It will be totally surreal for her and Phoebe to be on the same field wearing different jerseys. But the secret truth is that they could never really be against each other. Not in their hearts.
Mel flips through the mail on the kitchen island. Even though she committed to Truman a month ago, she still gets university brochures from schools who aren’t targeting her for field hockey. But it’s the new September issue of Vogue that catches Mel’s eye, a glossy behemoth, addressed to her mom. She slips it underneath her arm and heads upstairs.
Mel finds her varsity jacket laid out on her bed, back from the dry cleaner and sheathed in plastic, a C in blocky font newly sewn onto her sleeve. She tiptoes over, sits carefully next to it, and snakes her hand under the plastic. Thousands of soft, delicate white loops, like a brand-new fluffy towel.
Coach years ago let it slip to Mel that when the time came, the captain’s C would be hers. Mel understood that to mean immediately after the championship game of her junior season, as it had been for the previous captains. Knowing the honor was coming to her ahead of time didn’t take anything away from Mel’s excitement about it. Only shifted it by a few seconds, to right after Coach would call her forward to stand in front of the entire team and give a little speech about her, listing the qualities he felt made her the most deserving.
Would Coach try to surprise her with some new compliment? Or would he say the sorts of things he’d already told her privately? Either way, Mel hoped she wouldn’t blush too badly.
Never in a million years did she imagine her junior season ending with the seniors crying in a huddle. Or Phoebe using her stick like a crutch to hobble over to the trainer’s table. Ali never even made it back into the locker room. Apparently, she walked straight off the field and onto the bus.
Mel lowered her head and watched as pinpricks of blood speckled through her sports bra. Turf rash from a desperate dive she’d made in the final seconds of the match for a ball that had been stolen off her stick. She knew it hurt, but she felt only the shock that she would not turn this around. That she would have no more chances to pull something off and save the day. It was over.
All the compliments she’d been imagining Coach might pay her evaporated. She suddenly had no idea what he thought of her. Her performance in these last three games like an eraser rubbed over her, exposing her for a fluke. Or, worse, a fraud.
And yet, when Coach finally came in to address them, Mel still glanced up, hopeful and hungry.
He said, “I want everyone on the bus in five minutes,” and then left. Without so much as a glance in Mel’s direction.
Their team captain, Rose Tynam-Reed, stepped into Mel’s sight line with a look of disgust that made Mel pull out her ponytail so she could hide behind her hair.
What a horrible teammate she was. With all the hearts that were breaking around her, Mel even thinking about getting the C was the worst kind of betrayal.
She can see now that Coach withholding it from her was just. It hurt at the time, but isn’t that why they call it growing pains?
Anyway. It’s a new season now. Comeback time.
Mel tears away the plastic bag and slips her varsity jacket on, loving the weight of it, and flops on her bed, her feather pillows catching her in a puff.
This season will be Mel’s victory lap. This time she will deliver. For Phoebe, for Coach, for all the girls. There’s no other choice.
Her phone buzzes in the blankets. Another time her heart skips a beat.
Gordy: I’m having people over tonight. You should come.
Gordy: And before you accuse me of forgetting about your sleepover, you can bring the entire team.
Gordy: In fact, I looked up the field hockey calendar. The Wildcats’ season doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow’s scrimmage. So you can’t start ghosting me until then. Deal?
Gordy’s persistence makes her smile. Mel respects it. But she doesn’t text him back.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
3:12 P.M.
PHOEBE
Phoebe Holt drops her duffel bag and closes the front door. The central air quickly, mercifully, overtakes the summer steam she’s pulled inside with her. She smiles, hearing Hamburger, the Holt family golden retriever, clamber off the living room couch and come galloping down the front