A Single Stroke ✔️

42: Exhale

I cleaned out my room. Finally found the motivation to carry all my broken canvases to the trash bin out front. Gone. Discarded. Lost forever.

All my empty paint cans and broken brushes went too. I scrubbed my wood floors with nail polish remover from the gas station to get the paint off. My room was bare and empty. Clean for once. If any girl needed a temporary stay when my dad wasn't home, I finally could offer up my room.

Basketball practice was every day after school, so I always got home later. Dad started questioning, so when I told him I was on the team, I expected at least a little bit of acknowledgement.

He was silent. But he didn't ask anymore and he didn't argue about it.

I was number thirteen. Mrs. Sutton asked when I switched from football to basketball.

"Last month," I answered.

"Wow! You've even got a cast on. You're gonna go so far with the amount of dedication you have towards your passions."

Psh. Yeah. Right.

By November, we started playing real games. I was good. Admittedly, Max was too. We weren't friends and I made sure he knew that, but we started fist-bumping before and after games and passed the ball to each other quite a bit during games.

People started asking for my phone number and cheering me on in the crowds. Emery, Emery, Emery, they chanted. My name was a trophy. In just a few months, Emery Cohen represented talent and glory.

I moved to a basic hand splint mid-November. During class time, I practiced curling and uncurling my fingers and strengthening them with a stress ball the nurse gave me (it was a mini-basketball). Using a pencil with my right hand was finally possible again, but I noticed I couldn't move my fingers the same way as before.

My "friends" became Palmer and his best friend Daquan (who acted like our soccer mom and brought us granola bars and Gatorade after practice and games). Honestly, they were the coolest I'd met since joining basketball. But I felt disconnected from everyone.

In December, we applied for scholarships. Could you believe the school year was already half over and I hardly remembered anything about it?

My waiter job paid well because I got good tips. And a few numbers. I always threw them away because I never could remember which table I served. My mind was too full of everything else to remember every face that came by, especially when there was only one whose impression still hadn't left me.

And then...winter break. Already. Crazy, right? My life was moving at the rate of a runaway train. And how did those usually end?

During break, I worked over time. All my money went to my savings that only I had access to. I still needed a car and eventually an apartment.

But I also needed it for something else.

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me?" Ellie leaned her forehead against her doorframe while she held the door open only two inches.

"I don't. We're not together. Nothing meant anything..." I rubbed the back of my neck and shifted on her porch. "Whatever that means. But I need...something."

Her eyes narrowed. "Okay...?"

"Don't tell anyone."

"God, how many secrets do you have?" She rolled her eyes but fought a smile. "FYI, these legs are closed for the season."

Did she have to go there?

I shook my head and leaned back against the wall of her house. "That's not what I'm talking about."