Page 17 of Possession

Tim is asking me on a date? I’m always Baxter’s date to the banquet. I sit with him during the dinner, smile at his side while he talks to the rich people supporting the athletic programs, and then watch from the sidelines while he leaves with a gymnast or a volleyball player.

He always makes sure one of his roommates walks me home…but the evening is generally a mixture of humiliation and sweet torture.

I’m close to Baxter, in public, but I’m not the one taking him home at the end of the night.

All the same, I usually go with Bax, and I know he’s probably expecting that I will this year. Though he hasn’t asked me yet… What would he think if I agreed to go with Tim?

Bax could just as easily take one of his fangirls and save himself having to find me a chaperone later.

Would it be fun to go to the banquet with someone actually excited to be there with me? Maybe Tim and I can have fun there together as friends. I shift my weight around, realizing I need to respond to Tim in some way or he’ll think I’m being rude.

“Just as friends?” He asks, raising a brow hopefully at me.

“You don’t have friends from the team who are dying to go with you?” I tease, stalling. But Tim shakes his head and explains that most people on the swim team are already paired off. He looks around the room—we’re the only ones still in here apart from Emily and the other trainer. “The person I really want to be my date…I can’t ask.”

Well, I certainly know how that feels.

“Ok,” I tell him. “Just as friends. Maybe we should grab a coffee now that your back is loose. I don’t really know much about you other than you have tight hamstrings!”

Tim laughs and asks me to wait for him while he changes in the locker room. I see him pull out his phone to fire off a text, and I smile, excited that someone is so excited to go on a date with me.

I wander over to Emily. “You hear any of that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Please. You know I know all the dirt about all these kids. I know exactly who is sleeping with whom on the swim team, soccer team,andlacrosse team thanks to my knee research.”

“What did Tim mean about not being able to ask the person he really wants to ask to the banquet?”

Emily doesn’t answer right away. She studies my face for a minute and sighs. “That’s not my story to tell,” she says. “Go on and get coffee. I’ll see you back here tomorrow before they all hit the weight room.”

I give her a fist bump and meet Tim outside. As we walk to the coffee shop, he tells me a bit more about his plans after graduation. He seems pretty set up to get a job right away in his field: finance. It shouldn’t surprise me that he has a whole 5-year plan mapped out. Work, MBA, promotion. All the athletes at SCU have to be disciplined and organized or they wouldn’t be competing at this level. It makes sense that this carries over to other aspects of Tim’s life.

“You don’t want to continue your swimming career,” I ask. I’m not used to this perspective, since all I’ve ever heard about from Bax is how football is his means to a different end.

Tim shakes his head. “There’s no future in swimming unless you’re heading to the Olympics or something. I mean, I’ll probably always swim to keep in shape.” We get to the front of the line and Tim orders his coffee black.

“Oh my god, how can you drink it that way?” I pour in 2 sugar packets and enough skim that my drink is more like coffee-flavored milk.

He shrugs. “Our nutritionist would spit fire if I started adding sugar to anything.” I say a silent prayer of thanks again that my college funding isn’t attached to anything I’m doing with my physical body.

“Thankfully I can still stretch out an athlete without a balanced diet.” I get quiet then, thinking about how often I had to fend for myself at home, making boxed rice or canned pasta for meals. Anything I could get from the corner store with the change I’d pull from my dad’s pockets. He and mom never seemed to get around to making grocery trips more than once a month, and they both seemed to drink all their meals. Coffee with all the sugar and milk I wanted—that was always available. My parents drank it strong to get through work each day.

I smile at Tim, trying to pound back those unwelcome memories. “So tell me who you’d rather ask to the banquet.”

Tim flushes. He fiddles with his coffee cup. “My family wouldn’t approve,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s putting it mildly.”

Sensing there’s more to the story, I try to get Tim to open up by confessing one of my own secrets. “My family doesn’t approve of anything, anyone, and most especially me being at college.” I tell him about the last fight to end all fights—when I needed them to sign the financial aid paperwork after I’d been accepted on a full scholarship to SCU. All that stood in my way was one of their signatures, even though I was 18. That first year, I needed them to sign off because I was still their dependent, for tax purposes.

Growing up, my parents never noticed that I was quietly excelling in math and science, with special interests in biology. I took all the life sciences classes my high school had to offer and, thanks to Baxter, got to shadow the athletic trainers who worked with the football team. Everything clicked when I started reading medical journals about sports injuries, about treating injuries and healing bodies.

But my parents never understood that world. Their world was limited to physical labor, menial work for low pay. They weren’t expecting to have kids, and I threw a wrench in their gears they never quite seemed to dislodge.

Tim looks on in shock as I tell him how my parents cut me off for heading a different direction from them.

“I guess they thought I’d either get into the factory with dad or get a job answering phones like my mom. I don’t know.” They eventually signed the papers, with the understanding that if I turned away from their roof to chase these high-falutin’ dreams, I shouldn’t bother coming back.

“And I haven’t. Gone back, that is.”

Tim looks horrified. “I can’t imagine my life without my family in it,” he says. “They are everything to me.”

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