Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock Page B

which of course I'd try my best to do, and I wouldn't ever feel guilty about the score.
    Sure, Bill played Big Ten, and Win PAC-Ten, but my brothers aren't me. Which is pretty obvious, but it's still worth pointing out. And pointing out that they weren't the ones who spent all summer managing the farm while Dad had surgery. They were off at fancy football camps. Maybe the same thing in my brain that made me too wimpy—if you want to call it that—to play D-I, maybe it's the same thing that saved the farm. Because everyone has bad and good in them all at once, the way Ashley Erdel is both bad at basketball and good at school, and maybe for the very same reasons.
    When Win called Sunday night, I didn't even get rattled. Because that's just the way his brain works, getting so caught up in sports and competition and being the absolute best competitor you can be, and until he got a real job I was just going to have to put up with it as best I could. So I said the visits were very nice and I really liked St. Margaret's, and I didn't even get defensive when he started ragging on it, and I let him blab away about how I still needed to take video and just kept nodding and saying okay, staying cool with my new inner peace.
    Beaner called too, to say he'd seen me in the audience on TV only for a second but he knew it was me, and he was so psyched that he knew someone
on television,
even for something as little as that. He was totally impressed when he found out I knew Tyrona, and he agreed those last two shots had completely sucked.
    "It'll be so awesome, you know, to watch you in college," he said, and I laughed and said it would be. Because he didn't specify what it was exactly he'd be watching me doing, and as far as I was concerned, it would be just as awesome to have Beaner watch me sitting in the bleachers, or playing a money game that we lose by eighty.
    And Monday during lunch, I called the U of M just like Win had told me to, thanking them for the weekend. I couldn't say, I'm sorry but there's no way I can play Big Ten ball," because sure as shooting that would get back to Win. But I did a great job of making it clear indirectly, asking how many other girls they were looking at, saying how bad I felt for Tyrona and how I'd never in my life want to be in that position. The coach kind of chuckled and agreed that no one wants that, but she got my point. Recruiting is like a board game where one side creeps forward and then the other side does, no one willing to give too much away. By saying all that, I'd moved myself three spaces back. Which made me even more relaxed and peaceful.

    All this, weird as it sounds, made me a better player. I guess because I didn't feel so much pressure anymore, so much belly-knot fear that I wouldn't measure up. Now that I didn't even want to measure up, the coast was clear for me just to be me. So when we played Prophets town on Tuesday, I actually kept my head a bit. It wasn't like I was hollering up and down the court, but I didn't freak when Coach K started riding me. And a couple times when I saw something that was totally obvious, I had smarts enough to whisper it to Kari. We did an especially good job on this play where I draw two defenders while Kayla drives in. That worked five or six times, and Prophets town never seemed to figure it out.
    We won, which was important because winning is important, duh, no matter what any grownup tells you, but also because we had Hawley coming up on Friday. And Hawley's no Prophets town. They're more like the Los Angeles Lakers. Which Coach K reminded us afterward, how hard our next game was going to be. Looking straight at Ashley, he mentioned how much a couple players were improving, and she just about smiled her face off, hearing this. Then he said that anyone who wanted to could join Ashley and D.J.'s little practices if it was okay with the two of us. Which I'll confess was a kick to hear, because if nothing else it meant he thought I wasn't doing so