When No One Was Looking Read Online Free PDF

trouble in your second round. Pam Carly is sure to win her first round too, but remember, she has no second serve at all. Come way in on it. Her last match ... let me see. Her last match she double faulted twenty-two times. Keep the ball deep on her backhand side. She can’t do anything with it.”
    “Is that the girl with the pigtails?” Kathy’s father asked.
    “Yes,” said Kathy.
    Jody hummed “If I Loved You” barely audibly.
    “No problem with her,” said Kathy’s father. “Tomorrow you’ll probably play Betty Schultz in the third round. Talk about her instead. Forget Carly, you’ll beat her love and love. Schultz can trip you up. She beat Alicia deLong last January. Gordon’s doing well with her. Let’s go over Schultz and Alicia. You’ll probably play Alicia in the semis.”
    Kathy answered her parents’ questions mechanically, hardly hearing them. She argued with none of their advice and agreed to start deep breathing if she felt angry for any reason. She was aware of the constant passage of other cars around them. A horse van pulled into the slow lane in front. She wondered if the horse inside felt both bored and skittish at the same time, as she did. When she was sure Jody had stopped teasing, she fixed her eyes on Bobby’s small pink face. Bobby suffered a never-ending string of colds and minor infections, which often meant bringing penicillin to tournaments in a thermos or packed in ice. He also had what her mother called “problems adjusting,” although she never named what it was that he couldn’t adjust to. His hobby was emptying tissue boxes or Band-Aid boxes or even his father’s cigarette packs and stowing their contents, piece by piece, in hiding places all over the house. Kathy was forever coming upon bits of rolled-up tape or single M&M’s behind a book or under a sofa pillow. Only Jody took pleasure in the ritual of finding Bobby’s treasures. She exclaimed with glee when she discovered one, and Bobby still ran to her and hugged her and said it was her special present long after this game had stopped amusing Kathy and her parents.
    “Keep in mind, if you make the semifinals next weekend, that Alicia is much stronger on Har-tru than clay,” advised Kathy’s mother.
    “She won’t be in the big tournament next month at the Newton Country Club,” said Kathy’s father. “That’s your big qualifier, clay courts, honey, and you’ll have a chance at Penny Snider and even Jennifer Robbins. It wouldn’t hurt a bit to knock off numbers one and two.”
    “Let’s do one thing at a time,” said Kathy’s mother. “Now Daddy will watch Alicia’s first round. I’ll be at Pam’s. When you’re finished, meet us at the car for lunch, and we’ll go over whatever notes we’ve taken. Then Daddy and I will both watch Shultz in the afternoon.”
    Kathy felt her focus shifting back to her father. “Dad,” she said, “I can’t guarantee beating Penny and Jennifer Robbins in July. Please don’t make it sound so easy. Those girls are all more experienced than—”
    “Honey,” her father interrupted, “you don’t have the perspective your mother and I do. In five years you won’t even remember those girls’ names. They’ll fall by the wayside. Maybe you won’t beat them this time or even next time, but you will sometime. It’s a matter of putting things behind you one by one.”
    “There are thirty-one girls behind you now that were ahead of you last year at this time,” Kathy’s mother put in. “Daddy’s right, see?”
    “It may stop sometime,” said Jody suddenly.
    “Jody, that’s enough,” snapped her father.
    “But what happens to Kathy if it does stop?” Jody persisted.
    “Talent doesn’t stop,” explained her mother. “Do you think you’ll ever stop reading books?”
    “You don’t have to hate anybody to read a book,” said Jody dramatically. “You don’t have to beat somebody else to the last page. You don’t—”
    “Jody!” shouted Kathy