Open Court (21 page)

I
t felt strange being in Coach's SUV without Annie in the passenger seat.

“All right. Where to?” Coach said.

“To get your baseball back.”

He stopped fumbling with his keys and looked me square in the eyes. I was ashamed it had taken me this long; I didn't need his disappointed gaze, too. “Coach, this will be easier if you just don't ask.”

Bewilderment slid across his face. “You, Braxton?”

“I didn't do it! What would I want with your baseball? But I know who has it.” I shuddered. Nothing about getting that baseball back was going to be easy. But I couldn't let Luke do that to Coach. I just couldn't. “Do you know how to get to Naples Drive?”

*   *  *

Miraculously, Coach promised to wait in the SUV. He didn't have a choice; the iron gate was locked. He helped ease me over the wall while lecturing me on the dangers. Then he stood, facing me, fists wrapped around the iron bars, stuck in his own helpless prison. “Hall, if they don't want to give it back to you, you come get me.
I'll
make them give it back.”

“Don't worry, Coach, I'm getting that ball!” I declared.

I took off, running up the driveway, looking back once. Coach paced like a bull on the other side of the gate. I'd have to do this quick. He looked three seconds away from reneging on the deal, ramming his SUV through the gate, and charging up the Kimberlin driveway.

Luke answered the door, surprised. “What are you doing here, Holloway?” He stared at my face, not my eyes.

“I need that baseball, Luke,” I said. I didn't accuse him, I wasn't condescending. It almost didn't matter why he took it. Maybe he did it because he couldn't stand up to his friends and be on the chess team. Maybe he was impulsive. Or maybe he really was a thief. I didn't know. And I didn't have time to care.

I looked back. No sign of Trent yet, but he wasn't going to wait long.

“You scaled the gate by yourself?”

“My coach helped.”

“Do you want to come in? Urn, we can't swim or anything today. Stacey's over there with her boyfriend. What's wrong with your face?”

“Luke, I need that baseball back.”

“Yeah, but, your face is …”

“I'm mad. That's what's wrong with my face.”

I caught his eyes. He looked down for a second. Ashamed? Embarrassed? I wasn't sure.

“I know you took it. It's my coach's ball, Luke. He's going to come up here, and if he does, I don't even want to know what's going to happen.”

“Who cares? It's a baseball. He can't prove it was his. He can get another one.”

“Luke, you don't understand. I'm doing you a favor. If Coach knows your name, he'll have your membership to the club revoked.”

“I can't believe you, Holloway!” he spat, eyes wild, chest heaving. “Did you
tell
him I took it?”

He moved, blocking the doorway. From me. Like I was the enemy. That was his choice, making me the enemy, not mine. Blood sped through my veins.

“This isn't like the candy bar at 7-Eleven, Luke—I saw you steal that, too. Coach paid a lot of money for
that ball, but it wouldn't matter if he'd paid only a dollar for it, it's his! Give it back.”

He snapped his head up, angry. “Make me.”

What?
Make me?
Where was my apology? I wanted a confession, a promise it'd never happen again, some remorse!
Make me?
Something inside my head went
click.

Did I need, want, crave someone who said,
Make me?

I salivated like a hungry mutt of a dog. I couldn't have stopped myself if I wanted to—I thrust my hands out and shoved him, hard. His back slammed into the door. His footing went awry.
Thud.
His ass hit the floor. “Hey!” he hollered.

I ran up the back stairway—the only way I knew how to get to Luke's room—passed two doors, and flung myself into his room, looking, hunting, searching. I slapped my pulsating paws on the plastic case and just as quickly sprinted back down the stairs.

Face sour, body reeling, forehead perfect, he stood where I'd left him. He didn't try to stop me this time.

“Made you,” I said, and barreled past. It seemed like four steps, maybe fifty-four, pounding down his driveway.

“Holloway!” Luke yelled.

I didn't answer. Didn't even turn my head.

“What's the matter with you? Give it back!” Luke hollered.

Trent came into focus. His SUV door opened and he popped out, his features gaining cheer. A mixture of sun and tree shadows spilled across his stout body. His relieved sigh hit the air, piercing it, piercing me, and I knew I'd done the right thing.

He steered with one hand and held on to the plastic case with his other, protecting it as if it was a child.

“Hall …”

“Don't ask, Coach. Please, don't ask.”

