Dangerous Play

by Emma Kress

  I stand and shake out my kinked-up legs. “Did I get ice cream on my butt?”

  Liv raises her eyebrows. “Since you will never let Grove see your butt, I will not dignify that question with a response.”

  I twist and try to see it myself. I pat it. It’s cold but dry. “I hate you.”

  She grins. “He said ‘guys.’”

  “What?”

  “He said he’d noticed us at his games. He didn’t say I saw you.” She punches me. “He said ‘I saw you guys.’”

  “So?” I feel like hiding behind the cooler again.

  “So, that’s you, you idiot.”

  I shake out my hands. I can’t think about that. “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. Imitate his walk.”

  Liv shakes her head. “You are entering a seriously screwed-up dimension of the crushing universe. Someday you will have to let him see you.”

  I pick up a rag and rub the counter. Somehow it’s always sticky.

  “Seriously, Zo.” She leans on the counter so I scrub around her. “Guys check you out all the time. And thanks to our fierce workouts, you’ve never looked hotter.” She backs away when I push her elbow with the rag. “Why do you run away every time one comes close?”

  “Not just any one,” I mutter.

  “It’s not even like you really know him. It’s just—”

  I turn to face her. “Maybe I don’t want talking to mess it up.”

  Liv busts out laughing. “Mess what up? This tantalizing game of hide-and-seek that only one of you is playing?”

  “Well, now he associates my name with manure, so I’ve got that going for me.”

  “Yes. That and the invisibility thing will surely get you a date for prom.”

  I scrub the counter harder.

  “Zoeeeee,” Eileen screeches.

  I roll my eyes before I turn back to the windows. “Yes, Eileen?”

  “Where have you been?”

  I gesture toward the back. “Restocking?”

  “And you couldn’t hear me?”

  “You called?” I try to make my eyes as wide and innocent as possible. I can practically hear Liv itching to laugh behind me. “How can I help?” I smile.

  “I’d love your help with the planting.”

  “Of course!” I bounce and turn. Liv stifles a laugh as I pull the door shut behind me.

  “Button your shirt!” Eileen says when she sees me.

  I look down. In my Grove-induced panic, I rebuttoned the bottom all wrong.

  I think of Nikki last night, her hair wild, her shirt crooked. I button myself back together.

  THREE

  MONDAY MORNING, WE SCRUNCH TOGETHER on the low bleachers, mouthguards tucked in our bra straps, the hot metal sticking to our thighs. I press my half-frozen water bottle between my wrists.

  “Can you believe how many people showed?” Ava whispers.

  Liv leans in. “Tryouts aren’t usually like this?”

  I shake my head. There. Are. So. Many. People. And it is so hot. Too hot.

  What if Liv doesn’t make the team, and Coach Webb is so pissed he doesn’t take her back on cross-country? What if Ava and I picked the wrong people? Oh, fock. What if I don’t make it? I’ll be the first captain in the history of captains to not make her own team. Why did Coach choose me and Ava last season anyway? What if I’ve turned into a total fockey flake? What if—

  Ava says something, but I can’t hear her above the noise in my own stupid head. “What?”

  “Respect the grind, Cap’n.” She knocks my knee with hers. “We worked for this. It’ll show.”

  I exhale.

  “Girls.” Coach marches over, her neon-blue clipboard tucked under one very freckled, pink arm. “I’m Coach Parker. Welcome to Northridge field hockey tryouts. Over the next several days you will probably come to hate me. But, remember”—she scans our eyes—“pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth.”

  Well, at least Coach hasn’t changed.

  Some girls behind me shift at “spiritual.” Coach is a fan of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m not sure what about it is anonymous since Coach talks about it all the time. If there’s an AA quote book, she’s memorized it. She throws a few more quotes at us for good luck before waving us onto the field.

  “She’s kind of weird,” Liv whispers as we scramble off the bleachers.

  “She’s perfect,” Ava says.

  An olive-skinned girl in baggy clothes runs onto the grass. She’s missed the AA-laced pep talk. Her dark hair is pulled back and a small scar slices her right eyebrow. I recognize her.

