CHAPTER 14: BLOCKS AND TECHNICAL FOULS, REBOUNDS AND FREE THROWS

FRIDAY – WEEK 6

9:45pm @ the Team Bus

“Shane, I can’t do this… I feel so guilty.”

“It’s still me – flesh and blood. Every piece of me is intact, the same. Do you need to have a DNA lab run on me to be damn convinced? I’m alive. Okay?”

“These were the very words bouncing inside my head even after waking up inside the team bus on the way home from a pre-season invitational game in Culver City. If you ask me, these fucking dreams are getting more and more of an oddity every time. The first voice sounded pretty much like Carmen…” At that moment, Shane took a quick glance at the back of the bus where the cheerleaders were, to look for Carmen. And there she was, listening to her iPod, nodding her head at the beat in her ears. “And the other one? I recognize my husky voice anywhere. It was me. It is me. The visual’s a mess; I can’t see anyone but the voices… Fuck. Maybe the screws in my brain are loosening up…”

“I was woken by Papi who was walking back and forth inside the bus. Her elbow caught my shoulder, going back to her seat in front of me. She didn’t even notice I was dozing off behind her.” Shane still wore that scowl on her face, frowning more at every bump and turn that the bus made. It wasn’t her to be thinking too much after a game but yet tonight, she did. “We won the game. Sure. But I did an ugly job. I’ve never picked up a technical foul in complaining a lot in a pre-season game, and it felt heavy in the chest when the referee drew up that T in the air to tell the scorer’s table that I went well over the line.”

“Pipe down, Torres.” Greg Ackland ordered Papi to keep it down. She just couldn’t stop bragging about the defensive play she made that won the game for Miriam High. After all, she wasn’t known for her defensive abilities on the court and Papi knew it was her night, it was her game. Not Shane’s.