Whatever Coach claimed, Mrs. Davis and Brittany and half of the other girls would back him up. The truth never had a chance.
Just like I never did.
I couldn’t say a word. Ice still encased me, but somehow I managed to walk out of his office. I went directly to my car, where Rosie was waiting for me, holding the backpack and water bottle I’d left on the bleachers.
She frowned as she peered at my face and asked if I was okay.
Sure, I replied. I may have even smiled.
I probably didn’t look any different than when I’d followed Coach into his office. I was still wearing my shorts and T-shirt and socks and sneakers. My hair was still up in blue-and-gold twisted scrunchies. I wasn’t even crying.
But I wasn’t the same girl. I wouldn’t ever be her again.
I told James everything that night. When he held me, it didn’t erase Coach’s touch, but it helped thaw me out.
It was hard to keep talking when I got to the part about Coach’s fingers sliding down inside my underpants, and what happened afterward. But James didn’t react. He kept looking at me gently and steadily, like he was entering into that awful space alongside me so I wouldn’t be alone.
When I finished talking, James told me Coach wasn’t going to get away with it. James didn’t seem angry, despite his words. His voice was calm. He wasn’t even frowning.
I was glad he wanted to stick up for me, but I shook my head. Who would believe me? By now Coach’s words had settled deep into my brain. Lots of people had seen James and I making out after school. It’s not like I had a stellar reputation, which shouldn’t matter, but double standards exist. They do.
James had a whole plan mapped out before I even realized where he was taking me in his car.
When we pulled up at my high school, my whole body recoiled. I couldn’t imagine ever setting foot inside the halls again. I’d always be scared Coach would call me into his office on a made-up excuse, like to return my uniform, and close the door behind us.
I whispered that I didn’t want to be here.
But James asked if I trusted him, and I nodded.
Then he asked if I wanted to make Coach pay.
I did, more than anything.
James opened his car door, then came around to my side and opened mine. He led me to the side door we’d used to enter the school before. He told me to wait and he’d let me in.
He disappeared and I knew he was pulling himself in through the upper-story window, the one that was always cracked open.
He took longer to appear than I’d expected. I began to shiver, even though it wasn’t cold out.
Finally, the door opened with a loud squeak. James had turned on the hall light and he was backlit, so he looked almost like a silhouette at first. I instinctively recoiled.
Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw James was holding the silver Louisville Slugger.
I expected him to take me to the wrestling room again, but he veered the other way. He took me to Coach’s office.
My whole body was trembling now.
James reached for the door handle. It was locked.
He looked at me and shrugged, and for a second I thought that was it—we were going to turn around and do something else tonight.
Then James began kicking the door with the hard soles of his shoe, again and again, as the cheap, hollow door shuddered. It only took a half-dozen kicks until the wood around the knob began to splinter and the door gave way.
I half expected people to come running at the noise, but of course the building had been empty for hours.
Somehow, breaking in removed the menace from this room. James knew exactly what I needed to offset the sickening helplessness I’d felt in this space.
James flicked on the overhead light. Coach’s shiny sunglasses were still on the desk, right where he put them after he’d brought me in here.
James handed me the bat and told me it was all mine.
I lifted it above my head and brought it down on the sunglasses. The impact of the bat against the metal desk jarred my arms all the way down to their sockets. The sunglasses flew off the table, their frames crushed.
Then James pointed to the Clapton guitar.
The words “I can’t” died on my lips. Sure I could. Coach had taken something far more valuable from me than a piece of memorabilia.
I stepped forward, holding the bat over my shoulder like I was waiting for a pitch. The room was so small I checked behind me to make sure James wouldn’t get hit by my backswing. I took a deep breath, then let loose.
The guitar was completely ruined by my fourth hit, but I whacked it until my arms grew tired.
When I finally handed James the bat, he winked at me and said our work here was almost done.
That was when I heard the distant sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.
Panic shot through me. Coach would probably suspect I was behind the vandalism, but I could create an alibi with James. Our school didn’t have any cameras or security guards. No one could prove it was us.
Unless an eyewitness saw me and James.
While all this ran through my head, James was moving around. The destroyed guitar and its case had fallen to the floor behind the desk, so he didn’t need to hide them from any passersby. He pushed the door all the way open, so you couldn’t immediately tell it was damaged, and he left the lights on. James was still holding the bat, which was evidence of what we’d done.
The sound of shoe soles slapping against the linoleum floor was just down the hall now, drawing closer with every step.
James was so calm he had to have a plan. But he was moving too slowly—there was nowhere to hide. We’d be caught.
My heart felt like it was about to burst.
I wouldn’t just be kicked off the Poms squad. I’d probably be kicked out of school. The police would arrive, and everyone would know what I’d done. I might even get arrested.
Right before he came into view, I heard Coach’s voice. He called out the name Donna—that was our vice principal—as if he was expecting to see her.
It was all over. Coach was coming. We were about to be discovered.
I shrank back into the office. But James did the opposite.
He lifted the bat and stepped forward, in perfect timing for the bat to explode in a half circle and meet Coach’s stomach as Coach rounded the corner and stepped over the threshold into his office.
Later, I pieced together what had happened. James told me some details when he drove me home that night, and the rest I put together through newspaper articles I researched.
At the beginning of the night, while I was waiting outside the school, wondering what was taking James so long, James broke into the main office and found Coach’s phone number on a list of contact information for teachers. He called Coach and identified himself as a police officer who wanted to alert Coach about a break-in at the school and the theft of his signed guitar. He told Coach that the assistant principal—Donna—was already at the scene in Coach’s office.
Coach came rushing in. He hadn’t surprised us, after all.
It was James who’d surprised him.
The next afternoon, Coach died from his injuries. The papers reported that he’d been hit more than two dozen times with a baseball bat that was found at the scene.
By the time Coach was being removed from machines that had worked to keep his body alive, I was stepping off a bus, arriving in a city a hundred miles away from my hometown. The girl I was before—Ava Morales—was gone.