  “This is the only time I will allow you to be late,” Coach says. “Ever. Understand?”

  The girl nods.

  “Pair up.”

  Any other day, I’d partner with Liv. But my feet walk me to the new girl. “Nikki, right? I guess you liked what you saw on the beach, huh?”

  Nikki flushes red. I feel like a jerk, except I’m not sure why.

  Coach claps her hands. “All right, girls. Warm-up time. Captain Cervantes?”

  Ava runs to the center to lead us. Ava’s fitness-goddess mom works at every gym in town, and I’m pretty sure baby Ava held a dumbbell instead of a bottle. Even though Ava says she wants to win States to attract colleges just like me, I’m pretty sure she’d love a few trophies of her own to slide next to her mom’s on the mantel.

  Afterward, the real fun begins: fitness tests. I glance at Nikki. I’m not sure if I want her to kick ass or just fall on it.

  Liv settles next to us with Bella, one of the triplets. Ava and I recruited Bella first because she’s savage on the basketball court. Triple bonus that her sisters, Sasha and Quinn, are just as fierce as their hair is red.

  “One-minute push-ups. Partners! Count accurately. No cheating.” Coach narrows her eyes. “Cheaters only cheat themselves.”

  “Does she always talk like that?” Liv whispers. “I feel like there should be a giant kitten hanging from a tree squealing ‘Hang in there, girls!’”

  “Or Albert Einstein telling us how often he failed,” Bella says, tying her hair up.

  “Einstein didn’t fail,” her sister Quinn says. “He just figured out a hundred ways not to make a light bulb.”

  Liv laughs. “That was Edison.”

  “Go!” Coach yells.

  I’m a jack-in-the-box. When my arms sing, I imagine I’m in the water, weightless. When they scream, I’m a machine. I get thirty-eight, twice as many as last year.

  As I count for Nikki, I scan the others. Some barely try—their butts high or drooping low, bodies like hammocks. Not our recruits. Their arms pump hard. Jack-in-the-boxes.

  Next the sit-ups. Then the forty-yard dash. Liv comes in first, of course, but so many of us bring in the numbers. It’s just how this year will be. I can feel it.

  The fitness tests wear on into the afternoon and bleed into the next day. Each hour separates further those who can from those who can’t. The ones Ava and I trained—we sprint, push, drive faster, stronger, harder than the others. Than we ever have before.

  On the third day, eight of the others don’t bother to come back. Fine with me.

  Some fly so loose with their sticks I can see their futures mapped out in bruises. JV can keep the flyaway girls. We’ll keep the ones in control, the power girls.

  Coach plays us in every position, on turf, on fields, on dirt. And then, on the fifth and final afternoon, when we’re reddened with heat and blood and dirty from grass and mud, Coach makes her choices.

  She talks about never giving up and staying off the sauce. Finally, she calls our names one by one. I make it. Ava makes it. So do Liv, Dylan, and the triplets. So do all the other girls we counted on—even the subs—except for one. Instead of Alana, she picks Nikki.

  Nikki who didn’t train with us all year. Who looks too skinny to be fierce. Who flinches when you look at her too hard. There’s something off about her.

  But that something is not in her game. All week she was on fire
. I have no idea where she learned to play, but she knows how to handle her stick, her feet, her ball. And, well, Ava and I aren’t building a sorority. We’re building a State Championship team.

  So she’s in.

  * * *

  I’m cleaning my stick when I get a text from Ava.

  AVA: Tonight? Or are u too busy cleaning ur stick?

  I look at my stick. I hate how well she knows me.

  ME: Shut up. Ice cream?

  AVA:

  ME: No beach hockey before our first game. We’ll be wiped.

  AVA: Not fockey.

  Great. Parkour. I was all about it when Ava suggested spicing up our workouts last spring. I was sure learning parkour would make us even stronger—and I’d be running up the sides of buildings the same way I plow down the field. But that wasn’t what happened at all.

  ME: U wanna break some bones before we’ve even had our first game??

  AVA: Nobody’s broken anything.

  ME: Yet.

