Mel had been bracing for a truly horrible revelation. But this? This makes zero sense.
“Phoebe. What are you talking about?”
“You don’t believe me. Amazing.”
“I just … don’t understand.” Why would Coach have told Phoebe that? The Truman scout had come to see them weeks before. She knew it because he’d broken his scouts rule for her. Not to be a jerk about it, but that’s another part that doesn’t add up for Mel. If Coach were going to break his rule about scouts, and that scout happened to be from Truman, he’d tell Mel. Not Phoebe.
“Do you think I invented the conversation?” Phoebe leans back. “Have you forgotten how he yanked the rug out from under you tonight when he switched out the varsity jerseys?”
Even though she still can’t quite wrap her head around the things Phoebe is saying, Mel answers, resolute, “He did that to help me.”
“You didn’t need his help! Your Psych-Up was amazing. The best we’ve ever had. The pi?ata was perfect. The girls were all having an amazing night until he butted in uninvited. He took tonight away from you for no good reason, Mel.” Her breath catches. “Or a reason that we haven’t figured out yet.”
“You sound crazy, you know that? Like, where are you coming up with this stuff?”
Phoebe stares at Mel so hard it makes her shiver. “Every single one of us can see what’s happening here except you.” Phoebe glances around and spots Coach’s laptop where Mel had set it down, on a wicker basket filled with old magazines. She picks it up and places it in Mel’s lap.
“Here. Read the email he sent about me to Trident. Then tell me I’m crazy. Actually, come to think of it, don’t stop there. I bet you’ll find a lot of illuminating emails in there. Maybe even some about you.”
“I’m not going through Coach’s laptop. I’m not going to be part of this.” Mel tries to hand it back, but Phoebe refuses to take it. “You want me to have some horrible story about him, but I’m sorry! I don’t!”
Phoebe seems torn between anger and sadness and is trying to choose her words carefully. At last she says, “I think you’re already living inside a horrible story, Mel. You just can’t see it.”
With that, Phoebe walks away from her and returns to the team.
Though she is entirely off-kilter, Mel stands up and begins to follow, intending to first give the laptop back to Phoebe without another word, then to shut off the lights and order her team to bed once and for all. But Mel only makes it a few steps, halted by the idea of herself a few minutes from now, the basement lights off but every one of the girls staring at her through the dark.
So instead Mel turns and hurries up the basement stairs, through the kitchen, down the hall, and up to the second floor. She closes her bedroom door and locks it. She is panting as if she were being chased, but no one is following her.
Coach’s laptop is in her arms. It’s heavy, too-large, ancient technology that’s labeled PROPERTY OF WEST ESSEX HIGH in marker, not like the new light-as-a-feather MacBook Air Mel got last Christmas. With framed photographs of her teammates smiling down at her, she sets it on her vanity, this dangerous thing, and backs away from it until she hits her bed.
Through the central air vents, Mel hears the girls talking in urgent whispers.
She climbs underneath the covers and closes her eyes, hoping she’s so exhausted that sleep will overpower her mind, which spins wildly, a too-fast ride. To try to steady herself, Mel plucks from the swirl her very best memory of Coach. When Mel knows for certain she was her happiest.
* * *
Mel’s official offer to attend Truman on a full-ride scholarship came by way of a FedEx envelope on the last day of July. It was ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. Her father had just returned from racquetball with a bag of warm bagels.
Mel and her mother were sitting at the kitchen island looking at their phones. He set the envelope down in front of her without a word. Mel shifted her eyes off the screen and TRUMAN UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS DEPARTMENT came into focus.
Her parents were overjoyed.
Mel felt a different emotion, something closer to bewildered surprise. She’d been stumbling through the wreckage of her imploded life this summer, trying her best not to glance down at the broken pieces. But here