“I’m blowing it!” Mercedes kicked over a trash can in the visiting locker room. Kat followed behind and picked up the spilled garbage, muttering a torrent of filthy language.
“That’s enough!” Coach shouted, but Mercedes heard nothing but sirens in her head.
Unable to swear, Mercedes smashed her fists hard into the old tan lockers. The sound bounced around the tiny room like thunder. “Cheryl, don’t you ever pass me the ball again!”
Cheryl started to speak, but Mercedes shouted over her. “Anybody but me!” She turned to Kat, snatched the clipboard out of her hands, and ripped up into tiny pieces the score sheet for the game that showed her line: zero for eight from the field, including three missed threes.
Instead of handing the clipboard back to Kat, Mercedes punted it across the room. When she did, Coach bounded across the room and grabbed Mercedes’s left arm.
“Let go of me!”
Coach clutched Mercedes’s arm tighter and dragged her into the shower. With one hand, Coach pressed against Mercedes’s chest to hold her in place, and with the other, she turned on the water. “You’d better cool down, now!”
Mercedes stood in the cold water, shivering, the water masking her falling tears. It was a game with scouts in the stands and they had to win, but she’d lost her rhythm. Mercedes wondered if she’d lost her soft shooting touch when the police locked the hard cuffs on Callie’s wrists.
Back in the locker room, she heard Coach trying to fire everyone up even as ice raced through Mercedes’s veins. She reached up and turned off the water. Kat stood a few feet away and tossed her a towel. Mercedes stripped off her clothes and wrung the water out of them. She squeezed as hard as she could—her hurting hands aching with the effort—to get her clothes dry.
“You ready to play?” Coach asked. Mercedes wrapped the towel tight around her. Kat picked up Mercedes’s clothes and took them into the other room. Mercedes heard the hand dryer turn on loud.
“I want to,” Mercedes said, her voice hoarse from tears. “I don’t know if I can.”
“If you want to change your behavior, then you can. It’s that simple.”
From the gym, Mercedes heard the roar of the crowd as the South High team returned to the court. “You can go, Coach. I’ll be okay.” Mercedes shivered again.
“Tell me what’s going on.” Coach leaned closer and put her hand on Mercedes’s shoulder.
“No.” My sister is locked up, Mercedes thought, and my brother’s out with the wrong people.
Coach shook her head. “Mercedes, I’m here for you, and so are your teammates.”
Mercedes stared at the shower floor. “Don’t you need to get out there and coach?”
“That’s what I am doing,” Coach said. Kat returned with Mercedes’s damp clothes and tossed them to her. “Kat, the team’s yours until I get back. Like always, do your best.”
Kat, all five-foot-one of her, sprinted off toward the gym as if a starter pistol had just fired. “Mercedes, get dressed and then come see me.” Mercedes did like she always did: followed her coach’s orders.
After Mercedes returned in her damp clothes, Coach said, “Tell me. It will help.” Coach motioned for Mercedes to sit by her on the bench. A bench made for quick changes, not for long stories like the one Mercedes told about her sister. How despite the surroundings they grew up in, Callie seemed on the right course until the dark cloud called Robert stormed into her life.
“When I’m on the bus and it stops at a traffic light, I can’t stop thinking about Callie standing on the corner with Robert’s hand on her shoulder pushing her down.”
Coach started to speak, but stopped. Mercedes sensed Coach wanted her to say more.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mercedes confessed. “I’ve got to change what she’s doing.”
Coach patted Mercedes again on her shoulder. “Let me show you something.” Coach dipped her left hand into her maroon North polo and pulled out a necklace. “You see this, Mercedes?”
The thin necklace held a large pendant with lots of writing. Mercedes stared hard and read aloud the words engraved on it: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
“What you can change is yourself. Focus on your game, not your sister’s.” Coach pointed at the gym. “I know one thing that you can change. I know you can change the score of this game!”
With her uniform still cold and damp, Mercedes felt her game was ready to heat up.