“Hey,” Sarah finally said.
“Hey.” I swallowed hard, quickly returning to the view outside. “Nice job today,” I said to the window.
“You, too.”
“Glad you won’t be dropping out of Homecoming court.”
A hand lightly squeezed my left thigh and rested there. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable this morning.”
“No worries.” I was trying to will away the heat searing my leg. Her touch made me feel I was being branded like cattle, and part of me wanted to be similarly marked by her as hers.
“If you do decide to go to Homecoming, I’d like you and your date to join me and Dirk for the night. We’ll be with a bunch of friends, and we’ve rented a huge limo so it should make for some seriously good times.”
“Thanks, but I don’t intend to go. Please…” I wanted to finish my statement with authority, but it came out more as a whisper. “Please respect that,” I said softly. I continued to stare out the window, and the weight on my thigh lifted.
“I do.” After several moments, Sarah headed toward the front of the bus.
She was giving me space, heeding my silent plea to be left alone. Having spent my life on the periphery, it was a message I was used to sending, a shield I was adept at raising. Yet never had I felt so alone as when she walked away.
Chapter Three
At our rival’s tennis club, which was very swanky compared to our modest on-school-premises tennis courts, Coach pulled us into an unoccupied court. “Primrose High is our toughest competition, and I intend for us to give them their best fight. We’ll be switching things around from what you’re used to. Normally, we try to win sets, but this is going to come down to winning games. If we tie in sets, the squad with the most games will win this meet. Instead of our usual one-two-three singles players going toe-to-toe with our opponents, today I’m putting our top singles players together as doubles teams and moving some of our doubles players to singles. Joanie and Sandra, you’re our new number-one doubles team. Sarah and Cassidy, number two. Rachel and Kristin, number three. Jennifer, Barbara, and Olivia, you’re our top singles players for the day. Remember, we’re fighting for every game. Let’s do it.”
Sarah and I split our first two matches, barely leading the games column by one, as we lost our first match 5-7 and won our second 6-3. This was our third and final match. We were behind three games to four when Coach told us as we switched sides that ours was the last match in play. Behind her we could see some of our teammates filing into the nearby bleacher seats. Total matches scheduled: eighteen. Seventeen had played, and the games totals favored Primrose by one, excluding our current match. Since the winner had to win by two games, the prevailing doubles team would mean the difference between winning or losing the meet. No pressure.
As I prepared to serve, Sarah joined me at the baseline and tried to pump me up. “You can do this, Cazz. We can beat these chicks.” My first serve fell well wide to the forehand side. The girl then pounded my second serve down the line past Sarah’s stab volley for a winner. That was indicative of most of the game. Although we got them to deuce, my first serve then failed me twice, and we lost the game due to my weak second serve. 3-5: one game away from losing the match.
This Primrose girl had the weaker serve of the two. Sarah ruthlessly clobbered the return on both serves, as did I. With two of our returns clean winners and the other two so well placed that our opponents’ shots didn’t clear the net, it was Sarah’s turn to serve, 4-5. I felt a slight surge in confidence at the prospect, knowing how hard her serve was to return. Her first serve caught the net and barely exceeded the service line for a fault. Our opponent attacked her second serve, hitting it right at me, forcing me to defend myself with a volley, which luckily landed beyond reach on the sideline. The game’s other points ended in similar fashion, and we were soon even at 5-5.
The Primrose girl with the stronger serve caught the outside line, causing Sarah to stretch wide to her forehand. Thinking the girl at net would get the volley, I moved back, hoping to reduce the size of no-man’s-land between Sarah and me. The girl at net hit a backhand volley to my feet, and I was able to scoop it up and send it back over her head. Her partner returned the lob with a shallow one, and Sarah rushed forward for the easy overhead smash. Love-fifteen. We high-fived each other.
“Let’s go, Cazz. Show ’em what you got.” I nodded, and Sarah jogged to her place at net. The next serve went in down the line, and though I barely got my racket on it, the return was deep. The server girl hit a solid forehand up the middle that Sarah anticipated and volleyed at a short angle, past our opponents.
“Way to go, Sarah.” Love-thirty. We split the next two points. Fifteen-forty. The server’s first serve was well long, and on her second serve, she made the mistake of going to Sarah’s forehand. Sarah took it on the rise for a better angle and nailed a crosscourt winner. 6-5.
Crap. My serve, at the worst possible time. Sarah scooped up a ball with her racket and foot and handed it to me, offering words of support and reassurance. Unfortunately, my first serve wasn’t listening. Various points later, although my first serve continued to abandon me, Sarah didn’t give up. At thirty-forty, one point from losing the game, she walked over to me before I prepared to serve. “Let’s go, Cazz. You can do it. We’re going to win this.” Serving to the ad court, I nailed it down the line, sending the girl well to the right of a comfortable forehand. The ball hit her racket frame and soared into the fence. Deuce.
Once again, Sarah hustled over to me, trying to pump me up. “Take a little pace off your first serve. If it doesn’t go in, do the exact same thing on the second serve. Can you do that?”
“I might double-fault.”
“True, but I’d rather lose because we were aggressive than because we played it safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Trust me.”
