We stopped in front of the driveway.
“I’ll see you at the game,” he said and continued toward his house. His words caught me off guard. He would see all of us at the game, but he’d singled me out. Why?
Chapter 17
Cutter
It was game day, and normally, I felt stoked about playing. Nothing compared to the exhilaration of being out on the court, knowing the other team had to do whatever they could to stop us.
To stop me.
I wanted twenty-five points today—a career high. I had come close twice but never managed to break past twenty-four. Maybe if I had taken one more three or driven harder to the basket for an and-one, I could’ve made it.
Although all of that depended on how I played and whether Coach pulled me out early.
If we ran up the score, some of us would have to sit. I hated the bench. It made me antsy. My legs bounced while I sat there, watching my teammates. I wanted to be out there with them all the time. How fun would it be if basketball were an eight- or ten-man sport?
“It’d be wild,” I muttered, tossing the basketball in the air. I always practiced my form in my bedroom before I’d head downstairs for my power breakfast.
My mind drifted to my mom. She always made my Saturday morning game day breakfast, but who would do it when she was gone? My stomach twisted at the thought of her not being here. She was allI knew. All I had ever known. Sure, Toni had been around forever, but she wasn’t my mom and never would be.
I knew I was supposed to love Toni, but why? Because she was my mom’s best friend? My honorary aunt?
“When did you stop liking her?” I asked my empty bedroom, hoping the walls might answer. I wished I remembered when I woke up and decided Toni wasn’t my friend anymore. She had always been there for us—at my games when they were close to her, here for the holidays, letting us stay at her place in Boston for a week of fun.
“So why?”
I couldn’t think of a valid reason other than the fact that she felt like another mother figure, and I didn’t want one.
My thoughts spun in circles, from my mom to Toni, back to my mom, and then to Eleni.
I sighed at the image that formed in my mind. The two of us spending as much time after school as we could before practice. I counted down the days until we could be alone together. We wanted privacy and hated looking over our shoulders to see who was trying to sneak up on us or who was lurking. The last thing I wanted was for one of my friends to see Eleni and me touching each other. If rumors started about her, I’d lose my shit on everyone.
Her parents were strict when I was there. We weren’t allowed to leave the living room, where one of her grandfathers kept a watchful eye on us. At my house, we had a little more privacy, but not by much. If we left the house, Nova followed. And Eleni wasn’t allowed upstairs.
It was like my mom was punishing me for her mistake when she was a teenager, even though she’d never admit I was a mistake. At least she hadn’t ever treated me like I’d ruined her life.
Right now, I felt like Eleni was the only good thing in my life. She knew about my mom because everyone in town knew about my mom but hadn’t said anything to me yet. I loved that she was waiting for me to tell her when I was ready.
What if I was never ready? Even thinking that my mom was going to die sooner than forty or fifty years from now made me nauseous. She couldn’t leave me and Nova.
There was a knock on my door, and then it opened. “Hey,” my mom said as she leaned against the doorjamb. She didn’t look sick, other than the bandage I could see peeking out of her shirt. She must have had some IV type of thing put into her body, so the doctors wouldn’t have to put one in her hand every day she went in for treatment.
“Hey,” I said as I continued to toss the ball in the air.
“Can I come in?”
I nodded, with my head against my pillow, and then said, “Sure.” I tossed the ball a couple more times before stopping.
Mom walked in and went to the corkboard she’d put up after we redid my room. I didn’t want one, but she said she’d had one when she was younger. That she had saved all her mementos and wished she could look at them every now and again.
Now, I didn’t mind it because Eleni often printed pictures of us, or the newspaper put me on the front page, and I definitely wanted to keep those things.
“Big game today?”
I shrugged. Technically, Coach wanted us to consider every game a big game, but sometimes they were just games you were expected to win easily. This was one of those games. However, with that mindset, we’d lose.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re coming, right?”
