that night, she glowed brighter than ever before. Was it her accomplishments that Coach was most attracted to? And if so, was that bad? He said he saw so much of himself in her. So what if those parts were the parts he liked best?
His texts to her post-dinner spun her light down like a dimmer switch. And the realization that she hadn’t been able to get into Truman on her own snuffed her out.
Is that why things cooled off so suddenly afterward? Because he’d seen through her confident routine from the start? She heard nothing from him for the next three weeks. Three weeks she spent on edge, preparing to be captain, planning her Psych-Up, worrying she’d let Phoebe down, trying to untangle herself from Gordy, afraid she wouldn’t be able to meet Coach’s expectations of greatness. It was state championship or bust.
Oh, Gordy. God, she screwed that up.
She chose to see it as a challenge. Coach only broke her down so he could build her back up. He always led her places she never thought she could go. If Coach believed she could do it, she would do it.
It’s never been her place to question him.
It’s her job to trust him.
And she did trust him.
Did.
So why can’t she bring herself to open the laptop?
Because the reasons that make things more simple for her teammates are the same reasons that complicate this for Mel. None of the girls are in love with Coach. None of them have worked as hard as Mel to make themselves in his image. None of them owe Coach as much as she does.
Worse, Mel feels culpable in every dark moment the girls shared tonight. She’s been his little puppet, his sounding board. Mel has never felt so ill equipped, so unprepared.
Mel doesn’t need to read a single email to know that she has failed her team.
Maybe she’s the one who should quit.
A soft knock at her door. Mel holds her breath. It will be Phoebe. Here to see if she’s opened the laptop. No. She is such a coward.
“Mel? Are you awake?”
It’s Luci.
Mel gets up and unlocks the door. Opens it only halfway. “What is it?” She makes her voice sound sleepy, so Luci will think she’s woken Mel up. She could use that, Mel thinks, should she need to end the conversation quickly.
“Can I come in?”
Mel sighs and opens the door a touch wider. Luci enters and sits herself right down on Mel’s bed, the mattress bouncing. She’s not fueled by bravado. Her teeth are clenched in worry, tight as the wire threading her braces.
“I was waiting for you to come back downstairs,” she tells Mel. “But then I decided it might be better if I just came up here to talk with you. So we could have privacy.”
“Okay.”
Mel sits beside her, and Luci immediately twists to face her, curls her legs up neatly with her on the bed. Mel sees that Luci’s holding something in her hands, something Luci squeezes for courage, before allowing her fingers to unfurl like petals.
A phone.
Mel’s eyes narrow. “I thought you said you didn’t bring your phone with you tonight. I thought you said it was drying out in a bag of rice.”
Dropping her chin to her chest, Luci says, “I’m so sorry I lied to you. But I only did it because Coach asked me to.”
“What?”
“He pulled me aside at the Psych-Up right before he left. He said he was planning a surprise and he needed my help to pull it off. He took my phone, put his number in it, and then told me where to find your keys so I could hide it inside your car.”
Mel’s so startled, the memories hit her like flashes of light, brief and blinding. Coach pretending to have left his phone in her house. Passing Luci on her way back inside with the duffel bag Mel thought contained varsity jerseys. Luci rushing up to be the first one to sit in Mel’s car as they were about to drive to the field.
Luci continues, “He’s been asking me for updates all night long. Wanting to know where we were and what we were doing, what the girls were saying about him.” Luci’s neck is flush and she wafts her T-shirt to cool herself down. “He knows that we went to Gordy’s party. He was saying weird stuff to me about Grace, making fun of her hair.”
Mel’s hands grip wads of her comforter. She’s thinking of all the effort Coach put