Annie turned in her seat, smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Uh-huh, what?”
“Give her the present already,” Trent said.
“What present? What?”
“I don't know,” Annie said. “I should wait. This is a victory present; there hasn't been a victory yet.”
“A simple matter of time. Are you winning today, Hall?” Coach asked.
“Yes,” I lied. When did I become such a liar?
Annie was cool. Her skin was the same milk chocolate color as Trent's, but hers looked like velvet. She produced a plastic bag from the floorboard and handed it to me. “Hall, I can't wait for you to see this!”
I turned the bag upside down, dumping the contents into my lap. And there it was. A cloth Swiss flag. Bigger than a beach towel. My mood lifted. I almost had cheer. “Annie—you didn't!”
“I did,” she said, all smiles. Trent watched my expression from the rearview mirror.
“Annie, Annie, Annie! This is so great. I'll hang it on my bedroom wall. Thanks, Annie!”
“No problem.” She turned to Trent. “Can't deny it, the girl's got good taste.”
“Not interested in her taste, interested in her game. “
“I'm interested in your taste, Hall,” Annie said.
I don't see Annie much, only during tournaments. She's nice in a way that isn't like a mom but more like a friend. I never feel like a junior player when I'm around Annie. I feel like a pro.
The only sport Annie likes is shopping, and my tournaments give her great opportunities, especially the ones in different states. Nevada, Utah, Florida, Arizona: she's there, credit card in hand. Last February, when Janie and I played our one measly international tournament in Mexico and got slammed by our opponents (Janie by a German and me by an Argentinean), Annie consoled us with sombreros purchased from the hotel gift shop.
At smaller, local tournaments like this one she often buys me Slurpees on the drive home and we discuss our crush on Roger Fédérer. He's a pro player from Switzerland. We call him King Roger because he rules the court like royalty. He's an all-court player who hits the ever-living guts out of the ball. If he's struggling, he keeps it inside, plays it cool, never lets his opponent see anything but strength. It's only after he's won a difficult point or game that he'll raise his hands overhead and let out a wicked roar of a yell. Only then is it evident he was unsure of the outcome.
In the blazing heat he wears zinc oxide on his nose and cheekbones to stave off the sun. I love it when he does that. He's a warrior, like me.
Annie calls Roger Fédérer luscious. Wisely, she says it only when Trent is out of earshot. I'm pretty sure she wants a Swiss flag for herself as well, but Trent wouldn't be too keen on that. Coach isn't the kind of man who wants his wife thinking other men are luscious.
“I bought Trent a Swiss Army knife at the mall and it sparked my imagination. I knew you wouldn't want weaponry, but I wanted to get you something with a Swiss theme,” Annie said, referring to the flag.
“Let it inspire you, Hall,” Trent said. “Be soaked in inspiration.”
“This is fantastic.”
“You like it, then, Chickadee?” she said.
“Like it? I love it!”
“Good.”
I got worried for a second. “And if I lose today?” I said, my voice cracking.
“Lose?” Annie said.
“Lose?” Coach said.
“You know, fail to win?”
“That'll be the day,” Coach said, shaking his head.
I felt ill.
Coaches aren't allowed to offer advice during a match. Instead they sit in the stands, recording the mistakes their particular player makes. Trent brought his notebook; it was the first thing he grabbed when he got out of the car. He planned on watching every bit of the final.
My opponent, from Utah, was Hanna Scott. I play her constantly. I beat her in the quarterfinals of the USTA National Opens and in the semifinal at the Copper Bowl, but she beat me the four tournaments before that. She's ranked higher, number two, in the Girls 14's.
Crowds love Hanna Scott. She's a vision. A beauty. Perfect blond ringlets of hair. Textbook ringlets. Angelic face. Great serve. Hard serve. Rich. Spoiled. Brat. Hanna Scott. Her name alone makes me cringe. The girl is everything I'm not. Little Miss Perfect. Little Miss Popular. Hanna Scott. I want to break her racquet, render her helpless. Break her into bits and pieces, into spare parts. Dumb perfect curls. Stupid perfect face. Great serve. Amazing serve. Jealous of the serve. The bane of my existence, Hanna Scott.
