Heroine(37)

“Go get it,” Coach yells at Bella Center, who lopes after it good-naturedly, more than familiar with the punishment.

“I’m getting good at hiding things,” I admit quietly.

“Like what?” Carolina asks.

Like pain. Like fear. Like dead people’s OxyContin prescriptions.

“Dick pics from your boyfriend,” I say.

“Whatever, chica,” Carolina laughs, the odd sheen on her eyes evaporating. “Your screen is too small.”

“So are your boobs,” I tell her. “Curveball?”

“Yeah.” She nods, taking the ball from me. “I can do that.”

“Cool,” I say, flipping my mask back down.

I get behind the plate and crouch into position, giving her the signal for the curve. I ignore the pull in my hip. I ignore the tremor that’s started in my bare hand. I ignore the nausea welling in my gut. I ignore everything I don’t want to see.

I pull over on the way home to puke.

I’m so close to keeping it all together that I don’t realize I’m about to lose it until it’s almost too late. I’ve got to slam on the brakes, tires screaming and gravel flying. For a moment all I’ve got is panic, nothing else. Then fear gets a good grip and I’m thinking I fucked everything up again and am about to take my car right off the road, ruin my leg and any chance I’ve got at a scholarship.

Then I’m stopped, half on, half off the road. I’m clenching my teeth shut against vomit when I throw the door open, leaning out just enough that I don’t splatter on the running board. I manage it, mostly. Then the incline I stopped on works against me and the car door swings back, with me nowhere near done puking. I stick my leg out, getting a good pinch for my effort, then unhook my belt and throw myself out the door. I land on my hands and knees, lunch coming back up all over the shoulder of the road.

Somebody honks at me, a good-natured toot-toot like maybe I just provided the day’s entertainment. I managed to get my car mostly off the road, but not all the way, something I can’t acknowledge or apologize for because I’m still emptying my gut. The next driver leans on the horn, but I hear brakes on the third, followed by the familiar tick-tock of hazard lights blinking, then a voice I know.

“Mickey?”

It’s Lydia, her words edged with a mix of disbelief and concern, but mostly the former. I doubt she expected to turn the corner to find me on all fours, staring down at a steaming puddle. I can’t do more than nod that, yes, it is in fact me. Lydia gets her hands in my armpits and hauls me to my feet, carefully sidestepping the mess I made. It’s so mortifying, so against who I am and what I project to my teammates, that I don’t know what to say to her.

“You’re a wreck, girl,” Lydia says, standing back to take me all in, the exhibit of what Mickey Catalan has become in the small stretch of time between the end of practice and now. “Stomach flu get you?”

I nod. It’s believable. Our government teacher went home halfway through the day today, and I saw a line of kids in the office waiting to call their parents to come get them, green around the gills.

“Can you drive?”

I nod again, searching for the words required to get me away from the mess I’ve made at our feet, the scraped bare earth where my tires screeched to a halt, the embarrassingly black dirt where I went into the ditch.

“I’m fine,” I assure Lydia. “Thanks for . . . stopping.”

“No problem.” She shrugs and gets into her own car. Her hazards go off, but she’s not going anywhere until I do. I thank her again, in my head. Lydia’s not going to freak out or make a big deal about it, won’t make me feel helpless. But she’s not leaving until she knows I’m really okay.

I’m not, and I know it. I did as Luther said, went without Oxy until I could finally take a crap. It got things moving, all right, but it’s all coming up, not out. I put my car back in gear, giving Lydia a wave as I pull away, gripping the steering wheel tightly so that I don’t have to see how much my hands are shaking.

It’s not just in my fingers though. I can feel the small movements, tiny tremors, rippling out from the center of me, every nerve I have sparking and jerking, the energy flying out into nothingness as I quake in the driver’s seat. I’m struggling to get a good grip on the doorknob once I’m home, and Mom’s face when I walk into the kitchen is enough to tell me that I look the same as I feel.

“Mickey!” Her shock is pervasive, sending pings of alarm across my brain. I can’t let her know. Cannot let her guess what is actually going on here. She’s got a hand on my arm but I’m slick with cold sweat and it slides right off.

“Sit down, honey,” she says. “You look terrible. What happened?”

Mom leads me to the kitchen table, where I can smell dinner cooking. It sends another wave of nausea through me and I have to put my head down, my own rancid breath reflected back in my face off the smooth surface of the table.

“Mickey?” Her hand is on the middle of my back, the touch painful even though it is light. Every piece of me hurts, every inch of skin feels as if it has been sliced, every bone insisting to my brain that it has been broken.

“Flu. And I can’t shit.” I’d been meaning to tell her about the constipation, after Edith’s miracle cure of prune juice did nothing other than make my pee smell funny.