Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws

  "I don't feel like I'm all alone in school," I said. I was trying to convince myself more than Frederick, but I did a lousy job of both.

  Frederick shook his head at me. "You've barely looked at anyone all day, and you're not smiling."

  "Sometimes I don't feel like smiling."

  "I spent all last year acting the same way."

  "You did?" I didn't remember Frederick not looking or smiling at anyone last year, but then, I didn't remember much about Frederick last year, beyond the time in math class when he gave everyone a blow-by-blow account of how he won the regional chess championship. Chess is slightly less exciting to watch than—say—sleeping cats, and even less fun to hear about.

  Frederick shrugged. "Finally I just got to the point where I stopped caring what other people thought about me. That makes everything easier. You still feel alone, but it doesn't bother you anymore."

  I wasn't sure if that was a good motto or a really sad way to live life. I twirled my pencil between my fingers but couldn't write anything. "Look, Frederick, if I was ever a jerk to you last year, I'm sorry."

  He went back to writing. "It's okay. If you were, I've been enough of a jerk to you this year to make up for it."

  I wrote a sentence for a new hypothesis, decided it was no good, wadded the paper up, and chucked it into the wastepaper basket. Which was infinitely more fun than writing.

  "You'll be okay," Frederick told me without looking up from his paper. "You're popular enough that you'll have a new best friend soon enough."

  There was more to this statement than he said. He was unpopular, so he would continue to go through school feeling alone.

  I wished I could do something about that. I wanted to change it for him somehow, but what could I do? He was a guy, and I was a girl, and if we started hanging around together, everyone would think we were going out. This was definitely not an "in" thing to do.

  I tapped my pen against the next piece of notebook paper and felt worse than I had before.

  Hypothesis: High school stinks.

  Cami

  The next few days went by slowly. Ethan avoided me when we were at our lockers, even though I told him again that I didn't have kleptomania. "In fact, I was vaccinated against it as a child, weren't you?"

  "Probably," he said, and hurried off. I didn't even have time to tell him kleptomania isn't a disease, and there's no vaccination for it. Next time we were together at our lockers, I'd cough on him just to make him worry.

  I ate lunch with Tisha and Barbara. Josie never talked to me. I never talked to her either, but somehow I always knew where she was in the hallway and the cafeteria. At first, people looked at me a lot during school. I could almost hear them recounting the story about our poetry fight in English. By the end of the week the staring had all pretty much stopped, except for Caroline, who made a habit of stationing herself in the hallway, staring at me, and then, when I noticed her, calling out, "See, you knew I was looking!"

  She also did this in biology class to the point that I began to feel like one of those paranoid schizophrenics who think they're being watched all the time. Finally, to protect my sanity, I agreed that the sixth sense worked, that everything she believed was true, and promised once she became a psychic, I'd call her if I ever had delinquent pets that needed therapy—all so she'd stop staring at me.

  For our next batch of research we met during lunch and sat at a table in the far corner. "Once it gets out that we're testing people's sixth sense, everyone will start checking to see if we're staring at them, and it won't be an accurate sampling anymore," she told me as she sipped Noni juice from a water bottle. "But we should be able to get some good data at first."

  "Right." I figured once word got out that we were doing ESP research, people would indeed begin staring at us, but only because they thought we were strange. "Who should we stare at first?"

  "How about Brendan? He's cute."

  "No. He's sitting next to Ethan."

  "But all the cute guys are sitting next to Ethan."

  "Right, so let's stare at a girl instead."

  Caroline sighed. "How about Erica?"

  We stared at Erica while we ate our lunches. Fifty-two seconds later she looked over at us. Which just went to prove having a sixth sense must not be related to having a high IQ. Next we stared at Raleigh, or at least Caroline did; my gaze kept drifting over to Josie. Josie leaned over the table toward Rochelle, and the two talked as though they'd been friends forever.

  I'd been replaced so easily. It was like I never meant anything to Josie to begin with.

