Free Agent

by Catherine Gayle

  I guided Blake to the ottoman with a pouf that I usually sat on for story time and nudged him to take a seat. “Language,” I reminded him quietly, so the kids couldn’t hear. Then I turned to the class and asked, “So who wants to be first? Who’s got a question for Mr. Kozlow?”

  Fourteen hands shot straight up in the air, while some of the kids attached to those hands virtually bounced up and down in their excitement to pick his brains.

  I can do this, I reminded myself. I can get through today without attempting to rip out his voice box and toss it to the wolves.

  Somehow.

  “DO YOU HAVE all your teeth?” the tiny girl up front asked when Bea called on her. She was the same child who had asked me about using a green pencil to color her pumpkin.

  Sasha, I reminded myself. If I was going to be coming back to work with these kids every week—and Mr. Sutter and the rest of the team’s bigwigs had made it abundantly clear I would be doing exactly that, for at least the remainder of this season, if not the rest of my tenure with the team—then I needed to make an effort to remember their names. It’d always pissed me off as a kid when adults hadn’t remembered who I was.

  Maybe I wasn’t happy about being here, but I wouldn’t take my annoyance out on the kids. They hadn’t done anything wrong. I was the one who’d fucked up.

  I shook my head and opened my mouth wide, reaching in to remove my bridge, which left a gap where my four lower front teeth used to be. Then I gave her a huge, open-mouthed grin, flicking my tongue through the hole so that they’d all crack up.

  Sure enough, a mixture of laughter and disgust met my ears.

  “Cool!”

  “Ew, gross!”

  “I can do that, too. Wanna thee?”

  It always worked with kids. Kept my teammate’s kids in stitches. Most of the guys on the team had at least one or two missing teeth, though, so it wasn’t like I was unique. We all tended to have removable bridges, but a few guys around the league chose to go without and simply have a gap in their teeth. Losing teeth was a hazard of the job. We looked like a bunch of little old men. Really fit little old men, but still.

  I had to chuckle over the disgust, though. Seeing old people without their dentures used to freak me out, too. But these days, I just rolled with it.

  When the laughter died down, I put my bridge back in place. “I usually take that out before a game. Don’t want to have to get new teeth made unless I need to fill another hole.”

  “Did it hurt?” another child asked.

  Bea caught my attention and gave a brief shake of her head, which I took to mean I shouldn’t answer. Then she moved into his line of vision and raised her hand into the air, modeling the behavior she wanted him to follow.

  Once he did, she gave me the tiniest of nods.

  “You have a question?” I said to him.

  “Did it hurt when your teeth fell out? Mom said it doesn’t hurt, but I got a loose one.” He reached into his mouth and wiggled one of his front top teeth.

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “It won’t hurt when your tooth falls out, but it might bleed a little. That’s not bad, though. Those teeth are supposed to fall out, so it doesn’t hurt. But when these fell out”—I flipped out my bridge again so they’d see the hole—“yeah, that hurt. They weren’t supposed to fall out, you see. These were the ones that I was supposed to have until I was an old man.”

  “Aren’t you already an old man?” one of the kids asked, and most of the rest of them snorted in laughter.

  “Maybe so,” I agreed. To them, I supposed I was ancient. “But I got whacked in the face with a hockey stick, and it broke them. I was gushing blood all over the place. They had to rush me off for some dental surgery.”

  “But they’ll grow back, right?” a pixie of a child up front asked, looking both horrified and terrified at the same time.

  “Yours will,” I reassured her, even as Bea caught the girl’s eye and modeled raising her hand again. “But you only get two sets of real teeth in your life—the ones you get as a baby, and the ones that grow in when those fall out. After that, if you lose any more teeth, then you’ve got to get dentures or something, so you need to be sure you take good care of the teeth you’ve got.”

  A dark-haired girl near the back raised her hand.

  “You have a question, Connie?” Bea said.

