Soldier Mom by Alice Mead

Author:Alice Mead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 1999-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

11

At last I’m at practice, and I can’t wait to get started. I grab a ball and go out on the court by myself. Make a basket, leap for the rebound. Then shoot from the new spot. Make it. Leap for the rebound. I don’t even know anyone else is in the gym.

Just as I go for a rebound, someone cuts in from my right and snatches the ball from under my nose. Bridget.

“Ball hog,” she says.

“Go get your own ball,” I tell her. “Give that back.”

“There aren’t any more good ones, for your information.”

She shoots, misses. We both run for the rebound. I get it. She snatches it away.

“What’s your problem?” I ask. “Just take the stupid ball. I don’t care.”

“You were supposed to bring music for warm-ups. Remember? We asked if we could warm up with music?”

“Oh yeah.” I dimly remember that. “I guess I assumed Danielle would take care of it for me.”

“Well, team captains don’t ‘assume’ stuff like that. We always had music at Red Star. It was awesome. I play so much better that way. You are so out of it, Jas. I deserve to be captain, and you know it. Everybody knows it. Coach just let you be captain because he feels sorry for you.”

Bridget’s crazy. When Coach picked me, he didn’t know anything about Iraq. Neither did I.

I want to punch her. Kick her. Pound her little spoiled brat pea brain into the ground. But I hear Mom’s voice. “Cool it, Jas. Count to ten or even one hundred if you have to. Don’t let her get to you.”

Coach Campbell blows his whistle. All balls have to be held immediately so he can have quiet. Or else you have to run suicides, which means sprinting the length of the court so many times in a row.

Bridget stands near me. Then she drops the ball so that it bounces off my foot and rolls away.

“Williams,” Coach says without looking up, “ten suicides.”

Bridget laughs silently. I glare at her. She is such a pain. I trot over to a corner of the gym and get started. I run until my lungs burn, which I think is around eight laps. I bend over, hands on my knees, to take a break.

Coach sees me. “Okay. Come on back. That’s enough,” he says.

We practice layups for nearly an hour. Now Danielle is practically in tears. She keeps missing. Then we do dribbling skills. Most of the girls hate it.

Coach Campbell’s barking out the orders today, that’s for sure. “Drive the ball forward when you run. The ball is pulling you down the court, you’re not following after it. Drive it! Be aggressive. Your offense has to be aggressive.”

I’m aggressive. Look at me, Coach. You want to see aggressive? I’m running circles around most of the other kids, even Bridget with her $1,000 sports camp training. I’m flying right over the tops of her fingers when I shoot.

Around four-thirty, from the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Danielle’s mother.

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