Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move

by Nancy N. Rue

  “Roo-thee,” Lizard would say in a high-pitched voice. “What are you doin’? What are you doin’, Roo-thee?”

  She never answered, which I thought was wise, so the three goons answered for her. Tank would say something stupid, like, “She’s lookin’ at her navel. No—she’s tryin’ to find it.” More than once I wanted to ask if they’d lost their way and really belonged in middle school. Make that elementary.

  Lizard and Tank would go on for a while, and then Rafe would say something that made them look like insult amateurs. Wednesday, when Tank said, “Hey, Ruthie, have you called Jenny Craig yet?”—like he should talk, Mr. “I OD’d on Enchiladas”—Rafe let a big sly smile spread across his face and said, “Leave her alone. She’s gestating.”

  Even Ms. Edelstein looked up.

  “Gestating?” Lizard said, eyes shifting like his namesake. “What the—what’s that?”

  “Doesn’t that mean pregnant?” Uma said.

  Rafe just maintained his sick smile and nodded. For the first time since I’d been in Loser Hall, Ruthie turned around in her desk in front of theirs and looked at them—or somewhere in the direction of their shins.

  “I’m not pregnant,” she said.

  I was surprised by her voice, which was husky and deep and sounded like it belonged to a cheerleader.

  “No way she’s pregnant, man,” Tank said. “What guy would—”

  “You would,” Lizard said. “You’re desperate.”

  “Not that desperate.”

  Their discussion disintegrated into reports on their latest scores, punctuated by Uma pounding on Rafe’s arm. He didn’t actually say anything. He just sat there looking all satisfied that he’d successfully gotten the humiliation going.

  By then Ruthie had turned around and was re-slumping into her seat. Her face hadn’t even turned red, although it was hard to tell because it was pretty much covered in angry-looking acne. She had to be mortified. And yet she just went back to reading her thick paperback fantasy novel. Maybe she was looking for a magical way to lose weight so they’d lay off.

  It was kind of sad, how heavy she was. Even I thought she was—okay, fat—the first time I saw her hunched into the desk with her head sunken into her shoulders. Limp, unremarkable brown hair strung down both sides of her very round face and onto the sleeves of the oversized (even for her) flannel shirt she always wore with jeans that spilled over floppy tennis shoes.

  “Mighty Jabba!” Tank had called her the first day I was in there.

  “No,” Rafe told him. “The blessed Buddha.”

  One day on steroids and she might be able to kick them all to the curb.

  *

  By Wednesday night, I was almost numb. Selena never made eye contact with me in first period. Nobody bothered me at my lunch hideaway. In Loser Hall, Rafe and the others seemed content to concentrate on Ruthie, who basically ignored them like she was in a coma. And my father was working long hours, coming home too late to have dinner with Mom and me.

  The first night she had supper set up for the two of us before she left for work, I almost dropped my crutches. Not only was she never home for meals during the week, but she hadn’t cooked since she was made head meteorologist. The Brewsters lived on takeout and leftovers from restaurants. Yet there she was, spooning beef stew into bread bowls.

  “Wow,” I said. “You … cooked.”

  “I thought I’d better since I’m the one torturing you twice a day. I don’t want you offing me in my sleep.”

  It was true—the part about her “torturing” me. She got me up every morning at five to supervise my exercises, and she was ready to do it again every afternoon when she brought me home from school. I still didn’t see the point in suffering to get my leg more than twelve inches off the bed and practically biting my tongue off to get through prone hangs. I had to admit, though, that it was hurting less and less, and I was even thinking about losing the crutches in a day or two.

  But, yeah, homemade beef stew and warm sourdough bread and a table that didn’t have my father at it was nice. I kind of wished Mom didn’t have to go to work. She was the only person I could go un-numb with and not be bristled by the Frenemy the entire time.

  I thought about it Wednesday when I was propped up in bed, examining my knee. There wasn’t any feeling around the incision, which had freaked me out when I first took the bandage off, but when Mom called Dr. Horton about it—so I wouldn’t totally lose it and need psychiatric care—he said that it was due to “the disruption of a superficial nerve during the operative procedure.” He could have just said it was normal and I didn’t need to worry about it. Once he assured us that it would resolve over time and probably leave me with only a quarter-sized place with no feeling ever, I was okay with it.

  I still poked at it every night, though, just because it was weird. That night it came to me that it was sort of like my life right now. There was a lot of pain everywhere, and yet there was this little place I could go to where I could stay numb, where if I just kept my head down I wouldn’t feel the part that had been cut into and reconstructed with a graft from some other part of me that I didn’t want to be. Just stay where it’s numb and you’ll make it, I told myself. You’ll make it.

  *

  Yeah, well, so much for that plan.

  I was numbing out at my private table in the cafeteria Thursday, actually deep into the last chapter of The Scarlet Letter, when I felt a warm presence. It had always been my experience that you could tell when another athlete was close to you—something about their heat or their scent or their energy. It had always come in handy when somebody tried to sneak up on me on the court.