Hanna Scott hates volley players. Sometimes if I rush the net shell choke and hit a bad shot. I prayed she'd be weak. Prayed that if I attacked the net she'd give me the points. I took my place at the baseline. The crowd clapped enthusiastically for Hanna Scott. They would.
Thump… thump… thump… She won the point. Damn. She was better than I remembered, or maybe I was worse.
Thump… thump…
Squinting, I could barely see the ball. It was invisible. No one else seemed to notice.
Thump… thump…
… thump… thump… thump…
“Scott leads one game to love,” the umpire said.
I paused to wipe sweat from my brow. I studied my racquet strings, rearranging them slightly, desperate to find my rhythm. Breathe, I told myself, breathe. I tried to hit the angle. Open the court. Take the point. It backfired. She whacked it hard, whizzed it past me, for a winner.
… thump… “Agg!” I lost another point.
Bouncing up and down, I warmed my muscles, shaking tension from my bones.
… thump… Out!
It kept going badly: an unlucky streak of misery.
“Scott leads three games to love,” the umpire announced. Did he have to say it so loud?
We returned to our chairs for a changeover break.
Trent wrote furiously in his notebook. The crowd was fidgety and unimpressed with the lopsided match. They wanted blood; I was giving weakness.
“Time,” the chair umpire called.
I tied my shoe, giving myself an extra moment to think. What was I doing wrong? What command would Trent bellow? I closed my eyes and waited. I got a slight echo, but it was muffled and mixed, out of my grasp. My head ached. My guts void. My game vanished.
Should I attack the net? Hit to her backhand? Fear swelled in my muscles: between my shoulders and at my ankles. If I couldn't win a stupid Cherry Creek tournament, how could I hack it at a tennis academy like Bickford? Trent, where are you? I waited. Nothing. Pressure. Fear. Speak to me, Trent, speak to me…
The revelation rolled over me like a bulldozer.
Trent's voice was gone.
It was never coming back.
Ever.
“Time,” the umpire called again.
My head spun. My hands sweat from fear. I rocked back and forth at the baseline, awaiting Hanna's serve.
Trent's voice was gone.
It was never coming back.
Ever.
It was one thing to hate the thought of Bickford, to want to stay in Colorado and be a champion. It was something else entirely for Coach's voice to wither and die. Without his voice, I wouldn't be a champion anywhere. Suddenly Bickford Tennis Academy was the least of my worries.
Hanna bounced the ball. I swallowed hard.
As Hanna brought her racquet back, her grip was awkward. I could tell even across the court. She hit the ball… thud… then recoiled in pain. Her titanium racquet fell to the court.
My prayers were answered.
Hanna looked at the umpire. “I need an injury timeout,” she said, mouth hanging open in disgust.
“Three minutes,” the umpire called.
The staff trainer hustled courtside, barking for information. Hanna held out her thumb, as if to say, Duh! He produced balm that reeked so much I could smell it the instant he unscrewed the cap. Hanna stared straight ahead, dead to e
verything except her desire to get back on court and beat the living daylights out of me.
Unsatisfied, the trainer strapped tape on Hanna's appendage. Everyone knows thumbs can't be taped. Thumbs have to be flexible to serve. To heck with Hanna Scott and her stupid thumb—now I had a chance to win. A sprained thumb can cause damage!
“Time,” the umpire called.
Hanna whimpered.
Thump … She hit the ball into the net. Thump … Again, into the net. Bounce, bounce, bounce… thump… Into the net. She double-faulted, one, two, three, four times in a row. I won a game from her double faults. It was a miracle!
Thump … thump … Out! When she finally got it over the net, it was out!
