Sam walks through the gym to the locker room, past Coach’s office—no Coach inside, for which he’s thankful—and sweeps the contents of his gym locker into his duffel. Going past Coach’s office again, he slips under the door the laconic resignation he printed out in his awkward hand when he gave up trying to sleep.
A silence falls behind him as he crosses the gym again, still wearing his jacket, duffel slung on his shoulder.
“Sam!” Rick calls, in sudden alarm, as the doors swing closed between them.
They slam open as Rick races after him, catching him at the outside doors. The Mutant’s only a few steps behind Woods, having paused to grab her coat and duffel.
“Where are you going? What about practice?”
“I quit,” Sam confides and steps out, smiling slightly, into the cold.
In the doorway, Rick stares after him. The Mutant slips under Rick’s extended arm, which holds the door open, to scoot after Sam.
“Hey,” she calls. “You’re my ride. You can’t leave yet.”
“Oh? See me throwing my gear in the cab? See me getting in? See this key? Makes this heap go varrooom.”
She whips around the truck and clambers in breathlessly as he throws the truck into gear and skids across the lot toward the exit road.
“Jesus!” she yelps. “Slow down!”
Sam tromps the accelerator, deliberately spinning them into a donut while she shrieks and throws out her arms in an infantile reflex. He swings them casually onto the access road and she starts to laugh.
“Hot shit!”
“You wanted a ride,” he says. All at once, he feels fine. Lighter. Needed a little relief from gravity.
Sobering, she tucks up onto the seat. “You’re nuts. You can’t quit.”
“Sure I can. I just did.”
“You’re too good.”
He laughs. “Thought you were going to tell me the team needs me.”
“That was the next thing I was going to say. Hey, if I can quit smoking and partying for the sake of my team, then maybe you can put your team ahead of whatever hair you got across your ass.”
“Quit smoking and partying? Right. What was that last night?”
“No big deal if you don’t make it one.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m not gonna argue with you, Deanie. You twist everything around to suit yourself.”
She grins and toes his thigh. “That’s how you win arguments.”
“Not with me. Where you going? Home? Or you want me to take you back to practice?”
“I’m not going back to practice until you do. In fact, I’m not getting out of this truck until you agree you’re not quitting.”
“You’ll get out when I put you out,” Sam says. “Anyway, I was looking for a reason to quit. I’m sick of basketball running my life.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She should know.
His hands slacken on the wheel and he drums at it restlessly. He’s free. He feels unjammed—unchained. His life is his own again. It feels so good, he doesn’t know why he didn’t do it sooner. Hours and hours suddenly his again. Hours he can turn into buckage. Another set of hands, they can take in more business at the garage. He can help his father at the same time he’s earning the insurance on the bike. He’ll have time to put into the farmhouse. It seems so obvious now, like pulling a loose thread.
A few blocks ahead is the turn that could take them to the Mill. While he was hauling her ass home after midnight, she didn’t mention finding the hoop so he guesses she hasn’t. His anger at her was so great, if she’d brought it up, he’d have swallowed his tongue rather than own up to having done diddly for her. But now his mood is as balmy as the air of the melt after a storm. He’s a free man, and heady with it.
“Been to the Mill since Sunday?”
The change of subject focuses her intently. “Why?”
“I left you a surprise there. Sort of a belated Christmas present.”
She sits up straight. “Take me there then.”
They park the truck in the playground lot. The turrets, castellations and slides are gingerbread, sugarfrosted with the recent snow. The air crackles and there is a blue cast to everything that makes him think of last night’s New Year’s moon. Sam pauses to collect his basketball from the floor of the cab. The Mutant trips down the path toward the Mill. Catching up with her as she pops the padlock, he reaches a long arm past her for the light switch.
18
A blue spark explodes the switch. The shock travels from the tip of his finger to deep in his armpit, causing him to drop the ball. The crackle and the burst of light startle the Mutant as well as himself and she jumps back and comes down on his toes. Failing any traction on his sneakers, her feet start to go out from under her. She begins to twist toward him, flailing for her balance. As he scrabbles to catch her, he takes a sharp Mutant elbow in the balls. His loss of interest in rescuing her is immediate and severe. Clutching himself, he opens his mouth and a pathetic croak falls out.
Managing to save herself, she moans in distress. “Oh ‘god!”
He waves her off. Crouching against the wall, Sam grits his teeth and waits. And cups his sack. The only known treatment, chiefly beneficial on a psychological level, he recalls his father saying after a summer baseball game in which Reuben, on the mound, caught a line drive the hard way.
After the outrage in his testicles eases, he considers the numbness in his right arm. Flexes it gingerly and feels only a shadowy ache. The shock hadn’t been strong enough to
