Beneath the Net

The ball came off Emy's forearm with a sound like a wet slap, and I knew before it crossed the net that it was going out. I watched it sail past the antenna, hit the floor of the gym, and roll toward the water fountain where someone had left a towel. Nobody moved to get it.

"Line," I said. My voice didn't carry. The gym swallowed it. "That's a line ball. Side out."

Emy turned to look at me. She didn't say anything. She never said anything when she shanked a pass, which was worse than if she'd argued. She just stared with those flat brown eyes like I was the one who'd hit it wrong.

It was the fourth one in a row. Fourth pass she'd sent into the cheap seats, and we were down 22-19 in the third set against a team from Saint-Étienne that we should've beaten in straight sets. The girls on the bench had stopped watching. Marie was picking at her kneepad. Fatou was on her phone, hiding it behind her water bottle like I couldn't see the glow on her face.

"Time," I said, and walked toward the net.

Nineteen years old. That's how old I was when I got this job. The same age as half the girls I was supposed to be coaching. The club had posted the position in September because nobody else wanted it. The previous coach, a guy named Bertrand who'd been here eleven years, had left in August without explanation. Just packed his office and drove off. The president told me this in the parking lot before my interview, like it was a selling point. "We need someone young," he said. "Someone who understands the girls."

I didn't understand the girls. I understood volleyball. I'd played since I was seven, setter for the regional team until my knee gave out at seventeen, and I'd spent every summer since coaching camps in the Drôme. That was my qualification. That and the fact that I showed up.

Emy was still standing at the ten-foot line when I reached the net. She had her hands on her hips. Her ponytail was coming loose, dark hair stuck to the sweat on her neck.

"What was that," I said. Not a question.

"I got it."

"You got it into the stands."

"It was a hard serve."

"It was a floater. It had no spin. You had time to make a coffee before it got to you."

She looked away. The scoreboard buzzed. Someone in the bleachers coughed. It was Tuesday night and there were maybe twelve people watching, mostly parents, mostly there for the other team.

"Emy." I waited until she looked back. "You're the captain. You're supposed to be the one who holds it together."

"I know what I'm supposed to be."

"Then be it."

The whistle blew. I walked back to the sideline and sat on the bench next to Fatou, who'd put her phone away. She handed me a water bottle without looking at me.

"She's doing it on purpose," Fatou said.

"Doing what."

"Falling apart. She's been doing it since the tournament."

I didn't answer. I'd noticed. Everyone had noticed. Emy had been the best player on this team for two years, the one who carried us through regionals last spring, the one college scouts came to watch. Then in October she'd started missing practices. Then she'd started missing serves. Then she'd started missing everything, and she wouldn't tell anyone why, and she wouldn't let anyone help, and every time I tried to talk to her about it she looked at me like I was a stranger.

The serve came over. Emy passed it. A clean pass, right to the setter, and Léa set it outside to Marie who put it down. 22-20. The bench clapped. Emy didn't celebrate. She just walked back to her position and waited.

We lost the set 25-21. Then we lost the fourth set 25-17. The girls filed into the locker room without talking, and I stood in the gym alone for a minute, picking up the loose balls and putting them in the cart. The gym smelled like floor wax and old sweat. The lights hummed. Through the window I could see the parking lot, the cars of the parents waiting, the yellow streetlamp by the gate.

I was nineteen and I was tired in a way I didn't have words for.

The locker room door opened. Emy came out in her warmup jacket, her bag over one shoulder. She'd showered, or maybe just splashed water on her face. Her hair was still wet at the temples.

"Coach."

"Jérémy."

"Coach Jérémy." She said it like it was a joke. "You have a minute?"

I did. I didn't want to. But I said yes, and we sat on the bleachers, her on one row, me on the row below, both of us facing the empty court.

"I'm not trying to lose," she said.

"I know."

"Do you."

"You're not that good an actress."

She laughed. It was short and it wasn't real, but it was the first time I'd heard her laugh in weeks. "That's supposed to be a compliment?"

"It's supposed to be the truth."

She was quiet for a while. The janitor came in with his cart and started mopping the far end of the gym, and the smell of bleach cut through the floor wax. Emy pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She was small like that. She was small anyway, five-five, but she played bigger than she was, or she had.

"My dad lost his job," she said.

I didn't move.

"In September. The plant in Romans closed. He was there eighteen years. He's been home since. He doesn't leave the house. My mom works nights at the hospital so she's not there either. I'm the one who makes dinner. I'm the one who gets my brother to school. I'm the one who does the shopping because my dad won't."

She said it all flat, like she was reading a list. When she finished she looked at the court, not at me.

"So when I'm here," she said, "I'm thinking about whether we have enough for the electric bill. And when I'm not here, I'm thinking about whether I should be here. And I can't turn it off. I've tried. I can't."

I didn't know what to say. I was nineteen. I had a studio apartment with a mattress on the floor and a fridge that held beer and cheese and nothing else. I had no idea what it cost to run a house. I had no idea what it did to a man to lose a job he'd had for eighteen years. I had no idea what it did to a daughter to watch it happen.

"Okay," I said.

She looked at me. "Okay?"

"Okay. I hear you."

"That's it?"

"What do you want me to say."

"I don't know." Her voice cracked on the last word and she pressed her mouth shut like she could hold it in. She didn't cry. She just sat there with her jaw tight and her eyes wet and her breath coming through her nose.

"Practice is Tuesday and Thursday," I said. "Games are Saturday. You show up, you play. If you can't, you tell me. That's the deal."

"That's not a deal. That's just the schedule."

"It's the deal I've got."

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she stood up and put her bag on her shoulder.

"You're not going to fix it," she said.

"No."

"Good." She walked toward the door. Halfway there she stopped and turned. "Because I'm not asking you to."

The door closed behind her. The janitor finished the far end and started on the near end, pushing his mop in slow arcs. I sat on the bleachers for a while longer, long enough that he looked at me twice, and then I got up and turned off the lights and walked out into the cold.

The parking lot was empty. The yellow streetlamp buzzed. I got in my car and sat there with the engine off and thought about Emy, and about her father in a house in Romans, and about the plant that closed, and about how I had no idea what I was doing.

I started the car. I drove home. I didn't sleep.