Dangerous Play

by Emma Kress

  But I don’t do anything.

  I just walk on, my head down, my hood up, my fists clenched, my nails marking my palms like scales on a snake.

  * * *

  A week ago we played Tuscaroga on their turf and won. I didn’t allow myself to get distracted by the fight between Kups and Dylan, the epic fail with the dean, or even my dad and the fact that he can’t seem to get better no matter how hard he tries. I pushed all of it out of my mind to win. But that was a week ago.

  It only takes a week for the world to turn upside down.

  Coach pulls me and Ava aside. “Sometimes when you lose a game, it’s hard to remember the wins. And that’s when you can slip into a losing streak. It’s your job as captains to rally everyone and keep them focused. In AA, we say, ‘Think of the solution, not the problem.’ The solution is clear: We win. Got it?”

  I glance at Ava. She nods like she means it. I say, “I’ll try, Coach.”

  “Good,” she says. “I’m counting on you.”

  When we walk beneath the purple-and-gold banners, I try to pretend they’re our blue-and-green ones. I try to see the ball hitting the back of the goal again and again. In my head, I skate and push and drive and tap the ball the way I always do. I try—I try so hard to see my body working. But I’m faking it, and I’m pretty sure everyone knows it.

  I run onto the field, and Eileen and Uncle Bob sit in the stands with their stupid camera.

  It’s wild how the world can stay exactly the same just when you’ve changed the most. Everything else is frozen like my dad’s busted watch, stuck on 10:17, while I’m spinning so hot and fast I can’t land on a time.

  The whistle blows, and all I see is purple and gold where I want to see blue and green. I’ve got too much energy in all the wrong places, a fockey flake, a flyaway girl who can’t commit to the ball. The other girls hesitate and pull back, like they’ve forgotten how to attack. Coach kicks over the sideline bench.

  We lose. Again.

  FIFTEEN

  AVA SENDS YET ANOTHER TEXT about parkour. One more reminder of how I suck at everything.

  Like this Pre-Calc. Before, I would’ve just texted Quinn. She’d tell me a story of fockey-playing koala bears and somehow she’d make this stupid equation melt into something that makes sense.

  But nothing makes sense anymore.

  Mom knocks on my door. “How was the game?”

  I don’t bother to look up from my Pre-Calc. “Sucked.”

  I feel her footsteps, feel her hand reach out before it settles on my shoulder, but I still flinch when it lands. She doesn’t take it away. “You getting worried about the scholarship?”

  It takes everything in me not to scream. Because that’s just one more thing to add to the long list of things I can’t do and won’t have: math, friends, field hockey, and now college. I’ve let Coach down. I’ve let the team down. I’ve let my parents down. I’ll start bottling them all up deep inside—the screams and the dreams.

  “I really have to focus on this, Mom.”

  I count the seconds until she finally walks away.

  * * *

  Coach kills us in practice. We run and run until I can’t feel my feet. Too bad she can’t numb everything else too. But I feel it all, including the burn of her disappointment. She thought I’d be a better captain than I am. She thought this year would be different.

  Me too, Coach.

  Friday, another game. The sky is gray and flat, like nothing exists beyond the windows. In Mac’s class, Grove glares at me, takes in my button-down blouse, and I want to hide. I wish we didn’t have to dress up for away games. I wish I could walk around in my comforter all day long every day and have no eyes on me ever.

  “Good luck on your game,” Grove says, and I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic, and it occurs to me that I am walking around in a comforter, muffling everything and everyone, including me. I draw my invisible comforter closer and walk past him, past everyone, through the day, through the motions.

  During last period, the sky darkens, and the wind twists the trees. We leave school as soon as the other buses clear the parking lot, right as the rain cuts open the sky and pounds the roof of our bus.

  There’s nothing peaceful about hard rain on a bus roof. It’s all anger. All force. We drive south in the onslaught, to the Sparta Free Academy Tournament.

