“You see the story in the paper?” Coach Johnson asked Mercedes at the end of a hard practice. Mercedes thought Coach pushed them more after they won than after they lost. Since they were on a four-game winning streak, each practice seemed worse than military basic training.
“What story?” Mercedes asked, fighting a yawn. She’d been up until eleven texting with Jade, past one studying, and until two worrying about Callie. Callie had studied nothing since she dropped out at sixteen and jumped into the life of working for Robert, slinging back in their old neighborhood—what Mercedes just called the life. Some nights Callie came around the house, but mostly she stayed at Robert’s place. Mercedes didn’t know which was worse.
Coach showed Mercedes a printed story from al.com about the first few weeks of high school basketball. It wasn’t a long story. Nobody in Alabama cares about basketball until the college football season ends and the Crimson Tide secures the national championship.
“Am I the only Wildcat?” Mercedes asked. The attention embarrassed her at times, especially in front of her teammates. It isn’t my fault, Mercedes thought, that I’m this good. Yes, it was practice and hard work, all those little bottles of character traits that coaches sell, but Mercedes knew better. Like LeBron in basketball or the Williams sisters in tennis, some people became rulers of the court because of God-given natural ability. “I mean, didn’t the story mention Cheryl or Halle?”
Coach pursed her thin lips. “This means there’ll be college recruiters. I want them to talk to me first. You okay with that?”
Mercedes frowned. “Do I have to talk to them?” Mercedes’s small voice belied her five-foot, eleven-inch frame.
“Do whatever you want,” Coach said.
Easy for you to say, Mercedes thought. Mercedes imagined herself in college. Then she saw her sister on the street. Mercedes heard the cheers of a packed field house, and then she heard the tears of her crowded church.
“Mercedes?”
“Thing is, Coach,” Mercedes said, staring at her well-worn Nikes, “I don’t know what I want.”