tonight in a one-on-one tomorrow. Stroll into his classroom before all her teammates arrive and watch him squirm as she sets down his laptop, already open to the Trident email exchange. She’ll play it totally cool, lay her cards out, tell him how it’s going to go. She’ll keep this “miscommunication” between the two of them, so long as Coach gets her recruited to play at a different college. Wait. Actually, fuck that. For all she’s sacrificed, Phoebe wants to play at a D1 school and have her happy ending with Mel. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, right? He has the contacts. He’s made so much happen for other girls. Now he needs to make it happen for her. Or else.
It’s kind of fucked-up but Phoebe totally would do it if not the fact that she reinjured her knee. The thought of enduring another ACL surgery, and then another grueling six months of rehab, is just too much for her to bear. Even if it went well, even if she worked just as hard as she had the first time, Phoebe would miss her entire varsity season. And even with Coach giving his network of scouts a full-court press, no college was going to offer her a spot on the roster after she blew out her ACL twice in a year.
There is no way out of this hell. It’s only fair that Coach get trapped in hell with her.
She got a glimpse of what this hell looks like tonight. She noticed, when she was in Coach’s classroom with Mel, how he’s made it into a weird museum celebrating his glory days. His collegiate team pictures professionally framed. His national jersey in a glass shadow box. His sticks, medals. All reminders of his unfulfilled potential. The life he imagined he’d have looming like a shadow over the here and now.
Coach has always given off the vibe that he’s too good for West Essex. He dresses like he is. He walks down the hall like he is. He teaches like he is, barely caring. What she interpreted as cockiness, Phoebe now sees is misery.
There’ve been so many times Phoebe has felt that same misery inside her. Pulling her down, making her unkind, ungenerous, competitive. She hates who she is becoming, and she sees her future in Coach. Her one hope for tonight is that by blowing him up, she’ll detonate those terrible parts of herself, too.
Phoebe parks Mel’s car in her driveway, rewraps her Ace bandage, and gathers her things. She digs her phone out of the pillowcase in Mel’s trunk. There are a million text messages and missed calls from Mel. Her voice mail is full.
MEL: Phoebe are you okay?
MEL: Please let me know you’re okay.
MEL: We will get through this together. I promise.
Phoebe shuts her phone off before she reads any more. She grabs Coach’s laptop, slides it underneath her arm, and limps around to the back of the house, where she knows the sliding glass door will have been left open for her.
Mel’s parents sleep like the dead. Memory foam, expensive sheets that stay cool and slip against your skin, tufted headboard, shades that block out all light, a sound machine emitting steady rolls of ocean waves. Not to mention their nightcaps, an Ativan for Mel’s mother and a tumbler of Scotch with a tennis-ball-sized ice cube for her father. For these reasons, Phoebe feels no need to be quiet as she moves through the kitchen toward the basement stairs.
But hobbling down the steps, her breathing turns shallow. The other girls are deeper in, talking, laughing, getting ready for bed. She freezes like an intruder when she hears someone coming; the instinct to turn and run before she’s discovered kicks up her pulse. Even if she could run, it’s too late. She’s caught.
“Phoebe!” It’s Mel, now changed into her pj’s. She rushes over, takes the handful of steps separating them in two long leaps. “Are you okay?”
“I … don’t know.”
A flash of panic. “Where’s Buddy?”
Phoebe says, “I took him back, let him loose in the front yard.”
Mel exhales. “I knew it.” She threads their hands together, tugging her down into the basement. “Everyone’s going to be so relieved to see you.”
“Wait.” Phoebe pulls herself free. The wind that filled her sails just moments ago has gone still. She came in here intending to blow up Coach’s spot in front of her entire team. But now she hesitates. “Can we talk for a second? Privately?”
“Phoebe … I’m sorry