  I was right. I looked up to find Selena standing there, the tips of her fingers tucked into the front pockets of a pair of skinny jeans. She seemed taller and leaner than ever, especially with a snug black sweater clinging to hips that barely existed.

  “Why are you eating by yourself?” she said.

  It might have been a mean question, but I didn’t think so. Not from Selena. She did blunt and in-your-face and don’t-hold-back, but I’d never thought of her as just plain evil.

  “Mind if I sit down?” she said.

  I did, but I nodded out of sheer isolation.

  “So?” I said.

  “Yeah, so, I can’t actually stay,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Were you planning to sign up for a club team this summer? I mean, will you be able to play by then?”

  I actually hadn’t thought about it. Now that I did, a glimmer of hope about the size of a birthday candle flame lit up somewhere.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think they said I’d need, like, six months of therapy.”

  Selena appeared to be doing a mental calculation. “So you couldn’t play—not until, say, August.”

  I felt myself sag. “No, I guess not.”

  “Okay, well, that answers my question.”

  “Why?” I said.

  Selena folded her hands around her crossed knees. A bracelet with a silver basketball charm dangled from her wrist. “If you were going to sign up I wanted to know which club—so I wouldn’t sign up for that one too.”

  As that registered, I felt my jaw drop.

  “I just don’t want to play with a druggie,” she said. “Not that I have a choice. The parents—including mine—don’t want us around you.”

  “I’m not a ‘druggie.’ I didn’t know what I was taking. Didn’t Coach tell you that?”

  “Like I can believe anything Coach Deetz says about you. He’s totally biased. It was Mr. LaSalle who busted you, not him, right? If somebody hadn’t tipped LaSalle off, you never would have gone down for it.” She closed her eyes and rubbed at the air with her palm. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It looks like I never have to play with you again, and I’m okay with that.”

  She should have gotten up and left then, but she still sat there, legs crossed, looking at me.

  “
What?” I said.

  “I’m just waiting to see if you’re going to go into one of your rages. I guess you’re not so brave without your steroids, are you?”

  “You should back off, Selena.”

  I turned to see Kara, who had somehow appeared behind me without my best friend antennae going up. She wasn’t looking at me anyway. Her blue-blue eyes were on Selena.

  “What are you doing?” Kara said to her. “You shouldn’t stir something up.”

  “I was just checking a few things out,” Selena said. “I’m gone.”

  She got up surprisingly fast and padded away in her ballerina flats without a backward glance. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she was a little afraid of Kara.

  “You okay?” Kara said.

  I pulled my eyes back to hers, which were now swimming in signature Kara tears.

  As I looked into them, I remembered the last time—when she was deciding I wasn’t the old Cassidy anymore, and she needed to out the new one. And ruin my life.

  “Cassidy,” she said. “Can’t we talk? I don’t even know what I did—”

  “No,” I said. “What you don’t know is that I know what you did.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her voice wound up. “All I did was try to help you. I even called—”

  “Yeah, I know. And it didn’t help, okay? All it did was show me that I can’t trust you.”

  “I don’t know what else to say to you.” She didn’t seem to be aware that tears were pouring down her face like rapids.

  “You can tell me this,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Did your parents tell you not to associate with me? Yours and M.J.’s and Hilary’s?”

  “They had a meeting. Selena’s father called it—”

  I put up my hand. “I get it,” I said.

  She just shook her head. Her hair got caught in the wet, but she let it stay plastered to her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Cassidy. I really am.”

  “Me too,” I said. “But don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one. I don’t really trust anybody else anymore either.”

  She was still shaking her head as she ran among the tables for the door. I wished I could have run away too, long and hard and far.

  *

  So, no, I wasn’t numb when I got to fifth period. The Frenemy had completely taken over and it was scaring me. I didn’t have basketball anymore to push her away. What if this nauseous, prickling, terrified feeling was going to be in me forever? Was I going to go through the rest of my life with a mouth full of cotton and palms full of sweat? By the time I got to my table in art, I could barely hold on to my crutches.

  One of them clattered to the floor when I tried to lean them against the wall, and naturally Rafe was standing only inches away, for no reason that I could think of.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said.

  “You don’t want to hear what?”

  “Whatever it is you’re going to say. I’ll say it for you. I dropped my crutch. I’m a klutz. I’m a loser. There, are we good?”

  He let his lips go up on one side, which I assumed was meant to look sexy or something. “I was just gonna say, ‘Let me get that for you.’”

  “No, you were not.”

  “Yeah, I was. See?”

  He picked up my crutch and leaned it next to the other one, and did some kind of seductive thing with his eyebrows that made me want to pluck them out, one by one.

  “You disgust me,” I said.

  “That was the idea,” he said.

  Which it apparently was, because, for the rest of class, he came up with every excuse to get in my space. He chose my sketch to critique when we went around the room, and he pointed out that I would never make it as a graffiti artist. Like that was my career plan. He mimicked my facial expressions when I was critiquing somebody else’s piece. And when the bell rang to end class, he was there, handing me my crutches like a butler in a bad sitcom.

  “You are not walking me to class,” I said through my teeth.