  Two minutes into our stare, Erica walked by our table. She was pretending to throw her lunch sack away in the garbage can by us, but there were garbage cans closer to her table, so I knew she'd come over to talk. She peered at our notebook. "What are you guys doing?"

  "We're testing to see if people have psychic powers," Caroline said. "You scored pretty high. It took you less than a minute to realize we were staring at you."

  "It's our science fair project," I added.

  She cocked her head at me. "You must score pretty low on the ESP, Cami. Otherwise you would have known Ethan was only paying attention to you to make Ashley jealous."

  I gripped my pencil, not letting any emotion show on my face. "Oh, really?"

  "Yeah. Ashley broke up with Ethan to go out with Jeff. Ethan was just getting back at her by talking to you. Now Ashley's broken up with Jeff, and she and Ethan are back together."

  She turned and left before I could say anything, which was just as well, since I couldn't think of anything to say. What do you say when someone tells you that the guy you liked—the guy you fought with your best friend over—was just using you? Was she right? Or was that just what Ashley wanted to believe? Somehow, at that moment it didn't matter. The result was still the same. Ashley and Ethan were back together, and Josie and I hadn't spoken in a week.

  Caroline put one hand over her temple and closed her eyes. "I'm getting a reading on Erica's future." She hummed for a moment, as though she were a dial tone. "Years from now she and Ashley both join the cast of a reality show, where they are forced to eat rodents for prize money. Sadly, neither of them win, and they go to live in Hollywood, working as waitresses while they wait for their big break. That doesn't happen either."

  "I'd be happy to give them both a few breaks."

  "As for Ethan, he becomes a genetic biologist working on ways to make bigger chickens for KFC. He succeeds, but during a freak accident he's attacked by a flock of three-foot-tall roosters and is forced into taking an early retirement. He recovers eventually, but gets a nervous twitch every time he hears anything that resembles pecking."

  Despite feeling lousy, I cracked a smile. "You know, I think you may have psychic powers after all."

  Caroline's eyes fluttered open, looking at me sympathetically. "Ethan is a jerk. Who'd want to go out with a guy who just uses people like that?"

  "Right."

  "You're better off without him."

  "Right."

  And I was also better off without friends who lied about me at the first moment that things didn't go their way. Only I didn't feel better off about either of those things.

  The only thing that was better was this: for the first time I realized Caroline was not such a bad science partner after all.

  Josie

  During our game on Friday, Cami hardly passed me the ball, so I hardly passed the ball to her, and of course Ashley and Erica didn't want to pass it to either of us. Instead of a team, we looked like five girls on the court who just happened to be wearing the same outfits. We lost by twelve points. I was still the high scorer of the game, so I didn't feel it was a total loss. I was going to play with Rebecca Lobo. So there.

  After the game, as my parents and I were leaving, we walked by Cami and her parents. Our mothers said an awkward hello to each other, sadness in their voices. I wondered what Cami's parents thought of me now.

  Driving home in the car, my parents were
silent. I sat in the backseat, darkness around me, listening to the hum of the tires against the street. Dad glanced at me over his shoulder. "How do you feel about the way you played tonight?"

  "We lost," I said, as though that should explain everything.

  "Why do you think you lost?" Dad said.

  I shrugged. "You win some, you lose some."

  "You win more if you pass the ball," Mom said. "Don't you think it's time for you to forgive Cami?"

  "I can't trust her anymore."

  "Trust and forgiveness are two different things."

  "But she—"

  "Forgiveness isn't about what Cami did," Mom cut me off. "It's about what you're going to do. You forgive for you—so you can let go of the anger inside of you and get on with your life. Tonight's game is proof of what happens when you hold a grudge. You keep hold of that ball, and you all lose."

  I didn't answer. I knew Mom had a point, but it wasn't that easy. I couldn't just decide, Hey, I'm not mad at Cami anymore—none of the stuff she did hurts anymore.

