next to Grace on the couch, and takes a bite. The cake is soft and moist. She’ll have to check her braces once she’s done eating. Despite the pop of sugar, her heartbeat begins to slow.
Luci passed Coach’s test. Plus now she knows something is going to happen tonight, even if she has no idea what. And like her two teammates were trying to explain, right before Coach made his speech, it’s both scary and exciting all at once.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
9:02 P.M.
GRACE
Grace didn’t see Coach leave, but it’s obvious that he’s gone, because all the girls are changing into their bathing suits. Some, like Grace, are waiting for one of the bathrooms to change in privacy, while others strip down behind different pieces of furniture, modesty willingly traded for a chance to claim one of the novelty floats awaiting them in Mel’s swimming pool.
Grace is relieved that the overall mood is as buoyant. Since she wasn’t on varsity last year, she doesn’t take Coach’s gripes as personally as others might. But Grace had been in the stands for the state championship game to cheer the Wildcats on, which put her close enough to know exactly how badly it sucked.
That morning was brutally cold and the forecast warned it would only get colder, maybe even snow, so Grace dressed for warmth rather than Wildcat team spirit. A pair of thick tights underneath the only jeans she owned that didn’t have holes, two sets of socks, her scuffed white Doc Martens boots, two T-shirts, an itchy lemon cardigan sweater that was warm despite its state of partial unraveling, her grandfather’s black wool peacoat that weighed about ten pounds, a shearling-lined striped hat with dorky ear flaps, and a pair of mismatched mittens.
The sky pressed down with thick one-dimensional grayness as Chuck drove Grace over to the high school. He took the turns fast, making up for the time Grace had spent coaxing him out of bed, then to find his keys, then something to scrape the frost off the windshield. But she wasn’t late. If Chuck was her ride, Grace always padded the clock.
The JV team had planned to meet at the high school at nine thirty to surprise the Wildcats by decorating the varsity team bus and cheering them as they boarded and departed for the state university’s field. Grace was a minute early by those plans, but found she was still the last of her JV teammates to arrive. And that the varsity team bus was already decked out. Windows soaped with paw prints, giant letters cut from construction paper and taped to the body, empty cans tied to the back bumper with blue and white ribbons. Her JV teammates were cleaning up what looked like the remains of a breakfast tailgate. Crushing empty donut boxes, pouring out half-full hot chocolates that had gone cold.
“Do you want me to stick around?” Chuck asked gently. “Or I could take you to the game. I’m not doing anything today.”
“One of the girls will drive me,” she assured her brother, with no clue who that might be. But Grace was so embarrassed, she just wanted him to go.
She did not call her teammates out for purposefully excluding her. The way to survive was to swallow their drips of venom until you were immune. So Grace acted like she’d been the one who’d gotten the time wrong. She complimented their work—the bus did look awesome—and found ways to involve herself, checking the knots on the streamers and strings. There was one donut left, a jelly that another girl had tasted and put back. Grace ate around the bite mark.
Then the girls formed two lines stretching from the bus to the doors of the West Essex athletic wing and stood at attention like sentry knights in the cold. When the Wildcats emerged, the JV team whooped and hollered, clapping mittened hands together, cheering each player’s name and jersey number, someone’s phone blasting “We Are the Champions.”
The varsity players kept their heads low and their earbuds tucked in as they walked this gauntlet, but they still smiled and some even blushed. Like embarrassed big sisters who love you even when you make a complete ass of yourself.
The only player who didn’t look up was Kearson.
Grace did manage to score a ride to the game. She didn’t bother asking, just squeezed into the way, way back of a minivan and rode next to her teammate’s kid sister.
At the state university field, JV rushed to claim a section