Thursday, March 27
The locker room smelled of pine and vanilla. The vanilla came from a body spray, something cheap and bright that made Emma think of unicorn barf. She liked the pine better, with its earthy tang of damp and salty places. Her favorite smell was a sweaty penny in her palm, or the scent of her hands in elementary school after she’d played on the jungle gym or twirl bar.
She waved her hand in front of her eyes to dispel the noxious vanilla cloud, then exchanged her sweater and jeans for a T-shirt and knit shorts stamped with the school mascot, the Minuteman. The logo featured a square-faced man holding a rifle, wearing tight white pants and a black tri-cornered hat. At football games, their mascot used to hold a wooden cutout painted black to look like a rifle. Parents got mad because it sort of did look like a rifle, and now the mascot didn’t hold anything.
Beside her, Via laced a pair of scuffed tennis shoes in preparation for field hockey. Emma had signed up for badminton instead. Too many girls came to afternoon class with bruised and bloody shins to make Emma want to have anything to do with hockey. Her calves were the only body part she was proud of, the only part that didn’t jiggle.
“So,” Via said, wrapping the laces around her fingers to pull them tighter. Her nails were perfect ovals, filed religiously every night. “What do you think they’ll do to Tim?”
“He’ll get suspended, maybe?”
“He doesn’t deserve it.”
“He threw a punch.”
“What’s he supposed to do, let those other guys wail on him?”
“No,” Emma said. “Yes. I don’t know.” Heather James walked down the aisle between them. Emma leaned toward her locker to avoid getting bitch-slapped by Heather’s enormous backpack.
“If self-defense is a valid strategy in court, it sure as shit ought to work here.” Via touched her toes, then flat-handed the ground with her palms. “I’m out of here. Have fun flinging cocks, or whatever you do in that dumb-ass sport you signed up for.”
Emma pulled her knit shorts an inch below her natural waistline. The longer they were, the more of her doughy thighs they hid. She walked to the gym alone, still disoriented by the almost-fight. She’d been sure someone would end up with broken bones, all because Tim and a Mexican boy couldn’t navigate the niceties of personal space.
It wasn’t just a boy thing, either. She was forever angling her body sideways to avoid the press of the popular chola girls. They walked in rows five girls wide, like they owned every inch between the plastic baseboards. Her backpack had been knocked clean off her shoulder twice last week.
In the gym, she found a match-up list taped to the bleachers and scanned for her name: West vs. Becerra, Court 3. She picked up a racket and birdie from the tub near the door and went to stand on the court. Next to her, Rafael Dominguez and Juan Sanchez began their match. She noted where they held their rackets and how far apart they spaced their feet. Rafael, graceful and athletic, never missed a return. He’d been in her world history class last year, but they never exchanged a single word.
“Hey,” she heard. “Are you West?”
Emma turned to see a short, pudgy girl with a flat face and curly black hair, the top half pulled into a ponytail. She had drawn-on eyebrows and four gold hoops in each ear. “I’m Elvira.” The girl pronounced her name El-vee-ra, with an accent on the vee and a trill on the r. Emma saw her eyes drift toward Rafael, who slammed his racket like he was playing whack-a-mole. “Damn,” Elvira said, licking her lips. “Let’s not keep score, okay?”
Emma volunteered to serve first and barely cleared the net. Elvira hustled, but couldn’t get there in time. The birdie fell to the polished hardwood floor. “Chinga la madre,” Elvira said. She rested her weight on the racket and bent to retrieve the birdie. With a glance at Rafael, Elvira lifted her arm and tossed the birdie over the net. “Service.”
Now it was Emma’s turn to dash forward and swing the racket in vain, air whooshing through its plastic strings. “Man, we really suck at this.”
“Still better than field hockey.”
“I know, right?”
Elvira’s eyes tracked Rafael as he jumped to return a volley. A thin coating of perspiration shone on his forehead. “Sweat looks so much better on guys.”
Emma offered a noncommittal “mmm.” She’d never seen Dan break a sweat. Water polo matches happened on Saturday mornings. In order to attend, she’d have to ask her parents to borrow the car. They’d want to know why, and she had no good reason other than to see Dan in a Speedo. It wasn’t something she could say to her dad. Still, she decided to play along. Let Elvira think she was one of the normal kids—endowed with a C average, five real dates under her belt, and a clear picture of what a sweaty guy’s chest looked like. “Totally,” she said.
“Sometimes I ditch class in the afternoon to watch the guys’ soccer practice. Most of the time, they take off their shirts.”
The mechanics of ditching class were foreign to Emma. “Where do you go?”
“The bleachers behind the tennis courts.”
“How can you even see the soccer field from there?”
“I have good eyesight.”
“I think I need glasses.”
“They’d make you look smart.”
“I don’t want to look smart.”
“Are you going to the prom?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” Elvira stared at Rafael’s sweat-haloed brow.
“Out of bounds,” he called, hopping back as the birdie plunked down on his side of the white painted line. “Fuck.” He lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his brow and Elvira’s eyes glazed over.
“Still with me?” Emma asked.
“Uh-huh.” Elvira grasped the net with pudgy fingers, each encircled by a gold ring.
“Did you hear about the fight?” Emma asked. “It was right in front of my class before this.”
“Oh?” Elvira didn’t sound impressed. “Who with?”
“A guy my friend wants to hook up with and a Mexican guy.”
“What Mexican guy?”
Emma frowned. Her school had nine hundred members of the junior class alone, and it seemed like most of them were Mexican guys. “I don’t know.”
“Was he wearing red?”
“Why?”
“It’s a thing. Like a dare.”
“What kind of dare?”
Elvira’s eyes traveled from Rafael’s brow to his hands. “You know how it is.”
But Emma didn’t know anything other than what she saw on the news, which was all bad. “No, I don’t know.”
“I hate it,” Elvira said softly, turning her back on Rafael. “I don’t feel like playing anymore.”
Emma looked over her shoulder. Mrs. Patterson was nowhere to be found. Most of the other girls were already sitting on the floor and gossiping. Some of them had rolled up their sweat pants as if the gym were a tanning salon. On the next court, Rafael and Juan engaged in a sudden-death volley, shoes shrieking against the hardwood.
Elvira shuffled to the bleachers and sat down. Emma sat beside her silently, unsure what to say. It wasn’t until she got dressed in the locker room that she realized Elvira had a red bandanna tied around her half-ponytail.