He scoffed. Then laughed.

“Should've seen yourself fly down that driveway. Never seen you run that fast voluntarily. Remember that feeling and do it on court, would you?”

For some reason that struck me. “Will do, Coach.”

“Where to now?” he said, suddenly sounding up for anything.

I looked out the window. The afternoon was still young. “To Wellsprings,” I said. “To see Janie.”

Coach's eyes stayed on the road. His nostrils flared the slightest bit. He nodded and said nothing.

Trent walked me in. Wellsprings Mental Health Facility wasn't as scary as I imagined. A huge grassy lawn spread off its side, with large windows for a full view of it. The
receptionist considered me carefully, like I might be a resident, not a visitor. But when she heard who we were there to see, she smiled. “Janie,” the woman said. “We love Janie. She's over there, waiting for her mom to pick her up; they're going out for dinner.” She pointed to the furniture groupings in front of the windows.

“She can leave?” I asked.

“She's out for good next week,” Trent said. “They just had to get her medication dosage right.”

Coach and I walked past a row of ferns. He stopped. “Alessandro!” he called.

Janie looked up from the magazine she was reading and turned. Recognizing me, she shook her head wryly. She wasn't in a straitjacket or anything. She wore normal clothes.

Coach nudged me. “I'm going to get some air.”

I nodded. That was good of him. He used to hang back sometimes when Janie and I practiced together— take himself out of the equation and leave us to our ambitions. It was right of him to do that, and this.

My heart ticked, askew. A lump of regret choked my throat. I hoped I wasn't going to cry and make a blubbering fool of myself. Janie took a step toward me. That was all I needed. That killed me. I took two for every one of hers, and we met in front of a potted ficus tree. I
grabbed her and hugged her hard. “I should've come before now,” I whispered in her ear. “I'm so sorry.”

Her thick mane of dark brown hair smelled like strawberries from her brand of shampoo. It always had. I'd forgotten that.

She peeled me off her and backed up so I could witness her mug fill with pretend disgust. “You should be,” she said. “Took you long enough.”

I kept hold of her shoulder. I didn't want her to slip from my grasp. I had to know something, anything, everything she could tell me. Her coloring was a little off—paler—and she was quieter. Yes, quieter, but she was Janie again. Not the least bit deranged, not like that day on the court. She
was Janie.

We chose a leather couch that faced the sprawling grass beyond the windows. Odd ugly purple and green pillows covered the brown leather.

“I'm loving the decor. No wonder these people are crazy,” I said. Then I winced. I shouldn't have said that—”crazy.” Was she crazy? Still? The word “crazy” was dismissive. It was more complicated than that. It was expectation, pressure, winning.

Janie held me in her sights, then motioned to the pillows. “These are Wimbledon colors, girl, bite your tongue.”

Yes, it was Janie.
She was back.
I did bite my tongue—to keep myself from crying with joy.

“So they are.”

We had a view of Trent outside. He walked around aimlessly on the endless lawn. It didn't look like he could see us, because of the glare on the windows, but we could see him fine.

“Speaking of tennis,” Janie said, “Coach told me you won the Cherry Creek Invitational.”

“He did?”

“That's two years in a row, Hall.”

Hmmm. She didn't seem to mind talking about it. “Yeah, but you don't know how bad I sucked. You wouldn't have believed it. Coach went through five pens taking notes. He ran out of ink before I ran out of mistakes. Then he made me write a sportsmanship essay,
that's
how bad I sucked.”

“Ouch. Topic?”

I grinned stupidly at that—
Ouch. Topic?
She leaned forward as she spoke. Face paler. Voice a notch quieter. But her eagerness, the summary of her whole persona, was intact. “U.S. Open quarterfinal match between Agassi and Sampras,” I said.

“Oh, excellent choice!”

“It
is
an awesome match,” I acknowledged.

Using the tip of her pinkie finger, she touched my chin and displayed the resulting purple smudge on her finger. “You just come from practice?”

Zinc oxide still covered my face. Ugh! No wonder Luke had kept asking about my face and the receptionist had stared. Nothing unusual to Janie, though.

I missed her right then, even though she sat within arm's length. I missed her for what a god-awful desperate summer it had been—everyone asking me questions about tennis but never truly understanding my answers. Janie understood. But was she really OK? How could she be without tennis? Didn't she ache without it?