Come on, Hall, I thought. All I had to do was get the ball over the net and Hanna's sore thumb would do the rest. What more could I ask? The game proceeded, with me winning one clumsy point after another. She gave up altogether and glanced at her parents in the stands.
“I can't play,” she said politely. “Hurts too much.”
The crowd voiced one collective ooh for Hanna Scott and her brave effort. I exhaled. If one player can't continue, the other player wins.
“Three games to one, Hanna Scott retires. Hall Brax-ton wins,” the umpire announced, confirming.
The crowd gave me sparse applause. Technically I'd won, but everyone knew it was an ugly win. Hanna and I didn't shake hands at the net, what with her thumb and all. Just as well. I didn't want her congratulations. I felt like a total fraud.
As the officials prepared to hand me the trophy, I looked for Trent. As he closed his notebook, his eyes burned into me. I would pay for this display of my declining tennis abilities, of that I was certain.
The car ride home was less than fun. Apparently Trent thought I'd been trying to humiliate Hanna Scott. Since I'd beaten her at previous tournaments, Coach thought I was showing off at my opponent's expense—prolonging the match, delaying the points, in order to show up her tennis skills. He thought I'd been pretending to play badly! It didn't occur to him that expectations and his absent voice were crumbling my game. It didn't occur to him I sucked. Coach half watched the road and half craned his neck around to yell. His shaved head glistened with sweat. Sportsmanship was a big deal.
“Confidence is one thing, but arrogance is something else. I never want to see that kind of spoiled-brat behavior again. Are you listening, Hall?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“I'm not a spoiled brat. I'm the least spoiled brat out there.” It was true. Spoiled brats packed the junior circuit. Some of them were such spoiled brats they threw tantrums when they didn't win.
“What would you call it, then?”
I looked out the window, letting the highway asphalt blur my vision. “I don't know.”
“You don't know? You don't know? Do you think Kim Clijsters became a top-ten player by having a bad attitude?”
“No,” I said weakly.
“Do you think Maria Sharapova won Wimbledon at seventeen, before she even graduated from high school, because she has attitude problems?”
“No.”
“Do you think your darling Roger Fédérer wins Slams over and over and over again, making history, because his attitude needs adjusting?”
I felt the fabric of my Swiss flag, refusing to feel guilty.
“You're out there to do your best, not taunt the other players with mind games. When you're that much better than an opponent, you win quickly, not obscenely. What have I told you about winning graciously?”
“If you can't win graciously, you don't deserve to win.”
“Did you deserve to win today?”
I didn't answer.
His chest heaved. “Did you deserve to win?”
“No.”
“You better believe you didn't. Never in my life have I seen such arrogance on a tennis court.”
Annie put her hand on his shoulder, signaling him to shut up. He got quiet.
Winning graciously, ha! This same man repeated my warrior story to whoever would listen. Apparently, slamming a tennis ball into an opponent and breaking her arm was OK, but humiliating an opponent (which I wasn't doing) was unsportsmanlike. Whatever. That's the bad thing about adults; even the good ones like Trent change the rules without warning in order to fill some obscure need for control. It seemed he was pretty much being a hypocrite, but what do I know?
Trent's voice was gone.
It was never coming back.
Ever.
Without his voice I didn't trust myself on the court. Without trust it was impossible to acquire a blank head. Without trust there was nothing. I rode along in the backseat, my eyes fixed on the bright color of my Swiss flag. I was numb from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and I thought, This must be what nothing feels like.
“How was the tournament?” Eve asked over the phone. It was out of character for her to mention tennis. I wondered if she was doing it to compete with Polly on some level.
“Huh? Oh, I won.”
“You always win. What's new?”
“No I don't.”
“Yeah, right. You've got it made.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Can't you take a compliment? I'm just saying you always win.”
I let it go. She didn't understand, and I didn't expect her to. None of my friends, not even Polly, knew about the possibility of Bickford Tennis Academy looming in my future, mainly because I didn't want to have to discuss it night and day.
