Free The Odd Ballerz by Ruthie Robinson Page B

shoulders, and yes, Coach Harris had resumed his coaching duties at the cone station. She sighed, disappointed and disheartened. She didn’t want to be here anymore, working with him with his looks of pity. His gaze had been filled with it after she’d gotten the order of the cone drill wrong the first time, really she’d seen if after every one of her attempts. God, she hated pity.
    “Take as much time as you need,” she said. He gave her another look, which she couldn’t read. She stood waiting as requested, watching as he moved through the group of boys, demonstrating and talking, basically coaching. He seemed to be a pretty good coach: nice, calm, and patient, all that you would expect and very different from her past experiences. It was a few more minutes before he was standing in front of her again.
    “Let’s go,” he said.
    “If I must.”
    “Don’t get discouraged.”
    “Who’s getting discouraged?”
    He didn’t reply. “Remember anything from Monday?” he asked instead, moving them to a spot at the end, a little ways past the others.
    “Say hello to my little friend, the diamond,” she said, and she was smiling again, he thought, which was good.
    “Very funny, Jones,” he said without any hint of laughter. “Show me,” and then watched her as she demonstrated. “That’s good. Now take a step back,” he said, and he waited for her to follow his instructions. “What’s up with your eyes? Are they closed?” he asked.
    “Nope, they’re open, just not all the way open. It’s better if I keep them in slits. I’m less afraid if I can’t see what’s coming,” she said. She was messing with him, an antidote to the pity thing she’d seen earlier, falling back to the class clown days of her youth and it should not have been so easy to resort to that.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” she said.
    “Are you ready?” he asked.
    “Yes, I think so,” and he threw the ball to her softly. It passed through her hands, before landing on the ground.
    “Sorry,” she said, picking up the ball.
    “My bad. I forgot. You need to be close to me. Let’s start where we left off on Monday?”
    “Working with the baby using the baby steps,” she said, not sure what to do with the close to me comment. She threw the ball back to him.
    “Right, now come closer,” he said, watching as she did. He threw the ball to her and she caught it. “Good, now again.” And he threw about three balls from that distance before he asked her to take a step back. Which she did, and she caught the ball that time too.
    He smiled again. “Good, Jones, and now take another step back,” he said, and threw two balls to her. One she caught, the other one she missed, but she was back to feeling hopeful again. The whistle ending camp sounded. Thank you, god of small favors, she thought. Z had turned away from her then, looking around the field, making sure the boys had gotten the message and were moving to the middle of the field for the end of the day speech.
    “I’m starting to like the whistle, especially when it comes at the end of the day,” Memphis said, smiling when she reached him. He gave her a little side-eye, following her as she made her way to the center of the field with the rest of the boys.
    # # #
    Less than five minutes later, the boys and Jones were crowded around Coach Harris, listening as he discussed expectations for Friday. Z stood at the back, half listening to Harris too. More he was watching Jones, who stood toward the front of the pack, eyes and face forward, the picture of an interested student. Two days and four hours of camp and he was about ninety-nine percent sure she was terrible, and that there was nothing intentional about her inabilities.
    It had been the totality of all he’d seen so far, both today and Monday that had cemented this opinion. Jones’ athleticism was a lot contradictory, but overall terrible. You couldn’t fake that level of bad. She’d told him the truth on Monday when