FRIDAY, AUGUST 26

1:12 P.M.

GRACE

Even with the roof off, the Jeep is a vanilla hotbox. No fewer than seven air fresheners dangle from the rearview mirror, a forest of yellow cardboard trees. And Grace Mosure, buckled snugly into shotgun, is delightfully high.

Ali Park is next to her, kneeling on the driver’s seat, squeezing the trigger of a Febreze spray bottle rapid-fire, and misting the back seat, where Ali’s enormous goalie bag takes up any remaining passenger space.

“I’m kind of obsessed with making sure my gear doesn’t get stinky,” Ali admits. “Some goalies? I swear you can smell their BO from across the field.” She pauses, her finger on the trigger. “Which, come to think of it, might be some weird strategy. Anyway. You’ll want to hold your breath for a second.”

Instead, Grace closes her eyes and deeply inhales.

She is a world away from her brother Chuck’s beater Honda, the grimy interior camo’ed in peeling stickers placed to suture splits in the vinyl seats, the back left passenger window forever sealed, its missing crank rolling around somewhere underfoot with empty cigarette packs and crushed soda cans. When their grandfather lost the ability to drive, Chuck was granted full automotive privileges with the caveat he would give his sister rides anywhere she needed to go. A promise Chuck has mostly kept. But when he picked up Grace from tryouts this week, usually on his way home from being out all night, Grace had to ride perched as delicately as she could on one of Chuck’s sleeping bandmates’ laps, hoping she wouldn’t wake them up by sweating on their glitter-dusted skin.

“Okay, that should do it,” Ali says, tossing the spray bottle aside, spinning around, and dropping into her seat. She turns the key and her stereo kicks on mid-song, hip-hop bass thundering. A cluster of her JV teammates turn toward the music.

Ahem.

Former teammates.

Grace hadn’t expected them to still be lingering near the flagpole more than an hour after Coach had read his varsity picks, stunned to near paralysis by the disappointment of having not made the cut. This must be a rare situation for girls like Marissa Szabo and Quinn LaPlace. To be on the outside when they’re so used to being in. Their already hushed conversation had quieted completely when Grace passed by with Ali on the way to Ali’s Jeep.

The JV team is majorly cliquey, and for the past year Grace felt barely tolerated at team activities. The slights were small though numerous. A seat not saved. An invitation delivered at the last possible minute, if at all. An inside joke never explained.

Grace began varsity tryouts on Monday cautiously optimistic. Knowing there were two spots open on varsity defense, she played the very best she could on the field. But Grace also took it upon herself to carry the huge Gatorade cooler in and out of the athletic office each day of tryouts, and picked up any discarded stick tape or trash from the sidelines before heading home, all in the hopes Coach would notice her extra hustle. She would have done anything, honestly, to make it off JV.

When she did, Grace expected no congratulations and received no congratulations from the other JV girls. But she wonders if they will at least try to fake some happiness when they see Kearson Wagner. It wouldn’t even be hard to fool her, since fake is all she’s ever known.

Poor Kearson probably still has no idea the shit her “friends” secretly talked about her last season. They pretended to be thrilled for her, of course, when Kearson first got called up to varsity to cover for Phoebe Holt after she sprained her ACL. But when Kearson completely choked, the JV team barely concealed their glee. Grace saw it firsthand, the way they clutched each other in the locker room, grins equal parts euphoric and morbid, as a classmate who’d been at the varsity game texted all the lowlights of Kearson’s debut. It was beyond gross.

Grace wriggles in her seat. It’s a relief to leave those girls behind. The varsity squad doesn’t operate that way. Coach wouldn’t stand for it.

“Ready, Grace?” Ali asks.

“Yup.” Grace’s smile widens, as if controlled by the stereo volume dial, which Ali turns up even louder. And feeling as much glee as relief, she discreetly watches in the side-view mirror as the JV girls crane their necks, tracking the Jeep until it’s gone from the parking lot.

“You said you live on Dormont Road?” Ali shouts over her music.

“Dorchester.”

