“We’ll invite the whole gang!” I put a comforting hand on his arm, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you through it.” I can see longing in his eyes and I’m sure he’s thinking about Poblocki. It hurts my heart knowing he misses home so much. “Well, I don’t want to overwhelm you with the rules, so that’s enough Texas lessons for today.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
NASH
“This cannot keep happening to us,” Temi groans as we all stand back and look at the net that resembles the Leaning Tower of Piza. Practice had started like any other day. We went to the locker room to put our stuff away, got our court shoes on, and then we came out to get the net set up. I can’t say for sure how many times I’ve set up and broken down a net in my life, but it’s a lot. Something like three to five days a week, eight to ten months a year, for the last twenty years? How many is that? I don’t know, I’m horrible at math.
“Let’s double-check the storage closet for the crank one more time. Maybe we just missed it,” suggests Daly.
“You think you missed it, Temi missed it, and I missed it?” I ask incredulously. That’s like three pairs of eyes.
“Let’s make Danica look for it. She’s a mom, so if it’s there, she’ll walk right in and find it.”
We all turn away from the net and I yell for Danica, who’s still in the locker room. She comes out with a confused look on her face. “What’s wrong?”
I point at the net behind me, normally taut across the top,it’s now completely sagging in the middle. “No one can find the crank. We thought maybe you could use your mysterious mom powers,” I explain.
She heads in the direction of the closet where we’ve already brought out the cart that the poles and net are stored on and searched high and low for the missing metal piece.
I can’t help but be annoyed that we’re wasting time at another precious practice because of a malfunction out of our control. Maybe the founders of the league are forward thinkers and have enough money piled away to fuel this thing for four or five seasons before they have to pull the plug, but I don’t want to take that chance.
When she’s not out in just a few seconds, I know she’s not going to find it. The motherly power to find missing things works almost instantaneously, or it doesn’t work at all. I’m not surprised when she comes out empty-handed. “I have no idea where that little sucker got off to.”
Temi looks at me. “Who was here last?”
“I think there was a high school tournament here over the weekend. They must have accidentally misplaced it or walked off with it.” I gaze at the net halfheartedly. With its big dip in the middle all sunken in, it looks a little halfhearted, too.
“Crazy that they would take like the most important part. It basically ruins the whole thing,” says Daly.
“Yeah, what are we going to do for practice today if the net isn’t competition height?” Simin asks, looking at the rest of us.
“Oh, it’s competition height all right…if you’re ten and under,” Temi jokes and the laughter of my teammates breaks up some of the negative thoughts inside me.
Coach comes out of the makeshift office and sees us all standing around. “What are you all waiting for?” We split in half, Temi and me going one way, Daly and Danica going theother in a dramatic reveal of the fucked-up net. “Christ on a bike. You don’t have the net up yet?” She checks her watch. “We’re already twenty minutes behind.”
We’re silent for a beat, having an unspoken conversation between us about who is going to tell Coach that the net is missing a key piece. I’m trying to make this my team, so I’ll speak up. “The crank is missing; can’t get it up all the way. There’s no way to tighten it.”
She looks at each of us in turn, then up at the ceiling. “Well, ladies. We’ll just have to make do.”
I hate those two words. As a female athlete, I’ve heard them more times than I can count.
When the net is broken—we make do.
When the bus is late—we make do.
When the court is taken—we make do.
When the high school bake sale only made enough money to send one team to state and they gave it all to the boys instead of splitting it evenly between us—we made do.
I didn’t have to make do in Rome. There was money and fans and support there. But here in my home country, in my homecity, I’m back to making do.
I’m so fucking sick ofmaking do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
WYATT
If I had known when I agreed to these team workouts at the end of football season that they would become an interrogate Wyatt fest, I would have declined.