Varsity Rulebreaker

by Ginger Scott

  It takes almost the entire class period for Dr. V to get through his expectations for this semester. I decided somewhere around the fourth assignment that I would be fine taking a C in this class. It won’t affect where I go; I’ll be signed long before that final grade locks in.

  While Hollis squeezes her hand and flexes her fingers from writing cramps, I lean back and zone out, mentally preparing for the next month of conditioning before tryouts. It’s almost impossible to ignore my biggest hurdle, though, especially since she’s constantly moving right next to me. I don’t know whether she’s jacked up on caffeine or ADHD or nervous or WTF! Her knee has not stopped bopping since she started taking notes, almost as if her hand’s in a race with her leg to burn calories. If this is what she’s like on the field, I’m screwed. I’m used to a focused catcher. At my old school, I threw to a guy who was almost three hundred pounds. He wasn’t great at running down balls but he somehow blocked everything, and he could lock me in when I was getting wild. Zack’s got that gift, with the scrappiness to make fucking amazing plays behind the plate. I don’t know why he’s so freaked out about losing the starting position to Hollis. He’s made the all-region team the last two years and he’s proven himself. He’ll do it again.

  “Pshh.” My scoff slips out as I laugh silently to myself and lean forward on my elbows. Hollis’s knee stops gyrating, so I quirk a brow and give her a glance.

  “What’s funny?” she whispers.

  My mouth begins its slow curve because suddenly, so many things amuse me. My tongue pokes out over my bottom lip and I lock it down with my teeth, nodding.

  “Just ready for today.” My grin is lopsided and arrogant, and Hollis’s brow dips as she studies me, as if looking for the loophole.

  “Better be,” she says, her knee returning to its constant tapping out of Morse code.

  We must have made enough noise to catch Dr. V’s attention because he abruptly stops talking. His posture is pretty ready for conflict with his hands clasped in front of his body and his shoulders rolled back, chest puffed and chin high. He’s looking at us through his lenses now—they’ve moved from the tip of his nose to the bridge.

  “Mister . . .” He muses for a moment, leaning to the right to check my name on the tablet that shows the seating chart. “Jennings. Right. I made a note by your name. Athlete, I see. You’ll be needing to stay eligible for the season. Let me guess, do you two play doubles tennis?”

  He waggles his finger between Hollis and me. I shift in my desk, feeling the rush of blood travel down my neck and spine. I don’t like being made an example of, and Mr. V is officially out of the running for favorite teacher.

  “We play baseball, sir.” Hollis speaks up. I wince because of the way she says it, so sure of herself. Her knee has stopped moving again, and her hands are clasped on top of her notebook, mimicking Mr. V’s in a way. A confident smile plays at her lips, and while she seems to grow taller in her seat, I find I’m shrinking in mine.

  “Oh, that’s . . . progressive. I didn’t know we had a girl on the team,” he says, engaging and leaning one elbow on his podium.

  “We don’t, yet,” I blurt out. It’s my temper—a knee-jerk reaction when I’m embarrassed.

  “We will,” Hollis pipes in, turning to face me with the smug mask tightly pressed to her face. She blinks slowly and I shift again in my seat as I make eye contact with her. I hate that I don’t fit in these things, my legs too long to completely bend my knees under the tabletop, and my body too tall to rest my arms comfortably on the desk. I look like a monster breaking out of a cage. I’m not sure how Hollis fits so easily. Girls are just flexible I guess.

  “Interesting,” Mr. V says, actually running his palm over his beard while evil ideas appear to swirl in his head. “You two are perfect for my first statistics question. Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

  His question lingers in our silent classroom while nobody steps in. I finally shake my head and say, “Sure.”

  “Great. Here’s the data set.”

  He quickly pushes the screen to the side, exposing a whiteboard underneath. He takes a red marker to the board to write with the same fervor Hollis just did, explaining the details as he writes. Hollis doesn’t seem to be taking notes, and I wonder if the attention is chipping away at her brave face.

