A Game Worth Watching (13 page)

She
glanced at his house between shots, trying to see him through the windows. He
happened to slide into view from his bedroom window on the second floor and
caught her looking at him. He raised his hand with a pleading look on his face,
indicating he needed five more minutes. She growled and turned away. He’d told
her the same thing twenty minutes ago. Pounding the ball against the pavement,
she returned her focus to the basketball hoop until she heard the front door
open behind her a few minutes later.

“Finally,”
she muttered. She turned, expecting Riley but it was his dad instead. “Oh, hey,
Mr. Ledger.”

Over
the years, Mr. and Mrs. Ledger had told her multiple times to call them by
their first names, but Emma couldn’t. Calling them Robert and Kate just didn’t
feel right. Maybe it was because she still felt like a child in their presence,
maybe it was the amount of respect she had for them, or maybe it was a small
reminder for Emma not to get too close or too attached because they, too, could
leave her.

“You
had a pretty good game the other night,” Mr. Ledger said from the front porch
where he stood watching her. He cleared his throat. “I, uh, noticed you used
some of the moves I taught you.”

She
laughed. Her talent on the basketball court was nothing more than a testament
of Mr. Ledger’s coaching ability, and he knew it. “What basketball moves
haven’t I learned from you?”

Mr.
Ledger chuckled and joined her in the driveway. “How’s the team coming along?”
He was dressed in an old pair of cargo pants, ratty old sneakers, and a
sweatshirt with paint stains smeared across the front. Even with his messy
brown hair and day-old whiskers, Mr. Ledger still looked like the world’s
number one dad.

She
passed him the ball, and he put up a perfect shot, using the same form he’d
taught her and Riley.

She
shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” Yes, they’d won their first game and only lost their
second by ten points, but the team didn’t flow like Saturday morning games with
the guys.

He
looked at her from the corner of his eye. “There any more to that?”

It
was wrong how Mr. Ledger knew her better than her own dad. He knew the
questions to ask and the questions to hold back. He knew what wisdom to share
and what lessons she needed to figure out on her own. Thinking back on her
childhood, most of her cherished father-daughter moments had taken place with
Riley’s dad, not her own. She often wondered what made Mr. Ledger so different
than her own dad, but she could never figure it out.

She
rebounded the ball and twirled it in her hands, trying to put her feelings into
words. “Sometimes I feel like the girls just stand around and expect me to do
all the work. It’s aggravating.”

Mr.
Ledger barked out a laugh. “Emma, you are an amazing basketball player. Next to
you those girls look and probably feel like the worst players in the world. You
have to be patient with them.”

Patient?
Was that even possible with girls? Frustration, annoyance, madness—now
those were emotions Emma could relate to in the presence of girls. Not
patience. She couldn’t sit passively by with a smile on her face and wait for
the girls to step it up. It was physically, emotionally, and mentally
impossible for her. But feeling Mr. Ledger’s eyes watching her, she knew she
had to at least try. Besides, her resentment toward the female population
wasn’t her only problem.

“The
most difficult part is not knowing them,” she admitted. Even on a court full of
screaming, whining girls, Emma couldn’t help feeling lonely. Not having Riley and
the guys next to her was bad enough, but the game of girls’ basketball felt
foreign to her. “When I play with the guys I know I have to lead Jerry with the
pass, I have to set the screen for Cy on the left because he can’t dribble
right, and I have to help Tom on defense because he always gets beat on the
baseline. The girls can’t even catch a pass thrown right to them, much less
plow through a couple of defenders for a basket. I refuse to play down to their
level, but it’s impossible to play at the level I play at with the guys. It’s
driving me crazy.”

Mr.
Ledger gave her a compassionate smile.

Emma
hoped she wouldn’t have to verbally request Mr. Ledger’s guidance. She trusted
him, respected him, and depended on him to steer her in the right direction, no
matter how difficult the path might be. She stood quietly, waiting.

“Let
me ask you a question,” he said. “When you look at your teammates, do you see
how bad they are or do you see how good they could be?”

Ouch.
Leave it to Mr. Ledger to know exactly what question to ask to make Emma bite
her tongue and bow her head.