“Right, sorry.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, Ali reaches into the center console and unzips a small makeup bag. Inside are a package of Korean face wipes, the same ones Chuck swears by, and she uses a sheet to blot her forehead and the sides of her nose. “Grace? Remember the girl you elbowed yesterday? What was her name?”

“Marissa Szabo.”

“Is she the one who went to prom with Ryan Durst?”

“I … I’m not sure.”

“Yeah. I think she did. I remember her dress was cute.” Ali wrinkles her nose. “Wait. Except the back was weird. It had these crisscrossing straps.”

“Just so you know, I didn’t elbow Marissa on purpose,” Grace clarifies. Even though Marissa’s been a total bitch to her since basically kindergarten, Grace still felt bad about the accidental contact, especially when Marissa made a big show of rubbing her jaw and wincing afterward.

Ali waves away Grace’s concern. “Oh. Without a doubt. I mean, if Marissa still hasn’t figured out that she needs to look at who’s coming at her and not down at the ball after a year of playing JV …” She pauses and shrugs half-heartedly. “She’s kind of a lost cause, you know?”

Grace presses her palms lightly to her warm cheeks. Everything Ali said is the truth, and yet this conversation feels surreal. Though Marissa and Grace are the same age, Marissa has already dated a senior and gone to prom and gotten a solo during the holiday concert. In any normally functioning high school social universe, Marissa would be the one in Ali’s Jeep, forging a friendship, not her.

And yet, Grace had barely stepped inside Coach’s classroom before Ali made a beeline for her, as if she’d already picked Grace out from the other new girls who’d made the team, the scrappy mutt puppy she was set on adopting. It had to be for how hard Grace had played this week. Any time that Coach had put Grace on the same team as Ali for a scrimmage, Grace busted her butt to clear every single ball she possibly could before it ever reached Ali in the goalie crease.

This is the magic of the Wildcats. The comradery of the West Essex varsity field hockey girls obliterates all other high school social hierarchies. In fact, while other sports teams at West Essex wear the same school colors and share the same mascot, it is only the varsity field hockey girls who are referred to as, simply, Wildcats. That’s how tight they are.

Ali stretches past her open roofline, momentarily changing the sound of the air. “Anyway, Grace, when I saw you strip that pass from Marissa, I knew you’d make varsity.” She reaches over and pinches Grace’s arm playfully. “I bet Coach starts you tomorrow.”

Though today’s workout was maybe the hardest thing she’s ever physically endured, Grace feels a sudden zip of new, excited energy pumping through her body, a transfusion brought on, perhaps, by so many of her dreams coming true in quick succession. She twists in her seat so she can look at Ali head-on. “Well. If I am that lucky, I want you to know that I’m going to be all over Darlene Maguire tomorrow.”

Ali stiffens. “Do you know her?” She turns down the volume of the music.

Grace clears her throat. “Me? No. Not personally.” But everyone knows of Darlene Maguire. She is the reason why the Oak Knolls Bulldogs beat the Wildcats in the championship game last season. Darlene scored on Ali twice, the only two goals of the match, a couple of seconds apart, near the end of the second half. Grace now wishes she hadn’t mentioned Darlene Maguire, but for whatever reason, she keeps talking, explaining. “I made a point to watch her at Kissawa this summer. She has basically one move, which is to make defenders think she’s slowing up to take a shot, but then breaking into a sprint and beating them into the key.”

Ali manages a small nod, too small for Grace to pretend it affirms anything she’s just said. Instead it appears to be punctuation in a conversation Ali is having with herself.

Grace turns back to the windshield. Shit.

Ali eventually says, “I went to a special goalie skills camp this summer. That’s why I wasn’t at Kissawa.” She swallows. “I mean, I don’t know if anyone said anything about me not being there.…”

“No,” Grace says. “No one said anything to me.”

She feels bad for even bringing any of this up. Of course Ali would take the Wildcats’ championship loss super personally. Though it’s not just on her. The defenders didn’t have her back. The offense didn’t score. Mel hadn’t managed a single goal after Phoebe’s injury, which was why the Wildcats tied the last two regular-season games before the championship game zero to zero. Though if Kearson had stepped up and played better in Phoebe’s stead, maybe Mel could have?