  “First, we have you, Mr. Jennings,” he says, drawing the male symbol on the board. “And over here, we have Miss—”

  “Just call me Hollis,” she interjects.

  Her boldness earns a smile that barely breaks through the beard.

  “Hollis it is,” he says, drawing the female symbol on the other side. He next writes the number fifty on the board between our names, tapping his marker against the number a few times to punctuate it before turning to face us.

  “There is one spot open on the baseball team, and both Hollis and Mr. Jennings are trying to take it.”

  He takes out a coin.

  “Let’s assign heads to you Hollis, and Mr. Jennings, you’re tails.” He dips his head, peering over his glasses, waiting for us to agree. We both nod. I have no idea where this is going.

  Flipping the coin in the air, he waits with an open mouth, eyes eager to see how it lands in his hand before flipping it against his forearm.

  “One of you will make the team, and one of you will not. Based on this coin, would you say there is a fifty-percent chance it will be you?”

  I shrug and nod as Hollis does the same. Mr. V peels back his fingers to expose the coin, walking through the desks to stand between us so we can verify the coin. It’s tails. I smile as if I actually did something to earn the win.

  “Congratulations, you’ve made the team. Hollis, I am sorry,” he says, leaning to her side. Taking this entire scene in stride, Hollis snaps her fingers in front of her, a gesture that says, “Darn.” One side of his mouth lifts with his short laugh.

  “Ah, but wait. You know what? Let’s do this again. And for fun, let’s put some theory behind it. What are the chances I will land on tails again?” Pinching the coin between his thumb and finger, he twists it around in front of us so we can see both sides. “Mr. Jennings, what are your chances now? Can I land this on tails again?”

  I stare in thought at the coin, not sure how to wrap my mind around his question. “Maybe,” I eventually say.

  “But what are the chances? More? Less?”

  His eyes bore into me waiting for my answer. I let my mouth hang open, mentally playing out the game and testing the odds in my own mind.

  “Fifty percent. It’s exactly the same,” Hollis answers.

  Mr. V’s smile gets bigger this time as he strolls backward, flipping the coin in the air again and catching it, finishing with a swift slap against his arm. He cups it in place, waiting until he returns to the front of the class, and before looking, grills me one more time.

  “Is it the same? Or is it harder for you because now you’re trying to win a second time?”

  I swallow, but his question makes sense, and that’s what I was thinking.

  “Yeah, it is. I’ve already done it once, so the odds of doing it again, twice in a row, are smaller,” I say.

  His smile lingers, but becomes stale. I sense that I’m not right.

  Bringing his arm up in front of his eyes, he slowly un-cups the coin and shifts his focus to the emblem that landed on top.

  “Tails again,” he says, smirking.

  I breathe out and relax in my seat, suddenly aware of how tense my muscles were in anticipation.

  “Looks like you were lucky,” he says, and I chuckle in agreement, completely hooked into his trap. “Or was it luck? I wonder.”

  He tosses the coin in the air and it lands in his palm once again. He holds it out in his fist, staring at me.

  “What are the odds?” His face is devoid of emotion, zero expectation. He looks at me as if he doesn’t know the exact answer. I take a guess, doing my own form of math by taking the three tosses and dividing them into thirds.

>   “Thirty-three percent,” I throw out with a shrug.

  “You don’t seem certain.” His mouth is a flat line, and he maintains eye contact with me as he flops the coin on his arm once again. His gaze shifts to Hollis.

  “It’s the same as the first time. It’s always the same. Every time you toss it there is a fifty-fifty shot that it will land on heads,” she says.

  I sit forward wearing a grin that stretches into my cheeks because I think she’s wrong. But with the coin still covered under his palm, Dr. V stretches out a finger to point at her and winks.

  “Exactly,” he says, uncovering the coin. Once again, it’s tails.

  “Seems this experiment proves my point.” I fold my arms over my chest and lean back, one foot braced on the chair leg in front of me. Dr. V dips his chin and pulls in his brow.

  “The sample size is too small,” Hollis says, again calling his attention to her.

