The bus ride back from Chester Heights was almost completely silent.
The only person who seemed interested in any sort of conversation was Coach Axelson, who walked up and down the aisle while they waited for the driver to get going, speaking softly to everyone, trying to encourage all twelve players.
Coach Josephson sat in the front row, on the right side of the bus, staring into her phone. That was the pose adopted, or so it seemed to Andi, by almost everyone on the bus.
Andi had texted her parents to tell them the final score and what time the bus was expected back at school. Five minutes into the ride, she saw a text from Jeff: We won! it said. Came from 15 down to steal it. Danny hit the winner at the buzzer. You?
Andi smiled wearily and texted back. Lost, badly. More to it than score. She paused for a moment and then added: Want to get a pizza for lunch at Andy’s tomorrow?
They had talked in the past about how much they both like Andy’s Pizza at the King of Prussia Mall. It wasn’t too far from where they each lived and she hoped the parents might split the driving.
His answer came back so fast she had to smile. Sure! Let me check with my parents about driving.
I’ll do the same. Talk tonight.
The bus was now in traffic and Andi was starting to get a headache. Jeff sent her a thumbs-up emoji in response, and she put the phone down and closed her eyes.
Coach Josephson’s words in the postgame locker room kept bouncing around her brain: “This isn’t over.”
That certainly didn’t mean, “Hey, girls, we’ve still got twelve conference games to play, so don’t worry about the first two nonconference games.” Clearly, it meant something like, “I let you five play the second half to keep from getting humiliated, but I’m still angry about what happened.”
Andi was angry, too. She was pretty convinced her coach was a secret racist who had just revealed her secret.
She remembered watching a basketball game with her father in which the announcers kept talking about how cerebral JJ Redick—then playing for the Sixers—was. She had finally asked her father what cerebral meant. “They’re saying he’s smart,” her father had answered. “It’s code. They’re trying to tell you the white guy is smart.”
Their coach wasn’t even using code. She was straight-up saying stupid things, making racist assumptions about people because of the color of their skin.
She was jolted out of her thoughts when Eleanor suddenly sat down in the empty seat next to her. Andi had been so deep in thought she hadn’t even seen her coming down the aisle.
“So what do you think she’s going to do?” Eleanor asked. She was speaking just loudly enough for Andi to hear over the engine and the traffic surrounding them on the highway.
Andi thought for a moment. “She won’t suspend us, she can’t afford to,” she finally answered. “Look at what happened in the first half.”
“Yeah, but if it had been her call, we wouldn’t have played the second half.”
“It was still her call,” Andi said. “She didn’t have to let it get to a team vote.”
“Or maybe she miscalculated. Thought the vote would go against us.”
Andi hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense. She had certainly been surprised when Bronson had voted with them; she imagined the coach had been, too.
“She’s in a tough spot. On the one hand, she’d probably like to throw us all off the team. On the other hand, she probably doesn’t want to go zero and fourteen.”
“That’s why Bronson voted with us,” Eleanor said, nodding in assent. “She didn’t want to lose the game by fifty.”
“I think we get a stern lecture on loyalty and have to run a bunch of suicides,” Andi said.
“I can live with that,” Eleanor said. “I probably went too far. I should have brought it up to her in private. I almost forced her into a corner.”
Andi had been amazed before at how mature Eleanor was. This was another example.
“I don’t think you did anything wrong, but you’re pretty sensible for an eleven-year-old,” she said with a smile.
“Almost twelve,” Eleanor said. “My birthday party is the first Saturday in January. You coming?”
“Am I invited?”
“Absolutely,” Eleanor said. “Bring your friend Jeff. I like him.”
“Yeah,” Andi said. “He’s a good guy.”
Eleanor laughed. “And cute, too.”
Andi looked at her in the darkened bus to see if she was joking. Eleanor was at least seven or eight inches taller than Jeff.
“You’re like a foot taller than he is,” she said.
“Not that much,” Eleanor said. “And when you’re my height these days, most boys are going to be shorter than you.”
Andi didn’t have an answer for that one. So she leaned back, closed her eyes and thought about Andy’s Pizza.
Jeff read Andi’s text suggesting they get pizza together the next day three times before starting to respond. Then he hesitated. He didn’t want to appear too eager. So he waited an entire minute before texting his answer.
He was still in the locker room, dressed and ready to go, but waiting for his mom to come pick him up. She was ten minutes away. His dad was working the Flyers game. The Stanley Cup–champion Blues were in town, so his dad had a rare hockey assignment.
Danny, carrying the game ball Coach C had presented him with, stopped and sat down on a stool next to Jeff—who was sitting in front of his locker.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re texting with Andi.”
“How’d you know?” Jeff said, surprised.
“Because you’ve got a goofy grin on your face. You don’t get that look when you’re texting your parents.”