  We’re playing two games—one tonight against Endsburg, and another on Saturday. The whole thing is supposed to raise money for cancer and be fun, but it does count toward our league record, which, thanks to me, is going to shit.

  I hate playing in the rain. I hate driving home all wet.

  But not tonight. I’ll throw off my comforter for this.

  The second we run onto the field, the rain soaks us. It washes us clean, focuses us or something. I only know, even as my socks squelch in my cleats, that we’ve got this.

  Except we don’t.

  For every pass we make, they steal it. For every goal we get, they match it. And here’s the thing: We do everything right.

  But it’s just not enough. Endsburg wins: 2 to 3.

  * * *

  On Saturday, the sun burns the trees gold and red on the long drive to Sparta. Last night, while Endsburg beat us, Sparta won their game 4 to 0. And now we have to play them, on their turf.

  We all have our earbuds in, listening to our own versions of war music. I listen to Motown. Before Dad’s accident, we had Motown Mondays, where we danced all out while Mom cooked dinner. Dad spun me in the air, and I remember that lag of my stomach trying to catch up to the spin, the weightlessness as my feet left the ground. Motown is like this warm jumble of home and a wild-safe freedom.

  But even Motown can’t cut it today. I song surf until, finally, I just turn it off and listen to the whir of the wheels, the hum of the road.

  In the locker room, Coach rallies us. “Yesterday you did so much right. But games aren’t won on technicalities. They’re won with heart.”

  If that’s true, I’m screwed. Because I’m not sure where my heart went, or if I even want it back.

  On the field, Sasha gets me the ball. But within seconds, Sparta swarms in, their red socks and kilts blocking the green of the field. I need to whack the ball but there’s no room to drive, no space to push, no air to breathe. My stick swerves back and forth, but they dig into my moves. My shins feel battered even beneath the shin guards. Finally, they steal the ball.

  I race after them.

  Kiara rushes in and sticks slam against one another, and the ref should call hacking but she doesn’t, and the ball barely moves. Then somehow it’s free, rolling toward our goal, and Nikki lunges to push it away.

  But it doesn’t travel far. Sparta is there. Again.

  They hammer our goal while Ava collapses to her knees over and over. We try everything, but the game is played in Ava’s lap and while she saves many, two get through. At halftime, it’s 2 to 0 and we trudge back to the locker room, my legs and arms beaten.

  It’s a fact: They’re just better than us. And they drive, push, and score this fact into the next half. We lose: 4 to 0.

  We do the right things, and it never matters.

  After the game, Coach pulls me aside while everyone’s boarding the bus. She’s probably going to tell me no captain has ever been worse than me. She’d be right.

  “How’s your dad doing these days?”

  It’s so unexpected, I shrug.

  “I thought so.” She sighs. “Zoe, you shoulder a lot. Probably more than what’s fair. So many of you do.” She looks at the girls boarding the bus and so do I. She’s right. Dylan’s foster home sucks. Ava barely survived her parents’ messy divorce. Nikki’s forced to see her rapist every day. Nothing about any of it is fair.

  Coach sighs. “I wish everything were as fair as field hockey.”

  “That’s pretty much my main complaint with life.”

  She smiles. “Me too.”

  “Wouldn’t it be great if referees were just everywh
ere?”

  “Yes! I always say that.” She leans in. “But only the good ones. Nothing worse than a bad ref.” She smiles at me. “But just because field hockey doesn’t push into the rest of your life the way you’d like doesn’t mean you have to let the rest of your life push into it.”

  I look at her. “You mean, focus on the game.”

  “I mean,” she says, nodding back to the field, “out there is the one place you don’t have to worry about school or your dad. You get to just play fockey. So draw some boundaries. Enjoy it. You know, one player doesn’t make a team, but one player can have a tremendous impact. And you do. When you’re down, everyone’s down.”

  “I’m sorr—”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not blaming you. Look. I think I might have put too much on you and Ava. School is hard. Life is hard. If anyone gets life spinning out of control, it’s me. I’m just saying you have power here. You have power on that field. You have power with this team. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  On the bus, everyone’s quiet, wrapped in their sad playlists, while I replay Coach’s words. I don’t know if it’s that easy to just wipe it all clean when I hit the field. I don’t know how to find my way back.

