Front and Center

  That night Win was pretty decent about it, all things considered. He'd heard from Dad about the game and didn't give me any grief about blowing it. I guess even he could tell I was upset, or maybe Dad had told him, which meant even Dad could tell, which meant it must have been completely obvious. Win just said I'd done well for being double-teamed and that he'd like to see me play sometime, which was nice to hear even if it wasn't ever going to happen. And then just as we were winding down, he said it was all set for me to visit the U of M on Saturday.

  "What?"

  "Kathy Ott said she'd be thrilled to drive you. Thrilled," he repeated, in case I'd missed that word. "You can stop by St. Margaret's on the way home. And we're all set up for Madison—"

  "St. Margaret's? Madison?"

  "Do you have any video of those captain's practices?"

  "What?"

  He sighed like it was completely my fault I had no idea what he was talking about. "The ones you're holding after practice? That's great stuff. Coaches really like seeing that sort of thing—"

  "You mean with Ashley? I helped her one day!"

  "But your coach said you two are going to make it a regular thing."

  "You talked to Coach K?"

  "Yeah," he said, like it was totally obvious. "And you really need to videotape it."

  "Do you want some video of my sock drawer as well?" Actually I didn't say this, but I thought it, because video of my socks couldn't be any duller than me coaching Ashley on free throws. "Win..."

  "You need to let some of the other girls in on those practices too." Like they were begging to join us and I was saying no. "And Kathy will come by Saturday morning, so you better be ready."

  After I got off the phone I had to study for A&P, which was especially fun now that I had a trip to Minneapolis hanging over my head. Not that Kathy Ott is bad—she's actually super nice. But the thought that Win had called her and asked her to drive me ... I swear, Win on top of everything else must be some kind of brainwasher. Maybe that's how he gets people to do whatever he wants, like me training all November for him, and Kathy giving up a weekend to drive me around.

  But I did study some in the end, enough to do okay on the quiz. And after practice Ashley and I worked more on her defense skills, the cafeteria guys giving us the hairy eyeball because we were screwing up their floor-washing routine, although Coach K supposedly had worked that out, doing his own brainwashing program on them.

  Beaner even came by for a bit and played offense while I coached Ashley on guarding. Which was something to see, all right, because Beaner's like two feet taller than she is and every time she got close, guarding him the way she's supposed to with her arms up—as high as she can get them, anyway—he'd poke her in the ribs. Which should have made me mad, Beaner messing with my student like that, but I was too busy laughing and also reassuring Ashley that tickling never happens in a game.

  "Maybe, you know, I should tickle someone else," Beaner said, eyeing me with that boyfriend smile he does so well, and I opened my mouth to shoot back a response but nothing came out because all the thinking blood had rushed to my ears instead, and my bright red cheeks. And he came after me, but I move pretty fast when I'm being chased, even when I'm blushing, and then he had to go back to practice. Although it took about half an hour for my insides to calm down from all his flirting. And about the same amount of time to convince Ashley to lift her arms again, she was so spooked, but she did in the end, and you know, she was playing so much better—not as in Let's get out the video camera, but at least I came away feeling I was actually good at something.

  Maybe I could end up as one of those local guys who helps out with coaching. Take a whole team of Ashleys and turn them into short genius players, like something in a movie. Maybe Beaner and I could do it together. And all those short genius players would figure out fancy physics tricks with the ball, develop shots no one had thought of ever before, and we'd win all our games.

  "Whatcha thinking about?" Curtis asked out of the blue on the ride home, as I was going over that genius hoops dream team in my mind.

  I jumped, which made us both laugh. "Nothing. Basketball."

  "Roger that," Curtis said. Which shouldn't have made us crack up, but it did.

  We pulled in next to Jimmy Ott's Explorer, which cheered me up even more, because we all like Jimmy Ott so much, as much as we like his wife. Dad had done a great job of plowing the yard and he'd even shoveled out Win's special parking space, I guess to show Jimmy.

  "Roger that, over and out," I was saying to Curtis as we trooped inside, stomping the snow off our boots. Then I stopped dead.

