SATURDAY, AUGUST 27

2:38 A.M.

KEARSON

Kearson and Grace walk out of the party and across the front lawn, stepping apart momentarily to allow for the bulldog peeing in the grass. As they come back together, Grace playfully knocks into her and nudges her chin across the street.

“Is it weird seeing your mom’s face all over town?”

Across the street, a house is for sale, and one of her mother’s real estate signs is near the curb, perfectly positioned so her coiffed portrait is illuminated by a streetlight.

Kearson laughs. “Yes. It’s like she’s stalking me.”

It’s a good thing Kearson’s mother can’t see her tonight. The athletic director would have a full voice mail of her complaints when school starts back up on Monday. Anything Kearson might say to contextualize what she and the girls are up to would be dismissed prejudicially. West Essex field hockey is forever tainted for her mother.

Her mother didn’t make it to any of her JV games last season, and so, when Coach gave Kearson the tap, she didn’t expect the fact that she was playing varsity to make any difference. Besides open houses taking up the weekends, private showings and closings on the weeknights, sports weren’t her mother’s thing. Still, Kearson was excited to share the incredible news. Her calls went straight to her mother’s voice mail, so eventually she just left one. Kearson could hear how high-pitched her voice sounded, reverberating off the bathroom walls as she explained how the opportunity to replace the injured Phoebe and play alongside the top talent of the Wildcats was a dream come true.

When Kearson walked through the door after her first varsity game, her mother was waiting with a special dinner for them, rainbows of take-out sushi to celebrate, which she had plated in the shape of a W.

“Gah! My varsity girl!” Her mother had gone to West Essex herself, but there hadn’t been much in the way of sports for the girls back then, besides cheerleading, to which Mrs. Wagner was abjectly opposed. “I’m so proud of you!”

Kearson immediately started sobbing. Her mother, totally blindsided by this emotional bait and switch, pushed back from the table and rushed over to comfort Kearson, soy sauce splashing out of the little bowls.

“Kears, what happened?” Her mother looked her over frantically, as if Kearson had just walked out from the wreckage of a car crash. Which wasn’t that far off.

“I played so horribly, Mom!”

“What? No! How can that be?”

Kearson didn’t expect it to make sense to her mother because, though she never made it to games, her daughter was a JV starter. She couldn’t name Kearson’s position but she knew Kearson loved field hockey.

Kearson went straight upstairs and fell on her bed in a heap.

Her mother followed her. “Tell me.”

Kearson tried to catalog all her failures from the day’s match. How she couldn’t seem to connect with Mel, as if they were speaking two different languages on the field. How Phoebe had started off the game by trying to cheer Kearson on only to grow so frustrated with her, she wouldn’t say two words to her. And Coach, the way he screamed at her. His voice was like ice in her veins, freezing her when she needed to stay warm, stiffening her when she needed to play loose.

Annoyingly, her mother kept interjecting with some vague defense of her. That this was Kearson’s first game. That she was still learning. That she had never played with the varsity team before. That it was supposed to be fun. It began to occur to Kearson that she could never explain this. Her mother wouldn’t ever understand. Kids who just wanted to screw around and have fun did intramural sports. On the Wildcats varsity field hockey team, fun was not the point. Fun was the by-product when the girls won. The varisty girls played with an eye on college scholarships and state titles and national competitions. This was the big time, which made Kearson’s shortcomings a big-time failure.

Kearson pretended to fall asleep so her mother would leave, and once her mother had, Kearson quietly wept until she actually did.

The next game, the final one of the regular season, the Wildcats were the visiting team at Franklin Lakes. Technically the Wildcats had already clinched a spot in the finals, and the game didn’t mean anything, except it meant everything.

Kearson didn’t perform any better. In fact, she played worse because in her heart Kearson knew she simply wasn’t good enough to compete at this level. Failure was her inescapable destiny. And like an infectious disease, she would take the entire team down with her. Coach wasn’t the only one exasperated with her. Now her teammates were too. Mel stopped making eye contact in team huddles. Phoebe lost her voice trying to steer Kearson’s actions from the sidelines, and now she sat mute with a blank stare. They all seemed to know Kearson was a lost cause. It may have been a meaningless game, but for the Wildcats it was hospice.

And then, about ten minutes into the second half, Kearson saw her mother arrive in a black wool coat trimmed on the collar and cuffs with faux leopard fur.

The Franklin Lakes bleachers—one for home fans and one for away—were located on the same side of the field, next to the high school building. But Kearson’s mother wanted to be close to her daughter, so she walked around to the opposite side of the field and stood in the parking lot, behind a chain-link fence, just a few feet away from the Wildcats’ team bench.

