Missy dove. She hit the ground hard on her side, her shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. But she didn't feel the sting; she was too busy cradling the soccer ball to her gut.
"Nice one!" Bella pumped her fist in the air. "Now up! Six seconds! Go!"
Missy scrambled to her feet and pivoted right, throwing the ball two-handed over her head. Bella, though, had anticipated the direction correctly and was already body-blocking the shot, and now she was dribbling the ball, backing up for another attempt on the goal.
"Got to use your body better," she scolded, dancing backward. "You practically texted the direction. Fakeout. Just because you're a goalie doesn't mean you can't be shrewd."
Breathing heavily, Missy dropped into a low ready position, pretending she didn't feel the burn in her thighs. The rich smells of grass and dirt tickled her nostrils, and beneath that was the familiar odor of hard-earned sweat. She blinked perspiration out of her eyes, telling herself yet again that she needed a sweatband on her forehead. She swayed left, then right, her gaze locked on the soccer ball.
"You taking a nap?" Bella laughed. "Don't just squat there in the goal box! Come out and grab the ball! I dare you!"
Missy didn't take the bait. If she darted forward, she'd be committed to that and would have to block the shot while leaving the goal unprotected. Bella arced left, and Missy shuffled right, galloping sideways.
"It's not enough to watch the ball," Bella said, moving right, now left again, coming forward and then darting to the side. "Watch my hips. But always follow the ball. Don't look away too long, because the ball moves fast." She emphasized the point with a powerhouse kick, aimed high.
Eyes on the ball, Missy lifted her right knee and pushed off with her left leg, reaching long. Thumbs together so that her hands made a W, she caught the ball and rode it to the ground.
"Good! Six seconds. Go!"
Again, Missy hurled the ball away—and this time it got some distance before Bella got it under control. Missy took a moment to palm sweaty hair off her forehead and glance at the rest of the team. The girls, paired off, were scattered across the field, some doing passing drills, others attempting scoring shots while the partner tried to block or steal as the coach called out pointers. It was a good team this year, but they'd lose a boatload of seniors after graduation. Like Bella. But that meant that next year Missy would be the primary goalkeeper and one of the JV girls would be where Missy was now: drilling like mad for the time when she'd be the last line of defense.
The protector.
The thought made Missy grin. Here she didn't need her dead face. Here she didn't hide her heart in a glass jar and pray to God or whoever that it would never break again. Here it didn't matter that she was a freak, a loser, just a girl sailing through what passed as life.
Here, on the battlefield, Missy was home.
Bathed in sweat and adrenaline, Missy spread her arms wide and barked out a laugh—a raw sound, a primal sound, one that evoked joy and bloodshed in equal parts. It was the sound of jubilant violence.
But here was Bella again, approaching on a zigzag. Missy turned to face her opponent, and she caught a panoramic sweep of the people speckling the bleachers—some girls, a few guys who got their kicks watching girls get sweaty, a parent or two who'd taken "soccer mom" to the extreme by coming to the practices. And there, standing on the sidelines near the locker room, was a woman in black—as black as a dead heart, from her wide-brimmed hat to her trench coat to her boots—just standing there, watching the players.
No. Watching Missy.
"Heads!"
Missy spun just as the ball slammed into her stomach. She doubled over and went down hard. Even as she lay on her back, breathless, she saw the black-garbed woman, as if a flashbulb had burned her image on Missy's retinas.
Black as death, she thought, and on the heels of that: She's not Death.
As if that made any sense.
Bella ran over to help her up. "Christ, Missy, you okay?"
Biting her lip, Missy nodded.
"Good." Then Bella slapped her upside the head. "The hell were you doing, staring off into space? Come on, girl. You know better. You want to be goalie, you got to keep your head in the game."
"Sorry," Missy muttered, hands clasped on her stomach. "Saw someone..."Her voice trailed off as she stared by the locker room door, where no one stood in black, let alone at all. The woman had disappeared.
"Someone what? Coming at you?" Bella scanned the field as if to see who was ignoring the coach's orders to pair off.
"No. It was nothing. Just got distracted." Missy's stomach hurt, but that, too, was a distraction. Soccer means getting hurt. You have to have a high pain tolerance to play, especially if you're goalie. You're going to get kicked, and not always politely on the shin guard. You're going to have balls zooming at you, ready to take your head off. And you have to get in the way of the shot, even knowing that it's going to hurt.
Pain never stopped Missy. Truth be told, she relished it. On the soccer field, she was more alive than anywhere else. It was the one place where she could be herself, feel things the way she was meant to feel them—without getting overwhelmed, without it being like a hand squeezing her heart or gripping her throat.
When she played soccer, Missy could finally breathe freely after a day of slow suffocation.
"All right," Bella said, clapping Missy's shoulder. "Stretch out with me."
She led Missy through the exercises, pummeling Missy with words of wisdom as she did so.
