an eleven-year-old, Mel had boundless energy. Annie adopted a strategy of running Mel ragged so she’d pass out by ten o’clock, giving Annie a few hours to lie on the couch and enjoy the Gingriches’ premium cable.
Mel was curious, so Annie drove them to her house to get an extra stick and some cones she had, and then she put Mel through a couple of drills in the backyard. Mel was good, intense, a quick learner. Later, Annie let Mel stay up past her bedtime and showed her a rough cut of the video Annie was having made for college scouts. The Dormont Lady Knights were in second place behind the Oak Knolls Bulldogs. Annie told Mel that West Essex field hockey wasn’t great, but that was a year or so before Coach got hired. Anyway, Mel fell asleep on the couch while watching videos of other girls playing all around the world. England, Australia, India, Germany, China.
Mel awoke the next morning tucked in her bed. Her father must have carried her up. Downstairs, she saw that Annie had left her old stick behind for Mel to keep, plus a ball and a few cones.
In spite of what a feral little monster Mel looks like in the picture—bug bites and dirty fingernails, clutching her borrowed stick, Annie standing proudly behind her, hands on Mel’s shoulders—a rush of love for Annie drowns out her embarrassment. How crazy it is, the way certain people can come into your life and change it. It gives Mel a hopeful feeling. Like nothing is set in stone. Like you don’t have to steer through life so much as pinball through.
Coach seizes the opening to escape. To her mother, he says, “This was a perfect kickoff to this season.” Her father gets a firm handshake. They thank him for coming, for everything he’s done for their daughter, and her father promises a draft of the recommendation letter Coach asked for by next week.
“Cupcake?” Mel asks, as a joke more than anything.
“I’m feeling sick to my stomach,” Coach mutters, breezing past her.
And now Mel is too. So starved for a win—any win—she completely misread the tone of Coach’s texts, if not his entire post-speech mood.
From the doorway, she watches Coach stalk down the hallway. He doesn’t stop to say goodbye to any of the girls he passes, doesn’t slow down when stepping over sleeping bags or around field hockey sticks. One fluid motion carries him straight out her front door.
“Tonight couldn’t have gone better,” her mother says. “A Psych-Up befitting the best captain the Wildcats has ever had.” She plants a kiss on Mel’s cheek.
“We’re so proud of you, Melly,” her father says, coming around Mel’s opposite side to take another cupcake.
She passes him the platter.
Mel follows the same escape route, as if Coach had been demoing a drill, only with a layer of nothing to see here camouflage, because the last thing she needs right now is for her teammates to see their captain panicking. She takes an empty cup from Kearson and drops it in a wastebasket, pauses to adjust the angle of a throw pillow on a bench, pretends to be texting someone. When she reaches the front door, she is careful to open and then close it without causing so much as a tap from the brass knocker.
It hasn’t cooled down much outside but Mel shivers anyway. Coach’s Escalade is still parked at the end of her driveway. And he’s sitting on the bottom step, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands.
He glances up and she knows—he’s been waiting for her.
“Took you long enough.”
Despite her earlier misread, Mel knows for certain what the situation is now. Coach may have gotten a few things off his chest tonight, but he’s carrying the real burden in his mind. The unfortunate consequence of having so many hopes and dreams and big ideas.
Whenever Coach got tangled up like this, Mel was the one he turned to for help to sort things out. She’d be his shoulder, his sounding board. It didn’t matter if they were texting or talking, by the end of their conversation, Coach would feel clearheaded.
Who had Coach turned to in lieu of Mel during the months of silence between them? Did he have someone else to talk to? Or did he keep everything bottled up inside? Mel isn’t sure. Nor does she care. Coach needs her now. That’s what matters.
Mel’s heels click down the brick stairs. She sits down quietly beside him.
“This