Jeff had to tell someone. “She asked me if I wanted to go to the mall tomorrow to get pizza for lunch.”
Danny’s smile was so wide it took up about three lockers of space.
“Oh-ho, so the romance builds.”
“It’s not a romance,” Jeff said, fully aware of the fact that his face had flushed.
Danny shook his head. “Does she know she’s settling for the passer on the winning shot when she could have the shooter? You know, the guy who actually made the shot?”
“Should have passed it to Arlow,” Jeff said. “I can see you’re going to be impossible to live with.”
“As opposed to Arlow, right?” Danny said, and they both laughed. Arlow had been the first guy out of the locker room, not even bothering to shower. After he’d left, Jeff had filled Danny in on what had happened after his shot had gone in.
“Yeah, well, I can deal with Arlow,” Jeff answered. “I don’t have to be nice to him.”
“You better be nice to me,” Danny said. “If only because I’m your Arlow-protector. He has no desire to get into it with me—or, for that matter, be around me.”
“Why not?” Jeff said.
“Oh, I think we both know the answer to that question.”
“I think you’re right,” Jeff said.
Danny’s phone pinged. “My mom’s outside.”
Jeff’s phone pinged even before Danny stood up. “Mine too,” he said with a laugh.
They walked out together.
As they turned the corner and saw their parents’ cars waiting for them on the circle behind the school, Danny said, “Have fun tomorrow, lover boy.”
“Shut up!” Jeff said, punching him lightly on the arm.
He was glad it was dark. That way, Danny couldn’t see that he was red-faced … again.
Amy Josephson was the first one off the bus when it pulled up to the back door at Merion. She didn’t say good night to anybody or wish her players a good weekend. She bolted down the steps and began walking rapidly to her car.
She heard a voice behind her. “Amy, hang on a second.”
It was Joan Axelson—who was about the last person she wanted to talk to at that moment. But she stopped, turned, and said, “What is it, Joan?” in as cold a voice as she could conjure.
Joan walked up quickly beside her.
“Let’s go get a drink,” she said.
“Can’t it wait till Monday?” Amy said.
“I don’t think so,” Joan asked. “Come on, there’s a place not far from here that’ll be quiet.”
“At six o’clock on a Friday night, a bar that’ll be quiet?”
“Trust me,” Joan said. “It’s an Italian restaurant with a small, quiet bar.”
The truth was, Amy could use a drink. And, as usual, she had no plans for Friday night.
“Okay, give me the address and I’ll meet you there.”
Joan gave her the address. “It’ll take you about five minutes,” she said.
Amy was skeptical about the whole thing but nodded. “I don’t have that much time,” she said, knowing that Joan probably knew she was lying.
“No problem,” Joan said.
Joan wasn’t lying about the drive—four minutes—or the place. The main room was large and filled with families out for Friday-night dinner. But the bar, tucked up front, was nearly empty and a booth in the corner was unoccupied.
They sat down and Joan asked Amy what she wanted. “White wine,” she said.
Joan got the attention of the bartender, who smiled when she saw her.
“Can we have two glasses of Sonoma-Cutrer here, Mary Jane?” she asked.
Their drinks arrived quickly.
“To better times,” Joan said, picking up her glass.
Amy clinked her glass but said nothing. She looked at Joan and said, “You’re up.”
Joan took a long sip, put her glass down, and nodded her head.
“What is it they say in sports talk radio? I have a question and a comment.”
“Fire away.”
“First, the question. What exactly is your problem with Andrea Carillo? You’ve been on her since tryouts started; you buried her on the end of the bench in our first game when she is—at worst—our third-best player. And you’ve gone out of your way to pick on her whenever you’ve gotten the chance.”
“I buried Lisa Carmichael in game one, too, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did, but I suspect her crime was being friends with Andi.”
“The two black girls are friends with her, too, aren’t they? And now their Asian teammate seems to be joining them.”
Joan picked up her wine and took another long sip before answering.
“Okay, before you answer the Carillo question, what is it with you and your comments about people of color?”
“You too with the political correctness?” Amy answered. “Come on, they are different from us.”
“We’re all different from one another, Amy,” Joan said, getting exasperated. “And we’re all pretty much the same. Biggest problem we have in this country right now is all the labeling going on. Doing it on a sixth-grade basketball team is flat-out horrible.”
Amy shrugged. “You can quit if you want to. Blacks are different from us. Hispanics—did I say that correctly for you?—are different, too. And Jews. You want me to go on?”
“No, please, please don’t. But before I get out of here, what’s your issue with Carillo? Being Italian American?”
Amy laughed. “Not at all,” she said. “For one thing, I just agreed with Hal Johnston. Girls shouldn’t be playing with boys. I learned that from my father growing up.”
“When was that?” Joan said. “The nineteenth century?”
She stood up and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. She had to get out of there. She had a lot of thinking to do before Monday.