  Curtis banged into me. "Hey!" he said, and then he stopped too, because it wasn't just Jimmy at the table, drinking coffee and eating some sort of coffee cake that made the kitchen smell amazing, especially if you've just finished three hours of basketball. There was this other man who looked so handsome and also so familiar that for a minute I knew we had a movie star in our house. I couldn't quite come up with his name, but it had to be one of them.

  The man stood up. "Well, hello at last. I'm Dan Nelson."

  "Oh," I said, shaking his hand as I tried to figure out what I'd seen Dan Nelson in.

  Jimmy Ott grinned at my confusion. "This here's Brian Nelson's dad."

  "Oh," I said again, in a very different voice. We were still shaking hands, but I couldn't get my brain to figure out how to stop. "Um ... pleased to meet you."

  "The pleasure's mine. Brian spent so much time describing all your other qualities that he never mentioned how pretty you are."

  Behind me Curtis made a choking sound. I spun around—we were done shaking hands, finally—and there he was looking so innocent that the veins were sticking out on his neck.

  Dad eyed him. "You say hello to Mr. Nelson, son?"

  "Hey," said Curtis. Even the veins on the back of his neck were sticking out. It was a wonder he could speak at all. Although he did sound kind of strangled.

  "D.J. here's running double practices at the high school," Dad said like he was fit to burst. How the heck did he know about Ashley? Was Coach K publishing a newsletter on me or something?

  "I believe it," Brian's dad said. "This girl's quite a miracle worker, from what I hear."

  I shuffled. "Yeah, um ... We should shower."

  Jimmy gave me a pat. "Good to see you again, D.J. George, this is one heck of a coffee cake."

  Mr. Nelson turned back to their conversation. "I'm sure the guy could rustle up some asphalt. He's done it for me a couple times..."

  Halfway up the stairs Curtis muttered, real quietly so only I could hear, "He didn't mention you were so pretty."

  I swung at him but he danced out of the way. "How's Sarah doing?" I shot back.

  "She's fine. At least her parents don't flirt with me." He lunged for the bathroom and slammed the door one step ahead of me so I crashed into it with a huge bang, not to mention my kicking it as well.

  I sat on the bed in a cloud of D.J. stink for I don't know how long, trying to figure this out. What the heck was Mr. Nelson doing in our kitchen? Not four months ago he'd been all set to sue Red Bend about me playing football—he'd done everything he could to talk Brian out of working for us—and now here he was eating Dad's coffee cake. I mean, he did get Win that van. And Brian had said, in the one conversation we'd had since we stopped talking, that doing that had made him awfully happy. Which is nice, frankly, that you can do such a good deed and get satisfaction from it. But I'd thought Mr. Nelson was just being nice out of guilt or something, because he was so relieved it wasn't his son all crippled up. Or happy I wasn't seeing Brian anymore.

  Not that I'm objecting to his generosity. But it's one thing to be all generous just through the company you own, and another to sit at our kitchen table shooting the breeze. Why would a rich, handsome guy like Mr. Nelson do that?

  Curtis finished finally, and I took as long a shower as I could, thinking the whole time about Brian. What would Brian think about his dad's wh
ole baloney about me being pretty? His dad did own a car dealership. Maybe if you sell cars for a living, that's just the way you talk. Although I couldn't help but grin at the thought of Brian's reaction to his dad getting so cheesy with me. It'd almost be worth having him here for just a moment, just so he and I could share a grin about our totally mortifying fathers.

  I could even tell Brian that I'd thought his father was a movie star, which would absolutely crack him up. I wouldn't even have to tell him not to tell anyone, because that's not the kind of guy Brian is. Though even if he did, you know, it wouldn't be so bad. I mean, if Mr. Nelson was going to all the trouble of helping us with our driveway and everything, the least he could get was a compliment in return.

  Brian would love my Ashley genius b-ball team, too. He'd suggest some genius plays no one had ever thought up, or some genius players. He'd probably even have some advice on how I could help Ashley out more, help her out with college...

