Risky Business (27 page)

Lord, help me know what to do now
.

Sunday morning dawned bright. Sunshine shed hope and clarity on the previous night’s darkness. Before leaving for church, Kate decided to call Pam—she had to get it over with. “I hate to say this on the phone, Pam, because I’m afraid you won’t understand my intent from the tone of my voice. I’m not angry; I’m scared. I don’t want you to hate me, but I have to take that chance. I can’t go on and pretend I don’t know what’s going on. What if something happened to you or to Brittany, or whoever else is involved, and I had done nothing to stop it? I could never live with myself.”

Pam’s silence was deafening.

“So …” Kate could feel her nerve stuttering and weakening, threatening to abandon her completely, but she pressed on. “I … I have nochoice but to bring it all into the light. I’ll give you guys until school starts tomorrow to talk to Coach Thompson or to your parents. But someone’s going to have to know what’s going on.”

“You wouldn’t.” Pam’s shaky voice belied her bravado.

Kate winced as she bit her fingernail too low. Everyone would hate her. “I—I—I have to, Pam. I wish this wasn’t even going on, but I can’t pretend. Not only is it wrong, it’s dangerous.” Kate had to fight to keep from whining. She didn’t have to convince Pam of the right thing. She just had to do it.

“Wrong? Who are you to decide what’s wrong? We are held to such high standards as swimmers that we can’t possibly live up to them without help of some kind. Wrong? What’s ‘wrong’ anyway?” She snorted in disgust.

Kate sat down on a stool, choosing her next words very carefully. “Pam, God decides what’s wrong. He tells us to follow the law and to honor our parents. It’s wrong to take drugs because it’s illegal, dangerous, and disobedient.”

“Oh, you’re kidding me? You’re one of
those?”
She snorted. “I had no idea you were a religious nut.”

“I told you a bunch of times that I went tochurch, Pam. It’s not like it was a secret.”

“A lot of people go to church, Kate. I even go to church. But that doesn’t mean anything. So what? You go to church. But how does that make you the judge and jury?”

Anger spewed from Pam’s mouth, and Kate didn’t blame her—she probably felt betrayed. Shame washed over Kate. How could she have spent so much time with these girls but never shared her faith? “Well, I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t let you see that part of me well enough. I’m really sorry about that. But the facts are the facts.” This wasn’t going anywhere—no point in arguing more. “Look, I’m going to let you go. We’re leaving for church now. Think about what I said. I’m not backing down from it.”

On the drive to church, one of Pastor Rick’s famous lines kept running through her mind. “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.”

Hesitantly peering around the door frame to the office, Kate whispered, “Coach, do you have a few minutes?”

“Kate, come on in! I’m so glad to see you … but why aren’t you at lunch?” She slid her desk chair back and gestured toward the guest chair.

“I’m really not hungry. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay, well, have a seat. First, how is your day going? You’re a big celebrity around here!” Coach grinned.

“Oh, it’s great, Coach.” Kate tried to sound as excited as she knew Coach wanted her to be. It had been a victory for them both, and Kate knew she owed it to her to let her enjoy the moment. “Everyone is so excited and supportive. I can’t wait until next season.”

“You’re going to be swimming with the boys’ team practices, right? They start next week.” Coach peered over her glasses. “You need to keep your skills up in the off-season.”

“Oh, definitely. I just meant that I couldn’t wait for next year’s competition. I’ll be in the pool every day until then. It’ll be fun to swim with the boys’ team, too. I’ll get to see how their workouts are different than ours….” Her voice trailed off as she picked at a loose thread on her jeans.

“Okay, kiddo, what’s going on?” Coach got serious. “I assume this is about whatever was bothering you before your last race.”

Kate nodded, unable to speak through her quivering lips and pounding heart.

“Did someone give you a hard time?” Coach leaned forward, eyes intent.

“N–n–no. It isn’t that. Not really.” She took a deep breath. “Something happened, Coach. Something’s been happening, actually.” She launched into the whole story. Told Coach about the energy supplements and the caffeine pills. Explained about how Mom found her stash and made her stop and how pulling back from all those things had affected her swimming for a few days.

Coach nodded. “Ahh. That explains it.”

While she finished the story, Coach looked down at her desk, clicking her pen open and closed, open and closed, open and closed.

“Then, at State … well …,” Kate stammered, not wanting to continue. Her friends would hate her.

“It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Coach put down her pen and gave Kate her full attention.

“They offered me speed. The real thing.”

Coach Thompson peered at Kate over her glasses with her mouth wide open.

The ticking of the clock on the wall filled the room like a ticking time bomb.

“Are you sure, Kate?”

Kate nodded. “Not only that, but Pam said that it was partly your idea … that you wanted her to offer the pill to me so I’d swim better.” She hung her head, knowing that last part would hurt.

“Wow. I can’t think of anything that would have surprised me more. I thought I knew this team better than that.” She rubbed her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “I mean, I knew you guys fooled around with those goofy energy drinks. But even though I didn’t really like it, I thought they were harmless.”

Kate gave her a minute to process all she’d just heard and then continued. “I told Pam that I would give her and Brittany until school started today to come forward on their own. They chose not to, so I had to do it. I’m sure they thought I was just bluffing. But this is too important to just ignore.”

When Kate ran out of words, she just sat there, silent. The bell for her next class rang—she wouldn’t be going. She gazed sympathetically at the coach she’d come to love, sure that Coach had no idea what to do next. What could she do to help?

“Kate, it’s times like these that I wonder if I’m in the right profession. I guess I would have thought that I was doing a good enough job of making everyone feel valued for who they are and not for what I wanted out of them. No one on this team should ever feel so much pressure that they become capable of something like this.” She shook her head and rubbed her forehead so hard it turned red.

