Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (best ereader for graphic novels TXT) 📕

Until high school, when she learned quickly that nobody cheers for the ref. Least of all his daughter, who would prefer that he not notice every move she made.

“You just have to be better than everyone else,” he said when she complained. “Because the fans are watching me harder when I’m reffing my own daughter’s game.”

“But that traveling call was bananas! Those girls were double-teaming me and hacking like crazy. Intentional fouling!”

“I don’t care if they were acting like boxers in a ring. If you don’t want me to call traveling, then you better cement your pivot foot. Even if they draw blood, if you move that foot, I’m calling it a walk. The burden of proof is on you when I’m the ref.”

Lillian had been sitting in Kelsey’s kitchen, listening. Lillian had also been there when the whole thing happened, sitting in the bleachers, watching her cousin get called for traveling by her own father. There was a word for all this, Kelsey thought. Nepotism? No, that meant you were somehow benefiting from being related—and this was the opposite.

Kelsey was embarrassed that Lillian had heard the details of the call play out in her dining room. Lillian and her father never had to have these kinds of fights. Their relationship had never been so idealistic; there was no “falling from grace” for Lillian.

It was the first time an idea began to worm its way into Kelsey’s head: Had her cousin’s lack of basketball skills actually been a small gift, rather than a curse?

This idea was jarring, but still, it began to take root in Kelsey’s brain as Lillian got farther and farther away, becoming someone who could choose any path, someone for whom there were no expectations.

Kelsey, on the other hand, was feeling Lared close in around her.

She had never felt so much pressure to be perfect, until she began to make mistakes.

Kelsey had always blamed the messenger. But Lillian was not here to shine her strange illuminating light, revealing things that Kelsey refused to see.

Now there was no one between her and the message. She felt abandoned. Lost.

Her father tapped again on her window, and for the first time in her life, Kelsey decided that she didn’t feel like hitting the court. It wasn’t worth it to put on a stupid surgical mask and squint through the gritty air trying to find the basket or someone to pass to.

She shook her head, started up her car, and waved goodbye to the one person she had never said no to.

—

She drove around town for half an hour, which meant she’d basically gone in circles, passing the same houses about a hundred times until she wound up at her boyfriend’s place, which she never did in the middle of the day. Usually they were both busy playing ball.

“Hi,” said Brian, surprised to see Kelsey in his doorway. “Come on in. Want some milk?”

He was drinking straight out of a gallon jug. His jersey was completely soaked, front and back. One high-top was on, unlaced; the other foot was half in, half out of a sweat sock.

“Where did you play?” she asked.

“Our coach opened the gym,” he said. “You know, because of the bad air.”

“We’re playing outside,” she said.

“Yeah, well, we’re the guys.” He laughed, as if that was funny. Or made any sense.

She was still standing in the doorway.

“Kels, you’re letting in the dregs. In or out, I need to shut the door.”

She stepped inside as a coughing attack hit her.

It happened to everyone lately: coughing as if they smoked a pack a day. It was the new normal.

Brian rubbed her back between her shoulder blades as she leaned forward and hacked her lungs out.

“Thanks,” she said, standing up, wiping her eyes.

He didn’t have a particularly pretty face, and his nose was off a bit to the left from the time he’d been elbowed getting a rebound in junior high—four years ago—but he and Kelsey had been a couple ever since. She had fallen hard for him, watching him fall hard to the floor, his broken nose spurting blood everywhere. He hadn’t let go of the ball, even while bleeding all over his white jersey. Blood was on the gym floor and on the guy that elbowed him. Her heart had beaten wildly in her chest—as if something were blooming inside her—watching him make both of his free throws. Lillian had laughed at her then for falling in love over a rebound.

“It was so much more than a rebound,” Kelsey had said at the time.

But today Brian just looked sweaty. And smelled bad.

“I still don’t understand why we play outside and you get the gym.”

“Calm down,” he said. “We’re going to trade off. Your dad put up a real stink about it.”

“You mean my uncle,” she said. “Our coach.”

“No, I mean your dad. I heard him getting heated when we were warming up.”

“Well, he knows he’s not supposed to interfere. It’s against the rules for a ref to be involved in team practices.”

“I guess he cares more about his precious daughter’s lungs than he does about the rules.”

Again, Brian seemed to think he was being funny. Was he always like this? Suddenly Kelsey wasn’t sure.

“Are you being snide on purpose?” she asked.

“Are you having your period?”

“Fuck you.”

“What’s gotten into you?” He backed away, arms in the air, as if she were on the attack.

“I just want to talk and you’re jumping on me with these one-liners that aren’t funny, Brian.”

“Well, usually you think they are. Now you’re acting more like…”

“More like what?”

“More like…Lillian. The way she never laughs at anything.”

Kelsey said nothing. Her throat was scratchy, like she’d been standing too close to a campfire. She kept trying to clear it, aware that she sounded like a cat hacking up a fur ball.

“Maybe I’ll go,” she said, once she found her voice.

“Yeah, good idea,” he said, not bothering to pretend he cared, shutting the door behind her.

Back in her car, she thought about what he’d