Smashed (13 page)

She looked me in the eye and nodded as if we were making a silent agreement that I would behave and play by the rules.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“Good.” She smiled. “I need to lock up now.”

I made for the door quickly. I had to get out. I knew I was going to start crying, and that made me madder than she did.

Later, sitting on my front porch, I watched as the sun faded behind Pitcher Mountain. Across the road, lights flicked on in Matt’s house. I wanted desperately to talk to him. To have him hug me and say everything would be okay. But even if we were speaking—and we weren’t; we hadn’t since the day he’d left my house after the accident—even if he did say those words, could they be true? It felt like the ground had cracked open and any minute I would disappear into a gapping black hole.

The phone rang in the kitchen and I jumped to get it, praying it would be Matt. I’d been doing this for weeks, hoping against hope he’d call me. Every day—every minute—I wondered what he’d say if I called him or just walked over and knocked on his door. Would he hang up? Shut the door in my face? I didn’t think I could take that. In the new twilight zone that had become my life, silence was a step above outright rejection. I’d stick with the sure thing.

Cassie’s name blinked on the caller ID. Cassie McPherson:
best friend, other captain—
good
captain. Captain who didn’t get dragged into Coach Riley’s office and nearly get fired today. I couldn’t talk to her right now. What would I say? That Coach Riley basically thinks I’m a drunk, irresponsible loser and that the other girls shouldn’t look up to me anymore?

Yeah, that was a speech I wanted to share with my perfect best friend. Then, to top it off, I could tell her that, despite Coach Riley’s lecture and threats, I would
still
be going to Stanfield’s party Saturday night, but just not with her—I’d be going with
Alec.
It was a conversation I couldn’t have.

The phone rang again, then stopped. Cassie’s name disappeared. She’d wonder where I was, why I hadn’t answered. She’d ask me later and I’d tell her I was in the shower. Another lie.

At practice earlier that day, Cassie told me that Matt had asked about me.

“Call him, Kay,” she’d said. “He really misses you.”

I picked up the phone and went back out to the porch, my eyes on Matt’s house. He was close enough that if I called his name loud and his bedroom window was open—and it was, I could see—he would hear me. But I was afraid. We had always fought about alcohol—or, more specifically, about me drinking it. Fought, yes. Ended our friendship, no. But what if this time was different?

The air cooled. I put the phone down. A light glimmered on the second floor, then sharpened in the dusk: Matt was in his room. Downstairs, his parents’ television glowed. I stared at his house, replaying our last conversation in my head.
Maybe
you should just stay out of my goddamn life.
Why had I ever said that?

I’d blurted it out without thinking, that’s why, and I regretted it as much as anything I’d ever said. But would Matt understand that? And could he ever understand doing something as insanely stupid as getting in a car accident, drunk, with Alec Osborne? Matt wasn’t impulsive like me. He didn’t understand how you could sometimes do or say things and then wish you could take them back, and how sometimes you couldn’t even explain why you did them in the first place. He thought things through, then made a decision based on the facts. For him, life was like deciding which camera was the better buy when you only had money for one. But it wasn’t that simple for me.

I thought about the way he was on the soccer field—all grace and quiet energy. He surprised his opponents with his quick, subtle movements and his skill handling the ball. Moving down the field, he was patient, unassuming; there was nothing that made him stand out from the crowd. But just when a defensive player thought Matt was dribbling into a trap, he’d surprise him by executing a flawless pass without even blinking. His teammates said that Matt had great vision, that he could “see the whole field,” and that made him a brilliant player.

Right now I just wished he could see things my way.

The next day after school, the locker room buzzed. In a few minutes, we’d take the field for our first scrimmage, and even though it wasn’t an official game, we were fired up, ready to go. The year before, we’d finished second in the state in our division. This year we had to be first. For seniors, it was our last chance to be champions.

“Let’s kick some butt today!” Megan hollered. She turned and high-fived me as I made my way to my locker. “Seniors rule!”

