hundreds of miles on team buses, hours in airports, sharing beds in hotel rooms, huddled under awnings during rain delays. Their earnest attempts to untangle themselves from field hockey seemed to do more damage than good. For most of the summer, they avoided each other, choosing to preserve what was left than let it completely unravel.
So while Mel made out with Gordy, Phoebe ignored the emails and phone calls of college scouts looking for an update on her condition. While Mel made out with Gordy, Phoebe rehabbed with her PT specialist. While Mel made out with Gordy, Phoebe practiced drills alone in her backyard.
This imbalance was nothing new. Mel is a truly gifted player. She doesn’t need to train to perfect a skill. It’s one and done. That’s how quickly she absorbs it. Instant muscle memory. Phoebe works twice as hard to play at Mel’s level.
If it now takes three times as much work? Fine.
Phoebe’s injury nearly cost her everything she loved. Her team. Her sense of self. Her ability. Her strength. Her best friend. Basically all that defined her as a person. Who wouldn’t work as hard as they could to come back from that?
There is just a small wound left to heal. A divot where a drainage tube was inserted after she developed an infection post-surgery. Tenderly, and with almost surgical precision, Phoebe uses her pinkie nail like a razor blade, sliding it between her skin and the scab. The underneath is slick and pink. A rivulet of blood, not much more than you’d get nicking your leg shaving, trickles down her skin and into the bathwater.
This will be the last time I pick this scab, Phoebe thinks. It’s a thing she always says when she messes with it, but today she means it.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
4:58 P.M.
KEARSON
Kearson Wagner opens and closes her fists as discreetly as she can, hoping to flick away the tingles in her hands. She made herself a new mix for this season, only brand-new songs released this summer. The volume is up as loud as her phone will go, earbuds nestled snug in her ears, little vibrating pebbles.
A tap on her shoulder. Her mother, in the driver’s seat. Kearson pulls out an earbud. Just one. “What?”
“Everything okay?” Her mother keeps her voice light, pretending to be more focused on an empty intersection, dutifully glancing left, then right, then left again, a performance worthy of a driver’s ed instructional video. The sunlight makes her white silk blouse nearly see-through.
Kearson pulls the invisible levers inside her, hoisting a smile to her face. As soon as she guides the earbud back into her ear, her mother tugs the white cord, causing both to drop out.
“Seriously, Mom?”
“You’re going to go deaf playing your music that loud, Kears.”
“I can’t listen to NPR. It makes me carsick.”
“All you had to do was ask.” Her mother makes a big show of gently pressing the button that turns off the car radio. Lips pursed, a pleased little hmm sound escapes through her nose. A check mark on an tally sheet of what a good mother she is.
The driver’s side window is still rolled down from her mother’s daily cigarette, even though the air-conditioning is on high and the smoke mostly gone. Somewhere in the distance, the rhythmic chop chop chop of a lawn sprinkler slicing a stream of water. Kearson closes her eyes and breathes to bring her heart rate down to match its pace. But the only thing slowing is the speed her mother is driving.
“You’re going to make me late.”
Kearson’s mother pauses at the next stop sign and lights a second cigarette from a pack she already put away. After a deep puff, she leans her elbow against the open window, her arm straight up. Her wristwatch remains stationary, but three thin gold bracelets slide to the middle of her forearm. Resting her temple against her fist, the lit end of the cigarette dangerously close to her hairsprayed hair, her mother finally says, “Follow your heart, but take your brain with you.” The delivery is soft and slow, drips of honey. “I heard that at a sales conference once, but don’t you think it’s good life advice?” Her mother wets her red lips. “Follow your heart, but take your brain with you,” she says again in the same contemplative drawl.
Kearson rolls her eyes and tucks her earbuds back in.
They used to talk. Two night-blooming flowers sitting opposite each other on Kearson’s twin bed. Her mother, clean face slick with night