Authors: Nick Lake
“What? I read up on it.”
“Suck-up.”
“Scr—”
“Children,” said Paris. “No bickering.”
We watched some more of the play. I couldn’t really follow what was going on. After a minute or so they stopped skating and milled around, and then some of the players swapped with the ones waiting in the center space. It seemed like there were about fifteen girls on the team, but only about five of them were skating at any one time. Julie was one of the ones who stopped … playing? Competing? Skating? Anyway, she stopped. She looked around at the bleachers, finally saw us, and waved. We waved back.
Meanwhile the skaters were skating.
“Yeah!” you shouted at one point.
“Um,” I said. “What happened?”
“They scored.”
“Really? How?”
Paris turned to me. “You really don’t know
anything
?”
“Uh, no.”
“The jammer scores by lapping the pack,” you said. “The blockers from the opposing team try to stop them.”
I looked at you blankly.
“The one with the stars on her helmet has to pass the other ones,” said Paris. “Then she scores.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?” I asked you.
You rolled your eyes.
I watched them play. Now that I had a vague idea of the rules it was easier to understand and I was less bored. There was one more two-minute jam (see, I am all over this stuff now) where Julie sat out, and then she joined the team again. Almost straightaway the jammer shot past the pack and I jumped up and whooped. Okay, I got into it for a bit. I don’t like sports usually, but it was exciting.
Paris and you stared at me.
“What?” I said. “They scored. Right?
Right
?”
“Yeah,” you said.
“But you whooped,” said Paris. “You, whooping.”
“What? I whoop.”
“You’re not a whooper.”
“Hey!” I said. “I can whoop.”
“You don’t strike me as a natural whooper,” you said.
“Stop saying whooper, both of you!” I said.
“Maybe you could ask Julie if you could be a cheerleader,” said Paris. “You could follow the team around and—”
“Shut up.”
She smiled. It’s a picture I have pinned on the inside of my mind, to look at.
Then the jammer seemed to lock skates with one of the blocker girls from the Wild Kittens, and went spinning on her back. The play stopped and she hobbled off, and various people talked to one another, and then Julie took off the helmet with the stripe on it and put on one with stars all over it instead.
“Julie’s the jammer now,” you said.
“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” I said.
The previous jammer seemed to be okay. She sat on the ground cross-legged, rubbing her ankle, but didn’t appear to be badly injured. There was a scoreboard up on the wall of the gym, an electronic one. It said:
BEES 42 KITTENS 50
So I could see that the other team was winning. But as we watched, even in the first two-minute jam, it was clear that Julie was making a difference. She flew past the Kittens’ blockers a couple of times, and there was a big cheer when she did and Paris cheered too, so I joined in; I mean, I wasn’t going to be the first to whoop. Not after the last time.
Soon after that it was 50–52 to the Kittens. Really close. There was like one more jam and then it all stopped for some reason; the skaters all went into the middle and huddled, the two teams standing far apart so as not to hear each other. Paris turned to me. “Seriously,” she said, under her breath. “Are you okay? With …” She gave a meaningful look, knowing that you were sitting there too.
I nodded. “Surviving. Just about.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s really good. Let’s talk. Not here though.”
“Okay,” I said.
(We didn’t. We didn’t get a chance.)
Anyway, then the announcer, who was standing in the middle of the gym with a corded microphone, the track running in an oval around him, said it was time for the second period.
The skaters set off, the blockers first, Julie and the Kittens’ jammer behind. Some stuff happened. It’s not like I was registering every detail for later transcription. The score stayed pretty even. Julie scored some. The other blocker too. She was called Patricia Pornwell, I remember that because it was kind of a book name, and I liked that.
Even a sports illiterate like me could see that the time was running down. There were eight minutes of play left, and that’s when stuff got kind of exciting.
74–75 to the Kittens.
Julie was trying desperately to get past the pack. The Kittens’ blockers were all mixed up with the Bees, and then one of her team reached behind her and caught Julie’s hand, linked up with another girl, and kind of pivoted and slingshotted Julie past them all.
