Luci gingerly approaches the front of the classroom. Coach’s desk has a throne-like quality thanks to the two trophy cases glittering behind it. His baseball hat is off, his sandy hair lightened blond by summer. He’s on his laptop, typing, chewing a piece of gum fast and hard, almost compulsively. He could be a grad student cramming for an exam.
“Excuse me, Coach?”
He looks up, momentarily annoyed by the interruption. But then, in a flash, he’s smiling warmly. “Lucianna.”
“Oh. Ha. Only my grandmother calls me that.” Luci lifts her arms to fix her sagging ponytail but, realizing her armpits probably have sweat rings, lowers them. “Everyone calls me Luci.”
He leans back in his creaky teacher’s chair, old dark wood. “You’re Argentinean, am I right?”
Luci cocks an eyebrow. “Yes. My mom’s side.” She was pretty sure everyone at West Essex assumed she was white.
Coach stretches, pleased with himself. “Did you know that you share a name and a heritage with arguably the best female field hockey player of all time? Luciana Aymar.”
Luci laughs loudly. Practically a bark. “Um. No. And … in that case, for sure call me Luci. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
“Too late.”
She has a hard time keeping eye contact with Coach. He sorta looks like a grown-up version of Mike Roy, a classmate who Luci secretly crushed on third quarter. “Sorry. I guess I’m just overwhelmed?” Her upspeak is like nails on a chalkboard. She hears now why her mother gets on her case about it. It makes her sound like a ditz. She forces a swallow. “I’d never even held a stick before the field hockey unit in Mr. Yancy’s gym class last spring. So it’s a little crazy to be standing here right now.”
Mr. Yancy is the West Essex Lower School’s gym teacher, and also, it turns out, the freshman field hockey coach. Over the summer, he mailed Luci info about a free skills camp for incoming freshmen. Luci decided to go, mainly because it would be a chance to see her classmates before high school started, have another crack at making friends with them. She’d been a midyear transfer during eighth grade, was still a little lost, and had spent most of her summer alone, guzzling Cheetos and Netflixing on her phone.
The skills camp had turned out to be good fun. They did drills, mostly, not the most exciting stuff, but Luci was a quick learner, and Mr. Yancy would often praise her good instincts. It was borderline embarrassing how good Luci felt to have something in her life clicking.
Coach leans forward on his elbows and laces his hands. “Luci, I know you’re green but you’ve got a hell of a lot of raw potential. Believe me, I don’t normally bother checking out the incoming freshman players. But Yancy called me and said, ‘Coach, you have to see this girl play. She’s a natural.’ And he’s right. You are.”
Luci had heard whispers during the first day of skills camp that the high school’s varsity coach was not like a typical teacher. He was hot. Also young and cool. In the abstract, Luci couldn’t picture it. But on the second day, someone pointed Coach out to Luci, standing with his arms folded at the chain-link fence, watching them play. He didn’t stay long—maybe ten minutes— but he spoke with Mr. Yancy before he left. His eyes were on Luci the entire time. And her cheeks flushed as brightly then as they probably are right now. The next day, before Luci even set down her gear, Mr. Yancy sent her to the upper field, where varsity tryouts were already in progress.
“I’ll admit, I threw you into the deep end this week. But you more than held your own. Sure, I could have left you on the freshman team, given you a season to get your bearings. Or bumped you to JV and let you be their star. But playing at the varsity level and, frankly, having me be the one to coach you will raise your game much, much faster.”
Luci feels herself stand taller. “I think it already has.”
Not to say that she hadn’t spent those three days of varsity tryouts expecting any minute to be pulled off the field by Coach. She was fast only because she was scared of getting a stick to the shins. She never stood in the right place, even if she did score. And the language everyone spoke on the field was completely foreign to her.
Help side!
Get through!
Read it!
Pressure pressure pressure!
The girls would help Luci when they could, discreetly whispering tips, lifting their chins to show Luci where to stand. Little by little, the game began to feel more instinctual, the stiffness of drills smoothing during play. And when Luci completed one turn-and-shoot move, managing to sail the ball into the back of the net during a scrimmage, every girl, regardless of what color pinny they wore, swarmed her, slapping her back, mussing her hair. It was pure joy.
When she stood around the flagpole this afternoon, Luci desperately wanted to hear Coach say her name.
Coach nods, pleased with her validation. And perhaps, as a reward, his voice downshifts to something lower, more conspiratorial. “Tell you the complete truth, Luci, I’m being selfish. I haven’t been this excited to coach someone in … well, it’s been a while.” His eyes drift over her shoulder, focusing briefly behind her.
Luci turns.
Mel, still sitting at that front-row desk, sets her pen down and begins to smooth the tape onto her stick handle, pressing the edges, careful, precise. Mel is definitely close enough to have heard their conversation, but if she’s been listening, Luci can’t tell.
“Anyway, Luci.” Coach’s voice is at a normal volume again, and Luci spins to attention. “I want you to start thinking about goals for this season. Lay out what you want to accomplish.”
“You mean like … learn a lot?”
Coach’s face crinkles with polite embarrassment. “I’m talking about setting some stat goals to get you on the college scouting radar. It wouldn’t hurt to make a list of top schools. D1 and D2. More and more high school players aren’t waiting to commit anymore. This summer, a sophomore at Ellis signed a letter of intent for DCU, full ride.”
Luci bites down on her smile. This conversation feels impossible—she hasn’t even played a single game yet—but if it were true, if there were even a remote chance at a scholarship, it would majorly help her mother, who was already drowning in med school debt.
“Now, you came over to ask me something, right?” He rolls his pencil through his fingers so fast, it’s a yellow blur.
Right. Her mother. Still outside waiting. Luci thinks of a quick excuse, instead of telling Coach the truth, because she doesn’t want to seem babyish. “May I please go to the bathroom?”
She winces. Smooth, Luci. Real smooth.
Coach laughs at her, but to his credit, attempts to disguise it by clearing his throat. “Just make it quick.”
Luci’s been in the upper school only once, for the holiday concert. She never walked the halls or peeked inside a classroom before this. It feels like high school here. Serious. Straightforward. Smart Boards. Meanwhile, at the lower school, her eighth grade locker had been directly above a kindergarten classroom, and once, as she searched for a tampon in her book bag, she’d heard children singing their ABCs. This memory only makes Luci happier to be here now, as if a paper-chain umbilical cord tethering her to childhood has at last been snipped.