“Coach, I don’t see it that way. We all create our own pressure. You actually detract from it by talking us down and telling us to have fun. Any pressure we feel is our own doing.”

Knock, knock.
. Both of them jumped. Coach opened the office door then stuck her head outinto the hallway. “Come on in. I think I know why you’re here.” She sat back down in her seat and waited for Pam, Brittany, and Sandy to squeeze past her into the tiny office.

Pam glared at Kate, who occupied the only other chair in the room, and slumped onto the floor in defeat. Brittany and Sandy didn’t look at her as they took a place on the floor beside Pam.

Looking from one girl to the next Coach said, “I am so disappointed, girls.” She shook her head from side to side, over and over. Finally, she put both hands on her thighs and heaved her small body out of the chair as though a weight pressed down on her. “I’m going to have to bring your parents and Principal Coleman into this. So, why don’t you hang on before you say anything? I’ll give you each a chance to speak, but let’s save it until the principal gets down here. I’ll be just outside the door using the phone.” Coach left them alone.

Squirming, Kate looked at everything in the room but the other girls.

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone, Kate?” Sandy broke the silence. “We wouldn’t have pushed you. You could have kept doing your thing, and we’d have left you alone. Why?”

Kate shook her head, her lip trembling again.

“I mean, do you realize that we’ll all be off the team?” Sandy’s voice was laced with venom. “You crippled the team by what you did, Kate. How can you live with that?”

Kate had enough. She sat up straight and slammed her fists on her armrests. “How can I live with that?
Me?
I crippled this team?
Me?
Sandy, you guys made the choices you did, and you involved me in them.” Kate looked down at her hands. “I’ll admit to my own weaknesses and that I used substances as a crutch, too. But it crossed the line for me when it became illegal. I can’t go that far. I have to do what’s right. I have no choice.”

“When did you get all high and mighty, anyway? It’s not like you’ve been a goody-goody this whole time.” Sandy put her head back against the wall.

“You know,”—Kate looked at each of the girls—”that’s my one big regret in all of this. I am so sorry that I hid my faith from you guys. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I don’t even know why it happened like that, actually. I should have let you guys in to that part of my life. Who knows, maybe you’d have made a different choice about offering me drugs, or even taking them yourselves, if you’d seen Christ in me. But whether you believe me or not, my faith is a very important part of my life.”

Pam snorted in disgust—the first sound Kate had heard from her in over twenty-four hours.

“Pam, I know you feel the most betrayed, and you don’t believe I’m a Christian like I say I am. That’s okay. I have to live with that. I’ve learned a lot about why it’s very important to make people aware of where my priorities are.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you couldn’t just walk away and leave it alone, Kate. Maybe you just want us off the team so you don’t have to compete against us.” Sandy crossed her arms and glared.

Her snide remark twisted in Kate’s gut. “It’s not that at all, Sandy. What you said doesn’t even make sense. This whole thing was a big mess and … well … I had to try to fix it.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Plus, it was the only way to get you guys to stop using drugs. Think about it. Not only did you risk yourself every time you got into the pool on drugs, but you were also risking our team.”

All three girls rolled their eyes, but Kate continued, undaunted. “If you had gotten caught, it would have been made public and thewhole team would have been under scrutiny, not to mention our titles, wins, records, and even Coach and the school would have been called into question.”

Kate shook her head. “But that’s not even the most important thing, which is you guys. I couldn’t sit by and watch this happen right in front of me and do nothing.” She opened her mouth and took a breath, not quite finished but unsure of how to go on. “What if we had to scrape one of you off the pool bottom one day after you had a heart attack because your heart rate got too high? How would I have felt, knowing I could have prevented it?” She shuddered at the thought.

“And … well, I feel like I’ve done a disservice to my faith by not being a Christian example to you guys. I want to be that now, even if it means some of you get hurt for the short term. I wish it had unfolded differently, but that’s the way it is now.” Finished, Kate hung her head in the silent room. She wished someone would speak, but the silence remained unbroken until Coach Thompson and Principal Coleman walked into the room carrying an extra chair.

The principal sat in the chair and crossed her legs, her high-heeled shoe falling to the floor.

“Okay, who wants to start? What happened?”

After a long silence, Kate opened her mouth to speak.

Principal Coleman shook her head and held up her finger. “I think I’d like to hear the story from one of the others.”

Oh, Olivia. Why haven’t I been a better friend?

With Christmas break drawing to a close, Kate feared that she’d let too much time pass and there would be no way to fix things with Olivia. But she couldn’t put it off any longer. Kate took a deep breath, pressed the speed-dial button, and closed her bedroom door. She walked to the corner of the room, pressed her back into the wall, and slid to the floor. When she heard Olivia’s voice, she started the conversation with the plaintive plea of a kitten. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Olivia answered with a clipped and aloof tone. “Forgive you for what? I’m kind of busy. Can we talk another time?”

Ouch
. Kate deserved that. “Liv, I screwed up.

I know I’ve been a selfish, terrible friend. I hope you can forgive me and let me make it up to you.” Her voice caught. “Don’t shut me out….”

“You’re the one who shut me out, Kate,” Olivia reminded her. “You have no need for me anymore. I’m of no use to you.” Kate had never heard Olivia sound so sad.

“No, Liv, that’s where you’re wrong. I have no explanation; I’m not even going to try to convince you. I’m hoping we can just start over, though. If you can forgive me and we just erase the past few weeks, we’ll be back to normal.”

Silence.

“What do you say, Liv? Please?”