Having Coach narrate Kearson’s endless missteps was one kind of misery. But to have her mother attempt to drown Coach out with her cheers was next-level torture. Her mother’s shrill encouragements for a game she clearly didn’t understand blasting at the backs of all Kearson’s teammates and Coach was the most humiliating experience of her life. Kearson was already on edge; her mother pushed her over.

Kearson was subbed out near the end of the second half, after almost accidentally colliding with Mel in the midfield. She went to the bench and sobbed her eyes out. That’s finally what shut her mother up.

Later, Kearson found her mother waiting for her in the kitchen. There was no sushi this time, not even false pretenses of celebrating. Kearson could tell her mother was upset, the string on her tea bag wrapped so tightly around her finger that the tip was changing color.

“Just tell me, Kears, does Coach yell like that at all the girls?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.” She sounded genuinely boggled. Like it was impossible. Wouldn’t other parents have complained? Wouldn’t she have heard something?

“Mom, please. It’s my fault. I screwed up like a hundred and one times.”

“I don’t want anyone screaming at you like that, Kearson. Hell, I don’t even do it, and I’m your mother!”

“You don’t get it,” Kearson told her, exasperated. She was already so upset with herself, she didn’t want to now have to go over everything a second time, justify that her fuckups were indeed big enough to have warranted Coach’s wrath. “I’m going to bed.”

“What’s that on your face?”

“What?” Kearson lowered her face to look at her reflection in the toaster. There was a big red mark on her cheek. A perfect ripe raspberry of broken blood vessels. Her stomach hit the floor. “I got hit with a ball.”

“When? Is that why Coach took you out? Is that why you were crying on the bench?”

“No. It happened in warm-ups. I wasn’t looking.”

“Kearson …”

Kearson should have stood her ground. But she knew her mother would eventually disarm her, unspool her the way she always did. She simply ran to her room and locked the door.

Kearson dials back into the conversation. The girls are throwing out ideas for the next stanza of the Wildcat fight song. She murmurs the lyrics to herself.

Don’t mess with the Wildcats, we won’t accept defeat,

For we are the Wildcats, and we will not be beat!

Ali says, “Remember that sign when you first drive into Oak Knolls, about how they are the state champions? We could steal it and”—she shrugs—“I don’t know. Burn it or something?”

Luci says, “We do have to return Buddy anyway.”

“I don’t think we should make this stanza about Oak Knolls,” Mel says. “Tonight’s supposed to be about us showing Coach that we know what it means to be Wildcats.”

Kearson says, “What if we sneak into the West Essex gym and take a picture of us standing underneath the spot where our champion banner would have been?”

“I love it!” Mel says. “But how are we going to get inside?”

Kearson informs the girls, “The athletic director always keeps his office window unlocked. He hides a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray on the ledge so he can secretly smoke.”

The girls laugh. It is kind of funny to think of him being a secret smoker.

“Do you think it would still be unlocked? The school’s been empty all summer.”

Grace says, “He was in his office this week. I saw him when I was filling up the water bottles before tryouts.”

“Okay! So we’ll go in, take a team picture, and then get out. We still have one more stanza to do after this and then we’re going straight to bed! We have a game in a few hours!”

“Way to go, Kears,” Phoebe says, patting Kearson on the shoulder. Kearson beams like she’s just had a medal pinned to her chest.

It’s become clear to Kearson that her mother’s interference is what left her so vulnerable. In fact, she likely preferred Kearson to be weak, because it wasn’t like her mother tried to make her strong. With her mother, it was always the underbelly. The space she’s put between them has done Kearson wonders. But here, with the girls, she feels stronger than ever.

The girls drive over to the school. They park in the far parking lot and, after cracking windows for Buddy, creep like ninjas to the school, Kearson at the head of the pack. The building looks spooky at night, no lights on, all the windows turned reflective in the darkness.

“Don’t worry,” Mel says, helping to hoist Kearson up to the ledge of the athletic director’s window, which is only a little higher than her head. “Even if someone did call the cops on us, I’m like ninety-nine percent sure I could talk us out of it.”

The crazy thing: it feels true. When the girls are together, they feel invincible.

Her tennis shoes scraping the brick, Kearson scrambles up, then crouches in the small space of the window frame. Just as she suspected, there is a new pack of cigarettes and a little glass ashtray, which looks like it was swiped from a diner. With a few upward thrusts, Kearson is able to push the window open and climb inside.

She had been called into this office exactly three weeks after they’d lost the state championship.

The athletic director was behind his desk, and Coach leaned against a file cabinet in the corner, looking just over Kearson’s head, jaw clenched. Before either of them said anything, Kearson lowered herself into one of the two wooden chairs facing them and stammered, “I—I returned my varsity uniform before Christmas break. I put it in a plastic bag and hung it on the doorknob.” Because that’s what this was about, right?