I shifted my grip slightly to the left to add a small spin to my first serve. I tossed the ball and sprang forward into the serve with slightly less power than usual. It sailed long. I looked at Sarah, who nodded. “You can do it,” she said firmly. Keeping the same grip, I repeated the process and watched the ball land just inside the line. The Primrose girl stepped into the forehand but couldn’t take it on the rise due to the faster pace of the ball. She hit it to Sarah, who lunged left, her stab volley sending over a perfectly placed drop shot. Ad-in.
“Nice!” I called out.
Sarah met me at the baseline. Another high-five. “Same thing, Cazz. Same thing.” This time, serving to the ad court, my less formidable first serve landed on the centerline. Our opponent hit a strong forehand deep to my backhand, which I sent down the line to the other girl. She struck a hard but short ball back to me. I raced around it in order to hit a forehand that traveled between our opponents for a winner.
We won.
I hustled to the net next to Sarah, both of us shaking hands with our opponents to congratulate them on a good match. Our teammates cheered and applauded and began filing out of the bleachers to head to the gate leading to our court. Next thing I knew Sarah practically tackled me, engulfing me in a fierce embrace.
I’d never known such joy until that moment. My grin was as wide as our bus. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around Sarah and never let go, but I couldn’t bring myself to hug her. My racket in one hand, the other staying limp at my side, I wanted so badly to hold her yet knew I never could, not the way I wanted to.
“Okay, okay, okay.” I laughed. “No need to fuss. Geez. All right, already. It’s not such a big deal.”
She continued holding and rocking me for a few moments. She pulled back, and her eyes beamed with pleasure as she smiled, her hands around my neck, her face inches from mine. Her gaze dipped to my mouth, and her smile disappeared; then she quickly raised her eyes back to mine. My grin vanished, and my mouth went dry. The gymnast in my stomach did a backflip that moved deftly into a somersault. I gazed into her eyes for what seeme
d like an endless stretch of time. Then, afraid of what was in them or what I feared I might do, I forced myself to turn away.
Sarah released me and took a step back, which gave me the freedom to meet her eyes. “We did it,” she said quietly, bringing a smile back to her beautiful mouth. I nodded, pleased and pained by her smile. Pleased to see her happy, pained not to be able to cause it beyond a tennis match or two. She had Dirk for that.
“We did.”
Suddenly our joyous teammates surrounded, hugged, patted, and high-fived us, everyone congratulating each other on everyone’s contributions to our team victory.
*
My mother was late in picking me up that evening. It wasn’t possible to know when a match would be over, especially away matches, and sometimes I had to wait around until she could come get me. I read under a lamppost as I waited, sitting on a three-foot wall bordering the parking lot. When the brakes of a bicycle startled me, I glanced up to see a front tire a few feet in front of me and Kip Dawkins straddling his bike, smiling at me.
“Hey, Cazz.”
“Hi.”
“What are you sticking around for?”
“Waiting for my mom. You?”
“Just finished working out. How’d it go against Primrose?”
“We won,” I said with a grin.
“Sweet! Good work. I hate those stuck-up pricks.”
“I’m sure they say the same thing about us.”
“Yeah. Probably.” Kip stopped talking and I resumed reading.
“Cazz?”
I looked up.
“You going to Homecoming?” Kip asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Want to go?”
Along with Sarah and a few other students, Kip was in both my AP Earth Science and AP English classes. He got consistently good grades, played football and baseball, and was one of the cutest boys in school. And it sounded suspiciously like he was asking me to go to Homecoming with him.
“What?” I asked, lamely.
“Do you want to go to Homecoming with me?”
“Uh…dances aren’t really my thing. I’m not…I’m not much of a dancer.”
“We don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. It’ll be a huge party with lots of people and good music. Should be fun.” He smiled. “What do you say?”
“Kip, I’d hate to be a wet blanket. You should take someone who’s into it.”
His smile evaporated. “You don’t want to go, or you don’t want to go with me?”
Both, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “If I was going, I’d love to go with you. Honestly, it’s just not my kind of thing.”
“It’s Homecoming. I thought girls lived for this kind of thing.”
I chuckled. “Wearing fancy gowns and pretending to be Cinderella?”
His smile returned. “It does sound kind of dorky when you put it that way.”
A car pulled into the parking lot and we glanced over. “My mom,” I said, rising.
“Tell you what. Think about it over the weekend and let me know Monday. Deal?”
What a sweet boy. I’m sure it’s hard enough to ask a girl out, let alone leave the door open after being turned down. “Deal.” My mom pulled the car around about ten feet away, and I started toward it.
“Cazz.”
I turned back to Kip.
“It wouldn’t be right for the prettiest girl at Claiborne to sit home on Homecoming.”
I tilted my head and furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. She isn’t. She’s going with Dirk and will probably be crowned Queen.
“So say yes on Monday.” He grinned.
I quickly closed the final steps to the passenger door and shut it behind me, securing my escape.
