A Game Worth Watching (32 page)

“Emma.”
Ashley’s warning tone sounded too much like Riley’s.

“What?”

“No,
Emma’s right.” Lauren elbowed her way to the front of the group. “Dad, you don’t
know anything about basketball.”

His
laugh didn’t depict nervousness, which was bad. His laugh should have been
thick with nervousness.

“Oh,
sure, I do,” he said. “How hard can it be, right?”

How
hard can it be? For a team that had gone from nothing to something in two
months, they knew all about how hard it could be. The girls stared at Mr.
Thompson. He nodded and kept nodding as he looked around the locker room,
either mentally giving himself a pep talk or just taking in the scenery.

“Okay,”
he said, clapping his hands. “You girls are doing great. Go out there and keep
doing what you’re doing. Now, who wants to play?”

No
one volunteered. Was this seriously how the game would end? With Mr. Thompson
steering the wheel? They’d crash for sure.

“Uh…how
about,” he scanned their faces and started pointing, “You, you, you, and you.”

Four
against five. Great strategy…for slaughter.

“Dad!”
Lauren shrieked. “You only picked four players, none of whom are guards.”

“Oh,
well, of course I did.” He patted his daughter on the shoulder. “I was just
joking, sweetheart.”

Totally
not
convincing anyone.

Mr.
Thompson glanced at the blank clipboard in his hands. “How about we start off
with whoever just came off the field?”

Field?
Seriously?

They
shuffled out of the locker room, their first half low plummeting to rock
bottom.

“What
are we going to do?” Madison whined.

“Lose,”
Emma said without a doubt. “Lose big.” They’d worked so hard only to be creamed
by their cross-town rival…again. Bradshaw was good, but they needed direction.
Direction from someone who actually knew the game and what to look for. Someone
who was not Mr. Thompson. How could Coach abandon them at a time like this?

Abandonment.
The memories of her mom fleeing in the night in search of something better came
back so strong it almost knocked the wind out of her. The rest of the team
sauntered onto the court to shoot before they resumed the game, but Emma’s feet
stopped at the sideline. Five years. Five years since the woman she loved and
trusted disappeared with no warning. Just like Coach had done moments ago. Yes,
Coach Knowles had a lot to learn about coaching, but she’d built the team into
something. She’d gained the trust of all the girls, only to abandon them when
it truly mattered.

Emma
was blind to how her teammates cast her sideways glances, wondering why she
stood frozen like an idiot on the baseline. She was deaf to the chaos of the
gym as the pulsing notes of the band rallied fans for the second half. She was
numb to the hammering of her heart as it tried to propel her feet forward. It
was one thing to accept her family’s abandonment, but would everyone else she’d
learned to trust abandon her too? If so, what was the point of trusting anyone?

She
remembered the first game of the season and how she’d stood on the same line.
It had been so easy to run then, just like it would be so easy to run now. With
no coach and the certainty of a loss hanging over her head, her presence
wouldn’t make much of a difference. It wasn’t like she had much to offer anyway.

Emma
stepped backward—one step away from the baseline, one step toward the
exit.

“Em,
you okay?”

Shiloh’s
voice froze Emma in place and snapped her attention back to her teammates.
Ashley and Shiloh stared at her, questioning her. Doubt and fear flickered in
their eyes as they waited for her to respond.

She
didn’t know what to say. Looking at her two teammates, Emma realized Coach
hadn’t just left her, she’d left the entire team.

Ashley
held a ball out to Emma, willing her to take it. “You comin’, Coach?”

Emma’s
eyes locked on the kid’s, and she knew. She knew she couldn’t abandon her
teammates. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—follow the same path others in her
life had taken.

Taking
a deep breath, Emma shoved Coach Knowles and her lifetime of nightmares aside
and stepped onto the court to join her teammates. She took the ball from Ashley
and sunk a few shots, doing her best to gear up for what would be the worst
second half in history.

One
misfired shot, one second with her back turned to rebound the ball, and Emma
found herself surrounded by Lauren and the rest of the girls. Great, she
thought. Not only was Lauren’s dad in charge, but now Lauren was going to get
her wish and tar and feather Emma in front of hundreds of people. No way was
Emma going down without a fight.

