Tournaments, Cocoa & One Wrong Move

by Nancy N. Rue

  “If you’re looking for something in writing—”

  “We had something in writing—”

  “The student’s writing. Oh, excuse me, ‘Cassidy’s’—”

  “Ms. Holden, we don’t allow the use of cell phones in here.”

  Gretchen looked up from the phone she was frowning at, fingers flying. “I do have something in writing.”

  Disbelief twisted Mr. Blake’s face.

  “I still have the text message,” Gretchen said. “The one Cassidy sent me the day she tested positive for steroids.”

  Chins propped her glasses on her nose. “You saved a text from over a month ago?”

  I heard it in my head before Gretchen even said it: Aaron saying She doesn’t even take the time to delete her text messages.

  “Here it is,” Gretchen said.

  I saw her bony hands shaking as she handed the phone to Mr. Blake. He blinked at the screen, and then up at me.

  “Do you remember the text you sent her on March eighth?” he said.

  The Lizard Look-Alike man leaned over to read with him. Chins put out her hand and wiggled her fingers in a “give it.” Both Head Lady and Eyebrows looked at me with glimmers of hope in their eyes. It was that that opened my mouth for me.

  “I said something like, ‘They’re saying those pills you gave me are steroids. Were they?’”

  The man who no longer seemed like a Lizard to me looked at Mr. Blake. “That hard enough for you?” he said.

  Before Mr. Blake could answer, Head Lady threw back her shoulders and stood up. “Thank you, Ms. Holden. We appreciate you coming in.” She looked at me. “The board still needs to confer and give our decision, so unless you have anything to add, we’ll go ahead and ask everyone to step out.”

  It was over then? I didn’t have to stand up in front of those five intimidating people and defend myself after all? Could it really be that everyone else had spoken for me?

  I should have been just short of cheering at that point, or at the very least melting into a puddle of relief. But something weighed on me and wouldn’t let me stand up and flee before they could change their minds. Something that pressed my mother’s words into my mind.

  I looked at her now, and I could see it in her eyes again. What you said about not having a voice? I don’t think that’s true

  “Excuse me—I apologize for being late—”

  As Ruthie would say, oh, nuh-uh.

  Dad charged up the aisle, swinging his briefcase like he was flying into a courtroom. “My apologies. I’m Trent Brewster, the defendant’s father. I hope I’m not too late to speak for my daughter’s case—”

  “You are.”

  The five gazes that had been locked on my father flipped to me. Probably because I was on my feet. And using the voice I’d only used when I was standing up for Rafe. The voice in my head said it was time to stand up for me.

  Dad’s face had long since come to a point. “Cassidy, sit down.”

  “No, Trent,” my mother said. “You need to sit down.”

  Head Lady leaned around Dad and looked at me. “If you want to say anything, Cassidy, now is the time.”

  I didn’t look at either of my parents, though Mom did squeeze my hand as I headed for the speaker’s chair. I could do this. I could—even though when I turned to face the audience, my breath caught in my throat.

  There wasn’t an empty chair in the room. They were filled with the rest of my teachers, most of my art class, Boz, and all of Loser Hall, including Lizard. Rafe wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I wondered how that hadn’t always been the most supportive thing a person could do.

  But it was the people standing in the back who caught me and hung onto me. Coach leaned against the wall, wearing the shirt and the Mickey Mouse tie he always put on for our games. Standing beside him was Kara. My heart halted in my chest.

  “Cassidy?” someone said.

  I sank into the speaker’s chair and looked at Head Lady.

  “Did you want to make a statement?” she said.

  Chins was nodding. “Go ahead, honey. I want to hear what you have to say.”

  I suddenly wished I knew her real name.

  I closed my eyes, saw what I needed to see, and opened them again.

  “I really appreciate all the things Ms. Edelstein and Mrs. Petrocelli-Ward said. And Gretchen—I know she risked a lot to come forward.”

  I looked at Dad, who was seething on the edge of the chair my mother had ordered him to sit in.

  “And my father for making the appeal on my behalf. They’ve said almost everything that needs to be said. Except for one thing.”

  I turned to the board. “I made a stupid mistake. And even though it isn’t the mistake Mr. LaSalle says I made, maybe you’re right to take basketball away from me.”

  I heard a unanimous gasp, but I pushed on.

  “I’ve hurt a lot of people I love. My family. Coach Deetz. My team.” My eyes lingered on Kara. “The best friend I ever had.”

  I looked away so I wouldn’t cry.

  “There isn’t any punishment you could give me that would undo that,” I said. “Maybe I have helped some other people since I was taken out of the sports program—but only because of what I’ve learned from not being able to play basketball.” I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong—I want to play with my team again, if they’ll even have me.” I didn’t dare look at Coach Deetz. “But if that means turning back into the person I was before … I shouldn’t be allowed to do it.”

  I went back to my seat beside Mom and sank into the arm she put around me. Head Lady said something about taking a recess so the board could make its decision, and people moved and whispered all around me. But all I really knew was that I’d found my voice.

  And that was all I needed to know.

  *

  “I don’t get you,” Dad said.