Slingshot?
Slingshooted?
Who knows.
Instantly, I was on my feet, screaming.
“She
scores
!” shouted the announcer. “75–75!”
Julie looked right over at us as she cruised past, and she fired a salute off the side of her forehead at us. It was like the coolest thing ever.
“**** YEAH!” screamed Paris. “**** YEAH!”
Now it got kind of rough. The blockers were jostling one another, pushing. Not violent but close. It was messy. The red jammer got past the pack and scored for the other team.
“No,” said Paris. “No no no.”
Then Julie came flying up behind, putting on speed. She closed on the pack. Her hair was in two ponytails sticking out from her helmet, and they were flying behind her like pennants.
It happened suddenly—one of the Kittens went down. I think she caught her skate on another girl’s, and she wiped out on the hard floor of the gym. She spun for what was probably a fraction of a second but felt like forever, all of us in slow motion now.
Julie was maybe four feet away when the girl fell. She couldn’t turn. She couldn’t stop.
Julie—
—jumped, right up in the air, and she kind of hugged her knees to her chest, literally five feet off the ground, and then she touched down on the other side and just kept skating.
The girl on the floor did a thumbs-up to show she was okay, and the skaters slowed so that she could get up. A medic-type guy went over, but she shook her head and went back onto the track.
“Holy cow!” said the guy on the loudspeaker, when they were all skating again. “We see stride jumps in this competition but a full jump—wow! Mega Joules back in play here, and she’s gaining and—”
I don’t even know what he said after that, because there were Bees supporters around us and they were going pretty much crazy. The noise was getting louder and louder. Actually the other team’s supporters were going wild too. It was hard not to get swept up in it, even if at the back of my mind I was counting down time for another reason, glancing over at you again and again, thinking about later. About how we would be alone together when you drove me home.
I wondered what might happen when we got out of the pickup. When we stood in the warm night air, outside the house.
Then you caught me looking, and I turned away embarrassed.
I looked up at the board.
Two minutes to go. Still 75–75.
“What happens if they tie?” I asked.
“I don’t know actually,” you said.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” said the announcer. “We haven’t had a tie in the Eastern league before, but it might just happen tonight. If so, we’ll go into extra time. Oh, oh! Patricia Pornwell almost past there, but edged out by a human chain of Bees. Still a tie, everyone!”
“There you go,” you said. “Extra time.”
“Sport sucks,” I said. It was too tense for me. “Couldn’t they just have a tie and everyone be friends?”
“Shut
up
,” said Paris.
It may have been two minutes, but it felt like more. It was intense. Both of the jammers were pushing and pushing, trying to get past the group. But they couldn’t. The Bees did this thing where four of them linked arms and made like a diamond, trapping the Kittens’ jammer inside. It didn’t seem fair to me, but you said it was legal.
It didn’t help though. Julie couldn’t get past the Kittens either—she was trying, but every time there’d be a girl in a red uniform there, blocking her with a hip, or dropping onto the track just in front of her, preventing her from overtaking.
On the scoreboard, the time was ticking down.
Sixty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
The diamond was still in place, and the Kittens’ jammer was powerless. But it was no good because their blockers were in a chain and there was no way for Julie to dodge past them.
Fifteen seconds.
The pack was skating down the hall on the far side from us, toward the turn after the straight, and there was still no way past, and there was still no way past, and—
Eight seconds.
And—
Five seconds.
And then they came to the turn, the pack right on the inside of it, and Julie was there, suddenly, going faster than I had seen before, really powering up behind the blockers and then she leaned into the corner, leaned much too far into the corner and she kind of dived and I thought she was going to fall—
No.
She
jumped
, again, only this time with one leg and then the other, so that she kind of leaped past the blockers by cutting
across
the sharpest part of the turn in the air—without her skates ever touching down outside the track—and came down again just past them, just past the most acute angle of the turn, and we were on our feet before I even really knew what was happening.
