if Phoebe were playing, it’d be four to nothing by now. Maybe five. “Just tape it up and I’ll be fine!”
Her plea ignored, Phoebe got up herself, started slowly walking back and forth, putting a bit of weight on her left leg, then a bit more. The trainer was pretending not to pay any attention to her, but Phoebe knew she was watching.
“Please let me back in.”
The trainer sighed. “If you can hop up and down on your left leg, I’ll put you back in.”
Coach, who Phoebe hadn’t known was listening, looked away from the field to watch. Which made her want to suck the words back into her mouth. Phoebe tried, despite already knowing she couldn’t. Despite the fact that the pain made her wince. It was a pathetic display. Coach turned back to the field, and Phoebe didn’t say another word for the rest of the game.
It was indeed an ACL sprain. The doctor so annoyingly cheery with his diagnosis. “It could have been much worse,” Phoebe remembers him saying. Ice, rest, and wrap. Four days of crutches. After that, three weeks of rest, and she’d be good to go. Phoebe did the math and immediately burst into tears. She would miss two regular-season games. And the championship game too.
Phoebe had never called Coach before. She could have texted, but the news felt too big to type. He answered quickly, just one ring, as if he’d been hoping she’d call. She immediately started sobbing.
Phoebe doesn’t remember what she said to Coach exactly. But it didn’t take a genius to decipher it was bad news. The worst possible news. She remembers wanting to ask him a million questions about her injury, wanted him to give it to her straight, since Coach had been through this before. Multiple times. But he stopped Phoebe before she could get going.
“Don’t sweat it. You rest up and we’ll talk when you’re back at school.”
When he hung up, Phoebe stared at her phone screen. She was surprised that the call took less than three minutes. Of course Coach had better things to do than play therapist on the phone. Plus she was too upset to have an actual conversation. If she needed comfort and encouragement, she’d call Mel. Still, his brevity stung.
Coach brought Kearson Wagner up from JV to varsity as Phoebe’s sub. Even though their last two regular-season games were meaningless—the Wildcats had already statistically qualified for the championship—watching bobblehead Kearson (who Phoebe heard was a decent player) stumble and struggle and bob her bobblehead every time Coach screamed at her for screwing up (rightfully so because what the fuck was she doing out there) was still agony.
Putting Kearson’s complete sucking aside, it shocked Phoebe that Mel didn’t score a single goal on her own in those last two games. It sucked to watch her best friend—the most confident, competent player on their team—become someone unsure, unsteady, useless.
For that reason, Phoebe missing the championship was unthinkable.
Unthinkable.
So she played. Never thinking the Wildcats would lose. Never thinking her sprained ACL would become a tear. Never thinking it would put a universe between her and Mel for the next nine months.
Phoebe sinks into the tub, her back slipping against the porcelain until the tips of her blond hair begin to dance in the hot water. She needs to bend her legs in order to fit, knees cresting out into the cold air. Her injured one is bulbous, noticeably larger than the other. Scarred by multiple incisions. Pocked by injections and drains and scopes.
She held so much stress this week, put so much pressure on herself to prove to Coach, and to everyone really, that she hasn’t lost her edge. There was a moment when Coach was reading off the names that she’d gotten worried. When Kearson was chosen before her. Maybe Phoebe hadn’t made the cut. Maybe she would never fully recover. She clung to the strap of her gear bag, clung to it for dear life as Coach read another name, and then another, then another.
When he did finally say her name, Mel immediately reached over, took Phoebe’s hand, and squeezed it. As if she’d been just as scared.
They had started the summer with the best of intentions. Both girls quietly determined not to let Phoebe’s inability to play field hockey affect their friendship. It proved harder than either one expected. So much of their relationship, they realized, was tied up in this sport. Not just in the games and the practices but in