  “I could do this a thousand times. Every time, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the coin will land in Mr. Jennings’s favor. And to spare you all the pain of watching me do this nine hundred and ninety-seven more times . . .” He slides the digital screen back, switching to a slide that details some famous coin-flipping experiment. The chart shows dozens of trials with samples of thousands. The red color bars are nearly dead even with all of the blue ones. Fifty-fifty, I’m guessing.

  “Okay, but baseball isn’t like that,” I argue. I can feel Hollis’s eyes on me to my right, but I ignore them, pushing ahead to dispute this experiment.

  “How so?” Dr. V questions.

  “Well, we aren’t coins. I’m not going out there and flipping to see which end I land on. I’m going out there to work,” I explain.

  “Hollis? Do you go out there to work?” he queries her. I get the point he’s trying to make, but still, he has to see mine.

  “Of course. Some might say I go out there and work harder.” Her snide tone draws my glare, and when our eyes meet she sneers at me, her feminist claws ready to take out my eyeballs.

  I sigh.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there are variables that don’t work with the fifty-fifty method. You have my speed versus her speed. You have my weight and height, and then the natural differences between male and female athletes. I’m going to be stronger. It’s a fact.”

  Anticipating Dr. V’s counterpoint, I hold up my palm.

  “And yes, not all male athletes are going to be stronger than all female athletes, or faster or whatever. But on the average, those are the facts.” I finish my point with a slight head shake, my chest pounding with adrenaline. I’ve gotten worked up over statistics, and I have to give it to the guy—he made this interesting. Maybe he’s not my least favorite teacher.

  The bell rings, but nobody leaves their seats. All eyes are on me and Hollis, waiting for more arguing, more coin flips, more . . . something. I swing my backpack around from between my knees and stand, initiating everyone else, but before the clamor becomes too distracting, Dr. V throws out one more morsel for me to chew on.

  “Mr. Jennings, given everything you just learned, and your points in response, care to give me your best guess on the odds that you will have a female on the Allensville Public baseball team this season?”

  He’s baiting me, not even looking at me after his question, instead turning his focus on erasing the whiteboard and prepping the room for his next class. There are variables I haven’t mentioned, namely that Hollis’s dad is the coach, which sort of takes odds right off the table. I’m pretty sure that argument won’t be popular with him, though, and I know how Hollis will feel about it. I’m pretty sure she regrets kissing me as much as I regret kissing her.

  “It’s not fifty-fifty,” I say, tugging my bag up my shoulder.

  “You sure about that?” he asks, glancing at me over his shoulder.

  My eyes meet Hollis’s waiting gaze as I turn to my right, a steady tremor of anger brewing behind her sky-blue eyes. Her mouth is a tight line. She pulls the pencil from her hair, letting the twisted blonde waves fall around her face. Her nostrils flare.

  Daddy’s girl.

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  Hollis’s eyes haze as her lips curve ever so slightly to meet my challenge. I’m sure to Dr. V my answer sounds like another cocky chauvinist pig out to tell girls what they can’t do. But the faint smile Hollis flashes me just before her eyes blink rapidly in disgust says she gets my real point, that this whole thing is rigged, and she’s a guarantee, no matter what the other variables are.

  I’m going to have to get Zack in shape enough to force a fifty-fifty toss-up for playing time.

  4

  Hollis

  I knew today would be hard. I didn’t think it’d actually suck. Cannon Jennings is an asshole. I’m sick and tired of assholes. We left a bunch behind in New York, and I hoped we wouldn’t get a new crop here. Worse yet, Cannon isn’t even a local. He’s an outsider too, he just doesn’t have tits. Such hypocrisy.

  I’m used to being independent. Growing up in New York does that to a girl. You learn to ride trains young. Biking around city blocks to meet up with friends when you’re nine or ten is a basic rite of passage. And hanging out in front of the 7-11 until three in the morning with a bunch of teenagers is totally normal. Walking into a middle-America high school cafeteria without knowing a soul, though? Nothing normal about this.