  It did hurt.

  At school on Monday, I saw Ethan and Ashley walking down the hallway hand in hand, which meant he hadn't asked Cami to go out with him after all. I felt happy about this for thirty seconds, and then felt really awful. I had just meant to get back at Cami with the kleptomaniac story, not ruin everything for her. Had he actually believed me over Cami, or was it the yelling-poems-at-each-other in English that undid the romance?

  Either way, seeing Ashley and Ethan together was living, physical proof I'd hurt Cami too.

  On the way out of biology class I caught up with Ethan as he walked down the hallway. I had barely looked at Ethan, let alone spoken to him, since the poem-reading incident. It was embarrassing to even be in the same room with him now that the whole school knew Cami and I had fought over him.

  But I had to talk to him to clear my conscience. He took long strides, and I hurried beside him, clutching my books while I tried to figure out the best way to start a conversation.

  There wasn't a good way, so I just blurted out, "Hey, Ethan, do you remember when I told you about Cami having kleptomania? You knew I was just pulling your leg, right? Cami doesn't really have it, just like your shirt wasn't really on backward that day. I was just joking around."

  Ethan only glanced at me as we walked. "Right. I knew you were joking."

  "Good, because I wouldn't want you to think less of Cami because of what I said about her."

  He shrugged his shoulder. "What does it matter what I think of Cami? Does she still have a thing for me or some­thing?" The question was not so bad in and of itself, but the way he said it—with a sort of half sneer—made me catch my breath.

  "I don't know what she thinks of you," I said. "I just thought you ought to know the truth."

  His chin tilted down at me condescendingly. "I'm going out with Ashley now, and I don't think I should be talking to you about Cami." He veered away from me, and I stopped altogether, standing in the hallway while a flow of students walked around me.

  Ethan had not only dismissed Cami, he'd dismissed me too. All of the time I had spent dreaming of him—and he considered me an annoyance, someone not even worth the effort of politeness.

  I know you're going out with Ashley, I wanted to call after him, and you deserve each other.

  Frederick called me after practice, wanting to know when we could get together to work on our poster board. Everyone else would be putting their boards together on the day they were due, but not us. Frederick wanted to finish our board as soon as possible, probably so he could bug me about revisions until March, when we had the science fair.

  I invited Frederick to come over to my house—making sure Sadie and Kristen took Jack to the park. I was not about to have them hovering around, giggling that a boy had come to see me. I also asked my mother not to do anything to embarrass me.

  "Embarrass you?" she asked. "What do I ever do to embarrass you?"

  Which is one of those questions parents use to trick you into saying something that will get you grounded.

  "Just don't come in while we're in the kitchen, okay?"

  Mom threw up her hands. "You turn fourteen, and suddenly you don't want parents. Fine. I'll tell everyone you came to earth on a comet, like Superman."

  But when Frederick arrived, she said hello, then left us alone to work.

  We set everything up on the kitchen table, spreading out our graphs and pictures while we figured out how to arrange things on the poster board. Frederick changed the wording of every single thing I'd written about the project. I didn't mind. I wasn't sure how to use the words computational fluid dynamics in a sentence correctly anyway. We painted the poster board blue with white clouds and then taped our findings, trajectory plots, and rocket pictures onto it. We fought over the lettering of the title. He just wanted to write ROCKET STABILITY in marker, and I insisted on using stencils and glitter glue.

  "Why do girls have to make everything pretty?" he asked as I traced the letters in gold. "It's about rockets. It's not supposed to be pretty."

  "It looks better this way."

  He stood over the poster board and sighed. "My science project glitters."

  "Should I put some golden stars in the background to tie the whole look together?"

  "No. You're not putting glitter stars on my science proj­ect."

  "It's my science project too." I leaned over the table and put stars around our hypothesis and our conclusion. "I'll make one of them a shooting star."

  Frederick held out his hand to me. "Give me the glue. You're getting carried away."