  “Why not? You’re goin’ to the same place I am.”

  He said it just loud enough for Mrs. Petrocelli-Ward to hear. She looked up from a paper she was reading and gave me a curious look.

  “You’re in a study hall, Cassidy?” she said.

  I looked at Rafe and said, “Don’t even start.”

  *

  I was still fuming when I got to Room 109. I tried to bury myself in the last chapter of The Scarlet Letter again, but even Hester Prynne’s issues didn’t seem as bad as mine. Besides that, Rafe and the goons were in top form. I could only think that I had gotten Rafe warmed up for Ruthie.

  She, too, had her face buried in a book, as usual, and she was twirling a skinny strand of hair around her finger as she read. I was kind of envying her ability to get lost in a fantasy world when Lizard slithered in and headed past her toward his seat. He stopped and backed up and studied her face until she looked up at him.

  “Ruthie,” he said. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” she said.

  He actually did seem concerned, so I watched over the top of my book.

  “You had pizza for lunch, yeah? You’ve still got pepperoni on your face—right there—and there—”

  I stifled a gasp as he pointed to every acne cyst erupting from Ruthie’s skin.

  “What are you, stupid, man?” Tank said from the back row. “That ain’t pepperoni, that’s—”

  “Stop. Just, both of you—stop!” I got to my feet, crutch-less, and jabbed my finger at Lizard. “You think because somebody has a skin disease she doesn’t have feelings? Or ears?”

  There was only a momentary stunned silence before Lizard recovered and said, “Ooooh. Scary chick.”

  “Yeah, watch her. We might be talking ‘roid rage.”

  I turned on Rafe before the last syllable was out of his mouth. “No—we are talking me calling you on the way you treat people.”

  Uma nodded and gave him a punch and a giggle.

  “You too,” I said to her. “Why don’t you defend her? Because the worse they treat her, the better you feel about yourself? Is that your deal?”

  Uma stretched her skinny neck up. “You want to know what my deal is?”

  “All right, we’re done.”

  There was another shocked silence, because Ms. Edelstein had come out from behind her desk. I personally had never seen her standing up before. She was short and square and had on pumps she could have whacked somebody with, which she looked like she wanted to do about now.

  “It’s all good, Miss Frankenstein,” Rafe said.

  “It will be when you zip it.”

  He looked down at his fly.

  “I’m talking about your mouth.”

  Rafe pulled his finger across his monstrous lips and pretended to drop an imaginary key over the side of his desk. It was the single most disrespectful thing I’d seen him do yet.

  “Cassidy.”

  I turned to see Ms. Edelstein going for the door.

  “I want to see you out here.”

  Me? I’d just stopped a Ruthie crucifixion and she wanted to see me?

  That couldn’t be it, I told myself as I gathered up my crutches and followed her. She was probably going to tell me she would make other arrangements for my sixth period. I would have settled for the dugout on the baseball field if she offered it to me.

  When I got out to the hall, she had one hand on her hip and was resting her nose on the other one. Her eyes went from the floor to me.

  “I appreciate what you tried to do,” she said in a voice that announced she clearly didn’t. “But I think you’re only bringing more down on Ruthie. She just ignores them and eventually they leave her alone.”

  They did? When did that ever happen?

  “You’re a new audience. They’re just showing off for you.”

  “I’m not impressed,” I said.

  “I can see that.” She used her hand for a nose rest again, a
nd then she pulled in air through her nostrils and said, “You’ve been quiet, and then all of a sudden this outburst. Are you—?” She shook her head abruptly. “Never mind. Just—let’s not stir it with a stick, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. But I knew that wasn’t what she was talking about at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  No lady, I am not still on steroids, I wanted to say. Isn’t thawhere you were going? Man, if I were—

  If I were, I would be on my way to Mr. LaSalle’s office for taking out all of Loser Hall, including her. Off of steroids, all I could say was, “May I go back in now?”

  She may have said yes, but all I could hear was the Frenemy screaming, This is never going to go away! Never!

  The words continued to torment me through the rest of the period, blocking out whatever else the goons had planned for Ruthie. The inner shouting kept up even while Mom was driving me home. I could tell she was giving me looks from the corner of her eye, and I hoped she wouldn’t try to talk to me.

  Hope didn’t do me any good at all. She stopped at a light and tucked her hair behind her ear and played the steering wheel like piano keys before she said, “You have an appointment with Dr. Horton early on Monday morning. Can you afford to miss first period?”

  “I have a test on The Scarlet Letter.” Which I still hadn’t finished reading because every time I tried, somebody was right there to drag out my one mistake yet again and smack me in the face with it.

  “I’ll see if he can take you later, then,” Mom said.

  “How about right after lunch?” Yeah. Then maybe we could drag it out for a couple of hours. Maybe even days.

  “He’s probably going to clear you for physical therapy—

  “Why?”

  Another strand went behind the other ear. “Are you okay, Cass? Did something happen at school?”

  “Yes. No.” I ripped off my hat because I was breaking into a Frenemy sweat. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to get through it, that’s all.”