Page 25 of Guess Again
“We’re going to sprint this last leg, all the way into the track.”
“Not sure I can.”
“I am.”
“You are what?”
“Sure you can do it. Let’s go!”
Callie took off in a sprint, and her teammate followed close behind. Soon they were running side by side. As they grew closer to the track, Callie put her hand on the girl’s back, ushering her the last of the way and, finally, across the finish line. She high-fived the girl, and then glanced out of the side of her eye to make sure Coach Cordis had noticed her efforts.
Ten minutes later, the track was clear as the volleyball squad headed into the locker room. Callie stayed behind. As the day’s team leader, she was in charge of packing up the outdoor practice courts. Callie hauled a mesh bag filled with volleyballs over to the giant bin next to one of the practice courts.
“Hey,” Coach Cordis said as he walked over. “Nice job today.”
Callie smiled. “Thanks.”
“Gracie has a hard time with conditioning. Great job helping her across the finish line.”
“She would have made it without me. I was just encouraging her.”
“You were pushing her. Probably harder than she would have pushed herself. You’re a great captain, Callie. And we’re going to have a really good season if you keep it up and get the rest of the team to work as hard as you do.”
“I’ll try.”
Blake Cordis was a first-year coach. He graduated from UW Madison in May and was about to start his first year teaching history. He landed the head-coaching job by chance when the long-running girls’ volleyball coach retired unexpectedly due to health issues. Blake was a last-minute replacement, but the girls warmed to him quickly. He had been in college at this time last year, and Callie knew he was not too far removed from where she was now—a high school senior struggling with all the things students deal with. She continued to remind herself of this every time she and Coach Cordis were alone together, which seemed to happen more and more lately.
He placed his hand on the small of her back, above the band of her shorts and below the bottom of her sports top. The skin-to-skin contact sent a quiver through her chest as he leaned in and whispered in her ear.
“I’m counting on you this year, Callie. It’s my first year here, and I need you to make me look good, so they hire me back next year.”
Callie laughed awkwardly. Her cheeks flushed and her stomach buzzed with something—excitement, maybe, or was it still the adrenaline from the run?
Blake Cordis stood up straight, but his hand remained on her back. She didn’t mind. If he were a boy from her school, she’d think about kissing him. But he wasn’t a classmate. He was her coach.
Still, it didn’t stop her from thinking about it.
The letter waited on the desk in her bedroom, the seal of the University of Cincinnati stenciled across the front. Despite the fact that it was addressed to her, Callie saw that the envelope had already been opened. Her mother, having seen the seal, knew that the letter inside either declared Callie’s acceptance to the ultracompetitive, eight-year, direct-to-medical school program, or carried a regretful denial, and could not help herself.
Callie unfolded the letter and read the first line:
Congratulations! We are happy to inform you that you’ve been accepted into the DIRECT program at the University of Cincinnati.
Materializing like a ghost from the ether, her mother was in the doorway of her bedroom.
“Well?” she asked, as if Callie was supposed to have missed that the envelope had already been opened. As if her mother hadn’t already read the letter and had the next eight years of Callie’s life plotted out like a melodramatic romance novel.
Callie went along with the charade because it was simply her mother’s way. Callie was expected to ignore certain truths—like that her mother cheated on her father and was remarried to a man whose ick factor was off the charts; or that her mother was using Callie to fill whatever void existed from her younger years; or that her mother had opened her acceptance letter and read every word while Callie was at school—all so that the perfect little existence that was being created could remain a blemish-free fairy tale. Callie had learned long ago not to challenge this anomaly. To do so set her mother off on an overly theatrical response that included feeling betrayed and depressed for days.
The theater was too much to deal with so, instead, Callie smiled and held up the acceptance letter as if she were about to deliver breaking news.
“I got in!”
“Oh, sweetheart! That’s fabulous!”
Her mother rushed into her bedroom and embraced her in a tight hug.
“Damien,” her mother yelled. “Damien, come up here. Callie has some wonderful news.”