Coach and the AD shared a confused look.

Maybe not.

“Also, please know that I absolutely do not expect a varsity letter.” She twisted in her seat so she was talking to Coach. Even if she technically earned one by playing those two games and also dressing, though not playing a single minute, for the championship, she didn’t want it. “I would rather try for one next season.” If Coach didn’t flat out cut her, which would be completely in his right to do after her dreadful performance.

But again, Coach and the AD were perplexed. The AD cleared his throat, that way smokers do, deep and phlegmy. “So you don’t know why I called you down here today, Kearson.”

“No,” she said softly. “I guess I don’t.”

Coach actually laughed then, tension uncapped, as if he saw through some magic trick or sleight of hand that was being pulled on him. His eyes pinned on Kearson, he said to the AD, “Now do you believe me?” The AD glanced over at Coach, wholly sympathetic, and drummed his pen on a blank notebook page.

Now Kearson imagines herself in that chair across the office, what the two of them saw, a too-tall freshman, wringing her bony hands in her lap, wide-eyed and looking back and forth between the two men, afraid to breathe, wondering which of them was going to tell her what this was about.

Kearson wonders now if looking so completely clueless actually helped her case. As soon as the AD said, “I received a call from your mother this morning, Kearson,” the office became a vortex, a hole opening up directly underneath her chair, pulling her down down down. It hadn’t begun as a performance, but it became one very quickly. Kearson needed to take control of her story. She was no victim. And this was an opportunity to do something heroic.

Which isn’t all that different from what she’s doing back here tonight, come to think of it.

“Hey! Kears!” the girls whisper from outside. “Is the coast clear?”

She hurries back to the window. “Yup! Who’s next?” She smiles, reaching out her hand.

The high school has a fresh, clean smell. Almost antiseptic, but not entirely unpleasant. It’s dark, but with the emergency lights and Mel’s phone, they can see pretty well. And inside they are lit up with excitement. The girls tiptoe together in a cluster, padding silently down one hall, then a stairwell, toward the gym.

The floors are buffed to a reflective shine. The bulletin boards feature cheery back-to-school scenes, glued-down announcements on construction-paper backings, ruby-red apples, perfectly sharpened pencils, fall foliage that’s yet to appear IRL. Everything is pressed in tight with pushpins and staples. Every locker is opened wide, a hallway of gaping metallic mouths. The desks inside classrooms sit in perfectly straight rows.

Kearson is reminded of the possibility the new school year brings. Forget New Year’s Eve. The first day is when real resolutions are made. Earnest pledges fill their hearts, promises they fully intend to keep. This year, I won’t be late on homework I’ll keep my locker clean. I’ll study for tests, not just cram. I’ll get better sleep. I’ll dress up more than just game days. Shower every morning. Wake up early enough to do my hair.

But Kearson has a feeling that her teammates all share a single dream tonight as they step inside the darkened gym. Whatever it takes, this season, the Wildcats will be winners again.

The gym is a dark cave of shellacked wood. Retractable bleachers folded up tight against the walls. Basketball hoops cranked up and out of the way. Navy blue mats Velcroed to the walls. An equipment closet with all kinds of sports paraphernalia in the midst of being reorganized.

And above their heads, rows and rows of championship banners, rectangles of thick navy wool and hand-stitched white letters. It makes Kearson so proud to look up and see the five this team has won, the only banners in the gym that haven’t faded or collected dust over the years. This is their history, but in the scope of time, it is the here and now.

Mel passes the first three, championships won before Mel’s freshman season, and stops under the fourth. The girls crowd around her.

“I was talking with Luci before about captains, and it occurred to me that some of you girls might be interested in a mini Wildcat history lesson.”

She points up at the fourth banner.

“Joli Sands was team captain my freshman season.” Mel’s voice takes on a godlike echo. “Joli was all-state midfielder, leader in assists and penalty shots, and she got a full ride to Quayle University. When we won states that year, Joli’s parents rented three limousines to take our team to the varsity banquet dinner and afterward drove us all down to her parents’ beach house. It was one of the most fun nights of my life, though I still gag if I even smell raspberry vodka.”

The girls giggle.

Mel takes a few steps down the line, to the fifth banner.

“Olivia Mills was captain my sophomore season.” A couple of the older girls hoot and holler. “National Team alternate and goalie of the year, to the surprise of no one, because Livvy had a perfect season, zero points scored against her. Livvy was crazy superstitious. She wouldn’t ever take off her goalie gloves unless she had both feet on the sidelines, she wouldn’t step onto the field until every girl on the Wildcats had tapped the top of her helmet with their stick blades.” Mel scans the crowd, stopping when she sees Ali. “In the locker room after winning the state championship, Livvy presented her gloves to our freshman backup goalie, none other than Ali Park.” A few girls rub Ali’s head. “And right after, Livvy accidentally leaned against the master knob of the locker room showers, where we had apparently been standing, and doused all of us in ice-cold water.”

