Read Online Birthright by Judith Arnold - Free Book Online Page B

Coach Maz love me because I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him?” The kids laughed. “You don’t even want to be thinking about dribbling. So we’re going to take this one step further. Everyone get in a line—that’s right—and follow me. We’re going to walk and dribble and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ all at the same time.”
    “Walk or run?” Jimmy asked.
    “You guys can hardly do this standing still, and you want to run? No, we’re just going to walk.”
    He led them in a serpentine parade around the gym, listening to their off-key warbling. Every few dribbles, he’d spin around and walk backward, facing them, so he could make sure they were all following him. They were—sort of—but the task clearly wasn’t easy. Most of them still looked down at the ball a lot more than they looked ahead at where they were going. Collisions ensued, stumbling and jostling. The song got massacred along the way.
    Aaron didn’t care. He didn’t even care that the kids were all over the gym, losing balls, chasing balls, bellowing the song off-key. What he cared about was that they were having fun and learning a new skill.
    He ended the day with a relay race, partly to work on their running speed but mostly to burn them out. They were all replenishing their supply of fluids when Stacy’s mother arrived to pick her daughter up.
    Over the next few minutes he greeted a string of adults—mostly mothers, but one uncle and one older sister—who had come for the children. He answered questions, said goodbye and waved everyone off. Only when the last of the kids was gone did he allow himself to look at Lily.
    He hadn’t had to look at her earlier to feel her presence. He’d deliberately avoided the corner of the bench where she sat, but he’d never lost his awareness of her. Like white noise, she’d been there, a constant hum in the room, in his mind. He’d inhaledher, felt her on his skin, sensed her along his nerve endings.
    If taking money from her was going to be so distracting, maybe he ought to thank her for considering a contribution to his program and send her and her checkbook away. But damn, the money wasn’t for him. It was for Andy and Stacy and Jimmy and Jessica, and the other thirty kids who wouldn’t be starting the program until next week or the week after because he couldn’t take them all at once. It was for kids who had nothing to do with their time, nothing to keep them busy on a lazy summer day, nothing other than Aaron to prevent them from wandering the back alleys behind the Main Street shops scavenging for cigarette butts, or stealing money from their mother’s purses for marijuana, or—in the case of the younger kids—sitting mesmerized in front of their TV sets, watching shows filled with violence.
    It was for the kids that he would tamp down whatever conflicted feelings he had about Lily and try to woo a little money from her.
    Using the hem of his shirt to wipe the excess sweat from his face again, he crossed the gym to where Lily was sitting. She rose to her feet and smiled hesitantly. “Towels,” he said, letting his shirt drop back down over his shorts. “If you donate some money, I can buy towels.”
    Her smile faltered slightly, as if she wasn’t sure whether he was joking. In truth, he wasn’t sure whether he was, either. The physical-education department used a laundry service that provided towels during the school year, but he couldn’t afford that. He would have worn a headband and brought hisown towel if he’d realized that he was going to be running around and sweating as much as the youngsters.
    He gestured toward the gym’s rear door, which led to the phys-ed offices. His office was so small the desk and file cabinets nearly filled it, but he’d managed to wedge a compact fridge into a corner. He pulled out a couple of bottles of iced tea and extended one to Lily, who shook her head.
    Of course she wasn’t thirsty. She hadn’t been sprinting around a gym for the past