Open Court (18 page)

“What?” I asked.

“It's irrelevant. Everyone here is talented.”

“Then why did you send for me?”

“Wanted to see if you have what it takes.”

“Huh?”

“Talent is fine, but it's attitude that gets you through the tough times. People on the outside think tennis is just a game, but you know better, don't you, Hall?”

“It's a hunger. Gets under your skin and doesn't let go. Winning the game is irrelevant. The battle is in you. Tennis pushes you, and you either push back or you accept defeat.”

“Yes, yes …”

“True champions aren't afraid to lose. That's why they win,” he said.

It was the truth and I knew it. My insides quaked. I couldn't speak.
True champions aren't afraid to lose. That's why they win.

“I better get going.” He shook my hand, his gleaming watch blinding me. “Nice meeting you.” In an instant, he was gone.

“Hey, Hall!” Katie called from inside her room. “Which Grand Slam do you think is harder for a pro to win, Wimbledon or the French Open?”

M
y mom and I escaped from the Bickford campus and ate dinner alone. We barely spoke. Our minds were heavy. Later on, The Chin ushered us back to Bickford so we could view round-robin tournaments in progress.

I didn't feel like watching them play, so I excused myself. “Gotta find a bathroom,” I said, and ditched them.

None of the dorm rooms had private bathrooms. In order to pee at midnight or otherwise an academy kid had to travel down the hall to the army-sized, latrine-type facilities. As I removed a piece of parsley from my teeth in the bathroom of villa 2, I listened to a girl have a breakdown.

“I hate it here,” a Bickford girl said between sobs.

“It'll get better,” her friend promised.

The girl wasn't buying it. Slumped over on the checkered tile, she was defeated. It was hard to tell the true origin of her stress. Could be from crazed tennis parents, from herself, or from Bickford. Maybe all three.

“It won't get better. My game is sucking more and more. I hate it here. I can't take one more year.”

Her friend said, “Magda, come on, it's not that bad. You're just out of practice. Let's go hit a few balls, you'll feel better.”

“Who are you kidding? It won't get better. Did you see Grendelli's face every time I served?” Magda asked her.

“But you almost beat Naomi Lennon just yesterday.”

“That's nothing to brag about. Naomi Lennon is so bad she'll get the ax before Thanksgiving and you know it.”

“It's Grendelli. He's an asshole. It's common knowledge. Don't let him get to you.”

“I hate Coach Grendelli,” Magda said.

“He's out to kill us all. Sadistic dictator is what he is,” the other girl added.

“Coach Grendelli is a piece of shit and he can kiss my ass,” Magda declared, agreeing.

“Shithead.”

I was impressed with their level of hostility. They
seemed kind of poetic, talking trash in the girls’ room while wearing matching Bickford Academy T's.

I was ready to introduce myself when Magda said, “I haven't won in a long time. I hate it here. They only like you if you win.”

I shuddered.

They only like you if you win.

The hair at the nape of my neck stood up, and my heart was in my throat. It was the truth. For my whole life, Trent, Pete Graham, people at the country club, maybe even Janie Alessandro and Luke, they liked me because I won. Bickford would be no different. A tear ran down my cheek, then another, and more until I tasted salt on my lips. Terror overcame me.

The friend of the crying girl took a cigarette from her shorts pocket and lit it. She turned, gawking at me as if she just noticed me there. “What are you looking at?”

I didn't know what to say.

“I
said,
what are you looking at?”

Copping my own attitude: “Nothing, obviously.”

She took a drag off the cigarette. “What are you going to do,” she said, blowing the smoke my way, “tell on me?”

She failed to realize I was on her side. The poetry vanished. My heart beat like mad. I had to hold my own.

“I couldn't care less what you do.”

“Bitch,” she said.

The threat of a catfight in the ladies’ room coaxed Magda from self-pity. She got between us, eyes still pink and swollen. “Come on, Sandrine. If you get written up for code again they'll expel you.” She grabbed the cigarette, took a heaving drag, and flushed the evidence.

Magda pushed Sandrine toward the door. “She didn't mean it. Rough week. Bad week,” Magda said, dismissing the drama. “Everything's cool.”

Therein was the underbelly of Bickford Tennis Academy: glamorous on the outside, but malicious at its core.

They only like you if you win.

I'd read in my official
Bickford Academy Rules and Regulations Guidebook
(its thickness was that of a phone book) about code violations. Smoking, drinking, drug use, obscene language, inappropriate displays of affection, leaving campus without an official pass, fist-fights, curfew violations, unsportsmanlike conduct, and all sorts of other, vaguer antisocial behavior were sure ways to get a violation. Three code violations equaled automatic expulsion, no exceptions.

Code violations seemed to be the equivalent of being grounded by one's parents, without the parents or the grounding. It didn't seem like either of those girls would last very long at Bickford.

Bickford was a planet all its own, free from outside,
non-tennis forces. I suspected its regulations were an attempt not to make good human beings out of its inhabitants but to simply remove anything that might detract from their tennis abilities.

This theme was so pervasive that even now, after being verbally assaulted by a nameless, faceless Bickford girl, my thoughts drifted not to revenge or puzzlement but to whether or not I could beat her on court. She was fifteen, at least—but I thought maybe I could beat her. I
wanted
to, at least. It was this thinking Bickford required—this thinking turned tennis talent into tennis legend.

Better, more, win. It never ended, only repeated. And I wondered, in an instant and passing thought, whether or not I was being brainwashed.

