The Mutant’s body slips into a bored sprawl in her chair and she tips her head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Mr. Styles,” Laliberte says, with some impatience.
Sam gestures toward the Student Handbook among the reference manuals on Laliberte’s desk. “Handbook says the gym is open for hack hoops. It doesn’t say anything about boys or girls. We did consult with our team members and got a fifty-fifty break. I figured on negotiating alternate days but this morning the girls were there and ready to go. I wasn’t gonna take it on myself to throw them off the court. It seemed like a reasonable experiment to use the gym together. The important thing is it worked.”
Sam is perspiring heavily. Pleadingly he looks to the Mutant for support but she is otherwise engaged. Mouth Almighty except when you need her. Then she’s got more urgent business mapping flyspeck on the overhead fixtures.
Abruptly, she comes to life, bouncing to her feet to lean across Laliberte’s desk and shove her face into his. “It’s our gym too.”
The principal frowns as if he is considering a complicated thesis.
The Mutant pivots to address the coaches. “When we went in there, we just wanted our time on the floor. Now we’re all agreed if we could play the guys regularly, it would toughen us up to where nobody could beat us. We’ve never played so hard as we did this morning.”
Arms crossed, her coach listens intently and then addresses the principal. “I saw some of it. I was surprised at the way the girls fought back. I’m inclined to go along with it.”
Sam’s coach snorts incredulously. He pokes his chest with his thumb. “Well and good for the girls but what’s it gonna do to my team? They’ll get used to walking over the girls and lose their edge. Besides, this is a contact sport. There’s a size differential. Somebody could get hurt. This galoot here falls on one of those girls, he’s liable to do a serious injury.”
The principal and the coaches laugh and Sam smiles self-consciously. The Mutant is occupied with picking a loose thread from her T-shirt.
“Besides,” Coach continues, his face reddening, “I don’t like boys and girls playing together. Next thing you know, they’ll be—grab-assing—”
“Oh please,” the Mutant’s coach interrupts in an offended tone.
The Mutant jumps in. “It’s just hacking, mostly running and shooting.”
Sam looks hastily at the floor. She’s lying and her coach knows it too. They weren’t hacking this morning; they were scrimmaging.
Laliberte sighs loudly, a signal he is toying with ordering the baby bisected if somebody doesn’t offer him another solution.
Sam clears his throat and they all look at him. “The guys’ll learn by teaching. As the girls get tougher, the guys’ll have to adjust all the time. I told them the most dangerous opponents we’ll have this year will be the ones we’re not expecting, the ones who are supposed to be walkovers who turn out to have fire in their bellies. The girls are very gutty, very unpredictable. I think,” he takes a huge breath, “it’s worth a trial.”
Laliberte looks to the coaches inquiringly.
“Me too,” says the Mutant’s coach.
Sam’s coach makes a disgusted noise. “There’ll be trouble, mark my words.”
Laliberte nods solemnly. “So noted. I wonder if I could have a word with Miss Gauthier alone. Mr. Styles, I’ll see you after her.”
Sam slumps in a chair in the outer Office, trying to find a place to put his feet where no one will trip over them. He catches the high points of the principal’s interview with the Mutant; the word attitude is repeated several times with considerable emphasis by Laliberte. The Mutant’s responses are brief and inaudible. The door opens and she struts out and past him as if his chair were empty.
“Mr. Styles,” Laliberte trills.
Sam has to wait for the principal to leave off paper-shuffling. He is being reminded, he knows, that he has made trouble and is taking up Laliberte’s valuable time.
“Sam. I feel a little bullied. This has been very precipitous. How much is your doing and how much Gauthier’s, I’m not sure. I sincerely hope she is not going to be a partner of yours in further upheavals.”
Sam listens attentively. All issues suddenly coalesce for him into the image of the Mutant.
“The only thing in this school Gauthier’s ever given a sh—a damn about, is hoops. If it makes her a winner, maybe she’ll realize she can be a winner at other things.”
Laliberte smiles indulgently.
Hearing the naiveté in his words, Sam blushes.
“Very commendable of you. Have you ever heard the saying about the rotten apple?”
Throat tightening, Sam looks away. “You’re writing her off, the way my sister got wrote—written off.”
Laliberte straightens up like somebody just stuck a poker up his ass. “I’m not in the business of writing anybody off. Let me remind you that I was not principal here when your sister dropped out, but I’m sure no one ever wrote her off.”
Sam mumbles an apology.
“Accepted.” Laliberte turns conciliatory. “I had no idea you had any resentment about how your sister was treated here. What is she doing now?”
Sam stares at his feet. They don’t look as if he could get them into his mouth but somehow he manages to do it. “I dunno,” he mutters, “I never see her.” He picks at a callus on his palm. “It doesn’t matter.”
Laliberte is silent for a few seconds.
“All right, Sam. No more surprise rewrites of the rules, please. Keep this gym thing in order or shut it down promptly.”
A sunbeam casts its spell over Sam as he tries to read an assignment for Romney’s class at one of the big tables in the school library. The light falls over his heavy head and broad shoulders in a warm thick toffee caul, somehow stretching out time like a pull of homemade candy so the baby’s cry in the bone-chill of the house seems to have wakened him on an entirely