“Check him out,” she said, pointing to Coach.

Pigeons swarmed him for some reason—literally, from every direction. Trent appeared to panic at this. He looked around to see if anyone was watching. No one else was on the grounds, and it was clear he didn't know we could see him. He shuffled his feet, kicking at a couple of them. Soft at first, then harder. It was a sitcom, fierce Coach trying to shoo those plump birds. They weren't going.

Janie busted up laughing. Hard. Out of the corner of my eye I made a mental outline of the shape of her cheeks—Polly's cheeks, the cheeks that haunted my summer.

“Think we should help him?” she asked. And busted up again. That laugh. That laugh was a hundred percent Janie. A cackle, really. A bottomless, throaty cackle. Classic Janie. Her pain was deep, and the laugh matched it, balanced it.

“I met your twin,” I said. “They say everyone has one.”

“Is she a tennis star?”

“No, math whiz.”

Janie made a face. “Ew, ick.”

“No kidding.”

She placed a green pillow on her lap. We couldn't keep our eyes off Coach. He was pretty much getting dive-bombed by pigeons. They were coming at his head. He was sort of running from them, that big man.

I felt Janie's gaze on me. “I think he's afraid of them,” I said.

“I don't,” she said, voice low.

I turned to her. “Hmmm?”

“I don't miss it—tennis,” she said. “Isn't that why you're here? Why you didn't come before? I don't miss it, Hall. Miss Coach sometimes. You. But not the game. I didn't have the head for it. I had the skills. It's not the same thing. You know it's not,” she said quietly.

I wasn't about to lie to her. “I know it's not,” I said.

“I was just so terrified of losing, not just choking during a match, but losing … myself, I guess … my mind shut down, that's all.”

I nodded. Whatever I'd suffered this summer, she'd suffered worse. So much worse. I felt selfish.

“My parents are getting divorced,” she announced.

“Oh, Janie …”

“Can you believe my dad still wants me on the pro circuit after all this? My mom said over her dead body, thus the divorce.”

“He always was a jackass,” I said.

Again, the laugh. The cackle.
But what about tennis?
I wondered.
Says she doesn't miss it, but how could she not?
Then I knew. Janie didn't miss it.
1 would.
I exhaled, exhausted suddenly.

She glanced at her watch. “You're finally here, and now I have to tell you to go away,” she said. “My mom will be pulling up in about thirty seconds—we're going to go eat. I gotta go grab my purse.”

I nodded. We stood and hugged our goodbyes. I walked away a few feet and turned back. She hadn't moved. My belly quaked. I had to tell her. I didn't want her hearing it from Coach later on. “Janie, I'm going to Bickford Tennis Academy,” I said.

She stiffened, looked out the windows at Coach,
then back at me. Something pushed into her face—no, into
her.
Relief, I think. Had to be. Relief it was me, not her, going to Bickford. She nodded slowly. Using the smear of purple zinc on her fingertip, she made a line down her chin, somehow both approving of me and separating us forever.

“Of course you are, Hall. Of course you are,” she said, like she knew it all along.

I climbed back into Coach's SUV and shut the door. Restlessness bounced off Coach in waves. He had things to say. I knew he did. But he waited for me to speak.

“I just wanted Janie to still play tennis, Coach. I wanted her to be OK and play tennis.”

“I did, too, Hall,” he said softly. “More than you know.”

He looked fragile admitting that. We were the same, Coach and me. Warriors: hard on the outside but with secret soft centers.

“I was worried I'd end up like her,” I said, looking out the window.

“But you won't. You're not her.”

“I believe it now,” I said. “I believe it.”

Coach tipped his head to me. It was settled.

The engine revved. He turned the air-conditioning on full blast and paused, adjusting the vents.

Something still nagged at me, and I needed an answer. “Coach, remember how you didn't want any boys watching my practice?”

He kept quiet.

“Do you think I have to give up boys to play tennis?”

He writhed under his seat belt, considering it.

“Coach?”

“Can't you just have a crush on Roger Fédérer?” he said. “From far away?”

“But that's not fair. I don't even know Roger Federer.”

Coach sighed heavily. Giving in. So unlike him. “No, I guess that wouldn't be fair. Can't you at least like a boy who plays tennis? Somebody who won't distract you from the game?”