  “You gotta brush and floss every day,” she said matter-of-factly. “Mom said twice a day, but I brush my teeth eight times a day: when I get up in the morning, before and after every meal, and again before I go to bed at night. Sometimes I brush in between those times, too.”

  “That’s a lot of brushing,” I replied, doing my best to keep my tone neutral. The last thing I needed was for Connie or anyone else in this classroom to get the impression I was judging her obsessive need for clean teeth.

  “Are those dentures?” another boy asked, shooting his hand up into the air.

  “It’s called a bridge.” I took it out again to show the kids, holding it up for a moment before shoving the fake teeth back into place. “If you lose all your teeth, that’s when they give you dentures. But if you just lose a few teeth like I did, then they give you a piece that fills the gaps.”

  “I thought bridges were what you drive on,” another boy said thoughtfully.

  “That’s a different type of bridge, Jason,” Bea said. “But both kinds of bridges connect things, right? A bridge that you drive on connects two pieces of land when there’s a gap between them, so then you can drive or walk across. And Mr. Kozlow’s bridge connects two of his real teeth so he doesn’t have a hole in the middle of his mouth.”

  “Ms. Castillo,” Connie said dramatically, “everyone has a hole in their mouth.”

  All of the kids burst into laughter, and I barely managed to hold in a snort. “She’s got a point,” I said, looking over at Bea with a challenge in my eye.

  “So she does,” she agreed, laughing, too. “I think we all knew what I meant, though, right?”

  Most of the kids nodded in quiet agreement. “How about another question? Who has one ready?”

  Most of the kids raised their hands eagerly, and Bea called on a boy in the back. “Tony? What’s your question?”

  “How come you’re here instead of Riley Jezek?” Tony asked. “He’s better than you.”

  And now, we reached the crux of the issue. I’d known it was coming and that I wouldn’t be able to put it off forever. Didn’t mean I was ready to face the music yet, though. I took a moment to clear my thoughts, making sure I chose my words carefully. This was not the time to foul up even more than I already had.

  “RJ and his wife have a baby on the way,” I said slowly. “Did you guys know that?” I paused, waiting for a few of them to nod. “So Mrs. Jezek needed someone else to come and hang out with you guys for a while, and the team thought it’d be good for me—and maybe for you guys, too.”

  “Why’s it good for you?” Connie asked, her hand shooting high in the air halfway through her question.

  I shrugged, avoiding meeting Bea’s eyes because I didn’t want to know what she thought of what I was saying. Something told me she’d find it all wrong, yet again. But this wasn’t wrong. This was the only right thing I could do in my current position. “Because, believe it or not, I’m a lot like you guys.”

  “You?” one boy near the front of the room said disbelievingly.

  “Remember to raise your hands, guys,” Bea quietly but firmly admonished.

  But I ignored her, looking straight at those kids, and I said, “Yeah, me. You all know I play hockey, right?” I paused, watching for most of them to nod. “Well, I bet you didn’t know I spent my school years in a special education classroom an awful lot like this one.”

  A chorus of shocked squeals and disbelief flooded the classroom.

  “I did,” I insisted. “I’ve got ADHD and maybe a little bit of Asperger’s syndrome.”

  “What’s ass burglars?” a cute redhead with tons of freckl
es asked from the side of the room, and I nearly busted a gut laughing.

  But at least Bea was laughing, too.

  She pulled herself together before I did, forcing her face into compliance. “Asperger’s syndrome is kind of like autism in some ways,” she said. “You guys know what autism is, right?”

  Several of the kids nodded, and a small girl piped up with, “Like me!”

  “Yes, like you, Tabitha,” Bea said. “Someone who lives with Asperger’s syndrome is usually very, very smart, but they might not be good at interacting with other people. You know how we sometimes talk about social cues? The way you can tell how someone else is feeling without needing them to tell you?”

  Most of the kids gave soft sounds of assent.