“Even Coach?” Grace asks, her hands covering her mouth.

Mel nods her head incredulously. “Yup. Even Coach.”

Everyone has a big laugh. Even Kearson. She’d love to see Coach like that—laughing and proud. Hopefully this season.

Mel takes another step, just past the last banner. You can hear a pin drop.

“Rose Tynam-Reed was our captain last year. All-state defensive player of the year, full ride to Danford. I know we had good times last season.…” Mel shrugs. “But I can’t forget the sound of her crying in the locker room after we lost the championship. And how, after Coach told us to get back on the bus, she was the first to walk out. And the rest of us did the same thing, quietly packed up our stuff and left. I don’t remember any of us saying one word to each other.” She shakes her head sadly. “Is it any wonder why we lost? Because that’s not what Wildcats do.” She places a hand on her heart. “This is what Wildcats do.”

The girls all nod.

“Coach may have helped us to remember what it means to be a Wildcat tonight. But now it’s our job to never, ever let ourselves forget. If we can do that, there’ll be another championship banner hanging in this spot next year.”

The Wildcats erupt in screams and claps and hoots and hollers, the gym exploding with sound.

Mel scurries a few feet away, balances her cell phone upright on a stack of exercise mats. The girls grab sticks from the equipment closet and cuddle up against one another, readying their pose.

Ali says, “Did anyone find a ball in there? Might be nice for the picture.”

“I did,” Phoebe says, strutting out from inside the closet. And then, coyly, “The question is, how badly do you want it?”

In a matter of seconds, Phoebe has her loaner stick on the floor and is batting a ball back and forth. Ali jokingly tries to snatch it away with her stick. At first Phoebe deftly pivots and laughs deliciously, swaggering, but Ali stays on her, like a tango, stepping forward with each of Phoebe’s steps back, a Cheshire-cat grin on her face.

“Phoebe, you don’t have your brace on!” Mel cautions.

“Thanks, Mom!”

Indignant, Mel picks up a stick, darts forward, and steals the ball from them both. “I’ve always thought I could play defense,” she says, all bravado.

But then Ali crosses in front of her and steals it back. “You’ll need to be faster than that!” She calls out across the gym, “Grace! Grace!” before chipping her a pass.

And just like that, an impromptu game begins, spreading out from a few girls in the center of the gym to everyone who is here. Sides take shape without much deliberation, and half the girls peel off their shirts, play in just their tanks and sports bras.

First one girl calls for a pass, then another yells for sideline. Sticks slap the floor; sneakers rub the wood with bright squeaks of friction.

It reminds Kearson of how good she used to feel when she played. And she’s both grateful and humbled that this joy hasn’t been completely extinguished.

Mel and Phoebe are completely in sync. Kearson saw them struggling a bit during tryouts this week but they’ve slipped back into a groove. It is all love. Every shot, every play, ends with them hugging each other.

They scrap like this for who knows how long. Kearson’s bra is sticking to her with sweat and the score is tied, three goals on each side.

“Next point is game,” Mel announces. “We still have one more verse to do!”

After a face-off, Kearson grabs the ball, spins, and fires a pass over to Luci. It lands right on her stick. They could make a good twosome, Kearson thinks.

But the action stops like a freeze-frame.

“Shit,” Luci says, and drops her stick.

Kearson spins around and sees Phoebe is down on the floor, holding her knee.

The rest of the team rushes over. All except Kearson. She can’t move.

Mel kneels down and tries to tend to Phoebe. “I told you not to play without your brace! I mean, haven’t you learned your lesson?”

Even in the low light, Kearson can tell Phoebe is bright red, but Kearson’s not sure if it is from embarrassment or anger. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” Phoebe tries to stand. A few girls reach down to lend a hand, but Phoebe refuses. It’s as painful to watch as what Phoebe must be feeling. How much effort she requires to get to her feet.

“You don’t look fine!” Mel grabs her hair in two fists and pulls hard. “Coach is going to kill us.”

“Just take the picture.” Phoebe hobbles across the gym, unable to put any real weight on her knee, until she’s underneath the empty banner space. “Hello! Someone take a fucking picture so we can get out of here!”

So they gather together with their borrowed sticks and pose underneath the spot where this year’s banner would be hung. Five minutes ago, they could all see it. Now no one can bring themselves to look up, least of all Kearson.