SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
12:15 A.M.
PHOEBE
The Wildcats home field is lit with stars and fireflies and moonlight. Phoebe—field hockey stick over her shoulder, the shopping bags pulled from Mel’s trunk bunched at the curve of the upturned blade—pauses at the break in the chain-link fence to take in the beauty with a deep and satisfied breath. It sucks that they never play night games because it’s fucking magical out here. Teammates brush past as they step onto the field. It’s a gentle current that Phoebe eventually relents to.
She lowers her stick like the arm at a railroad crossing, twists the staff so the blade points toward the turf. The bags slide off one by one to the ground. Phoebe takes a knee—her uninjured one, now reflexively favored—and rifles through their contents for the sacks of candy. Phoebe then sets to tearing each one open with her teeth and pouring their sugary contents—Hershey’s Kisses, Twizzlers, Dum Dums, Airheads, Smarties, Tootsie Rolls—into the cavernous 2 piñata.
Phoebe senses someone coming up on her right side, the awareness of what might be in her periphery sharpened on this very field. She turns and watches Kearson walk past, careful to maintain a deferential distance, her arms wrapped around herself as if she could somehow be freezing on this sticky summer night.
Another player might blame Kearson for basically leaving her no choice but to get back out on the field for the championship game before she was technically cleared to play. Not Phoebe. And as Phoebe informed her mother this afternoon, she really doesn’t begrudge Kearson her spot on this year’s team either. Kearson clearly worked hard to improve her game in the off-season and she’s gotten a lot better.
But these benevolent feels are deep down inside her, in some dark, damp nook where it’s hard for good things to take root. To be honest, Phoebe doesn’t know for sure that she’s having them at all. They might be ghosts of her former self, haunting her. She used to be the kind of teammate who gave her all for the good of the team. Except how can she play like that this season, when she has so much on the line?
And so what if Kearson feels uneasy around her? So what if she feels like Phoebe’s ACL tear is her fault? That works to Phoebe’s advantage. Doesn’t she deserve an advantage, a leg up, after everything she’s sacrificed?
Phoebe bites the inside of her cheek. Hard.
“Yo, Kearson!” When Kearson looks up, Phoebe tosses her a foil-wrapped Kiss. “You look like you could use a little sugar.”
Kearson catches it one-handed. “Thanks, Phoebe.”
There. Phoebe lets out a cleansing breath and returns to the task at hand, shaking a final bag of goodies into the piñata and then closing the hatch.
Mel had happy danced right there in the aisle of Party City when she found it, then leapt up on Phoebe’s back as they hurried to the register, almost knocking them both to the floor in the process. Mel was so excited, Phoebe actually felt bad bringing up the practicalities of stringing the piñata up at their wide-open playing field—namely how and where—but Mel waved Phoebe’s concern away. She’d think of something.
Only it’s clear Mel hasn’t. Why else would she conveniently hang back in the parking lot to get “organized” while asking Phoebe to get the piñata set up?
Phoebe rolls her eyes. It’s funny how much their relationship on the field is mirrored in their real life. More than she ever would have thought.
Phoebe looks around, trying to figure something out. She nixes stringing it up at a corner of fencing (no room to get a good swing in), draping it down the backside of the bleachers from the top rung (not enough rope). But if she can hang it from the base of their scoreboard, that might work nicely. The scoreboard is large, mounted on three tall metal polls, and tall enough for the piñata to sway over their heads.
Phoebe carries the piñata over on her back. At the scoreboard, she takes a ball of twine in her hand and shoots it like a free throw. It takes a gorgeous arc, a comet tethered to the piñata at her feet. Phoebe knows it will sail over the crossbar. She doesn’t have to watch. But she does, just for fun.
Swish.
Phoebe’s first love was basketball.
Her first crush, LeBron.
Phoebe had started playing basketball with the kids on her block after getting a hoop for Hanukkah when she was eleven. Her driveway became home court for any girls and boys wanting to scrap. It didn’t matter how cold it was that winter, every day after school, there’d be a pile of discarded sweatshirts and ski jackets on the ground as stinging-cheeked kids played until it became too dark to see.
