"It means she doesn't compete until the account's current," Coach Tamika said. "It means she practices, but she doesn't go on the floor in Louisville on the twenty-sixth. It's the policy. It's not personal. I've got a hundred and forty kids and I can't carry everybody." She said it like she'd said it a lot of times, and like she hated it every time.
"If somebody paid it," I said, "would you have to say who?"
She put the carrot stick down.
"Honey," she said, "how old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"Go get your grandpa," she said. And I did. And Grandpa came in and stood at the front desk in his Carhartt jacket with his hands in the pockets because they were shaking, and Coach Tamika explained it to him, quietly, and he listened, and then he looked at me.
"It's my money," I said. "I made it. I want to."
"Does your mother know?" he said.
"No. She thinks Dad's paying. If she finds out he's not paying, she's going to," and I didn't know how to finish the sentence. She was going to sit on the back steps with her forehead on her knees again. She was going to have to call him. She was going to have to pick up one more thing she was already carrying too much of. "She's tired," I said. That was the best I could do.
Grandpa didn't say anything for a while. Behind us the music had stopped and the girls were stretching on the spring floor, and Callie was lying on her back with her legs up the wall, laughing at something.
"It is your money," Grandpa said finally. "You made it. I watched you." He turned to Coach Tamika. "She brings it Thursday. Cash. You write it down on a paper that says paid. You don't write who."