  Ava sends out a team text.

  AVA: Team adventure. Attendance mandatory. Surprise destination. Text ur rides. I’ll bring u home when I’m done with u.

  I tuck my phone into my pocket while it buzzes away, the team talking without me. I close my eyes. I’m too tired to even come up with an excuse. Whatever. I can handle Tully’s.

  Please be Tully’s.

  SIXTEEN

  IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME since we were all together, rolling into one another in Ava’s van. At least, it’s been a long time for me. This time, I’m in the back, not riding shotgun. This time, though we’re still a tangle of legs and feet, I can tell us apart.

  I’ve never felt so apart.

  Liv rolls into me. “I’ve missed you, Zozo.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” I say. Automatic.

  “So why’ve you been avoiding us, Cap?” Quinn leans into me from the other side.

  “I haven’t.” I force a smile. A laugh.

  “You are totally avoiding us,” Ava calls from the driver’s seat.

  “No, I’m not,” I say.

  “Yes. You are.” Liv’s voice is quiet and when I look at her, her face is a tumble of hurt and sad and confused, and I’ve never seen her look at me this way.

  “I was sick and then I had all this work and I—” I don’t mean to lie. But these are the words coming out of my mouth.

  Quinn throws her arm around me, pulling me toward her, and for a second I feel like I’m choking, and my arms flex, ready to break free, but then her arm relaxes and she rests her head on my shoulder. Her soft braid falls against my neck, her fruity shampoo fills my nose. The rumble of the van hums beneath me. “Whatever’s wrong, we handle it better together, okay?”

  I want to believe that. Liv squeezes my hand and Kiara knocks my foot with hers from across the van. Maybe Coach was right and I can draw boundaries. Maybe for one day, I can pretend we’re back in the Before. Maybe, for today, I can pretend that this bunch of girls can rewind time and I can exist as the old me. Just for today.

  Even from the back of the van, I can tell when Ava exits the highway, the Syracuse buildings thick and tall against the gray sky. Here, late September hasn’t touched the trees. There’s just gray—gray cinder blocks, gray concrete, gray clouds, gray sky. No city does gray better than Syracuse.

  Being in Syracuse means we’re definitely not playing fockey. We’re not going bowling. We’re not going to the mall. And we’re definitely not ordering a plate of Tully’s chicken tenders. Which I guess is good for my bank account because goodness knows I fell off the scholarship-bound truck about three miles back, but I really wish it was something other than this. Because it looks like Ava’s graduating our parkour from playgrounds to the city. Here, it’s easy to find shells of buildings, empty warehouses, abandoned alleys. I’m sure she’s imagining us leaping over rooftops and scaling walls like they do online—like I did, before I actually tried parkour and couldn’t get my feet off the ground. By the end of the day, the rest of the team will be flying while I’m stuck on the concrete.

  Under the elevated highway, we pull into a parking lot, its blacktop pocked with holes and webbed with cracks. Standing over it is a warehouse: hollow, forgotten. This is definitely not the playground back home.

  “Come on!” Quinn says, tugging open the van’s door.

  “Um.” Michaela flattens the bottom of her bright pink Black Girl Magic T-shirt. “Are we sure about this place?”

  No. There’s no way to be sure about a place without a roof.

  “Yes,” Ava calls, no hesitation.

  I’m the last out. I look up into the building and can see through the windows of the second and third stories—some with glass, some just holes—straight through to the sky beyond. An arrow of birds flies above.

  Ava walks up to the door and rams her shoulder into it, shoving it open.

  “What if there are people living inside?” Sasha whispers.

  Ava shrugs. “I scouted it two days ago. It looked okay.” She walks inside.

  Sasha turns to me. “I don’t like this.”

  “Me neither.”