  “Well, someone who lives with Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t often pick up on those social cues. So they might do or say things that hurt someone else’s feelings without realizing they’re doing it—or at least not until after the fact, or maybe if someone else fills them in.”

  As those words fell out of her mouth, I felt the weight of Bea’s stare falling on me, and it was like a light switched on in her head.

  About me? Maybe.

  Who could know? This woman didn’t seem inclined to fill me in on much of anything, so I could only guess.

  But still, this little girl deserved an answer from me.

  “Asperger’s is kind of like autism, yeah,” I said. “But it’s different, too. It makes it hard for me to understand what other people are thinking and feeling. Like, I bet your parents can always tell if you had a good day or a bad day at school as soon as you get home, right?”

  Most of the kids nodded.

  “Well, I don’t notice those things. It’s hard for me. I have to stop myself, slow down and think about it. Like, maybe you say something to your best friend, and it hurts her feelings. How can you tell that she’s upset?”

  “She looks sad,” Tabitha said.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “And maybe she cries?”

  Her head bobbed up and down.

  “For me, I might not realize my friend looks sad or maybe that someone’s crying. I don’t always realize that the things I’m saying might upset someone—I tend to just say whatever pops into my head, and then I have to apologize if I said something I shouldn’t have. One of my buddies is good about telling me when I’m being an as—a jerk,” I corrected myself, stealing a quick look at Bea to be sure I wasn’t in her doghouse. “I kind of live in my own head a lot, and things like that don’t sink in. So I’m always having to make up for saying and doing things I shouldn’t have. Anyone else in here like that?”

  Most of the kids nodded, and a couple of them raised their hands as if to say me, too.

  “But you’re still smart?” a quiet boy off to the side asked.

  “Please raise your hand before asking questions, Eddie,” Bea said, but she didn’t try to stop me from answering.

  “I think so?” I replied. “I’m good with numbers and puzzles. Not so good with words. Actually, I do a lot of puzzles and number games to help me settle my ADHD, especially when I’m stuck on a long flight or something and there’s no outlet for me to use up my energy.”

  “What kind of puzzles?” someone else asked, and Bea apparently decided to give up on trying to get them to raise their hands, at least for this session.

  “Sometimes I do jigsaw puzzles—big ones with lots of itty-bitty pieces. It helps me to slow my thoughts down to a more reasonable pace. And I like Sudoku. Have you guys ever played Sudoku puzzles?”

  About a dozen confused stares met my question.

  “We’ve done a couple of small ones,” Bea answered. “You guys remember the boxes, and we have to fill in the correct numbers?”

  A chorus of “Oh, yeah,” and “I don’t like those number games,” and “They’re too easy,” came in response.

  “There are a lot of things we can do instead of puzzles and number games, though, right?” Bea put in, and a bunch of the kids nodded enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, like coloring!” a freckled boy in the back said, bouncing up and down. “Do you color, too?” he asked me.

  “Honestly, I haven’t colored in a long time.”

  Bea caught my eye. “Might be something for you to consider, especially for those long flights. It can help keep your mind from wandering too much. They’ve got a lot of adult coloring books these days—animals and mandala patterns, and all sorts of other things.”

  “Yeah?” I scanned the room, because the kids looked excited at the prospect of coloring, even though they’d just finished an art project. “You guys think I should try it?”

  “Yes!” most of them shouted.

  Apparently, I was going to try my hand at coloring for the first time in well over a decade. But I’d need to find something that suited me. Mandalas and animals didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.

  Time to do a bit of research—once I was done here for the day.

  The kinds of coloring books I might be interested in pursuing likely wouldn’t be appropriate in a school setting—if they even existed, at all.

  “HE WAS ACTUALLY a really good fit for my class, better than I’d care to admit. And my kids adore him more than I could adequately say. I think having him around as an example of what they can do with their lives and who they can become if they put in the effort is going to do wonders for their self-confidence. And I’m not even one tiny little fraction of a bit happy about it,” I said, all of it coming out in a rush. I was huffing for breath into my phone as I power-walked around my neighborhood later that evening.