  “How could you?” I said. “I’m only now getting me myself.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  I wasn’t sure I could ever make it make sense to my father, and I definitely wasn’t going to try to do it right now. I looked over his head at the knots of people that dotted the boardroom. All I wanted to do was touch every person in there that I loved and say thank you. And thank you. And thank you. I just didn’t know where to start.

  A voice behind me made that decision for me.

  “Brewster.”

  I turned in almost slow motion. Coach Deetz looked down at me, and I realized with a pang that I had forgotten how tall he was.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, and then my heart twisted. “Or—oh—did you come for the other side? I mean—”

  “Don’t be a moron, Brewster,” he said. “I’ve always been on your side.” He ran his hand over his shaved head. “Besides, I had to bring Gretchen.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I gave her a call when I heard about the hearing. She said no at first, but after she talked to you …” He gave me a look he’d never given me before. It was person to person, not coach to star player. “I guess you can pretty much talk anybody into anything now,” he said. “She called me this morning and asked me if I’d bring her.”

  I turned to look for her, but he brushed my arm. “She was pretty upset. But let me just say this, Brewster.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I still have to abide by district policy, but if the board says you can play again, you’re welcome back on the team.”

  There should have been a surge of excitement. I waited for it, as I’d been waiting for it for weeks. But it caught on a snag somewhere inside me. Just the way my gaze caught on Kara.

  She was standing apart from everyone, long arms hugged around her, looking at the floor as if she wished it would swallow her up. I knew that feeling well.

  “What about the team, though?” I said. “Are they going to want me?”

  Coach followed my gaze with his. “She came to vouch for you in case you needed her. ‘Course, you ended up with people com
ing out of the woodwork to do that.” He nudged my arm with his knuckles. “And you didn’t do bad yourself.”

  “Bad” didn’t even come close to how I felt. I maneuvered around Coach, and I gave Boz, who was heading my way, a hold-on-a-sec signal. By the time I got to Kara, she was hugging herself so tight her fingers were white against her rib cage.

  “Coach told me why you came,” I said. “I just want to tell you—thank you.”

  She nodded, eyes still directed at the carpet. I got that. I wouldn’t have wanted to look at me either. But even if she never did again, I had to say it.

  “I’m sorry, Kara. I know you didn’t tell Mr. LaSalle—I know now it was Selena. Only—” I pressed my throat to push down the tears. “I never should have believed you did it in the first place. I should have listened to you. I’m sorrier for that than for any of it.”

  She started to lift her chin. Please, please, please, don’t let her tell me to—

  “Folks, if we could reconvene quickly.” It was Head Lady, leading the rest of the board into the room.

  I turned back to Kara, but I saw only her back as she walked away from me.

  *

  “Mr. LaSalle,” Head Lady said. “We want you to know that we appreciate your diligence in upholding district policies concerning athletics. That goes a long way in teaching our young people that the example of performance enhancement they’re being shown in professional sports is not one they should follow.”

  I sagged against Mom, but on the other side, my father nudged me.

  “I hear a ‘but’ coming,” he whispered.

  “Having said that,” Head Lady went on, “the board feels there is reason to believe that Cassidy Brewster was not aware that she was ingesting anabolic steroids and that it would be a detriment to her education and training to prohibit her from participating in the basketball program at Austin Bluffs High School.”

  Her mouth continued to move, but if anybody heard the rest it was a miracle. The room erupted into cheers and whistles, and I heard one voice wriggle its way to the top of it with, “All right, Roid!”

  “It’s over, Cass,” Mom said as she put her arms around me. “It’s finally over.”

  I nodded against her hair, and felt the pats on the back and the squeezes on the arm that should have sent me over the moon. She was right, I thought as I looked over her shoulder.

  Coach was moving out the door with Kara. It was all over.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When I woke up the next morning, I smelled coffee, so I knew Dad was up. I listened harder and heard him moving around in the kitchen. I knew it was him and not Mom by the way the water turned on full force and then off with a punishing squeal—and the way the refrigerator door closed and made the salad dressing bottles rattle. I could even hear the impatient rustle of the newspaper as the chair scraped the floor. He was still mad. “Disconcerted,” as he had put it last night. A spoon attacked the sides of a mug in even, metallic blows. That wasn’t “disconcerted.” That was an anger I’d never heard from my father before.

  I stayed where I was and waited for the Frenemy to creep in. I’d actually been waiting for her ever since Dad insisted that I ride home with him from the hearing. Being in the front seat with him again was like experiencing déjà vu: Let’s review—you could have lightened up on the self-deprecation; it worked, but you had a fifty-fifty chance that it wouldn’t, and I didn’t like those odds. I really had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I just told the whole truth, Dad,” I’d said. “Not doing that was what got me there in the first place.”

  I expected both the Frenemy and a full-out critique of that logic, but Dad had moved me on, as usual right to where I didn’t want to go.

  “What does your PT guy say about your progress?” he said.

  It surprised me that he hadn’t called Ben and given him the third degree himself, until I remembered Ben saying he and my father didn’t have “conversations.”

  “I’m back on track,” I said.

  “Which means you’ll be ready to play when?”

