selfish. I haven’t been this excited to coach someone in … well, it’s been a while.” His eyes drift over her shoulder, focusing briefly behind her.
Luci turns.
Mel, still sitting at that front-row desk, sets her pen down and begins to smooth the tape onto her stick handle, pressing the edges, careful, precise. Mel is definitely close enough to have heard their conversation, but if she’s been listening, Luci can’t tell.
“Anyway, Luci.” Coach’s voice is at a normal volume again, and Luci spins to attention. “I want you to start thinking about goals for this season. Lay out what you want to accomplish.”
“You mean like … learn a lot?”
Coach’s face crinkles with polite embarrassment. “I’m talking about setting some stat goals to get you on the college scouting radar. It wouldn’t hurt to make a list of top schools. D1 and D2. More and more high school players aren’t waiting to commit anymore. This summer, a sophomore at Ellis signed a letter of intent for DCU, full ride.”
Luci bites down on her smile. This conversation feels impossible—she hasn’t even played a single game yet—but if it were true, if there were even a remote chance at a scholarship, it would majorly help her mother, who was already drowning in med school debt.
“Now, you came over to ask me something, right?” He rolls his pencil through his fingers so fast, it’s a yellow blur.
Right. Her mother. Still outside waiting. Luci thinks of a quick excuse, instead of telling Coach the truth, because she doesn’t want to seem babyish. “May I please go to the bathroom?”
She winces. Smooth, Luci. Real smooth.
Coach laughs at her, but to his credit, attempts to disguise it by clearing his throat. “Just make it quick.”
Luci’s been in the upper school only once, for the holiday concert. She never walked the halls or peeked inside a classroom before this. It feels like high school here. Serious. Straightforward. Smart Boards. Meanwhile, at the lower school, her eighth grade locker had been directly above a kindergarten classroom, and once, as she searched for a tampon in her book bag, she’d heard children singing their ABCs. This memory only makes Luci happier to be here now, as if a paper-chain umbilical cord tethering her to childhood has at last been snipped.
She hurries past the bathroom and into the stairwell, quietly pushes on one of the metal doors leading outside, and then sprints toward her mother’s car idling in the parking lot. Every muscle feels sore.
Her mother is in the front seat, dabbing at her white lab coat with a Clorox bleach pen. The plan was to grab lunch together before her shift. When she was still in med school, Luci’s mother kept more of a normal schedule, but now that she’s begun her residency, she’s on two to eleven. Once school starts back up, they’ll be running on entirely opposite schedules.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mom. I thought I’d be dismissed by now.”
“No sweat. If we don’t have the time to sit down someplace, we’ll hit a drive-through.”
Lots of people comment that Luci and her mother look like sisters. Yes, her mother is young, and that’s part of it. Both have skin that will tan in the weakest sunshine, eyes the color of honey, brown hair streaked with copper and gold. Still, Luci knows it’s a generous compliment, because her mother is full-bloom beautiful while she’s a bud.
“Actually … there’s this thing about the older girls giving rides to the new girls on the team.” Luci shyly adds, as a way to not feel like such a jerk, “I made varsity. The only one from my grade.”
Her mother tosses her bleach pen aside and squeals. “I didn’t want to ask, just in case! Wow, Luci! This is a big deal, isn’t it?”
“Kinda. Coach is already talking to me about college scholarships and stuff.”
“For real?” Luci dodges as her mother tries swatting her through the open window. They both laugh giddily, because even after these last few days of tryouts, it still feels surreal—practically divine—to discover that Luci might be gifted at something she only just tried. Her mother kisses two of her fingers and presses them to the cross that dangles from the rearview mirror. “Okay, well, if you’re sleeping when I get home from the hospital, I’m waking you up. I want all the details.”
Luci bites her lip. “Actually, there’s a mandatory team sleepover tonight. They call it a Psych-Up. Our first scrimmage is tomorrow afternoon.” There’s a dip in her