Phoebe was tall, taller than any of the boys, and she loved posting up under the basket, ready to receive a pass. She’d do a quick dribble to reposition herself, then a little move, maybe a pump fake. Boys always fell for her pump fake—they were so hungry to block her shot—diving for a ball that never left her hands and leaving her with a wide-open shot.
Come spring, her height advantage began to shrink, and Phoebe found herself moving to the point guard position, sinking a gorgeous three-pointer every so often, but mostly working the court to find an open teammate, bouncing a perfect pass their way. She didn’t mind scoring fewer points; she took pride in every assist.
By that summer, the boys were becoming more physical. They were suddenly stronger and taller and when they would hold up their arms for passes, Phoebe tried not to notice the hair growing in their armpits. Some of them straight up wouldn’t guard her, they’d just throw their hands up, and they definitely got weird when Phoebe got physical with them, pushing her backside into their stomachs as she inched as close to the basket as she could get.
Derek Noble from two blocks over went out of his way to be rough with her, throw an elbow up, push on her from the back. He bruised her good one time, an elbow right in the ribs, but she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. By this time, the neighbor girls who used to play alongside her now sat in the shade, watching them, barely keeping score, whining that everyone should go swimming instead.
Eventually J. P. Coakley got a hoop for his twelfth birthday, and Derek and the rest of the neighborhood boys started playing at his house instead of hers. Phoebe could have walked four houses down from her driveway and joined them, but to be honest, none of them were very good. Her father gave her more of a run for her money playing HORSE.
She still loves watching basketball with her father. And since becoming a Wildcat, she’s always been number 23, an ode to LeBron.
J. P. transferred to Central Catholic after the end of eighth grade, and as far as Phoebe knows, he doesn’t play basketball. Derek Noble, however, goes to West Essex. He is a varsity basketball starter, also number 23.
Last February, Phoebe had a late PT appointment, so she tucked her crutches under her arm and hopped into the bleachers to watch some of the boys varsity basketball home game while waiting for her ride. The stands were barely half-full, the school’s cheerleading squad had to beg for answers to their call-and-response chants.
Derek was a physical powerhouse in the first quarter, leaping for the rim, diving for a pass. By the second quarter, he was growing tired, slowing up. By the half, he resorted to using his brute strength as a cover for his lack of stamina. He fouled out before the end of the third quarter and was forced to watch from the bench as his teammates lost the game, a towel draped over his head, directly underneath the two field hockey championship banners Phoebe had helped earn. She snapped a couple of pictures on her phone, a bit of visual inspiration for her PT session. Wasn’t shy about it, either. She turned the flash on and everything.
Phoebe focuses now on securing the piñata and gives it a tap to make sure it will hold. The 2 swirls like a top, a golden blur no longer recognizable as a number.
Then she follows the sideline back to the rest of her stuff, at first walking, then moving into an easy jog. In a flash, Phoebe bursts into a sprint. She shouldn’t be doing this without her brace, and definitely not without her Knee Spanx, but fuck it. After a few meters, she stops on a dime, spins around, hustles backward at half speed, then spins and takes off again, racing all the way back, a huge smile on her face.
When she stops, Phoebe pulls up her knee and hugs it to her chest. It’s a tiny bit sore, but nothing Phoebe can’t handle. She’s played through way worse.
“Hey, looking good!”
It’s Mel, standing center field, fists on her hips. Mel’s been watching her. And she’s grinning. She might be as relieved as Phoebe herself that her knee is holding up.
Phoebe quickly deflects out of embarassment. “What do you think?” She gestures to the piñata. “Not bad, right?”
Mel gives her two thumbs-up. “MVP!” She threads her arm into Phoebe’s and leads her away from the girls at midfield and toward the deserted metal bleachers. “There’s something I want to run by you real quick,” Mel says coyly. “I came up with a brilliant plan for when we play Oak Knolls tomorrow.”
“Isn’t the plan just to win?”