  I managed to kill seven minutes standing on line for a slice of pizza and an apple juice. I’m half-tempted to find a corner to lean against and eat on the run. The only person in this entire room I sorta know is June, and that’s only because my mom reached out to the school’s parent group to find me friends before we moved. June emailed me a few times before I got here, and insisted I show up for her New Year’s party.

  The New Year’s party, scene of my first mistake with Cannon Jennings. He dropped a clue when we first met, told me he moved out here to play ball with his cousin. I was so charmed by his unbelievably handsome face that I didn’t put the facts together that playing ball was what I was here for, too. That we’d be playing ball together. Teammates.

  I’m about to go for the wall-leaning option when my gaze lands on a waving hand. June’s smile is like a lighthouse in a really foggy sea. I don’t know why I feel so intimidated by the students here. I think it’s because the culture is so different. Back home, my friends were loud. And new people were rare. We all grew up together, and everybody knew everybody else. The only time things got sticky was when I started high school at Xavier. There was a sense of privilege there, a thread of extremely conservative traditions—that’s not how the Taylor household runs. We’re not hippies, but we’re definitely progressive. Hell, my dad sees no reason I can’t play D1 baseball. I know the realities, though, so I’m aiming for a two-year school, to keep baseball in my heart a little longer. If I have to give in and switch to softball for a full ride somewhere, then so be it.

  June kicks a chair out to make room for me when I get close to her table. She’s chewing a bite from her sandwich, so she cups her mouth to talk.

  “This is Lola.” She points above the head of a really pretty blonde girl with magazine-style beach waves.

  “Hi,” she squeaks before puckering her lips around the straw of her soda. She smiles around it. She seems sweet.

  “Hi, I’m Hollis. I like your hair,” I say, pointing at it.

  “Oh, thanks,” she says with a giggle, pulling a few of the strands out to the side and glancing at her periphery. Her eyes are more white than blue at this point. She’s funny. “I have one of those curling irons that basically does all the work for you. I just hold my hand in the air while I eat breakfast, and voila!”

  “Cool,” I say, unscrewing the cap from my juice. I turn it over to read the words on the inside, a weird habit I’ve been doing ever since I had my first Snapple. I like it when companies leave you with little positive messages. There’s nothing on this cap but an inspection number, though. Guess I’m glad i
t was inspected.

  “I can do your hair sometime, if you want,” Lola says, bringing my attention back to her. I laugh out some of my juice and catch the dribble at my chin with my long sleeve.

  “Sorry,” I say, coughing out the last of the choke. “I’m just, well, I’m a lot of work.”

  I pull my hair down from the makeshift bun I made while waiting on the pizza line. Jagged curls flop in various directions, and several strands jut straight out from my shoulder. Lola reaches toward me with a fork and combs out the wildest pieces. I’m left stunned, eyes wide and brows high.

  “Nah, my magic curling iron can do anything. We’ll try it sometime.” She tosses the fork-turned-comb onto June’s tray and sits back in her chair, seeming satisfied, and once again wraps her lips around her straw, drawing in a long sip.

  “Okay,” I relent, running my fingers through my hair a few more times to get the wild strays away from my face.

  “So, how’s your first day?” June asks. Once again I laugh, this time mid-bite. I cover my mouth with a napkin and finish chewing.

  “Oh, it’s been epic,” I say, sparking their intrigue. Both lean in, eyebrows drown into Vs.

  “Well, let’s see. I’m taking an English class that is the exact same curriculum I just finished in New York, and because of my late transfer, the only credited elective I could get into was culinary. I hate cooking, and I hate cleaning dirty dishes more.”

  They both scrunch their faces to echo my disappointment.

  “Sorry. That sucks,” June empathizes. They both lean back, I think a little disappointed in my definition of epic, but I draw them back in with my last bullet point.

  “Oh! And do you guys know Cannon Jennings?”

  The flat-lined mouths and blinking eyes staring back at me tell me they do, and that their impression matches mine.