Shouts of agreement rang out. Locker doors slammed. The buzz was about the scrimmage but also about Stan’s party, the one that marked the start of the school year. The same group of us always went; the rest couldn’t or weren’t interested. My friends assumed I’d be there with them.

“Better hurry up,” Cassie said. “I hear Coach Riley coming.” I threw my kilt on and fumbled with the buttons.

“Listen up, girls!” Coach Riley pulled her wire-rimmed glasses down off the bridge of her nose. “I got your drug and alcohol
contracts from the athletic director today.” She waved a stack of white papers as she spoke. “I want you to sign them now. Quickly. Get out a pen.”

There were low murmurs of conversation as girls shuffled through backpacks. Megan glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

“Let me draw your attention to the line about zero tolerance,” Coach Riley said as she passed them out. “That means if you drink or drug, you
do not play
.”

The room fell silent. The JV coach, Ms. Pingree, nodded in agreement, her solemn face aimed at her freshmen and sophomores.

“We’ve got a winning team here this year, but any one of you could blow it for the whole team if you don’t keep your priorities straight for the next eight weeks. Coach Pingree and I take these very seriously.”

My face was on fire. This was the first time she’d ever given us a speech like this. Ever. Her eyes were moving around the room, but it felt like she was talking straight to me.

“It’s simple,” she repeated. “You drink, you don’t play. You drug, you don’t play.”

She collected the signed contracts, but she didn’t move—she wasn’t done with us yet.

“One more thing.” Her eyes scanned our faces. “I don’t want to hear any talk about parties at practice, on the bus, in the locker room, or anywhere else coming out of your mouths—not about Stan’s party this Saturday night, or any other. Don’t think we aren’t paying attention.”

There was a stunned silence. No one had ever heard a coach refer to a specific party like that.

Marcy Mattison smirked and actually laughed—a short, surprised
ha!
A sharp look from Coach Riley shut her down quickly. She turned toward her locker, hiding her face from sight.

Megan and Cheryl exchanged a look. A couple girls glanced at me, their eyes darting away again when I looked their way. They were gauging my reaction. I stared down at the gray cement floor beneath my feet.

When Coach Riley left, no one said a word.

Then Marcy broke the silence. “Good going, Martini. Way to ruin things for everybody.”

My face burned.
Martini
.

Bobbi Crow came to my rescue, breaking the awkward silence. “Hey Katie, thanks for lending me this. It was awesome.” She pulled a DVD,
The Four Fundamental Attack Skills for Successful Field Hockey
, out of her locker and handed it to me.

Relieved by the distraction, people started talking again, ignoring Marcy’s outburst.

A minute later, Coach Riley was back. “Let’s go, girls! Get out there and get warmed up. Cassie and Katie, stretch out everybody. Hustle now!” She clapped her hands a couple times as we paraded by her. “Let’s start this year off right!”

*     *     *

I looked around at my teammates’ flushed, dripping faces, then tipped up a bottle and squeezed; a shot of cold water hit the back of my throat. We’d only gone through warm-up drills and we
looked like we’d played a whole game. I tossed the water bottle to Megan, who had thrown off her chest pad in a futile effort to cool down before the game began.

The refs called for the captains from each team. Cassie and I grinned at each other as we walked across the field toward them. It was our first game as seniors and as captains.

“Hey, Captain Kate,” Cassie said, “how does it feel?”

“It feels good, Captain Cass.”

We reported back to our team, and Coach Riley began reading the starting lineup.

“Megan in the goal; Cheryl Cooper at sweep . . .” I tuned her out and thought about the game. I wanted to play my best today. Start the season off right. Scrimmage or not, to me, a game was a game. I always played to win.

“Cassie, left wing; Sue Tapley, left inner . . .”

What?
My head jerked up. Left inner was
my
position. I looked around, confused. Had I missed something? No. Sue Tapley looked confused, too. So did my other teammates. Cassie shot me a shocked, questioning look. Coach Riley finished reading the lineup.

“Sally Foster, right inner; Sarah Miles, right wing.”
I wasn’t on it.

