continue at their current levels despite the board cuts,” Ty intoned.
She moved a stack of files filled with the names of kids who needed so much more than she could offer back from the edge of her desk, praying for self-control. Ty never spouted that community-support line spontaneously. It was a rehearsed speech to cut off arguments about why her girls’ team of basketball players would be sitting home this winter while the boys’ team went on undisturbed. “Some programs like boys’ basketball.”
“The Tigers are the heart of Milton High. You know that.”
Ty was right. She knew all about Tigers basketball. She knew the Tigers regularly turned out state championship teams and that the booster support for one athletic team in a small community like Milton was astounding. She knew the boys’ basketball team had fewer scholar-athletes and more kids who walked a thin line between exhibiting high spirits and committing juvenile offenses than any other team in the school. She also knew the sexual favors the Tiger cheerleaders allegedly handed out to the team went beyond anything their parents could conceive of. So yes, she knew what the Tigers meant to the school and she didn’t like much of it.
“Boys’ basketball survives and everything else gets cut?”
“Boys’ basketball has the only team with an active boosters group. Other teams can start cultivating community funding.”
“Basketball season begins in two weeks!”
Ty didn’t smile, but she sensed how much he wanted to.
Not for the first time in her life, Julia wished she knew how to bat her eyelashes and cozy up to a guy to get what she wanted. It would get a better reception from Ty. Unfortunately, growing up with three older siblings who lived in cutthroat competition with one another, she’d learned to always follow up an elbow to the stomach with a kill shot to the groin, not bat her eyelashes. She didn’t have feminine wiles and she was unlikely to find any in the drawers of her beat-up steel desk. So she stuck with what she knew how to do. When you face a problem, pummel it until it gives in.
Stepping out from behind her desk, she got right up in Ty’s space. She didn’t care if he was eight inches taller than her and still had the frame of a jock. She’d been at odds with him since his first year as principal when she testified at a district hearing that ended with the suspension of the team’s starting forward for threatening a teacher’s aide in the art room. She wasn’t about to duck from Ty now. Her brothers had trained her not to show fear.
“Bullshit,” she said. “You got together with your cronies and pulled a miracle for the only team you care about. But my girls get a lot out of playing. At least they’re not on the streets stirring up trouble, or sleeping with one of your precious Tigers.”
Ty didn’t look ruffled, which pissed her off even more. He was probably loving every second of this. “The school is grateful for the help the boosters provide,” he acknowledged.
“You can find some money for the girls’ team and you know it,” she went on.
“My hands are tied.”
“What if I forgo my coaching stipend?” She used that money to provide extras for the girls on the team, like monthly pizza parties and movie nights, but she’d worry about more funding once she convinced Ty to give her team back.
“Julia…”
“You can’t think this is going to fly without a protest. What about Title IX? You can’t have a team for boys and not for girls. I’ll file a lawsuit myself.” She had no idea how to file a lawsuit, or even if she had a case, but her three older siblings were all lawyers and Ty knew it.
He turned around from the door and glared at her. “You’re going to push this, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, every molecule in her body wanting him to dare her.
“Fine. You can have girls’ basketball. There won’t be much of a budget, but that’s okay, because you said you’d work without a stipend. This is a bare-bones operation, Julia. You want it—you’ve got it. However, I guarantee you nobody cares. You’ll save the girls’ team and work your butt off, and nothing will change.”
He’d relented so quickly it confirmed her suspicion that he’d expected her protest. He’d probably already cleared some money for the girls with the boosters, which meant she’d given up her stipend for nothing. He had no idea how much she wanted to step on his foot or spit or do something that would make an impact on his big, blond, jockish certainty that only the boys’ team mattered. Her anger got the better of her.
“How about a bet?” she asked. She was gratified to see his eyebrows lift in surprise. At last she’d gotten a reaction.
“What kind of bet?”
“We make it to the state tournament.”
He laughed at her.
She hated being laughed at.
“And our girls’ boosters raise enough to fund the tournament trip and housing.”
“Julia, you just dived right off the deep end.”
“Does that mean you accept the bet?” she demanded. The logical part of her mind that had set up automatic withdrawals for her rent and her car insurance screamed at her to shut up, accept the funding and move on. But the impetuous part of her mind that had taken the bait when her brother Henry goaded her into streaking at her parents’ Christmas party at the age of six told her she better not let Ty off the hook.
“What’s my offer? After your team makes the tournament and your mythical boosters raise the cash, what do I owe you?”
“Full funding for next year, including a summer camp. With academic enrichment.”
He snapped his fingers as if to say “chump change.” “Fine. And when you lose?”
Her foot twitched toward his instep, but she controlled herself. Barely. “Name it,” she said.
“You run the Boosters Bash in March. You throw the party and you plan and deliver the sincere thank-you to Coach Simon, the Milton Tigers and their fans after another championship season.”
She shook his hand so fast the conversation was over before he’d finished laying out his terms. She’d rather quit her job than fete the Tigers and their supporters, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was meeting Ty’s smug smile with one of her own.
He left, and she felt the effects of adrenaline in her shaking hands and sweaty neck. She lifted her hair with one hand and fanned her skin with the other, musing about the bet. At least the terms were straightforward. Without boosters and a winning record her team was sunk. She’d have to get those two things. Quick.
School was out for the day, so she locked up her office behind her, but made sure her cell number was on the whiteboard on her door—in case any of the kids needed her.
As she cut through the library on the way to her car, she called her brother Henry, and caught him on his cell phone, at their mom’s. He was taking down the awnings to prepare for winter.
“I’m stopping by,” she said. “Don’t leave until I get there, okay?”
Main Street in Milton was like a skeleton stripped of flesh. The storefronts were still there, but almost all the businesses were closed. A restaurant called Murphy’s. A furniture and lighting store. A barbershop with a red-and-white-striped pole. The history of the town was written in the names on the open storefronts. Julia drove below the speed limit, letting the sad street sink in. She lived in a small apartment just off Main Street and walked past the tired storefronts practically every day, but she was usually so busy with her life that she never really saw her neighborhood.
Even if she was the very best guidance counselor, would anything she did alter the bleak outlook for Milton? On a good day at work, she connected a kid with a necessary resource, be it tutoring, counseling or sometimes just a website.