  But everyone troops inside anyway. A late-afternoon breeze kicks a paper cup around the lot, and the little hairs on my arm wake up.

  “Come on,” Ava calls. “We don’t have that many hours of daylight.”

  I sigh. And follow. As soon as I step inside, my foot slips on a pile of boards and I nearly fall. Once I steady myself and look around, I see it’s just four brick walls straight up to a few lone rafters and the sky beyond. There’s no roof, no stories, no inside walls. There’s not even glass in most of the windows. The floor is littered with the remnants of its past—broken shingles, broken rafters, broken doors. It’s just a placeholder of a building.

  Ava hefts a door off the floor and leans it against a wall. A bit of red dust crumbles out of the brick. She sets up some small obstacles and exercises. We cycle through. Kiara does them one-handed, Quinn skips through them, and Cristina sings through her turn. Thankfully, none involve leaving the ground. So I’m fine. I go through the motions. I’m getting good at that.

  Ava clears a patch on the ground. Then she has us leap off a crate into a parkour roll. My feet follow everyone else’s, up the small crates, onto the big one. My feet walk to the edge.

  Leap.

  My legs give out from under me and crumple when I land. I hurt. The others move on to something else. I leap again. And again. Collapsing every time. Hurting. I collect scrapes and pain and it feels like getting all the answers right on a test.

  Nikki pulls me aside so we’re facing the crumbling wall. I can hear the girls behind me, laughing as they leap, getting better at making less noise when they land. “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “Hurting yourself on purpose.”

  “I’m not.”

  She levels her eyes at me. “You don’t have to pretend with me, remember? You’re stronger than this.”

  There’s nothing strong about me. I’m not sure there ever was.

  She leans in. “You built this team. The way Ava tells it, you were the one who had the idea to go out and recruit and train everyone.”

  I turn to look at Ava. She runs up a wall and backflips to the ground.

  Our recruiting talks were a century ago. I look back at Nikki. “We were stupid not to pick you.”

  She bows. “I’m happy to be your dark horse.” Her face gets serious again. “Come on, Zo. You push us hard because you know we can do it. So I’m going to do the same for you.” Her words float between us, not landing. She sighs. “You’re the voice in my head, you know.”

  I stare at her. I’m the voice in her head?

  She looks away. “When I think I can’t do something, I th
ink of you.”

  A loud burst of laughter erupts from me. “That’s nuts.”

  She shrugs. “It’s true.”

  “I keep thinking that I don’t know how you do it.”

  “One foot in front of the other and all that.” She leans back against the brick. “Clearly, we’re both focked.”

  I lean next to her. “Clearly.”

  We watch the others for a bit, leaping and jumping and rolling, and they look so strong, free. My eyes start to fill and I squeeze them shut for a second. Nikki bumps her shoulder into mine and I look up. Her hands push deep into her pockets. “You know there’s nothing you did or didn’t do to deserve this, right?”

  I think of Liv’s shirt and all the skin I bared. I think of the girl at the bus stop lifting her book above her head just to stay dry.

  Maybe. Maybe she just handed me a broom for all that broken glass inside me.

  I link my arm through Nikki’s. We watch Ava and the others drag stuff to set up a strange kind of obstacle course: boards stretch across cinder blocks like balance beams, planks crisscross the corner supported by open windows, and a series of steps of blocks and crates and barrels end at another open window.

  “I bet you’d like it if you gave it a chance,” Nikki says.

  “Parkour?”

  “Yeah. It’s…” She takes a second like she’s picking her words. “It honors the possibilities of a thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like the guy who invented the staircase did it to get from one level to the next, right? But when you do parkour, you realize that there are a hundred ways to get from one level to the next. And a hundred more ways to use that staircase. It’s … freeing. Like art. It makes me see things differently, fresh.”

  “I could do with seeing things fresh right now.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay.” I nod to the obstacles. “I’ll try.”

  Quinn goes first. She smooths her strawberry braid and flicks her bangs. She takes it at a run, skipping over the blocks and planks, and does an aerial between two beams.