in the painful details … like with Marissa or Quinn.
She’s ready to share her truth. Kearson is in a safe place.
It happened during the last game of the regular season, immediately after Kearson’s near collision with Mel. The ref blew his whistle, recognizing Coach’s call for the Wildcats’ last available time-out.
Having almost injured Mel, Kearson was sick with shame. Not only was she unable to replace one injured star player, she nearly knocked their other star out. She was surely about to get eviscerated by Coach, probably the worst he’d ever given it to her. And with her mother there, watching.
Coach screamed for Kearson to come over for a sideline conference. She adopted the posture she’d found worked best for her—eyes on the ground, imagining the laces of her cleats were a ladder she could climb up to get herself out of here. But unlike other times, she went into a sort of fugue state. Like her body was shutting down. Her mind shutting down. Because she couldn’t take it anymore.
“I guess I didn’t hear something Coach said to me,” Kearson tells the girls. “Probably when he was telling me to get off the field.”
Out of frustration, Coach spiked his half-empty water bottle as hard as he could on the ground. He’d thrown it with so much force, it popped straight back up, end-over-end inertia. Kearson didn’t see it until it hit her square in the face. It came fast. An ice-cold fist. There was no time to protect herself.
The bottle then landed at her feet, water seeping out from a crack in the plastic onto the turf.
Kearson held still. No matter that her cheekbone took the brunt of it, the wind had been knocked out of her like a blow to the chest. With a shaky hand, she gently touched the epicenter of the sting on her cheek and then looked at her fingers, expecting to see blood . But there was none.
“When I looked up, I could tell Coach was as surprised as I was. Because it really was an accident. I know in my heart. He hadn’t meant for the bottle to hit me in the face. It was an unlucky bounce.”
Everyone is silent. Kearson can feel it, the elephant suddenly in the room. She knows what the girls are hoping she’ll say next. That—intentional or not—Coach immediately apologized for what happened.
“So … we just stared at each other like that for a few seconds. And then I walked over to the bench, like he’d told me.” Kearson shrugs. “That was the last time I was on the field as a varsity Wildcat.”
There is a part Kearson leaves out of the story. It is too humiliating to share. But she actually picked up the water bottle and handed it back to Coach before sitting down on the bench.
“My mom and I had a big fight about it. I kept telling her over and over again that I’d gotten the bruise during warm-ups. But after the season ended, she called the athletic director and told him what she suspected had happened. She never even told me she was doing it. I had no clue why I was suddenly getting called down into a meeting with the AD and Coach. Luckily I was able to smooth things over. I made her seem like some crazy helicopter mom. And I’ve barely spoken to her since.”
Ali says, “Kearson … maybe she waited until the end of the season because she wasn’t sure what she should do. And because she knew you still wanted to play.”
Kearson says, “She absolutely knew that. But my mom should have trusted me.”
Phoebe lowers herself onto the floor next to her. “But you were lying, Kearson. And she probably could tell.”
Luci says, “Maybe your mom never wanted you to know. She could have been hoping to have the incident documented or to just give the AD a heads-up or something.”
Kearson feels the squeeze of guilt come back and wring a concession out of her. “Maybe,” she says. Then, “Probably.” She forces a swallow. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I need to quit the team.”
Mel, the only one who’s still standing, folds her arms. “Nope. Request denied. I’m team captain and no one is quitting tonight. Not you and not Phoebe.”
“But what if my mom makes another complaint? I was able to talk Coach out of trouble once, but I don’t know if they’d believe me again.” The girls plead with her, but Kearson is resolved.