But there’s no way Grace is going to dig into any of that right now. Not when the atmosphere in the classroom post-tryouts was so exuberant. Not when Phoebe has been cleared to play again. Not when Coach came back for another season. Not when the Wildcats seem more determined than ever to make a comeback.

Ali seems to be thinking the same thing. She takes a deep, cleansing breath. “It’s going to feel so good when we beat Oak Knolls tomorrow.”

“So fucking good,” Grace says.

Ali cracks up laughing. And any lingering awkwardness floats up and out of the Jeep’s open top.

---

Grace kicks the front door closed behind her. “Nana! I’m ho-ome!” she sings, and sashays into the living room, excited to spill her good news.

Nana’s not in her favorite armchair, though the seat cushion remains concave despite her absent weight. Instead, Grace finds Chuck—or a lump of blankets she assumes is her brother—sleeping on the living room couch. He has the window shades pulled down, cartoons flashing bright colors on mute.

“Nana went to the store.” Chuck rolls over under the blankets.

“Shit. Sorry.” She sets her gear down quietly, leans her stick against the wall. “I didn’t think you’d be home.”

Before he ventured into the city with his friends last night, Grace told Chuck she wouldn’t need him to pick her up at the high school the following day. Her thinking? If Grace made varsity, one of her new teammates would take her home. And if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have to cry about it in front of him.

A couch cushion muffles Chuck’s yawn. “What’s got you so cheery?”

“Oh. Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Before tiptoeing out of the room, she picks up her field hockey stick and, with a quick flick of her wrist, fires one of Nana’s crossword puzzle books stacked on the side table at Chuck’s body. “Sweet dreams.”

Grace knows plenty of siblings who spend their adolescence totally ignoring each other. But Chuck, perhaps out of lonely necessity, was always more than willing to share the things he loved with his little sister. And Grace, a thirsty sponge, was more than happy to soak those things up. Some of her favorite memories are when Chuck invited her into his bedroom to play a new song, and the two of them would dance around with their eyes closed, bumping into each other every so often. Or the times the two of them would sit across from each other on the bathroom floor, their heads slick with colorful dyes, and passionately debate whether Remus’s death was justified or if Thor’s hammer could be lifted by an elevator. Grace harbors no regrets that her formative years were shaped by her brother. If anything, she feels lucky. And, as she’s grown up and developed her own tastes, she’s been able to open Chuck’s eyes to some of the things she loves too.

Field hockey, however, isn’t one of them. For someone like her brother, someone who lived on the fringes of West Essex—as a blur of bright hair on the edges of the hallway, a faint smell of clove left behind in a classroom, a backpack abandoned on one of the study tables in the library, covered in patches naming bands no one at their high school had heard of—it’s nearly impossible for him to get that, when she’s playing, Grace feels like the best version of herself.

Though, after her experience on JV last season, it became easier for Grace not to explain. Because if Chuck knew how shitty her JV teammates made her feel on a daily basis, he would have wanted her to quit. So Grace kept her head down, ignored the drama, played hard, got better. She felt about JV the way her brother felt about his four years at West Essex. Something Grace needed to survive in order to find her people.

Now that high school is over, Chuck has a scene, a band, friends who get him. It’s been great to see her brother in a place where he can turn his volume up as loud as he wants.

Grace believes she’s found that with the Wildcats. Without a doubt. She’s seen it from a distance, and now up close, today, the way the girls have already embraced her. It’s a culture Coach has created, and where Grace intends to thrive.

Tonight’s sleepover is a perfect example. Even if it wasn’t mandatory, she’d be excited to go, but Grace appreciates that Coach has required that every girl on the team attend. It leaves no chance for someone to be excluded. What a relief to know that every weekend from now until Christmas break, she’ll have plans.

In her bedroom, Grace begins packing. She’s pleased to find Nana’s washed her favorite thing to sleep in—a Ramones concert tee that Grace’s uncle passed down to her on her thirteenth birthday. “That’s the real deal,” he told her, with love and caution. “July seventeenth, 1981, the Palladium in New York City. I was there with your dad.” It’s perfect for summer nights, thin and soft and raggedy in the best way. But also maybe a little short for a nightgown? She neatly folds a pair of spandex shorts and places them on top.

