto the basketball court and Jessica stomped on it by mistake and they had to call a time-out so the refs could pick up the pieces. So now it was really easy to identify because of all the Scotch tape.

"So. Betcha you're wondering why you're here," he said, tilting back in his chair and working his latest pen, catching it in his hand every time.

"Point guard," I said. Might as well rip that Band-Aid off right away.

"I have been doing some thinking on that subject. But you know ... I stopped by your folks' place last week, and your dad, well, he passed these along." Coach K lifted up this big shopping bag with a grunt and dumped it out onto his desk.

It was envelopes. A couple dozen at least. With fancy logos in the spot where you write who the letter's from, big capital letters that took me a few minutes to figure out were university logos. And beneath the logos, the words
Women's Basketball Program.

And right in the middle of every envelope, above our home address, or the school address sometimes, was my name.

I finally figured it out: recruiting letters. "But—but I didn't even
play
last year!"

"Lot of folks read
People.
A girl linebacker who scores twenty points a game, well, that caught their attention."

That stupid article! A couple months ago these two guys came by our place and of course I was really nice to them, me and Brian together because we thought they were farmers, but it turned out they were really from
People
magazine come to do a story on Red Bend's girl football player. And in the article they made a huge deal out of the whole Brian thing, which was great news for him and for me both—I'm kidding, it was absolutely horrible—and no matter how much time passed, people kept bringing it up. It was like a curse, a dead hand or something from a horror movie that kept coming back no matter how many times you buried it. The photograph stuck to my locker this morning, and now here it was again.

"Why didn't Dad give me these?" I asked finally.

"You already had a lot you were dealing with there. He didn't want to add any more pressure." Coach K sighed. "I'm afraid I dropped the ball here, D.J. We should have already been thinking, you know, about where you want to go. We should have been thinking about it last year. You have any preferences, school-wise?"

I shook my head. I just wanted to go
somewhere.
Somewhere with a scholarship, duh, that got me out of Red Bend.

"I've got some networking I can do. But no one's going to offer you anything if they don't know you're interested. The NCAA won't even let coaches call you. You've got to reach out."

"I've got to call
coaches?
" Although now I remembered Bill calling schools. How complicated it was, and how relieved everyone was when he decided on the university of Minnesota.

"You need to market yourself. You need to present yourself as a natural leader."

"I'm not a natural—"

"You're not? Look at you and Win. You took someone with a lot of promise and a lot of problems, and you got him to recognize his talents and overcome his weaknesses. You know what that is?"

Cruel?
I thought. Because if Coach K had heard me yelling at Win, he probably would have locked me up.

"That's leadership. Win and Bill didn't get those scholarships just because of their athletic ability. They got them because they're hard-working natural leaders. Just like you."

I wondered if I could change the subject to something less embarrassing. Sex ed, maybe. Anything would be less embarrassing than this.

"We need to figure out how to get out all that leadership trapped inside you. How would you do it, D.J.? Let's say now that you were coach and you had this amazing girl who was too shy, you know, to say much. To speak up on the court."

I gulped. "I don't know. Maybe have her practice?"

"Practice. That's a super idea. Why dontcha think about practicing your leadership."

"Oh. Okay." Not asking,
When is this wonderful conversation going to end?

"You understand why, dontcha? You need to show these schools what you're capable of. Anyone can sink a ball—Sasha Christensen could sink a ball. But leadership ... that's something special. That's something any school would pay for. Pay a lot."

By now I was seriously panicking—not so you could tell, but my guts were pretty much sausage. Sasha Christensen had played back when I was in eighth grade, the most famous girl player in Red Bend. She'd ended up getting a full scholarship to Michigan State. I'd gone to every one of her games I could—I mean, she was
amazing.
"Couldn't we wait? My mom's not even home right now. And I'm only a junior..."