  AVA: We need em revved and confident. Nothing like parkour for that.

  For everyone except me.

  AVA: Come on Cap’n. Plllllllleeeeeease?

  ME: Fine. Pick me up?

  AVA: Absofockinglutely.

  It’s the kind of early-September evening with an edge, like it could dip into humid but chooses not to. When we arrive at the playground, everyone’s gathered, a hodgepodge of tamed and wild hair, tank tops, and ripped shorts. And maybe it’s seeing our teen-size bodies against this elementary school playground, but it makes me so aware of how on the cusp we are to this epic season. I grin at Ava. We brought all these different girls to this single team, this single moment.

  As we get closer, I realize all the girls are looking up. At Dylan. She’s perched at the top of the metal roof of the clubhouse, shrouded in the blue late-day light. Of course.

  Dylan was Ava’s pick. Even after nearly a year, I’m the least sure about this girl with her snake tattoo and ready fists. I am sure she’ll win most carded player of the year. Still, there’s no question she’s a killer defender.

  Dylan throws open her arms … and leaps.

  She does a double flip and lands with a roll, her shoulder easing across the grass. Out here, she looks like she belongs in a ballet more than a boxing ring. All the girls whoop and cheer.

  Kiara, Dylan’s best friend, moves to the base of the slide, runs her fingers over her tight braids, and adjusts her sweats. She flips backward three times. Like it’s nothing. She brushes off her shoulder like a brag, eyebrows arched.

  “Fock yeah!” yells Dylan, making Kiara’s brown cheeks glow.

  Bella walks across the monkey bars on her hands, her red hair kissing the bars, while Liv floats between one thing and the next like her insides are all spun sugar and air. Even Michaela loves it. She takes a deep breath before adjusting her pastel headband that pops against her straightened black hair and dark skin. Then she smiles big as she tucks into her perfect roll. Michaela was my pick, and it took a bit to convince Ava that Michaela, who’d never lifted anything heavier than her AP textbooks, would be a good fit for the team. But Ava never saw her debate that dickhead science teacher, Mr. Pickney.

  They all explode and jump, twist and spin. Like they’re the smoke and the fire.

  And then there’s me. I might as well be another bench.

  “Back-handspring time!” Liv runs up next to me and squeezes my hand. “Come on, Zo. It’s just like gymnastics in the old days.” She lines her toes up next to mine. “Go on three. One, two, three!” And then she’s not there anymore. She’s swung her hands up and back and her body followed, just like it’s supposed to. But not mine.

  The others fly like they’re made of wings and stardust, not rocks and roots. Ava was right. Parkour is exactly the thing to get our team loose and confident. Everyone but me.

  “Try a flip instead.” Ava pats me on the back.

  I am not the girl who gets the sympathy pat on the back.

  I stand straight, release my jaw, close my eyes, and picture it. I bend my knees and push up, but my feet don’t leave the ground.

  I shake out my hands. Try again. This time, my feet do leave the ground. I’m up. But as I tuck into my knees, the ground rises and suddenly I’m flat on my back.

  Everyone rushes over with their “are you okays.” I smile and nod, but I’m clammy and shaky, trying to look like someone at the end of a medicine commercial where everything’s back on track—when really I’m the mess at the beginning. Except there’s no cure for me.

  Because in that instant when the ground rushed up, I saw my dad—falling.

  I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve imagined it a thousand times. He used to walk along rooftops like he owned them, like I own the fockey field. His hammer would swing from his hip, and when the sun was at his back and his radio was blasting, his silhouette would dance, and I used to think he was made of different stuff than the rest of us.

  And yet, he fell.

  So while everyone else practices their flips and handsprings, while they twist and tuck, dart and dance, I return to the bench and keep one hand on it at all times, trying hard to shove down the memories. It doesn’t help that every time I try to spring over the bench, I see the hospital room: the ugly whiteness, the tubes, the beeping machines always off rhythm, my dad’s eyes dark and deep in their sockets. And that watch. That stupid watch.