“So, what did you find out?” she asked.
“About what?”
“You said you'd ask Luke if Bruce likes me. Don't tell me you forgot.”
I'd hoped to avoid this conversation. Eve had decency, which meant a lot to me but was staggeringly unimportant to other people. Why couldn't Bruce open his dumb eyes, see Eve was pretty like Norway, and like her?
“No, I didn't forget,” I said, racking my brain for an elegant way to crush her.
“So …?”
“Well, urn, Bruce kind of likes Polly.”
“When did all this happen?”
“I don't know. After we saw them on the street that night, I guess.”
“But you knew I liked him. I told you. I can't believe you didn't tell Polly to back off. How could you do that to me?”
“Well, why didn't you tell her?” I said in my own defense.
“Because I told you.”
“Well, it's not my fault he doesn't like you.”
I knew the minute I said it that I shouldn't have.
“Do you think I'm stupid? I see you walking home from her house all the time. You're too busy with Polly to be bothered with me. I thought I was your best friend!”
“You are.”
“Liar,” she said. The phone went dead.
I called her back, but she refused to answer. Out of guilt I got on my bike and trekked down Wynkoop Drive to talk to her face to face. She'd have to answer the door. I rang the bell once politely, then assaulted it twenty times in frustration. Curtains in the living room window rustled—Eve pretending she wasn't home.
My plans of apology thwarted, I decided to try my luck at Polly's. I paused at the edge of the Cassinis’ driveway to watch Pete Graham play basketball.
It was nearing the last week of July, time slipping from my grasp. The heaviness of the summer air indicated that my entire world was about to change, quite possibly for the worst.
“Polly home?”
The ball slipped from his hands and rolled down the cement. He chased it, caught it, and then looked at me like I'd insulted him. “Huh?” he said.
“Polly?”
“She's riding bikes with some guy,” Pete said, pausing to think. “Sorry, I forgot his name.”
“Bruce?”
“That sounds right. You can wait if you want. But I don't know when they'll be back.”
That's all Eve needed, to gaze out her window and see Bruce and Polly riding down the street. I
watched Pete shoot free throws, watched his blond hair drip with sweat.
“Polly says you sell real estate. Do you like that?”
“I've got good connections, so the money is steady. Making more than I thought I would.”
“That's why you do it? For money?” I was trying to figure out how one acquired an identity. Mine wasn't working out too well.
“Got to pay the bills,” he said.
“Well, I know, but … is it what you always wanted to do? It's who you are?”
“It's what I do, not who I am.”
“They're not the same thing?”
“They don't have to be, no.”
“People are nice to me because I play tennis, not because I'm me,” I said, remembering Pete's sudden friendliness—after he knew I was an athlete.
“That's not true.”
“You'd be surprised how true that is,” I said. It wasn't a feeling, it was a fact.
He attempted a layup, missing. He seemed tired of talking, or of me. I took this as my cue to leave. As I started up the hill he called to me, “Hey, Hall?”
I turned. “Hmmm?”
“I'm agenting a house for the sportscaster guy from Channel Five news. You should set up a profile of yourself for a news segment. They do stuff like that on that channel—local athletes.”
I nodded. “I'll talk to my coach about it,” I said, lying. “See what he says.” That's all I needed, having my crappy game broadcast to the city. “You'll tell Polly I stopped by?”
“OK. See you,” he said.
I pushed my bike up the hill, passing Eve's house with a pit in my stomach.
Luke, out of nowhere, pulled up and bumped the front wheel of his bike into mine, giving me a jolt. What a long, boring week it had been without his good-looking face. He was tanned and fresh-looking. “Hey,” he said. “You're home? From your tournament?”
“As of last night.”
“D'you win?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I called you. Did you get my messages?” he asked.
“I did. But we had to leave before six-thirty in the morning. By the time the day's matches were over and we ate dinner in Denver I didn't get back until nine-thirty or so every night. I was too tired to call you, sorry.”
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