Free Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock Page A

too busy, never mind—I was just thinking that maybe we could, you know..." She glanced over, too shy to look at me directly. That we could maybe make this coaching a regular thing."
    Well, that was something to think about, all right. How to turn Ashley Erdel into something other than a very intelligent benchwarmer. Or rather, how to
try
to turn her, because all the things that Ashley was so intelligent about couldn't be applied to basketball. And even if they could, it wasn't like I could make every situation into some fancy math equation just so she'd be able to understand what I was talking about.
    But I had to admit that it'd been fun to feel like I was making a difference for someone, even if that person wasn't Brian Nelson. I'd always kind of worried I was only good at training because of the huge crush I'd had on him. Now it seemed that maybe that wasn't true.

    At supper that night Dad kept grumbling about how all the asphalt plants were closed, muttering to himself like some sort of crazy neighbor that you'd never visit when you were trick-or-treating. Curtis finally took the bait and asked what he was talking about.
    "Jeez, you know what asphalt is. I want the driveway done for Win for Christmas, and you can't do that without asphalt. What the hell are they teaching you, anyway?"
    Which got us grinning, because why in the world would Red Bend Middle School teach kids about paving? But all I said was "I'm sure you'll figure something out."
    "Yeah. I got Jimmy Ott working on it. We'll get it done."
    See, our driveway is just as run down as the rest of our farm, which doesn't matter for our beat-up pickup and our beat-up Caravan, or the milk tankers because those trucks have big tough wheels that can handle our potholes without blinking twice. But Win of course is in a wheelchair, and even if by some miracle he started walking, he still wouldn't be able to navigate from his van to the kitchen. That's why Dad wanted to pave that one area, from the van parking space to our kitchen door, and then build a ramp, a really nice one, into the house. But I guess he hadn't counted on no asphalt.
    He'd figure something out, though. He always did. It might not be pretty or last very long, but there was always a solution somewhere. And in the meantime I had a quiz to study for or I'd have my own problems. And then when Mom called I got a whole new set of problems, because Win wanted to hear about my calls, what I'd said to the coaches and they'd said to me, and when he heard how they'd invited me to visit—which is just being polite, how many times have you heard someone say, "Stop by whenever"?—he said I needed to set some trips up PDQ.
    "I can't go on trips! I've got games, you know."
    Win snorted. "Against who?"
    "Cougar Lake and West Lake, and Hawley next week—
Hawley.
"
    "You can miss Cougar Lake."
    "I can't miss a game!"
    He sighed. "You're not going to do this, are you?"
    "I can't miss a game, Win."
    "Okay then. I will."
    "You'll visit?"
    "I'll set them up. I'd say the U of M, and Madison ... Iowa too, they've got a good program—"
    I found my voice, finally. "But—what are you talking about? How am I supposed to get to Iowa?"
    "We'll figure something out," he said in his super-annoying Win Schwenk way.
    I didn't want to say this next thing, but he left me no choice. "Win, you can't even dial."
    "They've got a special phone here I can use. I'll make it part of my OT."
    Well, what was I supposed to say to
that?
So in the end I agreed, because if nothing else I knew Dad in a million years wouldn't leave his cows to drive me that far, no matter what his firstborn said, and there was no way Mom would ever let me drive it alone.

    Tuesday we had a game, and Coach K was on my case nonstop, only guess how well that worked. I ended up fouling out in the third quarter and spent the rest of the game on the bench, thinking that however much Coach K might try, and Win, and Jerry Knudsen might try even, there was no way to get