  “Five months.”

  “Any chance of going at it a little more aggressively?”

  “Tryouts aren’t even until November,” I said.

  “Tryouts?” Dad made a face at me as he looked over his shoulder to change lanes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I shook my head. “By that time I’ll have been off the court for longer than anybody else. I’m going to try out again.”

  “Deetz said that?”

  “No,” I said. “That was my decision.” As of that very moment. And then I made another one.

  “I know I can play again—and I know I’ll be good because it’s part of me,” I said. “But I don’t know if I’m going to.”

  It was the first time in my sixteen years as Trent Brewster’s kid that I ever saw him without a comeback. I watched him grope for words like a drowning person fights for air. When he did find some, any blasting I’d ever gotten from him was going to be a puff in the face in comparison.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I knew this was going to make you mad, but—”

  “I am not ‘mad,’” he said, though his face was the shape of an ice pick. “I am just completely disconcerted.”

  There hadn’t been so much as a whisper from the Frenemy.

  I slid out of bed now and crossed to the beanbag and crunched the stuffings under my feet as I stood on it to raise the blinds. A weak light whispered good morning and went back to turning the face of Pike’s Peak a dawning pink. The promise of a bright day outside—in spite of the dark one that was going to take place inside.

  Dad seemed to have finally settled in with coffee and the paper. At least he wasn’t charging in here to ream me with the words he must have found during the night. Not yet anyway. I nestled into the beanbag and slid out RL.

  It was the voice that made all the other voices make sense every time I had a decision to make. I was about to make a huge one, and although the Frenemy was not putting her two cents in, my hands shook a little as I lay the leather book on my lap.

  Okay, so—yeah, I knew Yeshua wouldn’t come right out and say, “Cassidy, do this and you’re good to go.” I wasn’t sure I would have followed his instructions if he had ever done that anyway. I guessed figuring it out was the only way I could live it.

  The sunlight brightened the page that found me, and I almost expected the words to squint. How weird was that? How weird was I? Weird enough to let the page press into me.

  Yeshua was hanging out with people as usual, and this one guy who was pretty much rolling in money—and he was a city official, so who knew where some of that dough came from Anyway, the guy said, “Good teacher, what do I have to do to get eternal life?” Yeshua said, “Well, first of all, don’t be calling me good. The only one who’s totally good is God—just so we’re clear.”

  That I could totally believe.

  Yeshua then said, “All right, you know your commandments, yes? No sex outside marriage, no killing, stealing, lying. Be good to your parents—all that.” And the rich guy said, “I have always kept the commandments. I’m squeaky clean.”

  Huh. I wished I could say that about myself.

  Yeshua said, “Okay, then there’s only one more thing you need to do: sell absolutely everything you own and give the money to the poor. That’s your ticket to a life with God. You’ll have more than you’ve ever dreamed of having. Do that and then come follow me.”

  Whoa. That’s like—huge.

  Yeah. The guy didn’t see that coming. He was mega rich, and the thought of having to give all of that away to people he considered to be pretty much pond scum was depressing. His wealth defined him, and there was no way he was letting go of it. Without it, he was afraid he’d just be nobody. He couldn’t do it.

  I nodded and went on.

  When Yeshua saw the near panic on the man’s face, he said to the rest of the group, “Do you know how hard it is for somebody who�
��s got it all to enter the world God wants us in—what he calls his kingdom?”

  I could imagine the follower-friends shaking their heads, just as I was swinging mine back and forth.

  “I gotta tell you, it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for me to get a person to let go of all his falseness and come into a full life with the Father.” The group shuffled uneasy feet and swallowed lumps in their throats. “Then who even has half a chance?” one of them said.

  My question exactly.

  “Nobody has a snowball’s chance in the furnace,” Yeshua said, “if you think you can do it on your own. But if you trust God to define you, to show you who you are, you have all the chance you need.”

  I started to lean back and close my eyes to try to figure that out, but the book pressed me on.

  Pete, one of Yeshua’s follower-friends, wanted to make sure he was getting it right. He said, “We gave up all our stuff, basically our whole lives, and have stuck with you, right?” And Yeshua said, “Absolutely, you have. You’re never going to be sorry either. Nobody who gives up what’s keeping them from being who they truly are in God’s eyes—even if that means their closest relationships or their social status or whatever—will lose out on what’s really important. The gifts of truth will multiply in ways you can’t even dream of, and not just here on earth but in the life to come.”

  The page let me close my eyes this time, and RL waited like a feather in my lap. Nothing pressed me or nudged me or Frenemied me—maybe because there was nothing to figure out. I didn’t say please, please, please … maybe because the right words were already thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn’t try to picture what my next move was going to look like, because I knew I wouldn’t see it. I wouldn’t know it until I got there—to the place where Yeshua would be waiting.

  *

  I went through the morning doing everything the same way I’d been doing it. Boz and I bantered back and forth in first period. I pretty much hung out by myself until lunch. I was headed for our corner table to meet Ruthie when three long-legged girl bodies planted themselves in my path. My stomach fell to my knees when I saw that it was M.J. and Hilary and Kara.