Mel sits down on the bleachers and wets her lips. “Coach’s speech tonight got me thinking. I want to do more than just win. I want to make a statement. Set the tone for this season. Do something big to get our confidence back. For Coach, obviously, but also for the rest of the girls.” Leaning forward, she takes Phoebe’s hand and tugs her down, making Phoebe sit next to her. “And I want us to be the ones to do it, Phoebe.”
The backs of Phoebe’s legs feel clammy against the cold bleacher steel. “What do you have in mind?”
Mel stomps her feet, a giddy burst of metallic thunder. “Okay! So. You and I are going to make a run at the Oak Knolls goal with the kind of intensity we’d have if the clock were about to run out and it was our last chance to score. Except we’re going to do it immediately after the face-off.”
“Assuming you win the face-off,” Phoebe teases.
Mel swats her. “Please! I always win the face-off! Anyway. Instead of passing forward, I’m going to hook the ball sideways to you. Then you and I will sprint straight up the field, full throttle, crisscrossing passes as we go. I’m imagining three total, like boom boom boom, with your last one hitting me right at the top of the key. And then I’m going to fire off a shot as hard as I can, with everything I’ve got.”
Phoebe watches Mel’s eyes sparkle. Her chest rises and falls as if she actually completed the play she just described. It is no less exhilarating for Mel to imagine this game than to actually play it. “And this idea just came to you?”
“Yes. On the ride over. Why? Is that weird?”
Phoebe laughs. “Um, no. This is extremely on brand for you, Mel.”
Mel tucks her hands in the pockets of her varsity jacket. “Obviously, best-case scenario is I score right away.… But even if I don’t, then you and I will just go at them again, the very next time we get the ball. Again and again and again, as hard as we can, as many times as it takes.” She bites her lip. “What do you think?”
Phoebe had tried to put her earlier conversation with Coach at the Psych-Up out of her mind. She couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened, least of all Mel. But Phoebe knew she was the reason, or at least a reason, behind his angry speech tonight.
Mel’s idea is a couple of notches higher than where Phoebe set the bar for herself for tomorrow’s game. Phoebe sees now that higher is where she must aim. After how badly she screwed up with Coach, it won’t be enough for Phoebe to simply play well tomorrow. She’ll need to play better than her best to repair what she’s damaged.
Not only that, but Phoebe suspects that Mel might be in exactly the same spot she is with Coach. Desperate to prove that the Wildcats’ top scorer can and will deliver.
How amazing then, that they can attack this problem on the field together. Suddenly, it seems to Phoebe more possible than not that they’ll be able to solve it.
“I’m in!”
Mel springs up. “Yay! This is going to be so great!” She jogs backward toward midfield, where the rest of the team is standing around. Phoebe moves more slowly.
The girls were friendly before field hockey, but during their time in the eighth-grade summer skills camp, Phoebe and Mel got tighter by the sheer fact that they were clearly the best of their peers. Mel was on a whole other level, and Phoebe was always working to keep up. But she liked that. On the girls’ basketball team, there would have been no one to push her. She’d have been the one carrying the team.
And when they each got the call from Coach inviting them to join the varsity tryouts that summer before high school, both girls were hopeful of course, but also nervous and wanting to be sensitive that the other maybe didn’t get the call. They hadn’t yet gotten to the point of sharing nearly everything with each other.
Umm. Hi was about as brave a text as Mel could manage to send her.
Ummmmm!!!!!! HIIIIIIIIII, Phoebe texted back.
Being the only two freshmen on the team, they would sit together at the front of the bus, claiming the fourth seat behind the driver. As they got older and gained more seniority, the girls could have moved toward the back, but they never did. They liked their seat. They’d memorized the pen graffiti written there, accepted that their window was the only one on the bus that wouldn’t open.
Neither girl, individually, was particularly superstitious, but together they developed a hundred little rituals over the years to ensure a victory. They packed certain snacks, depending on the day of the week and type of game. Tuesday scrimmage meant they split a Kit Kat. Saturday mornings, a salt bagel with cream cheese. Before games they tied each other’s cleats. They would hit play on their playlists only after the bus had left the school parking lot.
It certainly didn’t hurt matters that Phoebe played midfield and Mel left forward, two inseparable positions. They clicked in that way too, a deep trust forming between them. It was beyond intuitive. They always knew where the other was on the field.
