Chapter 1: Salty Coach, Sour Pickles
 
No lie, Coach Wise even yells at me in my dreams. Which is not to say my dreams are edge-of-your-seat thrillers. I’m not one of those kids who spends all night riding on the backs of flying tarantulas. I never fall off seaside cliffs or wake up in a cold sweat, afraid of shadowy things lurking under my bed. I got enough problems as is; I don’t have time to invent more for myself. Besides, you only find that kind of magical stuff in books with talking dogs or time- traveling closets. I don’t even have a regular closet. Me and my older brother Roddy keep our clothes on a broken bookshelf left behind by the last person who lived in our apartment.
 
Anyway—I was telling you about my dreams. Mostly I just kind of walk around my neighborhood, living my life, eating fried pickles, until Coach Wise pops out from behind a Dumpster or bumps into me in a crowd and starts talking trash.
 
“This is what you dream about?” he shouted last night. I dropped a letter I was holding into a sewer. He has this voice, growling and deep, that makes me think of empty stomachs. “Running errands? Where’s your generation’s imagination?”
 
Every time I think about Coach Wise, I shudder. Not a practice goes by without him chasing me around the court, whist le propped threateningly in the corner of his mouth, ready to tear me to shreds. Toni, go faster! Toni, you’re killing us! Toni, why in God’s name did you do that? When things get really bad, he suggests cutting up my jersey, making scissors out of his fingers with childlike glee. I don’t know why I make him so mad, but the one thing I do know is that you can’t go through life letting people talk to you any kind of way. Doesn’t matter who they are. Even Roddy has to ask nicely when it’s my turn to do the dishes. Sometimes I forget or I just don’t feel like it and I can sense him getting worked up, but if he says even a word, he knows I’ll stick a foot so far up his angelic little— What I’m saying is that you get to a point when you got to stand up for yourself. You got to let people know you’re not one to be played with. And Lord knows there’s no reason to be scared of Coach Wise. His truck has not one, but two of those coexist bumper stickers. His forearm hair is thin and limp. When he thinks no one’s looking, he rubs behind his ears and sniffs his fingers.
 
“Coach Wise,” I tell him after practice today, “we gotta talk.”
 
He squints unhappily in my direction. “Yes, Toni,” he grumbles. It kills him to even say my name, I can tell. His arms are crossed security-guard style in front of him. “I don’t appreciate how you always yelling at me.”
 
“Some people call that motivation, Toni. I’m a coach. I motivate.” For some reason he opens an imaginary book, licks his finger, and pretends to flip a few pages. He points to his palm. “Coach. Definition: a person who helps others through sustained encouragement.” He closes the book by slapping his palms.
 
Something strange and hot rises in my throat. Sometimes I have too many things to say and the words get so jammed before they get to my mouth that I end up sounding stupid. “So that means, like, what? So you think you’re— So you gotta yell?”
 
A corner of his mouth twitches. He rolls his neck long and slowly rubs his temples. He says I make his brain hurt. He says he’s never had a player so unwilling to follow directions. He asks if I think his instructions are just suggestions, open to any old interpretation. He wants to know why, for example, I get rebounds and dribble the ball up even though I know I’m supposed to pass out lets to Frank or Adrian. “Yeah, well, I figured it’d just be better if I did it myself.”
 
“But you always throw the ball out of bounds.”
 
My face gets hot. I don’t like to admit when I’m wrong, so I just stand there, silent and embarrassed.
 
“Toni, you’re smart. Super smart. But you have a problem with authority. You think you know better than everybody.”
 
“Says who?”
 
Coach Wise laughs. Did I remember the last game? When he asked me to pass the ball to Janae for the last shot ? Do I remember what happened?
 
“You just stood there,” he snorts before I can respond. Which is not exact ly how it went down. What actually happened was that I got distracted by a fight on a far court. Two teams were pushing and shoving, and parents were coming down from the stands to break things up. An old lady got pushed to the ground and someone held up her wig on a stick triumphantly. JamLand is a facility with zero tolerance for fighting. You fight, you’re out. By the time I’d turned my head around, the buzzer had sounded.
 
Of course he would bring that up. I can never win with Coach Wise. My eyes fill with water and start to sting. I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
 
“I want you to listen,” he says, yawning. “I want you to trust your teammates.”
 
He’s so calm that I suddenly want to piss him off. He needs to feel the helpless, shipwrecked anxiety that I’m feeling. I picture myself grabbing Coach Wise by the ankles and holding him upside down, cartoon bully–style. I imagine secretly shaking a soda and watching him open it.
 
Instead, I just stare at him really hard. “You’ll be sorry if I quit,” I say. But I’m not even sure that’s true. An embarrassed breath catches in my throat. I start to jog away before I can hear his answer.
 
In a cramped booth at Nation’s, I trust my teammates to be as fed up with Coach Wise as I am. Justin and Janae sit across from me and make walrus faces with straws.
 
Frank asks Adrian to poke an almost- crusted scab as he winces and proclaims his imperviousness to pain. My batt les with Coach Wise are nothing new to them, old stories with the same beginning and end, the same hero and villain. I decide to amp things up a little. I tell them that Coach Wise said he didn’t want me on the team (maybe he didn’t say that exactly, but he didn’t not say it, either). I make his voice sound mean, snorting, Darth Vader–like. I use the salt and pepper shakers to show a few plays I’ve learned from TV, hoping someone will suggest that Coach Wise’s plays are silly and outdated. I get myself so worked up, Frank stops slapping his scab to put a hand on my shoulder.
 
“It’s okay, guys,” I tell them, nodding reassuringly. I look down at the menu and spot the fried pickles. There isn’t a better fried pickle in the world, if you ask me. When I die, I hope they put pickles over my eyes and bury me in a pickle field. No—I hope they pickle me. I’ll have to remember to tell Roddy that tonight: If I die, I want to be pickled. I’m a regular, so the waitress has already scribbled down my order by the time she comes over.
 
“And the rest of y’all?” she asks.
 
Frank doesn’t want anything, and neither do Justin and Janae. Adrian and White Mike wave their hands.
 
“You guys don’t want anything?” I ask. “Not really,” Janae says.
 
“Get them some pickles, too. You guys’ll love the pickles. You’ll be hungry by the time they come out.”
 
I force a laugh, but everyone looks into their glasses.
 
“Anyway,” I say. “I mean, do we even really need a coach? I mean, I just think we’re smart enough to do stuff on our own.” Janae looks up and tries to smile. “I don’t know,” she says. She’s smiling so hard, it looks like it hurts. “We kind of like Coach Wise.”
 
The pickles come out in a big pile, steaming and crispy and sour-smelling. But by the time I’m down to the last couple, I look around the table and realize I’m the only one who’s touched them.