He
paused, not waiting for an answer but waiting for his words to fully sink in,
before he continued. “Sometimes being the best player is not about how good you
are fundamentally, but about playing
with
your team. Knowing their strengths and
weaknesses, no matter how difficult they are to find. Sweetheart, your purpose
is not to make yourself look good and your teammates look bad; it’s about
making the team look great.”

Not
exactly the words she wanted to hear, which probably meant he was right. “That
doesn’t sound easy.”

His
laughter reminded her of Riley. “Nor is it supposed to, but you’re the only one
on the team who can do it. If you figure it out, it will all be worth it. I
promise.”

Why
should she care? They were just a bunch of girls. None of it mattered. But when
she looked at Mr. Ledger and locked her gaze with his, she knew he had higher
expectations for her. He believed in her just like his son. She didn’t
understand why they made her want to do better and be better, and not be
satisfied with anything else.

She
longed to have these father-daughter talks with her own dad, not Riley’s, but
her dad was always so tired or focused on her brothers to take much interest in
her. He had yet to ask one question about basketball. Mr. Ledger was different.
He cared.

Emma
sighed. It was so much easier to complain about her teammates’ incompetence and
not care. Caring required a change of thought, a change of action, and a change
of heart. “It sounds like I have work to do,” she muttered, not even trying to
feign enthusiasm.

He
shrugged and handed her the ball, not wanting to force her into anything. “Only
you would know.”

Which
totally meant yes.

“Will
you tell Riley I’ll see him later?”

He
nodded. “I will.”

If
there was one thing Emma learned during the next two hours while she conducted
her own solo practice at the park, it was that it wasn’t about making a perfect
pass; it was about making the pass perfect. The difference between the two was
vast. She could snap a perfect two-handed chest pass across the court, but if
no one was there to catch it, or if someone was there who couldn’t catch it,
what would be the point? Maybe a perfect pass needed to be low or high or
slightly off center depending on who was on the receiving end of it.

Learning
the strengths and weaknesses of each girl on her team seemed like an easy task,
considering ninety-nine percent of basketball was their weakness, but it was
more than learning about their strengths and weaknesses. She needed to learn
how to play with them and to them.

During
the next week, Emma observed her teammates. Madison couldn’t dribble with her
left hand, Christi’s shooting range didn’t extend beyond the key, Shiloh couldn’t
dribble without looking at the ball, Peyton couldn’t play defense to save her
life, Steph was all height but no speed, Lauren was foul happy, and Ashley was,
well, Ashley. None of this was news to Emma, considering she’d spent every
practice cringing over their mistakes, but she couldn’t ignore the truth.
Madison could hit any moving target with her passes, Christi caused a fair
amount of turnovers as a defender, Steph was unstoppable under the basket,
Peyton pounced on all the loose balls, Shiloh hammered for every rebound and
claimed most of them, Lauren couldn’t miss a shot inside the three-point
circle, and Ashley had a knack for sneaking through the holes of the defense.

Emma
smiled. All she needed to do now was execute a plan to pull the team together.
Maybe, just maybe, this team had a shot at something more than a handful of
wins. They didn’t have to like each other, they didn’t have to socialize off
the court, and they didn’t have to pretend they existed in a utopian society.
All they had to do was play basketball. Together. It wouldn’t have been so
difficult if Emma could get the rest of the girls to focus on basketball long
enough to learn something. But girls were girls. They always found a way to
distract themselves.

***

No
matter how much Coach acted like a drill sergeant, stretching and warm-ups
never ceased to move beyond social time. Emma stretched in silence, listening
to the girls around her chatter about boys. If the guys only knew how they
served as the topic of way too many conversations between girls, their heads
would explode.

From
across the circle, Emma heard a gasp. “We should all go to the dance together!”

No
person could fake that much enthusiasm.

Other
conversations around the circle broke off as the girls diverted their attention
to the unified discussion topic.

“C’mon,”
Madison said. “It will be so much fun. Just the girls.”

