I return Elizabeth’s earbud and slink over to him. “Hey. How are you holding up?”
His stare could air-condition the whole park if we set him to oscillate. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Now is probably not a great time to mention that he and Melissa are two peas in a freaking pod.
“Okay, well—”
“What do you want, Ellen?”
“Just to tell you that I’m here. If you want to talk or . . .”
“You didn’t want to talk before this happened.” Chris kneels to strangle the laces of his cleats, not-so-sneakily concealing a sniff with a cough.
“You’re mad at me? I had no idea, dude!” I try to turn my yelp into a quieter hiss halfway through the sentence, but I don’t succeed very well, because suddenly heads are pivoting toward us, and John and Aaron casually meander to stand close but not too close to Chris, detached as any bodyguards. “She didn’t tell me,” I mutter mostly to myself. “I’m sorry.”
“Look,” Chris sighs. “It’s good, okay? We’re fine.”
I nod too hard. “And if you change your mind and want to talk . . .”
“We’re fine,” he repeats. “We’re not buddies.”
The gut punch aches in a dull way compared to the knife wounds Xiumiao and Melissa deliver, but it still hurts.
Karey’s car pulls up, and Roshni, Jackson, and those muscular chasers I never talk to show up from the opposite side of the street, just in time to offer me a safe retreat. We all shuffle over to unload hoops and brooms and the big bag of balls out of Karey’s trunk. We run laps and circle up for stretching, drawing a few strange looks from other parkgoers.
Feet shoulder-width apart, I bend to touch my right foot, the muscles down my leg straining taut. To count the stretches, Karey calls out odd numbers, and everyone else in the circle responds with the evens.
“One!”
“Two!” “Two!” “Dos!” . . . “Two!”
We are really not great at unison.
“Three!”
“Four!” “Fourrrr.” “Cuatro.”
My knee starts to bend as I hang upside down with beads of sweat dripping toward my forehead. Between my legs, long skinny weeds stretch above the grass, and gnats dart back and forth.
“Five!”
“Cinco! . . . Wait, crap, seis!” “Six!” “Potato!” I look up at that last one, because it’s Melissa who shouts it.
Karey, who was doing such a good job ignoring our team’s complete inability to count, suddenly loses it, laughing so hard she completely misses “seven.” I glance up and see Melissa and Lindsay joining in the laughing fit while the rest of the team looks puzzled.
I catch Melissa’s eye and arch my eyebrows, but she just laughs and shakes her head. Don’t worry about it, her face says. Long story.
For a second I wonder, When did Melissa develop intricate inside jokes with these older, cooler, Texas A&M–attending girls? Then I remember how busy she’s been this week, how she seemed to suddenly drop off the planet. I put together the two and two, and realize that I’m the fourth wheel on this cool-girl tricycle.
I catch Chris looking at Melissa, probably doing the same mental calculations I am as he realizes that she’s not mourning the breakup. But as soon as he makes eye contact with me, he goes back to inspecting the grass between his feet.
“Um, where are we?” Karey asks. “Nine!”
“Ten!” Only John calls it out.
I understand Melissa’s reasoning. She’s going to be at A&M next year, stuck in College Station with a solid majority of conservative frat boys and peppy sorority sisters. She’s going to need decent friends, friends that don’t live hours away. Of course she’d rather spend time bonding with those friends over the summer. Like Xiumiao and her new roommate.
I get it. If there were UT players here, especially ones as nice as Karey, I would want to make friends with them, probably. Melissa and I aren’t fighting any more than we’re fighting with Xiumiao. We’re all just . . . growing apart, except they’re the ones doing all the growing.
I’m glad to hear that our first drill is tackling. Force and leverage. Aggression. Suits my mood.
We pair by size, meaning that Elizabeth and I are matched again. John and Karey demonstrate the drill, then circulate. I slam my chest into Elizabeth, trying to wrap around her waist while keeping my broomstick tilted safely away from both of us with my left arm. Elizabeth doesn’t spin out or resist—we’re just practicing the basic form for now—but I still manage to shift my weight wrong and end up off-balance. Instead of sending Elizabeth over my leg and into the ground, I sway and almost topple us both over. Not quite as satisfying as I was hoping.
“Ellen,” Karey says, “can you do that one more time, slowly?” She walks over to watch. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Look, step with your other leg so you go to her side instead of getting tangled up.”
I try again, getting my feet in more or less the right position this time. Elizabeth actually tilts the way I push her, and falls. It might be a little bit of a pity fall, but I grin anyway.
“Awesome,” Karey says. “Now—”
“Hey,” Melissa calls, waving from a few feet away with one arm encircling Roshni’s waist. “Is this right?” Karey turns and readjusts Melissa’s grip, leaving me and Elizabeth standing awkwardly.
“What are you waiting for?” John asks, drawn by our stillness. “Switch—let me see Ellen go down.”
Um . . .
I examine John’s face, trying to read through his cocky smile to see if his innuendo was intentional. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I just have a dirty mind. Maybe people who play sports use “go down” in a totally innocent, nonsexual context all the time, like they do with butt slaps.
But also maybe not. His grin is awfully cocky.
I’m so busy not knowing how to react to John that I almost forget to brace myself for Elizabeth’s attack. When the hit comes, I slam into the ground, hard. Gone are all the tips Karey gave us about how to fall properly: butt-first, slapping the ground, protecting wrists and elbows and knees and neck. I fall following my body, not my brain, and for a second, everything hurts.
“Heh, sorry.” Elizabeth tugs her ponytail and grimaces. “Nice.”
“Shake it off,” John grunts, offering me a hand up.
I take it, and groan, and stand. Even though my butt is sore and I think I hit an acorn on the way down, I feel okay. I feel good. My brain unlocks from the panic of falling to realize, Hey, that wasn’t so bad. Like the bruises I will undoubtedly have tomorrow, the knowledge that I can take a tackle—that I can pop back up and readjust my broom and brace for another hit—triggers a surge of pride through me. For a second, I feel powerful.