  I was so busy thinking about Brian and all the great conversations we could have if we were still having conversations that I almost froze to death when the hot water ran out. I had to do one of those superfast dry-offs and quick yank on my sweatpants and Red Bend hoops T-shirt, which are not pajamas even though I sleep in them, only I'd forgotten my slippers and could feel the cold oozing into my toes from the bathroom floor, and then from my bedroom floor because my slippers weren't there either. Curtis was downstairs playing with Smut—you could hear her growling up a storm with her tug-of-war voice. I hollered down for him to toss them up, but Curtis fakes deafness better than anyone I know. I could either stand at the top of the stairs all evening hollering my lungs out, or just get them myself and get on with life, and my homework.

  "Did you even hear me?" I asked as I dashed into the kitchen, still having to holler over Smut's tug-of-war growls as the two of them duked it out behind the table. "All I needed was my stupid—Oh my God!"

  Because it turned out Smut wasn't playing tug of war with Curtis after all. She was playing with Brian Nelson.

  "No, it's Brian," he said, dropping the rope at once. "Remember...? That was a joke—ow!" Because Smut, fed up with waiting for him, snapped her rope around and caught him right in the jaw.

  "Smut!" I cried out. And then, "What are you doing here?"

  Brian stood up, rubbing his chin. "I had to pick up my dad, you know, and I asked if I could, you know, say hey. They're out looking at the driveway." A long pause. "So ... hey."

  "Hey." I'd forgotten completely about the slippers. My feet could have been two blocks of ice and I wouldn't have noticed.

  "That was really good coffee cake," he put in. Smut thwacked him in the knee with her rope, just a little reminder he still had a game to play, but he ignored her. "I saved you a piece. Your dad said I could finish it, but, you know..."

  Now I saw the pan sitting there on the table. "Thanks," I said. I broke the last piece in half. "You want some?"

  "Some more, you mean?" He smiled and held out his hand. "If you don't mind. I mean, it's really..."

  "Just when you thought you'd recovered from Schwenk cooking."

  Brian laughed. "Oh, please. You have no idea. I would eat here every night—seriously. My mom could burn water. And my dad..."

  "I've got to say, seeing him sitting at that table ... I had no clue who it was."

  Brian laughed even more. "I know! I was like, 'You're going where?' And he was being all cool about it, like it was no big deal ... We should have gotten him to help with haying."

  I cracked up, almost choking on the last of the coffee cake. I was at the poking-at-crumbs-with-my-finger stage, not yet ready to say it was kicked. "Can you imagine? I don't think he'd have been very happy about it."

  "He'd say it would give him a heart attack or something, that he'd hurt himself ... Although the guy is a total klutz. He broke his wrist, you know, planting an apple tree."

  "A tree? How do you break your wrist planting a tree?"

  "Beats me. It was a real little one, too. A couple weeks ago I called him Johnny Appleseed, just as a joke, and I thought he was going to blow a gasket..." Brian ducked to scratch Smut behind her ears, Smut eating it up because she loves Brian so much. All of a sudden he wouldn't look at me. You know ... something like that will happen, some little funny thing like that, and every single time I'll think I can't wait to tell D.J. And then I'll remember we're not talking anymore, and I'll be so freaking bummed. Three or four times a day."

  "Me too," I said. No longer jabbing at cake crumbs.

  "It's like half of me is missing. You know?"

  I nodded.

  "I'm so sorry for the way I treated you. Man, you must hate my guts. I hate my guts just thinking about it."

  "That's okay." Jeepers, D.J. You could run me over with a school bus and the first thing I'd say probably, lying there in a puddle of blood and little bones, is That's okay.

  He was still scratching Smut, scowling to himself. "No, it's not."

  All of a sudden it hit me: He was right. It wasn't. And more than that, right now Brian was doing that thing he's so good at, the thing he's the very best at, which is talking. Using words to take away what he'd done. What he'd done with his actions.

  "You hurt me so much." I didn't realize at first I'd said this aloud—isn't that funny? It just popped out without my even knowing.

  "I know. I'm sorry. I know you don't believe me, not yet, but I'm going to ... It's not going to be the same."