Grace shouts, “Hey, Chuck? Where’s the sleeping bag you took to camp out for those concert tickets?”

From the living room he shouts back, “James’s house, maybe? Why?”

She sits back on her heels. She could ask Chuck to pick it up for her, but it was on the city sidewalk for a night, and she might not have enough time to wash it. “Never mind!” Grace will bring some blankets to sleep on instead. Nana, for whatever reason, has hundreds and hundreds of blankets.

Chuck suddenly appears in her doorway, a blanket tight around his head like a hooded cape. His eye makeup is smeary and raccoon-ish, though Grace isn’t sure if that is from his nap or a look he created on purpose. “Hey. Was today the last day of tryouts?”

“Yep.”

“So … are you going to tell me how it went?”

“It was fine.” She smiles shyly up at him.

Chuck groans, marches into Grace’s room, and sits on her bed. “So does that mean you made varsity or what? Because you’re being super cryptic.”

She’s touched, and even a little weirded out, that he’s this worked up over it. “Yes. I made varsity.”

Chuck’s mouth lifts into a smile but then it stalls out. He hesitates, chews the inside of his cheek. “What about those JV bitches?”

Grace laughs. “A couple of other JV girls got spots too. But not the meanest ones.” Chuck lets out a long sigh. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle myself.”

He stands up. “I was worried about me, actually.”

Grace sets her bathing suit aside. “What?” Her eyes track Chuck as he heads out of her room. “Why?”

Pausing in her doorway, his back to her, Chuck glances over his shoulder and says, “Because if you hadn’t made varsity, I would have felt embarrassed going out in public like this.” In a flash, Chuck casts aside his blanket cape with the flourish of a matador.

Grace’s hands fly to her mouth.

When her brother left the house last night, his hair had been colorless, bleached so blond it was practically translucent. But sometime between then and now, he’s dyed it blue. Bright blue.

Wildcat blue.

Through her fingers she says, “You did that for me? But what if I didn’t make varsity?”

Chuck shrugs his bony shoulders. “I may not know shit about sports, but there can’t be another Wildcat wilder than you.” And with a level of pep Grace didn’t think was chemically possible for her brother, he lifts his arms and shouts, “Gooooo, Grace!”

She jumps up and smothers Chuck in a hug.

“I can’t believe you made me drag it out of you. It was so hot under those blankets!”

“I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”

“Umm, have you forgotten that I went to West Essex? This is a huge deal.” Chuck shakes his head. Pridefully, he says, “I can’t believe my sister is a Wildcat.”

Finally, Grace lets herself release some of the giddy fizz inside her. “We have our first scrimmage tomorrow. And Ali Park told me she thinks Coach might start me.” Her brother’s eyes widen. “Ali actually drove me home. We’re tight now,” she says with a wink.

“Well, Nana and I will be there. Maybe I can convince her to dye her hair blue too.”

Grace follows Chuck into the hallway, both of them laughing because there’s a good chance Nana might do it. Then she ducks into the bathroom to get a swim towel from the linen closet. While grabbing her toothbrush, she meets her eyes in the vanity mirror. Her hair is still in a stubby little tuft at the top of her head from tryouts.

Grace takes out the elastic and rakes her fingers through it. She’d always had short hair—a chinlength bob with bangs, usually—but she’d dyed it so many times during eighth grade, the hair started to break off on her pillow. So the summer before high school, she buzzed it into a pixie and began growing it out.

At West Essex, basically every girl has long hair. Grace would be lying if she said that didn’t factor into it too. That maybe if she looked a little more like the other girls on her team, they’d do a better job remembering she was on it.

Of course, they didn’t.

Grace actually likes the length. Past her shoulders now, after a full year of growing it. She can braid it or twist it up if she chooses. It’s the color that makes her feel like a poseur. Mouse-belly brown. The lamest camouflage.

Underneath the bathroom sink, she finds a squeeze bottle holding what’s left of Chuck’s blue dye. The color looks so good. The perfect shade. And, with about half a bottle left, likely just enough.

She no longer needs to hide who she is. Grace is a Wildcat now.

And like Chuck said, maybe even the wildest.