With my face against the wind, my spirit depleted, I walked outside to retrieve my mom. The brightly lit courts were packed with players of all ages, keeping honest score, playing hard rounds. My mom and The Chin were three courts over. Patiently she listened to Phil, her arms folded, stance calm. She adopted the same pose when one of my brothers brought home a D on a report card.

…
thump
…

My mom is a beautiful woman. Her mouth is placed
on her face in a way that makes it look like she's keeping a big secret. Tiny lines around her eyes crinkle when she laughs, making her even prettier. Often she complains that her fingernails don't look as good as they should. She votes for politicians who never win. I couldn't help but to want to please her. If only I knew how.

…
thump… thump
…

I leaned against the railing, closed my eyes, and listened to the tennis balls as they echoed from every direction. The sound a ball makes when it hits a racquet just right—that twang. It creeps into my soul. Frees me, that twang.

…
thump… thump
…

This trip was about me. Not for the me I am, but for the me I have the potential to
become.

My dad slaved at two jobs so I could play a game.

Sacrifices made. Money spent. Weekends wasted. For what? For my tennis. Sacrifices for me so I could play a game. It wasn't a game anymore. A career now. Important now. He worked two jobs and didn't complain.

For what? For me, for tennis.
Don't disappoint us, please.
Never saying it aloud, never—don't want me to feel the pressure. Expectations exist. It's no one's fault. It's for something, right? Working two jobs for
something,
right? For me. For tennis. So I can win, conquer.
This
is for
something, right? Not a hobby, an opportunity.
Opportunity.
Don't deny the opportunity. What other parents would sacrifice like this? Money spent. Weekends wasted. Making sacrifices for
something,
right?

How could I tell them I didn't know how to win? They had such confidence in my game. In me. Couldn't disappoint them with the truth.
They only like you if you win
—I wanted to scream so that someone, anyone, would understand my predicament. What if I
can't
win anymore? What if I
never
win again? Who will I be then?

“
E
ve has called you four times. Please remind your friends I'm not an answering machine,” my mom said.

“Sorry.” I picked up the phone and punched in Eve's magic code. My fingers were so used to dialing the pattern I did it without looking. The fact that Eve had called was nothing short of a miracle.

“I found one of your Prince racquets in my closet. Come and get it if you want it,” she said.

“Hall,” my mom screamed from downstairs, “Melissa is here!”

“Melissa's over. We'll see you in five minutes.”

I joined Melissa in my driveway. She wore green shorts, a red shirt, and brown clogs—she was a rainbow
of fashion disaster. Had Polly worn the outfit, it would Ve looked cool. On Melissa, it was ignorance.

“Nice outfit.”

“Shut up, Hall.”

“Where's Polly? She's not around?” I asked.

“She's at her interview thing,” Melissa said. She held out a long rope of red licorice, offering me a bite.

I shook my head. “What interview thing?”

Melissa's face percolated like a coffeemaker. “For the school. Didn't she tell you?”

I'd only been gone three days—what the heck was going on? “What school, Melissa?” I practically screamed.

“Bruce's school. I was there when she got home from touring the campus, I know.”

“Westland?” My mouth hung open in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Melissa said. “Polly said it would be cool to go to school with Bruce. Maren is excited to go—I mean to have Polly go there.”

I'd thought the whole Westland Prep thing was a charade, just something Polly was dreaming about. She'd applied? Had an interview? But what about her hatred of math? A school like Westland was all about academic excellence.

“That doesn't make any sense. Why would she do that to herself?” I asked.

“Don't know,” Melissa said.

Complete faith in Melissa was something I didn't possess. Two summers ago, she ate a dog biscuit convinced it was a cookie. I'd wait and ask Polly. It had to be a mistake.

We received a cold reception from soft-spoken Ms. Jensen. The woman sighed heavily through the screen door, as if our mere existence had ruined her day. “Eve is in her room,” she said, speaking in her telephone voice.

Melissa and I propped ourselves against a pink bedroom wall and watched blond Eve feverishly purge and reorganize her closet. “Here's your racquet,” she said, shoving it at me, not looking at me.

“Don't tell me you're still mad at me, Eve,” I said.

She threw a pile of jeans on the floor. “You can't ignore me and then suddenly remember we're friends when Polly isn't around. That's not friendship, that's stupid,” she said.

Unaware of my problems with Eve, Melissa looked horrified. She swallowed her remaining bit of licorice in one big gulp.

“Eve—”

“What?”
she said. “Why don't you go hang out with Polly?
She's
your best friend.”

Ms. Jensen popped her head inside the doorway.
“We have to leave in twenty minutes to make the movie. Will you be ready?”

“Uh-huh,” Eve said.

Ms. Jensen disappeared, and Eve glanced at us. “My mom and I are going to a movie at Cinemark IMAX, and then lunch after, so, you know, goodbye.”

“Can I go, too?” Melissa asked.

“Sure, Melissa,” Eve said while looking at me.
“You
can come if you want.”

Ugh. My friendship with Eve was over without so much as a ceremony. Somehow I knew it wasn't her fault or mine. It wasn't Polly's fault, either—Eve and I had dissolved on our own. She was riding fast, first, in a different direction. I didn't want to play catch-up anymore. Still, I felt like crying. She wasn't just kicking me out of her room; she was kicking me out of her life. Ordinarily we would've shooed Melissa away and gone to the movies ourselves. Instead, I was discarded. I didn't know whether to be mad at myself for Eve's rejection or at Melissa for abandoning me.