Heroine(30)

One of Coach’s favorite sayings is that scar tissue is stronger than skin, and anybody who makes it to twenty without a mark on them isn’t trying hard enough. I’ve tried—and it shows. She can tell the stories behind most of my scars as well as I can, and with as much pride. We’re cut from the same cloth, no doubt—and I don’t think she’d be impressed with my newfound shortcut through pain.

I spend extra time in the hot shower after an afternoon nap, trying to dispel the last of the fog from my head. I dig into my hip, like a warning to my screws to behave in front of Coach. I’m gaining muscle, can barely get down to them, but I think I can detect one head, pushing out farther than the others. The old bruise from all my digging is still there, deep in my tissue. I give it a nudge, letting it know I’m still here, too.

I’ve got a towel in my hair and am headed to my room when Mom yells up the stairs that I’ve got a visitor. I change fast, my hair a tangled mess that hangs down my back and leaves a wet spot on my shirt. But I don’t take the time to brush it out or put it up. Coach is here, and she’s waiting. I hurry downstairs as quick as I can, to find her at the sofa, accepting a steaming cup of coffee from Mom.

“You’re moving well,” she says, eyes already dissecting my gait as I cross the room, checking to see if my weight is distributed evenly or if I’m favoring my bad leg.

“Therapy has been awesome,” I tell her. “And I’ve been lifting.”

“I heard,” she says, and I can’t tell from her tone whether she approves. I should’ve known that the boys’ basketball coach would’ve told her as much. Carolina has sworn for months now that they share more than stats with each other, but nobody has the guts to ask either one of them.

“I’m just going to jump right in,” Coach says, talking to me instead of Mom. “You know I want you behind the plate for the first pitch. You’re the best catcher I’ve got and you’ve got a chemistry with Carolina that nobody else does.”

“Yep,” I say. “And I swear to you I’m—”

Coach holds up her hand to stop me. And I stop. It’s like running bases.

“But,” she says, and my stomach drops; the only thing preventing it from falling right down to my feet are the tips of the three screws that hold my body together. I feel the blood leave my face, and Mom puts her hand on my knee.

“But,” Coach goes on. “You were in an accident, Mickey. You sustained a serious injury.”

I think of a Barbie leg, snapping away from the body, a hole in her plasticized hip where the peg goes, how she pops back together and functions just the same. Well, almost. I bet that Barbie comes apart a little more easily every time.

“My point is, no one would think less of you if you needed to sit a few games out at the start of the season.”

“Sit a few games out?” I repeat it, in shock, like Coach just told me to execute a puppy.

“Mickey, I know what this means to you and—”

“I’m fine,” I say, interrupting Coach. Which is something you do not do.

“I understand, but Nikki showed promise in the summer leagues as an eighth grader. If we put her back there for some of the weaker teams at the beginning—”

“I’m fine,” I say again. “Nikki is capable. I’m better.”

Coach is quiet for a second, a little muscle at the edge of her mouth jumping as she decides whether to let me have it for cutting her off not once but twice. She looks to my mom.

“You’ve got a say in this, too,” she says. “This is your daughter’s health.”

“It is,” Mom says, taking a deep breath. “But it’s her body. Nobody knows how she feels besides Mickey. If she says she’s ready, then she is.”

I relax a little, realizing that I wasn’t sure if Mom would back me.

“All right.” Coach stands, not even feigning interest in the coffee Mom gave her. She came here to talk to me about softball, and now that conversation is over. We follow her to the door.

“You’ve said you’re ready, and I believe you,” Coach says as she leaves. “But two weeks from now, you’re going to have to show me.”

“I will,” I tell her, chin out.

“’Kay,” is all she says.

Later, I try to convince myself that she didn’t notice how stiff my right leg was when I got up from the couch. That Coach didn’t see the shift of my hips as I put all my weight on my left leg at the door, something that has become more of a habit than anything. One I’m going to have to break.

Just like a Barbie leg.





Chapter Twenty-Two


team: a number of persons banded together for a common endeavor, or to compete in a contest

When conditioning starts the only thing I allow myself to be is a softball player.

I am not someone who was in an accident. I am not a person recovering from an injury. I am not a girl who has upped her Oxy over the last two weeks in order to calm the anxious voices and quell the tide of anxiety as each day got me closer to this, my day of reckoning.

All I am today is an athlete.

I see it in the other girls’ faces in the hall, a stony preparation with tiny fissures where our doubts go. The ones who don’t play basketball have the most cracks in their composure, and the one-sport athletes who have let themselves be lazy in the off-season. And then there’s me, the girl who had crutches in January and today claims she will be running two miles.