No surprise he’s tired enough to check effortlessly into the Dream Motel.
Sitting on the bench next to Coach, the Mutant watches the warm-up. People gawk at her. Some of them make cruel remarks to each other behind their hands or in low voices. Nothing new in that. She holds her head a little straighter. Someone’s shadow falls massively over her from behind, ‘god’s huge hands fold over her thin shoulders, squeeze her gently and then he’s gone, up into the bleachers.
Time-out, quarter breaks, half—she crouches next to Coach in the heart of the clutch of girls, with a twin on either side of her, their hands on her shoulder and knee in unselfconscious solidarity. Unimpeded, even enhanced by their differences, energy—the will to win—flows among them and flowers in the bright, damp faces and eyes, the nervous flick of fingers through sweaty hair.
She leaps into the air a fraction of a second before the buzzer, her arms shooting up as if to dunk, and she comes down, pistons her elbows back, her fists closed, folding her body in a triumphant clench. Her eyes are closed tight in ecstasy when the camera flash goes off.
Slapping palms down the length of the parade line of the boys waiting at the locker room door, when she reaches ‘god the Mutant dances like a raindrop hip-hopping down a windshield, rattles her fingertips off his as if speed-typing, and is gone, a whirlwind on the tips of her toes.
The instant of contact transmits her excitement to Sam and he goes out pumped and primed, the tensions between them blown away.
After the game, the mood on the boys’ bus is one of raucous triumph.
“Smoked’m!” Bither crows.
“Bagged’m, tagged’m and shat on their heads, Sambo,” Rick confides happily.
“Amen, Brother Slick. But I felt like a paranoid asshole, sharing your squeeze bottle.”
Rick glances around at their teammates. “Yeah, well, they could try to fuck me up too.”
Sam shakes his head. “It’s over. Whichever one it was, made their point.”
“Anybody fucks me up, Sambo, is gonna get severely fucked back.”
It’s being pumped from the game that’s running Rick’s mouth, Sam knows, but he feels an empathetic surge of the don’t-fuck-with-me’s in his blood.
“All right!” he agrees.
High fives, to mark their mutual aggression pact.
On the road before theirs, the girls’ bus arrives at the high school first and empties. Sam checks his truck from the boys’ bus. Though she has a key and instructions to start it and keep herself warm should she arrive first, he sees no Deanie.
The planet under Sam’s feet seems to take a sudden acceleration and his stomach climbs his spine. Grabbing his gear, he climbs over the backs of seats past startled teammates to get to the front of the bus. The doors can’t wheeze open fast enough for him. He gives them a kick that produces a startled pneumatic squeal and an outraged “Hey!” from the bus driver. As the driver anxiously works the doors again and discovers, wonderingly, that the stickiness they have exhibited for weeks is suddenly gone, Sam bolts across the lot to yank open the passenger door of his truck.
The dark bundle on the floor is the very shadow of his fear. He stops breathing and reaches for her. Yelping, she raises her pale face from her arms. He sees in her startled eyes there is nothing wrong with her. Her whole body is shaking and he realizes she is cold.
Feeling foolish, he demands to know, “Why didn’t you start the truck?”
“I did what you told me but it didn’t work,” she snaps back just as crossly. “I must a flooded it.”
Silently he slips behind the wheel, turns the key she has left in the ignition and jollies the engine, which she has indeed flooded, to life.
“My fault,” he mutters. “Should of made sure you knew how to start this thing. We’ll practice it.” A lightbulb goes on in his head. “Gonna teach you how to drive too.”
That makes her sit up, amazed, not sure whether she has heard him right.
He plucks at his game tie and tears it off. “When I looked over here and I couldn’t see you, I was scared shitless.”
Her good eye goes wide, the one with the bad mouse leaking, and her mouth wavers. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just warmer on the floor. You shouldn’t be worried. Tony’s in no shape to come after me right now.”
He yanks up the parking brake. “There’s a tire iron under my seat. In case you can’t get to it, I’m putting a nail gun in the glove compartment so when you have to wait for me, you’ll have some way to protect yourself.”
Deanie stares at him.
“The fuckhead doesn’t get any more whacks at you,” Sam promises. “He comes within sight of you, I’m taking his fucking head off for him.”
Still hugging herself against the cold, she protests, “It’s not worth it.”
His answer is unspoken:
