We all went back to school the next Monday. Pony, Soda and I had fully recovered from the stomach flu and Darry was more than happy to get us out of the house and go back to his classes and football. None of us felt normal but Darry said the only way any kind of normalcy would ever return was if we started resuming our lives. So we tried. The trickiest part was logistics: with only Darry's truck it was sometimes hard getting us all to and from where we needed at be at the proper time. Eventually we worked out a system where Pony, Soda and I got rides to and from school and our various practices (Pony ran on the cross country team, and I had basketball) from either Steve, Two-Bit, or Kevin on the days Darry had to be at school either too early to drive us or too late to pick us up.
I don't know about the boys but for weeks I felt like I was existing in a bubble, and during the day I just was playing the role of Scout Curtis, rather than actually being her. I was a zombie at school, completely blocking out most of the day and trying to make myself immune to the stares and outright expressions of sympathy that never seemed to end.
The only time I actually felt alive was at basketball practice. It was there that I allowed myself to let go of reality, to lose myself in the game. As an eighth grader on the high school team, I was impressive. I was the shortest member of the team, by at least five inches, but I made up for it with my quickness and maneuverability. I had spent a lifetime avoiding boys who outsized me. Whoever knew you could turn that into a talent? Even I was surprised. But it was second nature to me to duck around taller people and sneak my way in toward the basket. More surprisingly, since I had never really played basketball, I had good aim. I was a good shot. I figured I had Darry to thank for teaching me to throw at a target, because I was the best long-range shooter on the team. I was a threat from the outside, which meant that, even as short as I was, the defense couldn't ignore me. I loved the challenge of the game, the way it made me forget everything else.
Unfortunately I was not so valued by the other members of the team, regardless of my offensive contributions. The older girls loved winning but resented that I was the high scorer. There were quite a few Soc girls on the team who felt that the opportunity to shoot the ball should be equally distributed, regardless of the fact that their shots rarely entered the vicinity of the basket. I didn't ask for the ball as much as I got it, it was the coach who instructed the other girls to give it to me. They didn't seem to enjoy the game very much, so I wasn't really sure why they played; it's not like being on the team gained us any popularity or respect. If anything, it made a lot of the girls think of us as tomboyish and weird. Kevin told me he was pretty sure it was so they could have another activity to list on their college applications. He said the guidance counselors were always after the juniors and seniors to get involved in more activities.
Personally I think they all had a crush on our coach. Coach Karis was a history teacher at the high school, probably in his mid-twenties. I guess he was kind of handsome, but all he talked about was his wife and baby daughter so I have no idea what those girls were thinking having a crush on him. I just thought of him as a nice guy, and the fact that he had cared enough to come to my parents' funeral after me being on the team for only a month only cemented that belief.
So, at practice, I was pretty much alone except for three other eighth grade girls who had also made the team: Jessie, Tara, and Anna. Jess and Tara were far more hardcore greasers than anyone I hung around with: Jess's brother was a real live hood, a high ranking member of the Brumley Boys, one of the truly dangerous gangs on our side of town, and Tara had two older brothers who were in jail for armed robbery. We got along OK but I didn't feel like I had much in common with them. Anna and I were pretty much on the same page, though.
It was funny, getting to know her, because I really had no experience having a girl as a friend. Despite her having a sister and me having only brothers, we seemed to have similar situations. She lived with just her dad above her family's pizzeria a mile or so from our neighborhood. I had never been there but knew of the place. It was named Angelo's, which was kind of funny since she told me her dad's name was actually Joe. Money was tight for her family as well and most nights after school she had to help out in the restaurant. Her sister was nineteen and was working there full-time; between them the family was trying to make enough money to put her through college. Anna was smart and had a sense of humor akin to Two-Bit. She was a good deal more mischievous than I was, and I was pretty sure eventually I would get involved in some of her mischief, especially if she decided to direct it toward the spoiled Socy girls on the team. She wasn't that great a basketball player but she provided a great deal of comic relief. The older girls didn't really pay much attention to her but I was glad she was there. Otherwise I probably never would have talked to anyone.
Most of all, I just tried to get through each day without giving in to the sadness and loss I was feeling all the time about my parents. Everybody at home was still adjusting to their new roles and it felt like we all walked on eggshells around each other. Darry seemed to be struggling to fit into his new role as our guardian, and he overreacted to a lot of little stuff the rest of us did wrong or didn't do at all. Soda and I took it with a grain of salt, but Pony seemed really bothered by it. I tried to do whatever I could to keep things going smoothly – I picked up the house, did laundry, got my homework done, and was even becoming a pretty decent cook, but every night when I lay in bed I just wished that we would all start feeling and acting like ourselves again sometime soon.