“The Bees WIN!” the announcer screamed. “Mega Joules jumps the apex and wins the final for the Bees! 76–75! Unbelievable!”
After the end of play it was actually kind of anticlimactic. The crowd—at least the Bees’ supporters anyway—kept cheering for a while, and that was fun, being caught up in that.
In the middle of the gym the announcer got both teams together. He had the mike in one hand and a framed certificate in the other. “The Oakwood Miss-Spelling Bees!” he said. “Winners of the New Jersey Eastern League!”
Applause.
He handed over the certificate to Julie. She smiled.
And that’s when Paris slung her bag over her shoulder and vaulted over the bench in front of us, her bag knocking the head of a girl with red hair who turned and said, “Hey!”
Paris turned at the safety barrier. “Come
on
,” she said. “Boost me.”
“Wh—” I started, but you were already on your feet and jumping down beside her. I guess boys are just better at obeying commands without thinking about them at all.
You cupped your hands and crouched; Paris got one foot on them and you powered her up. Everything was happening very fast, and I wasn’t really processing any of it because I had two conflicting thoughts in my mind:
— He’s helping, that’s so sweet, he doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it,
I
don’t even know, but he jumped right up to help her over the fence, like a knight in shining armor.
And:
— He’s helping, that’s so awful, he doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it, but he jumped right down and he put his hands out, and they’re touching oh God I’m so jealous her foot was in his hand and her hand was on his shoulder, just for a moment, and THIS MEANS HE LIKES HER DOESN’T IT? He’s only here for her, he’s a knight in shining armor, but he’s a knight in shining armor for her.
It made me feel sick, that feeling, that envy, seeing your bodies touch, just for that moment.
And, yes, I know this is repetitive, I know it’s just like when I thought you were into Jane from the library, and I apologize for that. But the thing is that minds are repetitive. They tend to get into fixed patterns.
This is something I know better than most.
Anyway. Those two thoughts were warring in my mind, but it was so much faster than I am conveying it here. It all happened in an instant.
Paris pivoted over the top of the fence, using the momentum you had provided with surprising grace, at first anyway. Then … then it kind of went wrong, her leading foot was over but her back one caught, and she flipped suddenly, scary-fast, like someone being hit by a bull, and for a frozen instant she was upside down on the other side of the fence.
Then she hit the ground, sprawling, her head and shoulders taking the impact, and rolled.
“****,” you shouted. “Are you okay?”
Paris stood, awkwardly. She shook herself like a dog. Then she put her arms up in a V, like an Olympic gymnast, like, “TA DA!”
She turned and hurried over to where the two teams were gathered, though it was obvious she was limping.
“What’s she doing?” you asked.
“I have no idea,” I said.
You frowned. I must have sounded angry. Because of the touching. Because of you giving her that boost, and how
obviously
you would be more into her than me.
And then Paris was pushing a big silver trophy into Julie’s hands and there was a flurry of movement and suddenly the Bees lifted Julie up into the air and the crowd went
wild
.
Click
. Kodak moment.
“Um,” you said, over the noise of celebration. “What was
that
?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said.
But I didn’t.
I mean, I didn’t explain later. I really wanted to, I really wanted some time alone with you, I had been looking forward to that all evening, thinking about the ride home and how we would stand in the yard together, under the night sky …
But sometimes life thwarts our plans. Often, in fact.
First off, we were hanging out with Paris and Julie and the team in the parking lot and then you offered them a ride and the whole way to their apartment the pickup was just filled with them, with their excitement and happiness, and Paris was so
loud
.
“My girl got her trophy!” she was shouting. “My girl is a
champion
!”
“It was a team effort,” said Julie, but I could hear the bright joy in her voice, and it made me twist inside.
“She is the champion, my friends … ,” Paris started singing. You glanced over at me and raised your eyebrows. Paris did not have a beautiful singing voice. I just wanted her to be quiet, but she was Paris. She was
never
quiet. I mean, what are you going to do? You can’t ask the sun to stop shining.