Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (28 page)

“No question.”

“Well then, I guess you win.” The girl held her hand out as she approached the net. “You're really a ninth grader?” They shook hands and the girl ran off, to cheer her teammates playing mixed doubles.

While Mikey was packing up her tennis bag, Coach Sandy came up behind her. “You should have had her eight-one, Elsinger. What went wrong?”

“I was hitting a little long mostly, although some of my shots did go just wide. I wasn't accurate enough,” Mikey said.

“You sure about that?” Coach Sandy asked. She had little pale button eyes, and her face was almost always expressionless.

“I netted two, maybe three, but the bulk of my errors were over the lines.”

“You
do
remember that the team totals all of its won games to score the match,” Coach Sandy said.

Of course Mikey did.

“So winning your set isn't your only objective,” Coach Sandy said. “Keeping their scores low matters too.”

Mikey knew that. She had been told it many times since the start of the spring tennis season. The coach had taken them over the match scoring system once a day for the first two weeks of practice, which meant ten times. After time two Mikey understood all the differences in game and set scoring, and also about how a team won a match.

“We wanted to deny them those four extra games you let her take from you.”

“I get it,” Mikey said. “I get it. But it wasn't as if I wasn't trying.”

Coach Sandy gave her usual response to that. “Try harder.”

Mikey agreed with that way of looking at things, but she pointed out, “I won the set, didn't I?”

Coach Sandy froze, and stared straight at Mikey. “It should have been a walkover and it wasn't. You're supposed to be such a hotshot. Think about how that happened, Elsinger. Because it's not what we want to have happen again.”

When the opposing team had climbed onto their bus and driven away, the team gathered outside Coach Sandy's office for her wrap-up speech, the twelve Varsity players waiting patiently for her to finish talking.

“The good news,” Coach Sandy said, “is that we won the match.” Before anyone could get too excited about that, she went on. “The bad news is—not one of you played anywhere near at the top of your game. You're just lucky Woodrow Wilson wasn't up to much. But you're not that lucky with me so I give you fair warning: I want to see better scores in your sets. Singles and doubles. If I don't see that, I can promise you, you won't continue to play on my team.”

She stopped speaking and just looked over her tennis team, making eye contact with each one of them, letting the threat sink in.

Hal Weathersing raised his hand, which surprised the coach, but she said, “Yes?”

“Someone lifted my racket,” Hal reported.

“If you'll wait a minute,” she snapped.

“It's in your hand,” Mark Jacobs pointed out.

“I mean my backup racket, from my tennis bag. I think one of those guys took it home with him because it's almost new.”

“I'll look into it,” Coach Sandy assured him, then went back to her speech. “When you barely beat a weak opponent, you shouldn't be satisfied with your performance.
I'm
certainly not, so think about that before practice tomorrow. Because you've got two more matches this week, only two, in which to prove to me you're players I can work with. Make a team out of. Make a winning tennis team out of.” She turned her back on them and went into her office, her short pleated skirt bouncing from side to side in irritation. She tossed the door shut behind her. They saw her through the big window, putting on her windbreaker, unlocking a drawer to take out her purse.

People moaned and mumbled among themselves, “What's with her?” “How was I supposed to get that serve back? You saw that serve.” “I had some really good points—I'd like to hear about those, too.” Mikey, as the only underclassman on the team, had no one to moan and mumble with so she just left, heading down the hallway and out the big main door of the gym to meet up with Margalo and catch the bus.

Hadrian Klenk was waiting with Margalo, his knapsack hanging from his hand, looking like his everyday self. Mikey carried her knapsack over one shoulder and her tennis bag over the other. Margalo had her knapsack on her back.

“I won,” Mikey greeted them, “but it was closer than it should have been.”

“We saw the end of it,” Margalo said.

“Do you ever use a slice backhand?” Hadrian asked.

“What do you know about tennis?” Mikey demanded.

“I watch television,” he answered.

They walked down the sidewalk, away from the school buildings, Mikey in the middle. Margalo, the heavy knapsack on her back so that her hands were free to tuck her straight brown hair behind her ears, looked across Mikey to confer wordlessly with Hadrian before asking, “What do you mean, closer than it should have been?”

Hadrian cut in, looking across Mikey to Margalo, “Because we thought she made a lot of bad calls.”

“A lot of them we're positive were bad,” Margalo said.

“Especially your last service game,” Hadrian said.

Mikey took that information in. “So I
was
making those serves? Good.” Then she took the information in further. “She was cheating?”

“We're pretty sure,” Margalo said. “On a lot of them.”

“I didn't see you there,” Mikey said.

Margalo observed, “You don't notice much when you're playing tennis.”

“Focus is important,” Mikey told her. Then she took in the information entirely. “She was
cheating!”

When they arrived at the road, Hadrian left them. “My mother's waiting.” He waved at the white Audi parked behind the Activities bus. “But there's no question about it. Ask your coach, she was watching too.” He ran off. Mikey and Margalo watched.

“You're sure?” Mikey asked. “Coach Sandy was there for my last service game too?”

“Didn't you say, a couple of times in the sets you played on the tennis ladder, didn't you say you thought they were miscalling?”

“That's different. A ladder challenge isn't like a real match. It's . . . it's just to make the team, not at all like playing against another school.”

Margalo wasn't buying that. “It's exactly the same and you know you think so too.”

