A Practice Match
It was Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend. Just two days left at Wonderland.
“We need to spend one more session on the court together before the tournament,” Jonathan told me.
Our last one, maybe ever. Thinking about this left a hollow feeling in my stomach.
All this time I’d been so focused on Forrest that I hadn’t much thought about how much I’d grown to care about Jonathan.
When you got down to it, he was probably the closest person I had to a real friend. At Lake Catherine or anywhere.
I got to the courts early to be sure I wouldn’t miss a minute of my time, but Jonathan was already waiting for me. The rain was over and the court was dry, thankfully, and the sun was out, though I could feel fall in the air now.
“You’re going to play a real game today,” Jonathan told me. In all our time together that summer, we’d never actually done this. He wanted me to know what it felt like, facing a competitor on the other side of the net.
“I’ll warm you up,” he said. “Then you’re going to hit with Olivia.”
Olivia, the girl whose lessons I’d picked up when she quit, way back at the beginning of the summer—before I knew anything about tennis, or Brenda Barnett, or The Joy of Sex, or Polaroid cameras and mini tape players, or moss, or murder plots.
“Here’s the thing about Olivia,” Jonathan told me. “She’s lazy, and she’s got a bad attitude. But she’s been taking lessons from me since she was six years old. She doesn’t have your kind of passion, but she hates losing. She’ll give you a good game.”
It was the last thing I wanted—playing my first real game of tennis ever against a girl who’d practically been born with a tennis racquet in her hand. Clearly she didn’t care about tennis the way I did. But she didn’t need to care. She was just better, probably. She’d destroy me.
I told Jonathan I’d rather just rally with him, but he shook his head. “You need to get out of your comfort zone,” he said. “See what it’s like out there in the real world.”
He meant the real world of tennis, of course. Which wouldn’t seem all that real to some people I knew. My parents, for instance. Or just about anybody I went to school with back home in New Jersey.
Olivia was supposed to show up in ten minutes, but we were halfway through my court time before she made it. She was wearing one of her many matching tennis sets—one I’d never seen before. I felt grateful I hadn’t put one of my new ones on. I’d only feel like even more of an idiot if I had.
She took her time unzipping her tennis bag. Then she took some more time retying her shoelaces. She took a long, slow drink from her water bottle and adjusted her ponytail. She flashed me a smile.
“I’ve seen you here, right?” she said. “You new?” I’d only been around every day all summer.
“Kind of,” I said.
I’d never seen the racquet spin before, which players do before a match to see who serves first. Jonathan had to explain this part to me. Olivia won the spin.
She served three aces in a row. Game point. Finally I was able to return her serve. Forty–fifteen.
On the next point, I hit her a short ball. She missed it. After a long rally that left us both gasping for breath, I won the next point. Forty all.
The game went to me. I knew Jonathan wasn’t supposed to play favorites, but I could tell how happy he was.
Next set. My serve this time. I made it to thirty–love. Then something happened.
A thought came into my brain. In my lessons over that summer, Jonathan could always spot this when it happened. “You’re thinking,” he called out to me. “You need to stop doing that. There’s only one thing to do. Keep your eye on the ball. Nothing else exists.”
Now it was happening again. Ideas, pictures, words, memories, skittering over my brain like static on a broken TV set.
I’d be standing at the service line, ready to make my toss—racquet raised, feet firmly planted.
Then this thought would make its way into my head.
What if Forrest changes his mind about Brenda and calls her up again?
What if Hayward tells his mother about seeing me reading The Joy of Sex?
And the other part he witnessed through the hole in the boathouse wall that day.
Regina’s dead sister. Regina herself, writhing around on her bed, getting green goop all over the linen sheets.
Forrest in his tube socks, down on his knees on the moss.
Reset. I readied myself at the service line again for the next point. Then the static was back.
What if Regina finds out I tried on her dress and snuck into the bedroom with her dead twin’s things in it? What if Forrest finds out I took pictures of him with Brenda?
What if I never get my period and I spend my whole life having people treat me like I’m fourteen years old?
And nobody ever loves me. And I’m alone for the rest of my life. And when I go back to New Jersey, my father comes over to our apartment and starts throwing furniture?
That’s all it took to screw up my serve.
Olivia won the match. We had time for a sudden-death round. She won that too.
I didn’t know about shaking your opponent’s hand after a match, but Olivia did, naturally. Seeing her standing there in her little pink skirt with her hand outstretched, I realized what I was supposed to do.
All I wanted was to be out of there.
After Olivia left, I told Jonathan I didn’t want to play in the tournament that weekend. “I’m not ready,” I said. “It would be too embarrassing.”
“Every player has days like this,” he told me. “I just wanted you to have yours before the big event. You’ll be ready on Saturday.”
I didn’t want to do it. But they’d already scheduled my match. My name was up on the board. There was no way to pull out now.
“Don’t lose sight of who you are, Frannie,” Jonathan said. “I’ve seen what you can do. You’re stronger than any of them.”