Page 25 of Dear Debbie

DEBBIE

So I’m not going to the high school only to see Coach Pike. I also have to drop off the cans for the food drive.

I realize that doesn’t make it better, but somehow in my head, it does.

Even though it’s after hours, the administrator who works at the front desk, Elena, is still around. She buzzes me into the school, and her eyes light up at the brown box filled with cans that I’ve got in my arms.

“Debbie!” Elena grins at me. “I knew you’d come through.”

“Yes, and I can skip the gym after carrying this over here,” I joke, even though I already had my workout for today.

I set the cans down on the counter while Elena taps at some keys on her computer. I linger there for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to handle this.

“Hey,” I say, trying to make my voice as casual as possible, “would it be okay if I popped over to speak to Coach Pike for a minute? I need to talk about the soccer schedule with him. There are a few days that Izzy can’t make it in.”

“Sure, go right ahead,” Elena tells me without looking up from the computer screen.

She trusts me. She doesn’t think that there’s any chance that I’m going to do anything I shouldn’t. But in my defense, I’m not going to do anything terrible. I would just like to have a conversation with the soccer coach about why he felt the need to cut his best player. If that’s not an honorable intention, I don’t know what is.

After all, what is more honorable than protecting your child? If my parents had protected me better…

Well, no point in thinking about that right now.

I already know that Coach Pike has his office on the first floor, not far from the soccer field. While I walk down the high school’s familiar hallways, I reach into my purse to pull out the brownies wrapped in tinfoil. I am certainly not beyond throwing chocolate at a situation to make it better.

I get lucky. Soccer practice has already ended, and the coach is sitting at his desk, shuffling through some papers in front of him. He is in his fifties, and I’m pretty sure he’s bald or at least balding, but I can’t know for certain since I’ve never seen him without a baseball cap on his head. He’s got a Hingham Prep T-shirt on, which stretches over the folds of his belly. He actually seems to be in poor shape for somebody who coaches sports, but who am I to judge?

I rap on his open door, plastering a smile on my face as I hold out the tinfoil-wrapped brownies as a peace offering. “Coach Pike?”

He raises his eyes. I’m still wearing the yellow dress that I had on during my meeting at the newspaper, and I can feel Pike’s gaze crawling up my body. I squirm and clutch my purse to my chest with my free hand.

“Can I help you?” he asks me with a lecherous smile. I never liked this man, but I like him even a little less right now.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m Isabel Mullen’s mother.”

“Oh.” The smile instantly drops off his lips. “I see.”

“I brought you these brownies.” I bring them over to him, glad to have an excuse for entering the office. “I was hoping we could chat.”

Coach Pike accepts the brownies, peeking under the foil wrapping with a look of approval. He doesn’t suggest that I sit down, but I do it anyway.

“I wanted to talk to you about Izzy,” I say. “I found out today that she was cut from the soccer team.”

“Yep” is all he has to say on the matter.

“Well, that confused me,” I continue, “because, as you know, she’s a great player. I watched her play all year last year, and I think she’s one of your strongest players. So I just don’t understand…”

Pike peels back the tinfoil to discover that I wrapped the brownies in several layers of plastic wrap. He looks like he’s considering unwrapping them, but he decides against the effort. “They look good.”

“They taste good too.”

He stares at the chocolaty treats thoughtfully, considering his next words. “Actually, the brownies are part of the problem.”

“Ex…excuse me?”

“At the end of last season,” Pike tells me, “I told Izzy that she was too slow, and she needed to lose some weight before the next season. Fifteen pounds at least. But twenty would be better.”

My jaw drops. “You…you told my fifteen-year-old daughter that she needs to drop twenty pounds?”