"Even if someone's coming at you, you can't freeze," Bella said, bending over one leg. "Don't be afraid. Be confident. Don't be scared and run away from the ball. I promise you, there are things a lot scarier than soccer balls. Like the boys' locker room. Be confident. Block the shot."
Missy absorbed the advice like blows to the body.
"You don't even have to touch the ball," Bella said. "Intimidate the hell out of your opponent. Scare your opponent into missing the shot. You don't have to block what doesn't come near the goal."
"Isn't it better to make the save?"
"Making a killer save feels great, but if you make them screw up the shot, or if you organize the defense well enough that they can't take a shot at all, you've done your job. Think outside of the goal box."
Missy grinned at the lame joke because she knew Bella expected it, and then she looked once more toward the locker room. The woman in black was gone—if she'd ever been there at all.
***
Missy took her time in the locker room, first stripping off the gloves and cleats and soccer socks and shin guards, then going into the bathroom to change her clothes. Unlike the others, she wasn't in a rush to get home—she'd taken care of her homework during her study period, and despite what Erica thought, she wasn't going to Kevin's stupid party, where stupid Adam and his stupid friends would definitely be.
Looking hot under all the black.
She squeezed her nails into her palms, squeezed until her hands wept. The last thing she wanted to be thinking about was Adam, but there she was, alone in the girls' locker room, remembering what it was like for his hands to travel over her body, the feeling of his mouth on hers ... remembering his husky declarations of love even as he fumbled with her zipper.
Missy closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath, then shoved the memory down down down into the glass jar. Only after she'd sealed the lid again did she open her eyes. If she tried, she could pretend the tears were just sweat.
Maybe she should take out her lockbox tonight.
No, she thought, and No again. Aloud she whispered, "I don't need the blade."
A kiss of wind, like frost on the nape of her neck.
"I don't," she said again, insistent. Unclenching her fingers, she watched the half-moon imprints fill with blood. Tiny mouths, she thought, staring at the maroon slices. Tiny mouths waiting to be fed ...
Her stomach growled, like a warning, and she realized she was hungry. Starving.
Missy grabbed her water bottle and drained it. Shaking out the last drops into her mouth, she berated herself for not having at least a granola bar with her. When she got home, she was going to raid the fridge, and never mind that dinner would be in an hour.
A hint of shadow caught her eye, darker than dark, over by the back wall. It almost looked like the outline of a person, a silhouette in a spill of black ink. Missy frowned as she stared at the shadow, thinking how odd the lighting was and that of course she was alone, she'd said her goodbyes to everyone else...
And then her phone vibrated, announcing a text message. Missy tore her gaze from the dark spot and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She glanced at the screen.
Adam.
She sat down hard on the bench. Why? she thought, despairing. She knew she should delete it without reading it, knew it would be the textbook definition of mistake if she read his message.
Her lips tingled as she remembered the feeling of his mouth on hers, and she suddenly hungered for him, missed him so completely that it was a physical ache. She checked the message.
CU @ KEVS 2NITE?
The world whited out in a blinding moment of utter panic. Her heart slammed in her chest, galloping, rocketing now, threatening to go nuclear. Sweat popped on her brow, and her stomach knotted viciously.
... no no no no no ...
Her blade. She needed her blade. She needed to bleed out the badness, needed the blood to breathe again.
Her hands shook, and the phone slipped between her numb fingers. It hit the bare floor, clattering. The sound snapped Missy out of her anxiety attack. She scooped up her phone and checked to make sure it still worked. Damn it, if Adam made her break her phone, she'd kill him.
She almost heard Bella's voice reprimanding her: Don't blame the defense if you miss a block and the other team gets the goal.
Missy gritted her teeth. She'd been the one who'd dropped the phone. Not Adam. Luckily, the phone still worked, so she didn't have to worry about where to place the blame. Blood pounded in her ears as she reread Adam's text. Before she could rethink it, her thumbs moved, flowing over the keyboard with practiced ease. She replied:
She sat, holding her breath as she waited for his response. Stupid, she told herself, stupid stupid stupid ...
The phone vibrated, and she checked the new message.
B/C I MISS U
Oh God.
It was a joke. A prank. The Matts put him up to it. He just wanted to screw with her—or maybe just screw her, use her and dump her like Kleenex. Her head felt too light, and it was impossible for her to take a deep breath.
Another text from him:
C U 2NITE?
Hating herself, she replied:
MAYBE
And then she turned off her cell phone.
For a long moment, Missy just sat in the dim locker room, feeling her heartbeat thump through her body, hearing the sounds of her own ragged breathing. Then she grabbed her things, stuffed everything into her duffle bag, and shoved her feet into her boots. She had to race home and shower and figure out what the hell to wear to Kevin's.
***
The woman dressed in black from head to foot stepped away from the shadows and watched the girl zoom out of the locker room. Once the door slammed shut, the woman smiled, a thing of teeth and appetite.
"From the way he talks about her," Famine said aloud, "you'd think she was taller."