Free More Than Enough by John Fulton Page B

to doubt for a minute that I would make a good athlete, and I even began to picture myself leaping to the hoop and slamming one in, never mind the fact that I had never played the sport and that I couldn’t jump more than an inch or two into the air. The cheerleaders would shake their pom-poms and scream for me. Even Tracy Bingham, the squad leader who drove a white Rabbit convertible and had perfect, medium-size breasts and a very nice smile, would notice me and begin to think about me sailing through the air with a basketball in my hand when she was trying to do her math homework at night. It was a silly fantasy, I knew, and I was ashamed of ever having dreamed it up, especially after my injury destroyed any remote chance that I might become a star athlete. It hardly mattered, I told myself. I had more important things than Tracy Bingham to think about. But somehow my sister was a success. She was an attractive teenage girl with social ambitions and friends, and I had no idea how she’d remade herself so quickly. Perhaps she’d been developing—growing taller, more beautiful, and popular—for a while, and I hadn’t been looking. Sitting in those bleachers, I felt suddenly panicky. I felt suddenly that it was too late, though I wasn’t sure exactly what was too late. Something had passed and I had missed it. That’s all I knew.
    Jenny made the team and as soon as the rejects had left the auditorium, the Billmorettes surrounded their new members and screamed and clapped and hugged them. They handed over to the new girls the red-and-gold Billmorette uniforms with the big B on the chest. I walked down the bleachers and faced my sister on the court, who made no sense to me as a Billmorette. “Did you see? Did you see?” she shouted. When she tried to hug me, I let out a yelp and reminded her that my arm hurt, even though it hadn’t hurt a bit when she’d grabbed me. I just felt that she should be cautious around my injury, that she should show some manners and consideration. But she was too damned excited to apologize.
    â€œYou have work to do at home,” I reminded her because someone had to lay down the law and insist she spend some time at the kitchen table trying to turn her C and C- grades into B’s. When we lived in Boise, she’d signed a contract with Mom that was taped on the refrigerator door and that said, “I agree to get at least two B’s this term.” After breaking this contract, she was grounded to the house between the hours of three and five, her mandatory study time. But with both my parents working, I was the only one to enforce these study hours, which I did militantly because I understood how essential good study habits were. All the same, my father had given her permission to try out for the Billmorettes and do just about anything else she wanted to do when she wanted to do it.
    â€œWe have our first team meeting right now,” she said. “Could you tell Mom to stop by school and pick me up on her way to get you at the hospital? Could you call her please and tell her that?” That afternoon was supposed to be my last appointment at The Richmond Clinics.
    â€œI guess I could,” I said.
    â€œWho’s that?” Janet Spencer asked her.
    â€œOh,” Jenny said. It hadn’t occurred to her until then that she was going to have to introduce me to her new friends. I didn’t look so hot. I never did. Fashion was not a big concern of mine then. I wore a loose pair of Levi’s—another of my mother’s great finds at Deseret Industries—that fell halfway down my butt and that I had to pull up fifty times a day. I pulled them up when Janet Spencer set her large blue eyes on me. My white, long-sleeved T-shirt said TEAM PLAYER on it for some reason. I hated wearing T-shirts with words on them, but more often than not the best secondhand clothes—the newest, most unused-looking clothes—were the