During the ride home, my incipient frustration with Kip’s tenacity grew into full-blown annoyance. Until that last bit about the prettiest girl, I actually thought I’d give his proposal some meaningful consideration. After all, going to the Homecoming dance wouldn’t kill me. It might even turn out to be somewhat enjoyable, depending on the company and the entertainment. But as with most compliments, his struck me as being insincere. A calculated thing designed to manipulate me. Like many of the recruits I’d met during the numerous events my father took us to or held at our various houses, Kip’s compliment was aimed at taking something from me.
The young army recruits wanted sex. Period. And they were very persuasive in trying to get it. In the past three years rotating through school after school, the one constant when it came to my interactions with them was the sheer volume of compliments heaped on me. You’re so pretty. You’re so beautiful. Your eyes are incredible. And so on.
Twice, once at fifteen and once at sixteen, I’d made the mistake of believing the sincerity of the boys wielding those words, wanting so much to feel special. Toward the end of my date with the first boy, he drove us to a scenic point that overlooked the city lights below. He kissed me brutally, shoving his tongue into my mouth and pushing me hard against the door. No tenderness, no gentle words. He grabbed my breast and squeezed until it was painful. I wanted to cry out but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging I’d felt his touch. I fought him off and was able to grab hold of the door handle behind me. Since he’d been leaning heavily against me, I fell backward onto the ground as the door opened. He told me to get in, saying he’d take me home, but I refused. I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. He got out of the car and forced me against the door.
“Look, you fucking tease, you’re going to get in and I’m going to take you home, because if I don’t, your father will have my ass in a sling. Now get in the goddamn car, you little bitch, or I’ll give you more than you bargained for.”
I climbed into the backseat and he took me home.
I fared no better with the second boy. He seemed sweet, telling me I had the prettiest green eyes he’d ever seen. He took me to dinner, followed by an R-rated movie at a small theater. He was twenty, and by then I looked eighteen, so it was easy to get in. Toward the start of the film, he took my hand and held it. About an hour in, during a raunchy sex scene, he put my hand between his legs. As he held it firmly in one of his, I felt something warm, firm yet soft, and couldn’t immediately place that I was holding his penis until he forced my hand up and down his shaft. I recoiled and ran into the ladies’ room. I cried for a long time, unable to understand what I’d done, how it had happened.
When an employee made her rounds to clean the bathroom, I asked her if there was a rear exit. There was. I darted into the street, saw a tall building that had the name of some hotel, ran to it, and took a cab home.
Although repulsed by the behavior of those boys, I’d been more disgusted with myself for having been so stupid and naïve as to believe their lies. Keeping my distance from people was my surefire method of preventing repeat performances, and aside from those earlier mistakes, I was good at it. In reminding myself that I needed to remain so, my mind inexplicably settled on Sarah’s face instead of Kip’s, and my resolve momentarily faltered.
Chapter Four
Saturday morning, the phone rang. “Cazz, it’s for you,” my mom called to me upstairs. I was reading and not particularly enjoying Catch-22; the contradictions were giving me whiplash. I reached for the phone near my bed.
“Hello?”
“Get changed and meet me outside your house in half an hour. We’re going to work on that serve of yours,” Sarah said. She was one of many seniors at Claiborne with a car. I wasn’t, since we moved so much. Even during our Othello preparations, we hadn’t shared phone numbers, so she must have gotten my home number from the tennis-team roster.
“That’s very nice of you, Sarah, but it’s not necessary.”
Unfazed, Sarah pressed on. “Bring a change of clothes, too. What’s your address?” I gave it to her and started getting ready. As I looked in the mirror to put my hair in a ponytail, I noticed I was smiling.
Once we got to the courts, Sarah popped the trunk of her black Jet
ta and pulled out a cage of balls. “Coach let me borrow it.” We warmed up by hitting some rallies, and then she jogged over to my side of the net and met me at the baseline. “Take a few practice serves to loosen up.”
I did.
“Show me your normal service grip.”
I showed her my hand as it held the base of my racket.
“All right. Now move your grip counterclockwise a quarter of an inch and choke up on the racket.”
I did.
“Hold the ball out to where you’d normally hit it.”
I held it out as if preparing to serve.
“Now.” She stepped behind me and reached around my left shoulder, lightly grabbing my forearm. I stiffened involuntarily. “Instead of hitting it there, you want to toss it closer to here, kind of like eleven o’clock.” She pulled my arm up, back, and to the left, then reached around me for my right arm. “Pull your racket back like you’re about to serve.”
I moved my racket behind me as she’d instructed. She put her right hand around mine, lifted my left arm, and pushed the racket head from just above my head to the top of my reach.
“Pretend you’re hitting from six o’clock to twelve o’clock on the ball, like this,” she said with her arms around me.
Focused on the tingling heat where she was touching me on my arms, hands and back, I had trouble concentrating on what she was saying. I could feel her breasts against my back, her breath on my neck, and my shoulders tightened slightly upward, as if I was bracing myself for possible injury. It was anything but painful, yet somehow frightening.
“Jesus, Cazz, breathe, will you?” She stepped back and I blew out my breath, unaware I’d been holding it. While I kept my eyes forward, she walked around me and into my field of vision. Without looking at her, I could tell she was studying me.
“You really hate to be touched, don’t you?” she asked.
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