  Walking was about the only thing I could think of to help me get rid of the irked sensation that had held me in its grips since the moment Blake Kozlow had stepped into the school’s front office this morning. Besides, I hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough steps in today. My Fitbit might as well be laughing at me for my poor showing.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what the heck he did wrong and why we hate him so much?” Dani demanded on the other end of the line. “Because I’m fully on board with hating him—I mean, I was already down with that before I ever introduced you to him—but you two seemed to really hit it off at first.” Until recently, Dani had been doing a lot of these walks with me. But her pregnancy had done a serious number on her body, and these days, my friend was beginning to spend more time in bed than out of it—by doctor’s orders, no less. No walking and talking for her today, sadly. We’d settled on talking while I walked on my own.

  “Seemed and at first being the key phrases in that observation,” I agreed. “Yeah, things were fine between us in the beginning.”

  Better than fine, actually.

  “Hmmph,” she said. But she sounded pained—physically pained, not just put out that I’d brushed her off again.

  “You okay?” I asked, my concern meter kicking into overdrive as I started doing mental calculations. I was only a few minutes away from my house. If I jogged the last bit, I could be in my car and at her place in fifteen minutes, tops, and we could be on our way to the hospital in another five after that.

  “I’ll be okay when this bowling ball is on the outside of me instead of on the inside.”

  “It’s not big enough to be a bowling ball yet.”

  “Getting there.”

  “You were the one who wanted to make babies right away,” I pointed out. “Cody didn’t seem overly motivated to jump-start the process of building a family.”

  “Yeah, but Katie can’t have kids, and Luke doesn’t have a uterus, nor does Cole, and Luke obviously won’t be getting involved with anyone who does have a uterus, so I’m the only one of my siblings who can give my parents grandbabies—or at least grandbabies that share their DNA. Doesn’t mean I was prepared for bed rest and shit,” she grumbled.

  I laughed. For as much as she complained, I knew the truth. Dani Williams was beyond ecstatic about her impending motherhood. She just didn’t have a non-sarcastic bone in her body, and being confined
to bed any amount of time put her on edge.

  I knew plenty about being on edge lately. It was the overriding sensation I’d been feeling due to Blake Kozlow walking back into my life.

  During that date Dani had mentioned, I’d allowed myself to think, for the span of about an hour, that a sexy-as-hell professional athlete could be interested in me.

  Ha-ha. Not so much.

  Yeah, the same me who’d once weighed more than three hundred pounds.

  The same me who hadn’t been able to bring myself to start dating again until Dani had given me a massive nudge in that direction, because no matter what the scale or mirror said, I still saw the three-hundred-twenty-eight-pound version of me, not the one-hundred-sixty-two-pound version of me.

  The same me who perpetually saw fat rolls and bulges that no longer existed. And even in those rare moments I didn’t see the fat, I couldn’t deny the loose, saggy, hanging skin that could only be hidden by formfitting undergarments and lots of outer layers.

  The same me who hadn’t dated again since that disastrous first outing because it had been so bad that it had essentially confirmed all the negative self-talk that continuously lived in my head.

  The same me who only saw jiggly, saggy boobs and flappy, chicken-wing arms and a sad, droopy butt when she looked in the mirror, not the one who looked like a hot mamacita in the clothes Dani had created.

  And it didn’t matter what kind of person lived on the inside—I couldn’t seem to see past what had once existed on the outside. And if I couldn’t do that, how could anyone else?

  Besides, this guy wasn’t just a rich, famous athlete—he was younger than me by a good five years. Blake Kozlow had just celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday, according to my internet searches all those months ago, and I’d passed my thirtieth over this past summer break. The idea of a good-looking, uber-successful, young pro hockey player having any sort of interest in me wasn’t anything I’d known what to do with or how to handle.

  Men had never stopped to look twice at me when I’d been so heavy.