Written in the Scars(40)

“Nice work!” he shouts.

I round the corner and pause by the bleachers. Dustin marches across the floor and stops inches from the coach’s face. They go at it, fingers in chests, veins popping.

“Hit the showers, Dustin!” I boom.

All heads turn to me. Jaws hit the floor. My eyes stay trained on my player.

“You heard him,” Reynolds says, his chest rising and falling from the exchange.

“He’s not the coach,” Dustin growls, turning to Reynolds. “You are.”

Reynolds doesn’t back down. “This is his team. You know that. Now hit the showers like you were told.”

No one utters a word as I traverse the room. When I reach Dustin, his eyes are wide. He’s only seen this look on my face a couple of times and neither has ended well for him.

I love this kid. I’ve even had him over for supper a few times and Elin keeps an eye on him academically. But his attitude can be something fierce, something I try to handle when it erupts at me because I get where it’s coming from. His parents left town while he was at a friend’s house when he was seven years old. He’s been in foster care ever since, moving from house to house, school to school. He’s been in Jackson for five years now, part of the team for two. I’ve heard enough stories, seen enough of his strained life, to have empathy for the boy. Yet, it’s my job to teach him to manage his anger and act like the man he’s going to be, hard life or not.

“Apologize to him,” I say through gritted teeth.

“He had us running suicides for the last twenty minutes!”

“I don’t give a shit if he had you running them all practice. You do not disrespect your coach like that. Apologize or get the hell out of here.”

A flicker of something dashes through his eyes and I make note of it.

“Everyone, come here,” I say.

The boys gather around, balls on their hips, sweat dripping off their chins. They watch me with a mixture of trepidation and respect that makes me pause.

This team, all fifteen athletes standing in front of me, are my responsibility. They’re my boys, my team, my group of kids to inspire and encourage, even if I did officially resign. I can’t let them down any more than I already have.

Taking a deep breath, I face them all.

“How are ya?” I ask.

They nod, mumble their typical “fine,” “okay,” “all right” and wait for me to continue.

“Look, guys, I want to say I’m sorry.”

“No, Coach, it’s fine—” Jason begins, but I wave him off.

“You know what? It’s not fine,” I say, looking him in the eye.

“No, it’s not,” Dustin says, squaring his shoulders.

“Where have you been?” Pauly asks, a tall kid with blonde hair.

“Yeah, Coach . . .” Their questions come at me in a flurry, some asking out of concern, other voices on the cusp of an outburst.

I take a deep breath. “Guys, give me a minute.” I run my hand through my hair. “Look, I get why you’re mad. You have every right to be. If any of you want to talk one-on-one, let me know and we can meet up after practice or do some fishing this weekend and get it all worked out, okay?”

The energy in the room stills, lowering a few notches. I breathe a little easier.

“You all give me one hundred percent every night on this court,” I continue. “Some of you have done that now for four years. And I resigned and didn’t respect you enough to give you a heads-up. I was wrong to do that.”

Holding out my hands, Jason passes me a ball. I flip him a smile and he returns it.

“I love basketball,” I say, passing the ball between my hands. “It’s good competition, a fun way to pass some time. But you know what else it is, what it teaches?”

“Teamwork,” Jason says quietly, unsure if it was a rhetorical question.

“Exactly. It teaches us to rely on the guys around you. So when James has a bad night and can’t hit the broad side of a barn—”

“Hey!” he interjects to the laughs of his friends.

“When that happens,” I smile, “we have Dustin or Pauly or Matt that can pick up the slack. It’s not just you, individually, out there, taking on the opponent. It’s all of you.”

I bounce the ball a few times, trying to get my thoughts together, when the silence is broken by Jason.

“You know, Coach,” he says, clearing his throat, “There aren’t just fifteen of us. There’s seventeen. There’s Reynolds and you too.”

I smile at my starting forward.

“Whatever happened to you, we would’ve been there for you too. Just like on the court. If you were missing your shots, we would’ve had your back,” Jason says.

“But you stopped playing,” Dustin challenges, clearly the most affected by my departure. “You just walked off the team.”

“And I was wrong,” I say, turning to face him. “I got all caught up in myself and forgot about my team. I forgot a lot of things. Sometimes . . .” I pull my gaze to the floor. “Sometimes it’s easier to run off and try to deal with things on your own because you don’t want people to see you struggle. But all that does is—”

“It lets your team down,” Dustin chimes in.