“This
is a disaster,” Lauren stated for the record. “My dad? Seriously? Let me assure
you, what little athletic ability I may have did
not
come from him.”

Not
exactly the greeting Emma had expected, but okay. Just to be on the safe side,
Emma shuffled back a couple of feet.

Lauren
nodded at Emma. “You’re up.”

Emma’s
breath caught in her throat. She didn’t like Lauren’s tone. Not. One. Bit.
“What do you mean I’m up?”

“We
voted.” Lauren gestured to the girls surrounding her, a smile growing on her
lips. “You’re the coach.”

“What?”
Emma exclaimed. Girls—all of them—needed to be committed to the
insane asylum. Immediately.

“You
know this game and this team inside and out,” Lauren said. “You made this team
what it is. If we want to have any chance to win today, we need you to do
this.”

Emma
said the first word that popped into her head. “No.”

Lauren
crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. “No, is not an option. Besides, you’re
outvoted.”

“I
don’t care if I’m outvoted by a million,” Emma said through clenched teeth.
“I’m not doing it. Coach left your dad in charge. Not you and not me. We have
to trust her decision.” Not that Emma believed Coach’s decision was for the
best, but she wasn’t going to let the team ambush her and force her into the
coaching role. No way.

“Coach
left us,” Lauren said. “So, in my opinion, she doesn’t have a say in the
matter. We have to do what is best for the team, which means you’re the coach.”

Emma
waved her hands in front of her face, trying to ward off the demons. Lauren and
the rest of the team stood in agreement. Against her.

Ashley
stepped forward out of the circle. “Emma, it’s brilliant.”

Emma
pointed at the freshman, her shock changing to anger. “You stay out of this.”
She turned back to Lauren. “My answer is no. I don’t know the first thing about
coaching. If you’re dad won’t work, then how about—”

“What
do you call Saturday practices?” Madison said, cutting her off and stepping
beside Lauren.

“Scrimmaging.
And it was the guys helping, not me.”

“What
about post-practice sessions?”

Despite
the assurance in Shiloh’s voice, Emma refuted her too. “Show and tell.”

“We
need you,” Lauren said with so much conviction Emma believed her. Almost.

Gone
was Lauren’s disgust of Emma and her reluctance to place Emma in a position of
authority over her. “No one knows this team like you do,” Lauren confirmed.
“You know how we work and when things need to be changed up. You can do this.
You’ve been doing it.”

“No!”
Emma pushed through their barricade. No way could she do what they asked. No
matter what they thought, she wasn’t good enough, strong enough, or smart
enough to coach an entire team. Playing was one thing, but coaching was
completely different. Especially against Evergreen.

“Emma,”
Ashley said softly, appearing beside her.

“Don’t
start, freshman.” Emma snatched a water bottle from the bench. She chugged down
water for the sake of doing something.

“You
can do this,” Ashley continued anyway. “You’ve been coaching me and the other
girls all season and you know you’ve done an awesome job. Lauren’s right. If we
want to have any chance to win today, we need you to coach us.”

Emma’s
eyes were drawn to Ashley. Not even Riley could muster that much faith in her
with a single look.

Mr.
Thompson called them all to the bench before Emma could gather the strength to
turn Ashley down again. She threw the water bottle to the floor and turned to
her teammates. She felt their eyes on her as they huddled. With Madison on one
side and Ashley on the other, Emma wished they could skip to the end of their
team chat and play. No such luck.

“So,
Coach.” Lauren looked straight at Emma. “What’s it going to be?”

“I
already told you no,” Emma growled. “Now, drop it.”

“Okay,
girls,” Mr. Thompson said. “Let’s see here.” He had Coach Knowles’ clipboard in
one hand with the marker in the other. He bit the cap off the marker and,
holding the cap in his teeth, tried to give some sort of undecipherable pep
talk as he doodled like a first grader on the clipboard. When he realized no
one understood him, he tried to take the cap out of his mouth and somehow
dropped the clipboard and the marker in the process. All eight girls grimaced.
The fate of their game lay in the hands of Lauren’s dad, Mr. Basketball
Illiterate.

