1
Quinn
Despite that I wasn’t scheduled to report to work until ten o’clock, I was there bright and early at seven, just like always. I worked at the local recreational center, better known to most as MontRec, in the small, barely-a-coffee-stain-on-a-map town of Montpelier, Idaho. I didn’t own it per se, but the owner was almost a thousand years old and wasn’t hands-on. There was a manager above me, technically, but it was the owner’s daughter, and if she didn’t feel obligated to take care of the place, she wouldn’t. So, I showed up every day, first thing in the morning, to get the place unlocked and ready for business.
It was a Wednesday, so it meant three of my favorite things in the world were happening. One, lunch would be brought in for the rec center employees—pizza and pasta from Pizza Roma, the best pizzeria in barely-a-coffee-stain, Idaho. Two, it was Wild Wednesday—the day when all the kids’ programs take place at MontRec. I was the office manager, so I didn’t run any programs myself, but I liked to peek in on the kids when they arrived in the early afternoon. I could be biased, but kids from Montpelier were just cuter than the rest of the world. At least, that’s what I and all of their parents thought.
Third, football.
I was a major football fanatic. I was only six when my dad walked into my bedroom with a football and asked me to play with him. We started with catch, then went on to drills, and by the time I was ten, he was teaching me how to tackle. I might look like only five feet, seven inches of dainty damsel, but my dad used to say that the most dangerous thing in the world were bullets, and those were small, too. Tackling wasn’t about having fifty pounds over someone else. Sure, that would help, but it was really about the center of gravity. You can tuck and plow right into someone’s core and hit them perfectly to knock them off their balance. That’s what my dad wanted me to master, so I tied back my sunny-brown hair, narrowed my dark brown eyes, tucked my shoulders, and charged.
I must have fallen flat on my ass after hitting my dad posing as a brick wall about a hundred times. My tailbone and thighs bruised, but he kept pushing and pushing, and one day, under the roar of my mother screaming at my father to knock it off, I did it. I got him just above the belly button with my shoulder. I put some weight against my calves and thrust forward as I tackled, and he went flying backward, sprawling out across the grass as I had done dozens of times that day.
The high of knocking the wind right out of someone to sail past them and head for a touchdown, it was unlike any I’d ever felt. I chased after it so hard that I didn’t notice my dad fading into the distance behind me. I didn’t notice him fighting more with my mom, I didn’t notice when he started sleeping in the guest room, and I pretended not to notice when he started spending whole weeks away on business. Football kept me focused and kept my eyes on something that didn’t crush me.
By seventeen, I was the first girl accepted onto the varsity football team at my high-school, and my dad was long-gone. Moved to Detroit to be with his new girlfriend. Funny how life works. I spent all that time chasing the dream he gave me, and he wasn’t even there to see me realize it. I didn’t have time to worry about what he chose to do with his life, though. I had to help my mom take care of my baby sister, Honey. So, I came to the rec center for a job and never looked back. I refereed weekend games through high-school, became a part-time records keeper during college, and when I graduated, the owner made me the office manager. He said I knew the most about the place, anyway. It was with that promotion that I was able to leverage establishing an all-women’s football team—the Black Widows.
The Widows had practice on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and we played other rec teams on Fridays. It was my favorite thing in the entire world. Wednesdays were even better because I got a double-dose of football. First, I’d have practice. Then, some of the Widows and I would retire to our favorite bar, where my brother also happened to work, to get some discounted drinks and watch the Montpelier Vipers play semi-pro ball.
“Mornin’ Quinn.” The grate of the security gate blocking the front doors screeched out, nearly drowning out Jansen. Jansen was always the next person in after me at MontRec on Wednesdays. She had some senior swimming classes in the morning and then led some of the kids’ classes in the afternoon. She was also a Widow, one of our wide receivers. “Happy Wednesday.”
“You too. Ready for some football tonight?” I high-fived her as I passed her by on the way to the breaker to flip on the community center’s lights.
“You know it. I know you are, so I won’t even ask.” Jansen was tall and thin, with long blonde hair and crystal-blue eyes. She was a typical cheerleader type, but when it came to football, she preferred to be on the field instead of cheering next to it. “Spritz after practice for the Vipers versus Minnesota, yeah?”
I watched as the lights clicked on one by one, staring at each of the sub-rooms to make sure they illuminated, as well. “Yep. Hollie and Kris are in, too.”
Jansen wiggled her hips in a little dance as she walked toward the back where the pool was. “I can’t wait.” She was out of sight a moment later.
The day passed by just like any other. We didn’t schedule any programs between noon and three o’clock on Wednesdays so that we could flip MontRec and get it ready for the influx of kids. We started the three-hour prep time with our provided pizza lunch, and then we all buzzed around, getting things in place. MontRec wasn’t a five-star facility by any means, but it had a lot of expensive stuff that I simply felt better having padded or out of sight. Each of the program directors was responsible for getting their own room ready, and I filled in where I was needed.
Around the time that schools let out, the kids arrived. I stood at the front door, offering high fives and hugs to those that wanted them and moody, silent head nods to the older teens. From three to four-thirty, I walked around and looked in on all the classes. The kindergarten Run, Jump, and Play classes helped keep the babies active. In the middle school Busy Bodies, Busy Town program, the kids created and ran their own city to prepare for the adult world. They were in week five and had already established a bank and mini-MontRec, which made me proud. The high-schoolers mostly had tutoring and grad-prep programs, but there was one athletic program that Jansen led, my favorite of the bunch—the MontRec PowderPuff Prep League. Ninth and tenth-grade girls who wanted to try out for our high-school’s junior varsity and varsity football teams could prepare and practice as a group.
“Oh, looks like we have a visitor.” Jansen motioned me onto the field when she noticed me standing behind the fence. “The captain of my football team, Quinn Dallen.”
One of the girls let out a little gasp. “Are you number twenty-eight?”
I unzipped my sweat jacket and revealed my t-shirt underneath. It was one of our Black Widows’ t-shirts, gray cotton with a black spider on the front, but instead of a black widow’s notable red keyhole shape on its back, we each had our numbers in red. I pointed to the number twenty-eight in the middle of my spider, and the girl squealed.
“Looks like you guys are doing good work! You’re learning from the best, so I won’t take up your time.” I smiled at them and could see myself reflecting back at me in each of them. “Good luck. You can tell Coach Cal I said hi.”