Emma
didn’t even try to hide the disgust on her face. School dance? Just the girls? Seriously?
Friday night dances held no purpose other than for teens to congregate and
express way too much physical affection toward one another. The idea of
attending the dance, especially with a group of girls, terrified her. Girls
screaming for attention, guys on the prowl, teachers trying to enforce rules
from another century—dances were nothing more than one big drama fest.

No
one else shared her animosity. One by one the faces around her lit up at the
idea.

Before
she could open her mouth to object, the rest of the girls started squealing
their agreement. Emma cringed.

“What
about you, Emma?” Christi asked, as if knowing exactly what would put her over
the top. “You up for a little dancing?”

Christi’s
attempt to bust a move in the middle of stretches was not the way to entice
Emma to join them. Emma shook her head and held up both hands to ward them off.
“I’ll pass.”

“Great,”
Madison said with way too much perk. “We’ll pick you up at seven, and then meet
at Lauren’s to carpool together.”

Emma’s
mouth dropped open. “No, I—”

Her
protest was lost among the squeals, which lasted throughout the entire
practice. A distraction their team didn’t need. Basketball Emma could do, no
matter what she encountered on the court. But a school dance? With just the
girls? She wouldn’t survive more than ten minutes. Why did they even want her
to come anyway? It wasn’t like they’d formed some unbreakable bond during the
past week. Okay, so maybe after their first win some of the girls stopped
staring at her like she was a solo act in some freak show, but they were still
a long way from any sort of friendship.

Emma
made it home after her double practices with barely enough time to shower and
change before Madison arrived. She knew if she fled, Madison would hunt her
down and make a public display of dragging her to the dance. Emma didn’t even
have time to notify Riley of the hostage situation. She was on her own.

If
the girls expected her to dress up in girly clothes and actually care about her
appearance, they had another thing coming. Jeans and a sweatshirt. The dance
didn’t deserve anything more than that.

The
bass from Madison’s car could be heard from two blocks away. With a screeching
halt, the Land Rover stopped in front of her house, and she hopped in before
anyone could get a decent look at her one-story rambler. Compared to the rest
of the houses in the neighborhood, the Wrangtons’ was the black spot, the eye
sore, the house everyone turned a blind eye to hoping it would someday
disappear. The paint, cracked and peeling, was no match for the summer sun and
the winter storms that beat against it every year. Overgrown shrubs concealed
half the house from the neighbors’ view, and an old truck rusted in the
driveway. The grass needed mowing, the weeds needed pulling, and the roof moss
needed scraping. Grateful Madison and Christi weren’t detail-oriented
observers, Emma breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away from the curb and
left her house behind.

The
decision to jump into Madison’s car proved not to be one of Emma’s better
judgments. Madison sped down the street, nearly taking out a mailbox and
swiping the bumper of a parked car. Despite the restraint of her seatbelt, Emma
braced herself against the door and the backseat for additional safety measures
against Madison’s erratic turns and abrupt stops.

She
couldn’t help but laugh at Madison and Christi as they sang way off-key to the
music blasting from the speakers, knowing every word to every song. Car dancing
was another thing Emma didn’t understand about girls. What was the point of
bouncing while restrained by a seatbelt? They looked like caged monkeys going
crazy over a banana. She shook her head and laughed. Knowing what girls did in
the privacy of their own cars was one thing, having the visual to prove it was another.

After
fifteen minutes of Madison’s hazardous driving, they screeched to a stop in
front of Lauren’s house. Emma unclenched her hands from the edge of the seat
and tumbled out onto solid ground, not prepared for the sight in front of her.
No wonder Lauren acted like a rich snob; everything in her life screamed it.
Even in the dark, the massive two-story house had enough curb appeal to make
the rich neighbors jealous. A pristine blanket of grass warned feet to keep
off. Brick stairs led to the front porch from the street, bordered on both
sides by rose bushes. On the second story, another covered porch wrapped around
the house and jutted out on one side beyond the roof. Bay and picture windows
took up half the house and welcomed views of Puget Sound and breathtaking
sunsets. And pillars. The house had pillars! Huge white columns extending from
the ground to the roof like some southern plantation house. Emma’s jaw dropped.