Mikey didn't argue.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Mikey didn't know, and she didn't want it to be true, either, so she changed the subject. “How was rehearsal?” she asked.

Margalo let her change it. “It went okay. Hadrian can't sing or dance, not really, but he acts like he can, and he's getting away with it so far.”

On the bus she suggested to Mikey, “You could ask your dad.”

“I should be able to handle it myself.” This time Margalo had the window seat. “I'll ask Coach Sandy, but what I can't figure out,” Mikey said, giving voice to what really worried her, “is, if she saw what was going on, like you did, why didn't she say something?”

“Because you were winning anyway?”

“That's what I think. But then she yelled at us because we didn't win by enough. So what's she after?”

“You're the competitive one,” Margalo pointed out. “You should be able to figure her out.”

“Yeah, but cheating is a fake victory. Do you cheat at solitaire? Because if you do and you win, you know how it feels like you haven't really won?”

“I don't play solitaire.”

“But if you
did
.”

The next day Mikey walked down to the tennis courts with Coach Sandy, which meant going side by side down the gym hallway carrying the long-handled metal baskets in which the practice balls were stored. Mikey carried two baskets, and her racket in its case over her shoulder. Coach Sandy carried one basket and her clipboard. The coach never brought a tennis racket. When she wanted to demonstrate a stroke or a move, she would take a racket from one of the players. “I'm here to teach you what I know,” she explained. “Not to play. What do I need a racket for?” They all understood that her racket—except she probably had several of them—was too valuable a tool to be used with high school players on high school courts. They knew they were lucky to be coached by someone who'd really played the game, played professionally. They believed that she was way too good for this job, and she believed it too.

Coach Sandy moved fast, with energetic steps, her attention on her clipboard. Mikey had to hustle to keep up with her. They went down the long hallway and out the rear
doors towards the playing fields—soccer and football and baseball and track. Beyond them were the six tennis courts, surrounded by a high wire fence. Some players had already arrived and were stretching out or running laps around the courts to warm up. From a distance they looked like little-kid-size dolls.

“Coach,” Mikey said. “About yesterday. About my match.”

Coach Sandy stopped. She turned to study Mikey out of her pale blue eyes. “What about it?” She was taller by a few inches, but they had the same build, stocky, muscles in their arms and legs, and they were both unsmiling types. There was no question in the coach's mind who was the kid and who was the coach.

There was no question in Mikey's mind either, although she wasn't sure just what that difference meant, if it meant as much as Coach Sandy thought it did. The coach sensed this and didn't like it.

“There's a complaint you want to register, Elsinger?” she asked. Never give an inch was her teaching rule. On the offensive was her teaching style.

Mikey actually preferred this directness. “A complaint about bad calls? I sure do.”

“Are you ready to make a formal accusation?”

“You were there,” Mikey pointed out.

“I'm asking
you,
Elsinger.”

In absolute honesty Mikey couldn't be positively sure, not the way you should be to make that kind of an accusation. She
said what she was sure of. “There were too many bad calls. My friends—”

“Your friends.” The coach dismissed this evidence. “Are they trained linesmen?”

Mikey took a breath. A deep one. “Okay,” she said. For a few seconds the coach stared right at her. Mikey, who recognized intimidation when it was being blasted at her, stared back. She smiled, just a little smile, a little bending of the lips.
You think you're scaring me?

The coach nodded and didn't smile. She turned and started walking again. “You don't believe they were just bad calls.” She said this glancing back over her shoulder at Mikey, to show how unimportant it was.

“No,” Mikey said, following. “I don't.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“That's why I'm talking to you,” Mikey pointed out. The woman might be a good tennis player, but she didn't seem any too swift at making logical connections.

“But I just asked
you
,” Coach Sandy said, now with a sideways glance. “I mean, it could be that she was just outplaying you. Maybe you were actually losing those points, did you ever think of that? Maybe you aren't as good as you think.”

Until that last statement Mikey had been willing to consider doubting herself. But she knew how good she was, as clearly as she knew how good she wasn't—not yet, anyway. The coach was pushing her for some reason, in some particular direction.

Mikey didn't like being pushed, in any direction. “I was winning,” she repeated patiently. “I was the better player and I was playing better. I hit harder and I got to net more times. And”—she held up one of the baskets to keep the coach from interrupting her before she was finished—“I won almost all the points I went to net on. Although”—her hand was still raised—“she had a good down-the-line backhand passing shot.” The coach opened her mouth but Mikey got in first. “And a pretty good serve out wide.”

Then Mikey waited.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but the score didn't reflect that big a difference between the two of you,” the coach said.

“That's what I'm asking you about,” Mikey insisted.

Coach Sandy sighed, a teacher with a slow student. “You know, Elsinger, we're not in this for the fun of it. Take a look around you, winning's what it's about.”

“And I did win,” Mikey repeated patiently.

That stopped Coach Sandy again. They had almost arrived at the courts, and the rest of the players were half-watching them, curious, and half-pretending not to notice them.

“Let me see if I've got this straight. You're asking me what you do if you think someone is cheating on line calls.”

Mikey nodded. She waited.

“Seems like a no-brainer to me,” the coach said.

Mikey didn't get it. She shook her head, as if to clear it.

“Did you ever hear When in Rome, Elsinger? Ever heard When in Rome, do as the Romans do?”