“Did you try on the jersey, Walsh?” She says it in a casual way, like she’s asking if I’ve seen a new Mission Impossible movie. Like, “Just out of curiosity, did you wedge your monumental breasts into that sausage casing?”
Mmm-hmm, I hum. I can’t open my mouth to talk. Air will enter my throat and it will stop there.
“Did it fit okay?”
I blink really hard and really fast. I shake my head even faster.
Jessa frowns. Reinhold yells over her head, “Assistant Coach Vallejo is in charge,” and then to me, “Let’s see.” She doesn’t wait for a response, just heads into the locker room. I scramble after her, and Jessa does, too.
It’s almost as embarrassing to take my plastic bag into the toilet stall as it would be to try to change in front of them, because it means I’m some kind of super prude, which most of the girls aren’t. But I do it anyway, because I can’t bear to have anyone see me grunt and struggle to pull that thing on.
When I come out of the stall, the two of them stare at me. Coach furrows her eyebrows and squeezes the sides of her mouth with one hand. This is how she looks when she’s thinking about strategy.
The fact that neither of them says, “What’s the problem? It looks great!” confirms that it is as bad as I thought. I squeak out, “It’s really tight,” and wipe the embarrassment sweat off my lip with those silky oil-slick arms.
“Don’t they have a bigger size?” says Jessa, which would be the obvious thing to think if you had not been down this path with a million shirts. In order to be big enough at my biggest point, the whole thing essentially has to be a four-person tent. The sleeves would be down to my knees, and the V-neck would plunge to my belly.
“Timms, run up and get people going on threes and twos.” This is a passing drill I love. A passing drill I won’t ever get to do again. “Walsh, come with me.”
I don’t know where we’re going, maybe outside to push me in front of a speeding Highlander, but that is the power of a good coach: She says, “Come with me,” and you follow. I maneuver out of the uniform top and back into my tee while walking.
She walks faster than most people run.
We end up in the Family and Consumer Sciences wing.
Coach Reinhold knocks on a door with an embroidered sign that says THERESA KERSHAW-BEND. When it opens, Coach says, “Hey, Tess. You got your sewing machine down here?”
CHAPTER 30
Family and Consumer Sciences includes classes like Culinary Explorations, Personal Finance, Independent Living, Child Development, Fashion and Design, Fashion Management, and new this year, Food and Fashion Blogging. Theresa Kershaw-Bend teaches all the clothing-related classes, plus the financial stuff. Another teacher handles food and children, and our IT specialist teaches the bloggers because she has a hundred and ten thousand Pinterest followers.
Coach R tells Ms. K-B that we need a uniform that fits and we need it quickly. It’s interesting, this “we,” especially since ten minutes ago I was ready to sneak out of the locker room and never return. She says we might be able to special order something bigger, but it would probably be all wrong, it would take too long, and the school activities budget doesn’t accommodate special-order items anyway.
“I’m sure we can figure something out,” Ms. K-B says, holding up the jersey. As though it’s as easy as that. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Try and make it match?” Reinhold says.
“It won’t be exact, but I’m sure I’ve got some maroon and gold back here.” She swings her head toward the shelves full of clear storage bins, remnants of cloth folded and stacked inside.
Coach heads back up to the gym while I stand there in my Zoo tee feeling conspicuous. My cheeks are still hot and I’m sure my eyes are pink. Ms. K-B buzzes around the room, grabs a notebook and pencil from her desk, and drapes a measuring tape over her neck. I know what that measuring tape is for and I know what it’s going to say. I steel myself. She stands in front of me and smiles. “First year on the team, or have things changed since last year?”
“First year.”
“Let’s see what needs doing,” she says, sliding her glasses on a beaded chain from around her neck to the tip of her nose. “Arms straight, please.” I am a stranger in Ms. K-B’s domain but she’s looking at me like this is the most perfectly natural thing in the world to her. As though imperfectly shaped people stand in front of her tape measure every day. As though I am a problem to be solved—only somehow not a problem where something’s wrong. More like a math problem. A puzzle. A collection of unique properties with a unique solution. And I relax a little.
“And things have changed a lot in the last couple of years,” I add. She laughs, and I do, too.
She starts by pressing one end of the tape at the tip of my shoulder with her thumb. She lays it along my shoulder to the base of my neck, holds that spot with her pinky, and smooths the tape down my other shoulder with her opposite hand. Even through my T-shirt, her fingers are cool, and I get a sprinkle of goose bumps when she touches my neck. She holds the tape against both my shoulder blades next and scratches the numbers into her notebook. She moves around me gently, but without any hesitation or apology, measuring, marking, murmuring to herself. “Thirty and a half . . . Nine and seven-eighths . . . And let’s make sure the left arm is the same . . .” she says, filling the page as she goes.
It should be awkward, having this stranger touch and wrap and measure me, but she doesn’t act like it’s awkward, and somehow that makes me trust her. We haven’t gotten to the worst part yet, though, the part where she measures my chest and her eyebrows shoot up on their own. The part where she feels sorry for me and I feel ashamed.
Now she’s in front of me, reaching her long arms around to lasso me in her tape measure. “We should be okay over the shirt,” she says, as much to herself as to me. “It’s pretty thin.” She maneuvers the tape around my rib cage, just under my breasts, and tugs it tight. Then she gives it some slack, lifts up just to the biggest part of my boobs—the biggest part of me.
“Don’t hold your breath. It messes up the measurement,” she says. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I exhale and feel everything relax a little. She tugs the tape so the end lines up with the numbers, and suddenly we are done. Minutes. Seconds. If she cringed at the measurements, I missed it. If she doubted those numbers could possibly be right, that she was accidentally reading centimeters instead of inches, I missed it. If she is anything but confident that she can fix my jersey, I am missing that, too. She’s already pulling out bins, leafing through for leftovers of material that will work. “Alrighty then. Game is tomorrow?”
“Right after school. But if you can’t—”