Field hockey became a year-round sport. The regular season was followed by spring club league, the Thanksgiving showcase in Florida, Kissawa summer camp, summer league. Plus both girls were alternates in the National U-18 team two years ago.
Outside of their relationship on the field, their personalities complemented each other in real life. Mel was shy and reserved, but Phoebe knew how to get her to be silly, unguarded. Like the time, for Phoebe’s birthday, that Mr. Holt took the girls on an overnight trip to see the Cavs play in Cleveland. She made them each a T-shirt to wear, KING and JAMES, and together they would dance to every song played over the PA system, hoping to make it on the jumbotron screen.
As close as they are, Phoebe’s injury shed light on some aspects of Mel’s personality that either Phoebe hadn’t seen before or just straight-up ignored. Like how much Mel actually relies on her. How quickly Mel’s confidence, which seemed part of her DNA, could slip away. How uncomfortable Mel is with being vulnerable.
If anything, these revelations make Phoebe feel more warmly toward her best friend. They help her make sense of things. Why Mel wants them so badly to play, if not for Truman, then in the same division. Because it’s hard to imagine Mel making many new friends. Or at least the kinds of friends she needs.
Phoebe joins everyone at the very center of the field, where a large navy circle is painted on the turf. Inside that is a smaller circle in white, and inside that is the illustrated rendering of West Essex’s school mascot. The wildcat has golden fur streaked with black and white stripes, white fangs bared around a panting red tongue. Though she knows it isn’t meant to be, Phoebe has always interpreted it as a female.
The girls sit cross-legged around that outer navy ring. The newbies, adorable in their pj’s, are beaming with anticipation. The returning players in normal clothes, looking as excited as they did the first year they made the team.
Mel steps into the center and everyone quiets.
“During tryouts, it’s every girl for herself, until Coach makes his final picks, selects the best of the best for his team. But starting tonight, it’s no longer about any one girl. Not me. Or Phoebe. Or Ali. Not about the starters or the girls who’ll mostly ride the bench. Tonight we all become Wildcats.”
Mel’s Psych-Up is a perfect blend of old and new like the players themselves. She starts, as in other years, with the Clap Clap Lap Snap name game because it’s always a good time. Next they play Two Truths and a Lie, which is another Wildcat favorite. Phoebe and Mel are always out to stump each other, like two poker players betting big on shitty cards. Ali duped the entire team this year—turns out she got a tattoo on her hip when she was visiting her brother in San Francisco this summer. Three little stars that Kearson instantly recognizes as the design on top of every page in the Harry Potter series. Phoebe read all the books at least three times each and she didn’t get it.
Next, Mel leads the girls in a new trust game called Willow in the Wind and she’s relieved when it’s a big hit. But Phoebe knows that it doesn’t matter what games the girls play. Swap out Big Ups with a Human Knot. Trust Wave with Slice ’n’ Dice. After the stress of tryouts, where any mistake could mean the difference between making the team and not, it’s a relief to do dumb shit together, where the whole point is to fall on your ass in front of your team.
That said, Mel’s piñata feels not just special but necessary. Cathartic.
Phoebe practically pees her pants laughing as she watches her blindfolded teammates swinging wildly with her field hockey stick.
Luci gets in the first good crack, and the girls all scream and cheer her on as she swings again and again, beating the crap out of it, landing every hit.
Finally, the number 2 piñata cracks open and a rainbow stream of candy pours out. The girls dive into the bounty.
It’s perfect. This night is fucking perfect. Phoebe is overcome with feelings for her team, these girls, every last one of them. Even Kearson bobblehead Wagner, which really says something.
Phoebe wants to play field hockey forever.
She hip checks Mel playfully and hands her a lollipop. Mel thanks her and dabs the tears from her eyes with her varsity jacket sleeve. Phoebe immediately tears up too. They laugh at each other.
“I told you I was going to cry,” Mel says.
“Happy tears,” Phoebe says, wiping Mel’s eyes and then her own. That’s exactly what they are. Phoebe, maybe more than anyone, knows the difference.