Fadeaway by E. Vickers (ebook smartphone TXT) 📗

away. Now Jake comes in and sits at Coach B’s table, eating the chicken and rice Mrs. B started in the slow cooker this morning for just such an occasion.

“She’ll be so glad you came by,” Coach B tells Jake. “In fact, I hope you’ll see her before you leave. She just ran to the pharmacy for me.”

“I hope so too,” Jake says, and there’s still a bit of that sixth grader in him, so hungry to be seen. This year has been rough on him, but things are getting back on track.

Still, Coach B notices the way the boy winces as he shifts in the chair. He shouldn’t have shoveled the snow.

They talk strategy for a while. How the Warriors aren’t as big as their opponents, but they’re quicker. Smarter. How they can come out with the win if they control the pace of the game. It’s nearly time for Jake to leave for the school and get on the bus when Mrs. B comes through the door.

“Well, there he is,” she says, like she’s been looking for Jake all morning. “Can I fix you some cocoa?” She frowns. “And which one of you shoveled the walk? Somebody at this table is in trouble for wearing himself out on game day or disobeying doctor’s orders.” She looks back and forth between them as she takes a bag of cinnamon bears—Jake’s favorite—and sets them in front of him. “Good luck tonight. And you don’t have to share those. Not with the team, and certainly not with anyone watching their sugar intake.” She gives Coach B a stern look and leaves them to talk, but they hear her voice once more from down the hall. “Wallace, I’m putting your pills in the bathroom. Don’t come to me asking where they are, and don’t forget to take them this time.”

They talk a little longer. Coach B tries to get back into the strategy for finding the gaps in the opponent’s defense, but the focus has shifted. The boy is nervous. He’s spinning the package of cinnamon bears on the table, a quarter turn at a time.

“I should probably go,” Jake says at last. “Mind if I use your bathroom first?”

“Of course, of course,” Coach B says, waving him away. “I’ll make you a sandwich while you’re in there so I don’t get in trouble later for not feeding you enough.”

But he can’t help but look back and worry at the hitch in the boy’s step as he walks away.

—

Quietly as he can, Jake picks up the orange bottle. Pushes the lid and twists it open.

Sixty pills, perfect and round, but pale green instead of white like his.

Jake checks the bottle. Same stuff, different strength.

Eighty milligrams.

Holy shit.

Even after his accident, the most they’d give him was twenty. Not that you can’t make eighty out of four twenties. Even Jake can do that math.

If it weren’t for all that white outside, he’d be fine. But shoveling really did tweak something in his knee. He pictures the scars from last summer’s surgery. Nothing will ever be the same. He’ll never be as strong as he should be, never be whole again.

And he definitely can’t play his best ball if he’s distracted by his knee. One pill will take the pain away, but two would help him relax. Two pills and he’d really see the court clearly.

He shakes two pills into his palm and holds them there. Two out of sixty. Hardly any at all. And didn’t Coach B say he’d help any way he could? Isn’t two pills a pretty reasonable price to pay for six years of lawn mowing, snow shoveling, dirt hauling—just generally being Coach’s manual laborer?

Jake is sweating now. The pills are beginning to stick to his palm.

He knows it’s wrong, knows he’s wrong. Coach B needs these pills for his own pain—decades of pain left as a legacy of war and not some stupid game. Jake knows too that Coach B has given him a thousand times more than he’s ever received in return. Not just in sandwiches and cinnamon bears but in basketball advice and encouragement and a clear picture of the kind of person Jake hopes to be.

He tries to imagine himself as an old man, somebody who means something in the world. Somebody people have pointed to for decades as the one who made a difference in their lives. He imagines spending all those years with somebody by your side who still looks at you like Mrs. B looks at Coach. And when he imagines it, the figure beside him, gray-haired and weary, definitely has echoes of Daphne.

That’s the life he wants. Even if they don’t grow old together, maybe he could still fix things with Daphne if he goes back to being the guy she fell in love with. The person he was before…

The pills make a small sound as he drops them back in the bottle and secures the lid. He closes his eyes and turns on the water, splashing it on his face, rubbing it along the back of his neck.

There’s a gentle knock at the door. “Your sandwich is ready, son.”

Son.

And because Coach B is the closest thing Jake’s had to a father for a long time, Jake chokes on the words.

“Thank you.”

He’ll take the sandwich and go. He’ll see the floor and control the pace and bring home the title and make Coach B as proud as any father ever, anywhere. And it will all start with this moment—the one that defines him, the one when he is strong enough to say, once and for all, no.

The small orange bottle calls to him as he washes his hands.

No.

As he dries them on a hand towel with the Warriors logo on it, embroidered by Mrs. B.

No.

But when he reaches for the doorknob, the bottle, perched so dangerously on the edge of the counter, falls to the floor.

And when he bends to pick it up, a shock of pain stabs into his knee.

And then, somehow,