  "It looks good."

  "I'm taking the board home with me. Otherwise you'll paint in sunsets and sprinkle perfume on the thing while I'm gone."

  "You're so paranoid." I handed him the glue. "Although a couple of Scottish terriers in the bottom corner would be cute.

  "Give me the board. I'm taking it home right now."

  I slapped his hands away. "If you touch it now, you'll smear the stars. Then the judges will wonder why we have a bunch of golden blobs on our poster board, and I'll be forced to make up some story about UFOs."

  He put both hands in front of him on the table and glared at me. "You're not going to say the word UFO when talking about my science project to the judges. In fact, don't say anything at all. Pretend you're mute." He sighed, then covered his face with one hand. "I'd forgotten, the judges will ask you questions too. You'll ruin everything."

  "Your confidence in me is so touching."

  "Okay, I'm confident you'll ruin everything."

  If anyone else had said this stuff to me, I would have either burst out in tears or slapped him. Maybe both. But I'd gotten used to Frederick, and it just seemed funny to see him so panicked. I blew on one of the stars to help it dry. "I'll tell the judges next year we're doing a project on fingernail polish."

  "No, we're not. Next year I'm doing one on global positioning satellite signals, and if you want to be my partner, you won't be decorating our poster board with any more glitter stars."

  Which was not what I thought he'd say. I expected him to say he was never being my partner again, and the fact that he hadn't seemed almost like a compliment. Suddenly, there in the kitchen, it didn't seem to matter so much what the kids at school would think about Frederick and me hanging out together. Why should I let everyone else determine who my friends were? I leaned over and blew on the stars again. "You realize I don't know anything about global-positioning-whatever-you-said."

  "Yeah, I figured as much."

  "Any chance you'll be chased out of someone's yard by angry dogs during it?"

  He waved a hand over the poster board. "How long does this take to dry?"

  "A long time. Come on, let's go play basketball while we're waiting."

  Frederick straightened up and huffed. "I don't play bas­ketball."

  "You do now. And while I'm teaching you how to shoot, we'll work on your people skills."

  I pushed away
from the table and walked to the kitchen door. He stood up and followed me reluctantly. "I don't want to work on my people skills."

  "Which is part of the problem," I said. "We'll work on your bad attitude first."

  He huffed again, but then he smiled.

  Twelve

  Cami

  We played Thatcher and lost the game. Again. And got yelled at by Coach Melbourne for not passing enough. Again. She put in a lot of time yelling at us at practice, which may come in handy if she ever decides to quit coaching basketball and become a drill sergeant.

  I've decided Josie has taken our fight worse than I thought. She's started talking to Frederick at school, even when she doesn't have to. She is obviously suffering from some sort of identity crisis—either that or she thinks I really do have kleptomania, and she's trying to tempt me into stealing Frederick away from her. Like I would fall for that.

  Josie

  Cami has taken our fight worse than I thought. She's started hanging around with Caroline, Madame Pet Psychic. Cami is either having some sort of nervous breakdown or she suspects her cat has feline depression. It's hard to tell with cats, since they sleep all day anyway.

  Frederick and I have become better friends. We IM each other a lot, and he helps me with my homework if I need it. At first I was worried he would want to be more than friends, but it turns out he has a thing for Jessica Bing, who is one of those petite, perky girls on the cheerleading squad. Frederick and a cheerleader. And to think of the grief he's given me about being a jockette.

  Anyway, I sent him a card before he went to his regional chess tournament. When he got back, he called me right off to tell me he'd come in second—beaten by Daniel the Knight Slayer. Frederick still got to go to the state tournament, so he didn't mind that much. He went on and on about the competition. I think he was just happy to have someone to tell about it, and I was happy to listen.

  Cami

  During our fourth game against Benson, the team still wasn't passing to one another enough, and at halftime we were down by ten points. Coach Melbourne hauled us all into the locker room to scream at us.