She’d slipped a fingernail into her mouth and was gnawing on it, her eyes darting from me to her feet and back again. She looked to me as if she was trying to make a decision. I stayed quiet and let her make it.
“Can we talk after the game?” she finally asked.
“I don’t wanna wait, Megan,” I said. “Meredith’s been gone too long and I don’t want to waste anymore time.”
She mumbled something, but I couldn’t understand her.
“What?”
“She’s alright,” she whispered.
“You’ve talked to her?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
The goosebumps popped harder and my heart rate spiked. “Do you know where she is?”
She started to say something, then glanced over my shoulder and something in her expression changed.
I turned and followed her gaze. Kelly Rundles was talking to Stricker at the other end of the hall. She looked up and waved. I waved back.
“After the game,” Megan said quickly. “Not now. We can’t do it now.”
I turned back to her. “Why?”
She started backing away from me, toward the locker room. “After the game. Meet me on the other side of campus, near the admin building.”
“Megan, come on,” I said. “Talk to me.”
“After the game,” she repeated. “Just trust me, please. And don’t tell anyone yet. Please. Don’t tell anyone.”
I didn’t want to let her go, but there was something in her voice and in her face that made me realize I didn’t have a choice. And I didn’t want to push her to the point that I lost her. Plus, I knew I’d be sitting on the bench and she wouldn’t be out of my sight for the next two hours.
I nodded in her direction.
The tension drained out of her face and something close to a smile found it’s way into her expression as she disappeared into the locker room.
SEVENTY-THREE
The girls were out of it and so was I.
It was nearly halftime and we were down by fifteen. It should’ve been more. They couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t pass, they couldn’t defend and they couldn’t execute. It looked as if they had never played a game together before. Everything that Kelly tried failed. When she wasn’t screaming herself hoarse, her jaw was set in a concrete mix of frustration and anger.
Megan, the best player on the team in Meredith’s absence, was atrocious. Throwing the ball away, taking ridiculous shots and letting opponents drive by her as if she was nothing more than a turnstile. Kelly had called her over to the sideline several times, alternately coaxing and berating her, Megan nodding at her with an absent expression, then returning to the floor to continue her ugly play. She was now at the far end of the bench, a towel draped around her neck, her eyes glued on the floor.
I was no help, either. I was watching the game, but my mind was on Meredith and Megan. And Kelly Rundles.
The phone calls bothered me. A few phone calls would’ve been normal, maybe a few text messages. I could recall calling my coach in my high school several times, but they were nothing more than short courtesy calls. Times had changed and relationships between players and coaches had changed, as well. If Meredith was being recruited by top notch colleges, it was likely that Kelly would’ve acted as a filter between Meredith and recruiters which would’ve meant regular phone calls and communication.
But the sheer number struck me as odd. They were nearly every day and many were late into the night. That just seemed abnormal, particularly after Kelly herself had cautioned me about how the relationship between coach and player could be construed differently if the adult wasn’t careful.
As I watched the seconds tick off the clock in the second quarter, though, something else was bothering me.
When I spoke to Megan before the game, her demeanor and voice changed when Kelly showed up at the opposite end of the hall. Was it just a player shrinking beneath the gaze of her coach? Or was there something else?
Every time I glanced at Kelly stalking the sideline, I wasn’t thinking about the game. I was thinking that maybe she had lied to me.
The horn sounded ending the quarter and the girls jogged out of the gym toward the locker room. Several glanced anxiously at Kelly, no doubt anticipating an ass-chewing over their horrendous play.
Kelly snatched her whiteboard off the bench, her jaw still locked in place. She walked over to the scorer’s table, took a look at the scorebook, shook her head and came back in my direction.
“It’s like they don’t even give a shit tonight,” she spat. “Sixteen turnovers. In the first half. Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.”
She walked past me, still talking. “I’m thinking we just go straight man, full-court, press the rest of the way. See if that shakes them awake.” She bounded up the steps that took us from the gym floor to the hallway that led to the locker room, her feet stomping against each stair. “They wanna lose, fine, but they’re gonna run their asses off doing it.” We stopped at the door to the locker room and she turned to me, sweat on her forehead and the skin around her eyes pinched tight. “What do you think?”
I massaged the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. A trace of a headache was forming in my skull, as if my brain hurt from everything I was putting it through.
“Joe?” Kelly asked. “Are you alright?”
“You were talking to her,” I finally said. “To Meredith. A lot.”
Her face screwed up with confusion. “What?”
“Phone calls. I looked at Meredith’s phone records for the last couple of months and there were hundreds of calls between you and Meredith.”
The confusion wound tighter on her face. “What are you talking about?”
“Why was she calling you so much Kelly?” I asked. “Daytime, night time. You two were on the phone together a lot.”
Her eyes were narrow slits now and her hands were balled into fists. “We’re in the middle of a game, Joe. It’s halftime and I’m trying to figure out how to stop the ass kicking we’re on the wrong end of. You wanna talk about Meredith, we’ll talk about her after the game.”
“Ever since she disappeared,” I said, pushing on. “It’s like you’ve forgotten about her. You haven’t been worried about her, you’ve barely mentioned her. It’s been about basketball all the time.” I paused. “You know where she is, Kelly?”
The confusion folded itself into anger and for a moment, her right elbow cocked and I thought she was going to hit me. Instead, she stepped in closer to me, our noses no more than a couple inches apart.
“I am in the middle of a game,” she growled. “And I am not interested in discussing anything else right now. But fuck you for the insinuation. Get the fuck out of my gym.”
That was fine. I wasn’t doing her or the girls any good on the bench. I didn’t belong there anymore.
“I’ll find you after the game then,” I said.
She held up a finger like she had one more thing to say, her teeth bared, her cheeks sucked in, anger plastered on her face. But then she abruptly turned and her fist slammed against the door as she disappeared into the locker room.
SEVENTY-FOUR
I watched the rest of the game from the stands.
The second half of the game went much like the first half. The Coronado girls made a bit of a run to start the third quarter, but it was nothing more than a token show of effort. They quickly reverted to the poor play they’d shown in the first two quarters and when Kelly benched Megan near the end of the third, it was as if she was waving the white flag. The girls appeared listless, tired and uninterested and they were rewarded with a thirty-one point spanking. They looked the part of a defeated team as they left the floor-heads down, shoulders slumped, embarrassment sitting heavily on their backs.