"Hands," Mr. Callahan was saying. "Hands. Hands. Where are your hands? You think a big man in college is going to wait for you? You think Siena wants a soft boy?"
One came in high and left. Brent jerked his head around. It glanced off his cheekbone. He made a sound, not a cry, just a breath.
And his father said, in a voice that was low and flat and exactly, perfectly the voice Brent had used on me at the tryout, so exactly that a cold feeling went all the way down my back and into my sneakers:
"What, 'cause you think you're tough?"
He threw another one.
I stood at the end of the driveway behind a reindeer with the white pharmacy bag in my hand. I don't know how long. Long enough for four or five balls. I didn't know what to do. I was sixteen and I'd been raised by a mother who said you don't go into other people's houses and tell them how to live, and also I was scared of Mr. Callahan, who was a man on television. And also, I'll tell you the truth, there was a small mean part of me that thought, good. That thought, now you know.
That part didn't last very long. It's hard to keep feeling it when you watch a ball hit somebody in the face.
I went around to the side door, like I'd been told. A woman opened it before I knocked. She was small and blond with her hair done in a way that took effort, and she was wearing an apron over a dress, and she took the bag from me fast and gave me a dollar, which was much too much, and looked past me toward the driveway, where you could still hear the balls.
"You're on the team," she said. "Aren't you? You're the new boy. The one who blocked him."
"Yes, ma'am."
She held the bag against her chest. Her fingers were tight on it.
"He doesn't—" she started, and stopped. "His father doesn't know about these. The drops. The doctor in Latham wanted Brent to see a man at Albany Med about his eye, a specialist, and his father said no, he said it was a scratch,