29

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, RUMORS of a televised interview spread quickly through the halls of the high school. Someone who arrived late in the day claimed that there were Channel 6 News mobiles lined up in the driveway and the street in front of Kirsten’s house. Did you hear? Did you hear about Kirsten? someone would say, before somebody else—spotting me as I walked by—elbowed him or her into silence. She’s going to be on the 5 o’clock news! he or she would finish, once they thought I was out of earshot.

When I got home after practice, I found Dad in the living room chair with the TV muted. I sat down on the couch next to him.

The five o’clock news started, and Dad turned up the volume. One of the news anchors gave a rundown of the show: the weather, sports, something about the President’s international tour. “But first,” she said, “a high school basketball coach has been accused of foul play with his star player—and we have an exclusive interview with the player and her parents.”

They went to a commercial break.

“Foul play,” Dad said, shaking his head but not taking his eyes off the TV. “They’re making a sports pun out of real people’s lives.”

Just as they came back from the break, I heard the door to the garage open and close. Mom, I thought. Clips of newspaper articles flashed across the screen—first ones with headlines praising Kirsten (“Howard Scores 32 in Another Rapid River Win,” “Krazy for Kirsten”), then the Letter to the Editor from Kirsten’s mom and dad. The camera zoomed in to show the words “inappropriate relationship.”

Suddenly we were in Kirsten’s house, in her family’s living room, with the three of them sitting together on a couch: Kirsten’s dad, then Kirsten, then her mom.

Despite everything going on, it was a relief just to see Kirsten.    

Still, she looked strange sitting there. She had her hair down instead of her usual ponytail and was wearing a noticeable amount of makeup, as well as a dressy green shirt with semi-sleeves. The shirt made her arms look awkward—too muscular or something. Her elbows were squeezed in by her parents’ bodies.   

The camera zoomed in so we couldn’t see the interviewer. We could hear him, though. He read from the key parts of the letter and then asked questions.

Kirsten, would you characterize Coach Duncan’s relationship with you as inappropriate?

“What do you mean by characterize?”

Her voice sounded strange, too—trembly and weak.

As far as you know, did Coach Duncan break the law in any way?

“Not that I know of,” she said. She swallowed hard. I’d never seen her so nervous and scared. She was looking away from the camera as she spoke as if checking to make sure she had the right answer. I thought about her on the basketball court, dribbling the ball as if it was on a string, her body moving around the court with total confidence.

Not that you know of?

Kirsten’s dad put his hand on her shoulder. Which was all it took.

Just like that, the old Kirsten was back. She cleared her throat. She sat up and dislodged her elbows. She looked straight at the camera. “I mean, no. No, he didn’t do anything illegal.”   

He didn’t do anything that made you feel… compromised?

Kirsten again asked him to say what he meant by compromised, but this time she sounded almost annoyed. The reporter tried to clarify. He reused the phrase inappropriately intimate, as well as the words physical and contact.

“No,” Kirsten said. “Nothing like that.”

Thank God.

I mean, of course not.

But thank God anyway.

Then why do you think your parents wrote the letter to the paper?

Kirsten’s Mom jumped in before Kirsten had a chance to answer: “We were just trying to protect our daughter,” she said.

From what?

There was a pause. The interviewer clarified again.

Did she need to be protected from her coach?

Another pause. Mrs. Howard turned to her husband, who was looking at her, nodding at her to keep going. She turned back to the camera. “In retrospect, we may have overreacted.”

In what way?

“The letter we wrote,” Kirsten’s dad said. “The language we used. That wasn’t what we intended . . . .” he trailed off, cleared her throat, and said: “We probably never should have gone public—”

“He had no right, though—” her mother blurted out.

No right?

“Meeting with her all the time.”

Kirsten nudged her mother with an elbow. “Mom,” she said, “he’s my coach.”

 “And we’re your parents. He had no right,” she said again, looking at the camera. “To take her away from her family. To take her out of school. To treat her like she was . . . like she wasn’t just another teenager playing basketball for him. Like she was something more—”

Another elbow from Kirsten.

Something more? the interviewer asked.

Kirsten’s mom opened her mouth but couldn’t find the words.

Out of school? the interviewer pressed.

I thought about those passes he signed to let her shoot on our driveway.

“It wasn’t just that. It wasn’t just one thing. I’m sorry,” her mom said—to Kirsten? To the camera? “I was angry. . . I was so angry about the whole situation.” She paused. Now she was definitely talking to the camera again. “The words I chose—I didn’t realize they were so . . . I didn’t care . . . I didn’t think about how they would sound to others.”

What were you trying to accomplish with that letter?

When no one answered, the interviewer asked a different question: What do you want to accomplish with this interview?

Kirsten sat up more, freed her arms like she was clearing space for a rebound: “To play basketball,” she said. “Just to play basketball.”

So you won’t be pressing any charges?

“That is correct,” Kirsten’s dad said.

I think Dad and I let out a sigh of relief simultaneously.

The interviewer tried to ask a few more questions, but with no success. Kirsten’s Dad draped his arm across the couch and squeezed his wife’s arm. “I think we’ve said all we wanted to say,” he said.

“Amen to that,” my father said. He clicked off the TV. “Now we can finally get back to real life.”

He said it as though he’d been completely cleared—and he had, hadn’t he?

We heard a thud and turned around. Mom stood in the kitchen next to two bulging bags of groceries.

She said, “There should be enough food in here, Jeff, to last you and Mike a while.” Then she turned and took a few steps towards the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked.

“To pack,” she said.