he said. “I’ll make sure you get upstairs. Get some sleep.”
He watched from the parking lot, so I made a show of going into my room, where Tina and Todd were waiting for me. They were fully clothed but the bed looked mussed. “Are we in trouble?” Tina asked nervously.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But we should break up the party.”
I split the blinds with my fingers and saw that Bobby’s light was off. Tina, Todd, and I entered the party room through the adjoining door. Everyone stared at me, waiting for what I’d say.
“He didn’t suspect a thing,” I said, not sure if it was true but hoping I was right.
“You’re the fucking best, Susan,” Marie said, raising a drink. “To Susan!”
“And Tina! And her hot boyfriend!” Wendy added, definitely wasted.
As a cheer—a soft one—went up, Tina whispered to me, “Maybe everyone can have one more? This is kind of nice.” I looked around at my teammates, who were waiting for my answer. The talk with Bobby had left me too excited to go right to bed. And it wasn’t that late yet. Keeping the party going a bit longer wouldn’t hurt. Bobby had coached us too well.
If winning tomorrow would feel this good, I couldn’t wait.
Nineteen
Bobby knocked on all our doors at six in the morning, just like he promised.
The problem was, we were still in Marie’s room. And everyone was scattered about in various states of hungover or still drunk.
“Noo,” Wendy moaned from the floor as I hoisted myself up from the foot of a bed where Arlene and Dana had passed out. Tina was sleeping next to me. I nudged her and she groaned as she rolled onto her stomach. “Rise and shine.”
She looked at me, one eye still closed, holding her head. “Dammit. I feel like shit and I didn’t even drink that much.”
There was a pause and another knock. “Are we okay in there?” Bobby called. “Are you all awake? We need to get going soon.”
“Susan, can you please deal with him?” Dawn said, ambling toward the bathroom.
With my own head throbbing more than I had expected, I didn’t think I could, but I’d somehow been appointed responsible for covering up our quickly multiplying infractions. “I’ll try.”
I went to the door with the most composure I could manage, and I felt like I had myself together. When I pulled open the door and the glare of an October sunrise hit my eyes, though, I made a not-on-purpose creaking noise, like someone had stabbed me in the stomach with a dull knife. “We’re almost ready,” I mumbled, trying to keep my foul breath in my mouth. Then I burped in Bobby’s face.
He stared at my eyes and I saw the awareness that I was wrecked cross his face. His eyes narrowed as he looked past me, into the room. We’d cleaned up as much as we could when we’d wound things down just before one a.m., but it must not have been good enough. Bobby cleared his throat and used his head to gesture to a spot on the floor. An empty bottle of peach schnapps was lying just outside the bathroom and in view of the door.
“The bus leaves in five minutes,” he said in a tight voice. His narrowed eyes were focused on me, while my own bleary eyes could barely focus on him. “Clean up and get your uniforms on.”
He hadn’t yelled, but somehow it was worse. He pulled the door shut with a click. I was pretty sure that if we weren’t on the bus to the game, he’d leave us in Wisconsin.
The ride was silent, no speeches or lectures. We’d rallied to get ready, but looking at my teammates slouched about the bus, I thought it was possible we’d used all our energy for the day in getting dressed.
It was my fault. For all my patrolling and discarding of drinks at the beginning of the night, I’d still missed that a few people—Wendy, Dana, Arlene—were drinking faster than I knew. Then, when I’d gotten back from talking with Bobby, I felt so confident that we’d win the next day, I figured I’d be okay to have a couple of drinks with the team. But the drunker we’d gotten, the surer we became that nothing we did could keep us from a victory, so we kept on drinking. . . . The second bottle of schnapps had helped it make sense at the time.
The excitement I’d had the night before