  I looked at him—I'd been real busy staring at the kitchen floor, memorizing patterns I already knew by heart—but now I looked him right in the eye. "You're right. I don't believe you."

  "I miss you—"

  "Yeah. I miss you too." I gulped. All of a sudden it was all I could do not to lose it.

  An engine started up outside. The guys must have finished their driveway powwow.

  Brian took a step toward me, looking as miserable as I felt. "I'm sorry."

  "I know," I whispered. I squeaked, actually, because it took so much effort not to cry.

  "Yo! Brian!" Mr. Nelson called. Through the kitchen window we could see him in Mr. Ott's headlights, waving to us.

  "I've got to go," Brian said. "I'm sorry." He smiled at me from the doorway, then shut the door really softly behind him.

  Smut watched him go, still holding her rope, her tail wagging slower and slower until it drooped to a stop. She let go of her rope with a sigh.

  "Those are words," I whispered. "Those are just words."

  Dad was heading inside, I could see, and all of a sudden I couldn't get out of the kitchen fast enough. I made it all the way upstairs and into my room before the back door even opened. Then, alone at last, I dropped onto my bed and sobbed.

  7. Traveling

  HERE'S ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS: our game Friday against Cougar Lake got canceled on account of lice.

  Seriously.

  Friday morning Beaner stuck his head into English to announce it, grinning like crazy.

  "Lice?" Mrs. Stolze asked, touching her hair. It's really hard to hear the word and not do that.

  "Yeah. So it's just afternoon practice instead. Hey, D.J., wanna go to the movies tonight?"

  I'm surprised blood didn't start spurting out of my eyeballs, I blushed so hard. Everyone laughed. Although Kayla and Brittany and about four boy players are in that class too, so maybe they were laughing about Cougar Lake instead. Maybe.

  I shrugged in what I hoped was a normal teen girl way. "Sure."

  "Awesome. I'll pick you up at your place. Rock on, Mrs. Stolze." And he galloped off.

  Did you see that? Beaner had no trouble asking me out—in front of a whole roomful of people! See the difference between him and Brian? If I was that kind of person, I'd take a video of Beaner and send it to Brian just to show him how some guys treat me. But I'm not that mean. Also I have no idea how to take videos. Also no equipment to take them with. And also I wasn't going to even think about Brian, not ever, ever again. So video was out.

&n
bsp; Anyway, thanks to Cougar Lake we had a regular practice, but with fun stuff like dribbling blindfolded. Coach K gave us a little talk about how anyone can get lice and we shouldn't hold it against them, and we all nodded like grownups but inside we were thinking it'd be a while yet before Cougar Lake heard the end of it. And Ashley and I spent time afterward on her squaring up, getting her body facing the right way when she passed, which was especially tough given how hard it is for her to figure out how her body parts work or where the various parts even are.

  There were two pickup trucks in the yard when I got home, a real one with scratches and toolboxes and lumber, and the other a shiny new tricked-out ride. A couple guys in parkas and tool belts were hammering away outside the kitchen door, building an actual wheelchair ramp out of new wood with nonslip patches and a handrail and everything, nothing like what Dad would have made out of leftover plywood and roofing nails. They nodded to me in that way worker guys do, and because I didn't want to bother them I stomped through the snow to the front door, trying not to get snow in my shoes. When I opened the door, this amazing smell of chili hit me, Dad's buffalo meat chili—seriously, it's real buffalo meat, which is pretty trippy to think about—which he keeps working on, each time making it better than it already is. And sitting there at the kitchen table, a beer in one hand, was Mr. Nelson.

  That explained it. Because it's not like worker guys had ever been to our place before—for a moment I'd thought I was at the wrong house, even, when I first pulled in. They were with Mr. Nelson, part of his Schwenk family charity project.

  "Hey there, sport, where you been?" Dad asked, stirring away, a beer in his other hand.

  "Practice. Game got canceled," I said. Wondering what Brian had told Mr. Johnny Appleseed Nelson about me.

  But he didn't seem to be thinking anything, or at least nothing bad. "No kidding. Why?"

  "Lice," I said. Like it was nothing. "I'm going out tonight, okay?"