Emma
closed her eyes, biting her tongue hard enough to draw blood. Peer pressure was
an evil; she would
not
succumb to it. Nope. No way. Coach left Mr. Thompson in charge,
so Mr. Thompson was in charge. They would just have to endure the consequences.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Opening
her eyes, Emma took a deep breath. As long as she didn’t look at Ashley,
everything would be fine. From across the huddle, Lauren caught Emma’s eye and
raised her eyebrows, all joking gone. Lauren was asking Emma for help. Emma.
Poverty child. Loser. Poor girl. Tomboy. Some may have considered it a bonding
moment between enemies, but not Emma. She glared back at Lauren, shaking her
head and scolding herself. “Lauren, Madison, Shiloh, and Peyton. Check-in!”
Emma barked.

Smiles
spread across their faces and Lauren and Madison exchanged a high-five, which
deepened Emma’s scowl. “The rest of you be ready to sub in. Let’s see what they
do with a full-court press the first time down the court and then pick them up
at half court with man-to-man defense. We need to keep the ball under control
and run the offense. Make them fight for each and every rebound. Don’t give the
ball away for free. If I see any of you lagging out there, you’re benched.”

She
shoved her hand in the middle of their huddle. “Team on three.”

Lauren
bumped Emma’s shoulder as they filtered onto the court, a smug smile spread
across her face.

“You’re
going to pay for this,” Emma said.

Lauren
laughed. “You’ve been nothing but a show-off all season. Now it’s your time to
prove yourself and live up to your potential.”

“And
what would you know about my potential.”

Lauren
rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot.”

Was
that, like, a compliment? From Lauren? Emma shook her head. “Just don’t blame
me if we lose.”

“No
chance we’ll lose, Coach.”

Emma
scowled. What was with girls? First they detested her, then they humiliated
her, then they detested her some more, and now they trusted her. Emma couldn’t
keep up with them, nor did she want to exert the effort to try. Somehow, she
had to figure out how to survive the rematch with Evergreen as a coach and a
player.

She
searched the stands for Riley, knowing he couldn’t help her out of this mess,
but desperately wishing he could. For the first time since she’d known him,
Emma was flying solo.
This should be interesting
, she thought. All these girls relying on
her, expecting her to pull off a miracle by leading them to victory against the
best team in the league. She hoped they prepared themselves for disappointment.

She
found Riley and hoped he would come barreling out of the stands and whisk her
away to safety. Her eyes pleaded with him to help her, but he just laughed and
flashed two thumbs up. Emma knew it was his way of encouraging her to face this
challenge head on, but it did nothing but confirm she wasn’t ready for this.

The
court seemed smaller than it had a moment ago. It provided no place to hide and
no alternate solutions for a girl forced prematurely into a coaching role. Emma
searched the stands, the court, and the sidelines looking for an escape route,
but all she found were hundreds of eyes focused on her. She was
trapped—trapped within the black rectangle of the court with a bunch of
girls whose hatred of her had somehow turned into trust. She closed her eyes
and shook her head. What other choice did she have but to coach her teammates
and hope they didn’t get slaughtered under her reign?

***

It
took the world about two seconds to figure out Coach Knowles was MIA and Emma
was calling the shots. Sure, Mr. Thompson was the adult on the sideline
clutching the clipboard as if his life depended on it in case someone tried to
argue that a seventeen-year-old girl wasn’t qualified to coach her peers in the
most important game of the season, but Emma was the one in the driver’s seat.
She hollered orders and whispered pointers to her teammates between plays,
expecting them to dismiss her callous tone and swallow their whining long
enough to listen to her. For once, they obeyed without protest. They had
already accepted Emma as their coach.

The
transition was not so smooth for Emma.

Playing
was tough, coaching was torture, but doing both at the same time was
excruciating. A different mentality was required for each, but when both were
required at the same time it took all the strength Emma had to stay focused. As
a player, she could pass the ball to the open player and cut the other way
without looking back. As a coach, she had to pass the ball to the open player,
cut the other way, watch how the rest of the players shifted, and devise a
strategy for the next time down the court.