Page 17 of It’s All in How You Fall
V.XC.T.G.G.
The lastGhe marks with a circle and a strike-through—like on a no-smoking sign.
Next, he creates a new column topped with aWand strikes another line before writing a couple more letters:B,S&D.
The last line is predictable because I think I’ve got it now—the crossed-outGwas a dead giveaway. An underlinedSleads the way on the final list, followed by the lettersT&F,S,S.
“Caroline Kepler, meet all the sports that exist for girls according to KSHSAA governance.”
Fall: volleyball, cross-country, tennis, golf, gymnastics (marked out, sigh).
Winter: basketball, swimming and diving.
Spring: track and field, soccer, softball.
My choices written in sandy relief.
“You forgot football,” I chide him because Nat’s crush Liv is basically famous for being the starting quarterback on Northland’s football team.
“I wouldn’t recommend that one, short stuff, but you’re right, there’s nothing stopping you from doing any of the boys’ sports.”
To that end, he adds anFto fall and aWto winter: wrestling.
I read the list again, lingering on the sad, crossed-outG. The irony is that last fall I turned down the school’s gymnastics coach—Ms. Clarke—because my team schedule was so bananas there was no way I could compete for her too. Plus, with my back already a mess at the beginning of my freshman year, there’s no way in hell Olga would’ve let me spend any time in a gym that wasn’t under her watchful eye. “You did a lot of research for this.”
It somehow embarrasses me that he thought about more than just the mechanics of picking me up and getting me here.
Alex literally shrugs it off. “I just organized my thoughts. If I’m going to teach you something, I want it to be useful.”
“Okay.” God, he’s too nice.
“I figure we’ll work for an hour today and you can train those skills the rest of the week before we move on to another sport. If at any time you find a sport you love and think is the one, we’ll focus specifically on it for as long as you want.”
That makes sense. “And we’re starting with volleyball? Why?”
“Because if your back can handle it, I think you’d make an awesome libero and, if you want to compete, the tryouts are in early August.” I’m about to ask if all the fall sports have tryouts at the same time when he gives a self-effacing grin. “Also, I knew there was an open window of court time for me to snag between three and four today.”
“Way to use your resources, Zavala.”
“I’m not a dumb jock and you know it.”
This makes me laugh not only because no one would ever accuse him of that—he’s on Northland’s championship mathletics team, after all. Alex also happens to be a letterman in sports that aren’t stereotyped as being full of a bunch of meatheads: soccer, basketball, and tennis. Much like Sunny, he’d literally be the most annoying human being ever if he weren’t so nice.
He grins and points me and the ball in my hands over to the court. “Let’s get started.”
Off go my athletically appropriate shoes and socks. I suddenly feel a hundred percent more at home, even as my heels sink into carted-in sand instead of a fluffy blue mat.
We line up on the same side of the net, oriented so that neither of us gets a full to-the-face look into the steaming afternoon sun. I smack the ball to him—just like in our basketball game last night, it’s got too much velocity and there’s exactly zero arc.
Somehow Alex turns a line drive to his chest into something workable, bumping the ball off both wrists before catching it, easy as pie. “The key with volleyball is timing and contact.” Alex tosses up the ball and pops it my way.
I bang my wrists together and try to tap it back to him, but I swing instead of bump and the ball goes sailing straight up toward the blinding sun. It plummets back down, and on instinct, I toss myself toward it, trying to correct my mistake. I get one fist under the ball as my knees hit the sand, popping it up with such force it thunks Alex in the shoulder as he unsuccessfully dodges. Still, he’s at least fast enough to avoid a volleyball-to-cheekbone collision.
The ball drops with a thud to the sand and I stare at it, this poor thing that’s in for a wild ride whenever it comes my way. It’s going to be a long hour for you, little volleyball.
Alex scoops it up and meets my eyes, face blank. “You don’t know it, but that whole sequence was actually not too shabby.”
I squint at him and rise to my feet. I don’t bother to dust off the sand—there’s going to be a whole lot more where that came from. Screen print Nadia’s just going to have to live with some manual exfoliation. “Are you going to be the type of coach who blows smoke up my ass? Because believe me, that won’t work. I’ve been nitpicked to death since I was five. Something can always improve and we both know what I did just now was shit.”