It felt like a swift kick in the stomach. I looked at Coach Riley for a clue, but her eyes stayed focused on the field. For a moment, no one moved.

“Hustle out there! Let’s go!” Coach Riley said.

I stood on the sideline, watching my teammates jog onto the
field. Frozen in place, I didn’t know who to look at or where to stand.

The whistle blew. Cassie’s red hair bobbed in the distance. Beyond her, Sue Tapley, running parallel, waited for a cross-pass that should have been mine. The field blurred. No. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t.

A surge of anger ripped through me; my face grew hot. The only time a sub had gone in for me
ever
was when I’d twisted my ankle one game, and Riley’d let me go back in after twenty minutes when I insisted I was fine.
No one
else in Deerfield had made the Maine All-Star Team. No other freshman in the
state
had been named to the team. And I was watching from the
bench
?

Farther down the sideline, Coach Riley was doing her usual thing, pacing up and down, kneeling, then standing up again, jotting notes on her clipboard. I willed her to look at me, to call my name and put me in, but she was totally absorbed in the game.

Sue Tapley had a clear shot on goal and fired it away, missing the goal cage completely. Ten minutes later, the other team scored. My heart pounded. It was the perfect time for a substitute. Still, Riley never looked my way.

*     *     *

At halftime, Cassie and the others came off the field panting and dripping with sweat. They collapsed in a circle, sucking their water bottles. I stood behind them with the second-stringers as Coach Riley talked. She hadn’t looked at me once since the game began.

She put in a couple substitutes at halftime. I wasn’t one of them. I was beginning to hate her.

Five minutes into the second half, the other team scored again. It was 2–0 now.

“Katie!” Riley called in my direction. Her eyes stayed on the game. “Stretch out and take a lap—then go in for Sue. Pronto.”

I hadn’t done this before. It was tough going in in the middle of a game, barely warmed up, trying to find the rhythm of my team, nervous as hell that I would blow my chance to contribute—or, in this case, redeem myself—by missing a shot or making a bad pass. All my confidence had evaporated in the last forty minutes.

They intercepted our pass-back and carried the ball toward their goal, shooting almost immediately. Megan deflected the shot and kicked the ball way out to the side, where one of our halfbacks fought for it and won, shooting it up to Cassie, who was waiting above the twenty-five yard line to pick up the pass and go. My anxiety slipped away as I sprinted forward, but Cassie lost the ball in a tackle.

The rest of the game was a tired series of scrambles. We managed to keep the ball on our end for the remaining fifteen minutes, and I even tapped one into the goal on a rebound, but with about three minutes left, we had no chance; we still needed a second goal to tie things up.

The lead ref blew her whistle and raised her arms. “Game!” she called.

For me, it felt like it was over before it began. We’d lost 2–1. There wasn’t enough time to even things up no matter how hard I tried.

And I really did try.

*     *     *

I slammed my locker door and reached down to where my backpack lay on the cement floor. I was in no hurry to go back outside and run into anyone. If my complete humiliation had been Coach Riley’s goal today, she’d achieved it.

Behind me, footsteps. “I need to lock up now, Katie,” Coach Riley said.

This was my only chance to ask. She was going to leave if I didn’t.

“Why didn’t I play the whole game?” I said, my back to her.

“You know why, Katie.”

“I
don’t
know. If I knew why, I wouldn’t be asking.” I turned and looked at her.

Coach Riley’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but her expression remained calm. “Think about it.”

“I don’t know.”

“I told you when I handed out the contracts. You drink, you don’t play.”

“But I
haven’t
 . . .”

“Not since the accident. I know. And I don’t want to hear again that you have.”

“This was for the
summer
?” My face was burning. I nearly spit the words out.

“This was for the summer. You have to understand what it will be like if I hear anything about you drinking at
any
time during the next two months. It was only a scrimmage today, Katie. I did it so that it won’t have to happen during the real season. The team needs to know that captains aren’t above this policy. It applies equally to everyone.”

My head was spinning. Imagine if she knew the
truth
.

“Can I go now?” I said. I picked up my bag and left without looking back.