  When he fell, he smashed a watch that I’d bought him for his last birthday. The watch that he still wears. It wasn’t even that great a watch. But he keeps it because I gave it to him. Because it reminds him of how fragile life is. Of how lucky he is. Of how he should appreciate every second.

  But that’s a lie. I think it reminds him of the moment that everything changed. The moment everything stopped working—not just him but all of us. At 10:17 a.m., time stopped. And here I am, stuck on this bench, watching my teammates flip like it’s the easiest thing in the world for feet to wheel over hands.

  For the hands of a clock to keep spinning.

  FOUR

  I TIPTOE AROUND THE KITCHEN in the morning half-light, putting on the coffee, emptying the dishwasher, and swiping the counters clean. I eat my first breakfast of cereal at the counter. I’ll fit in another before I go. Apparently, field hockey and parkour—even the pathetic way I do it—require me to down calories like LeBron drops buckets.

  The hum of the coffee maker and the crunch of the cereal sound too loud in the near dark and I miss the old mornings when the kitchen was bright and busy. When Dad sang and danced while he cooked. When he made a huge deal of the first day of school, taking the morning off to whip up a breakfast of thick, homemade waffles or pancakes.

  Now he’s lucky he can walk at all, and I’m eating cereal by myself in the dark.

  Upstairs in my room, I yank my ponytail tight and smooth my white home jersey over my blue-and-green kilt. Since we have a home game on our first day of school, we all get to wear our uniforms. True, my knees are covered in bruises and various stages of turf burn, and my shins sport a ridiculous shin-guard tan, but I would happily wear this every single day. I turn to see my number 11 in the mirror, two straight lines rich and blue against the white. The whole team is probably doing the same thing right now. Except Cristina will pair her uniform with Louboutin heels and movie-star shades. And Dylan’s probably trying to figure out how to attach her wallet chain to her kilt.

  When I come back downstairs, Mom’s peeling a hard-boiled egg at the sink.

  I put some bread in the toaster. “Dad up yet?”

  Mom shakes her head. “Last night was rough.” She says it to the egg.

  “What do you think is wrong?”

  “Maybe we need to switch his meds? Try yet another physical therapist?” She leans on the sink and looks through the window to our backyard.

  The toaster dings, so I can hide my eye roll as I slather some butter and jam on the bread. I’m not the nurse in the family. She is. And yet she has zero clue how to h
elp Dad.

  She leans in and kisses my cheek. “Let me look at my girl.” She holds both my shoulders. Her eyes grow glassy. “I can’t believe you’re a junior. I’ve only got one more of these first days to go.”

  “Mom.” I wriggle away, shove the toast in my mouth, and pour myself a half cup of coffee. “I forbid you to cry.” I focus on smothering my coffee with milk.

  She smiles and rubs at her cheeks. “Okay, baby.”

  I lean against the counter and sip some coffee. I hate the taste but love the jump. Maybe I’ll get Ava to teach me how to make café con leche. But I don’t think I’d ever sleep again.

  “I do wish those skirts were a little longer.” Mom looks at my thighs.

  “Well, longer would mean I can’t run fast, and if I can’t run fast, I can’t win games, and if I can’t win games, I don’t get a scholarship.” I place the coffee cup behind her in the sink. “Also, I can’t get a scholarship if I skip school. So…”

  She kisses me. “Enjoy every minute.”

  I take the stairs two at a time.

  “Dad?” I say into the dark bedroom as I make my way to his side.

  “Zo?” His voice is quiet, but he tries to turn toward me. “I want you to have an incredible first day.” He smiles even though he can barely move.

  I nod. The cracked face of his watch stares back at me from his wrist.

  “You play Sommersville after school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Show ’em who they’ll have to beat at sectionals.” He takes a ragged breath as he shifts himself on the bed. “They’re going to wish they’d trained harder after seeing you play.”

  “Do you want a pain med?” I grab the pad, ready to make a note of the time.

  “No. I think I just need to stretch. But thanks, kid.” He takes a sip of the water I hand him. “I hope you know how much I’d like to be there.”

  “I do.” I lean forward, careful not to hurt him, and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Get going.” He pats my hand. “You don’t want to keep Liv waiting.”