right?”
Luci cocks an eyebrow. “Yes. My mom’s side.” She was pretty sure everyone at West Essex assumed she was white.
Coach stretches, pleased with himself. “Did you know that you share a name and a heritage with arguably the best female field hockey player of all time? Luciana Aymar.”
Luci laughs loudly. Practically a bark. “Um. No. And … in that case, for sure call me Luci. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
“Too late.”
She has a hard time keeping eye contact with Coach. He sorta looks like a grown-up version of Mike Roy, a classmate who Luci secretly crushed on third quarter. “Sorry. I guess I’m just overwhelmed?” Her upspeak is like nails on a chalkboard. She hears now why her mother gets on her case about it. It makes her sound like a ditz. She forces a swallow. “I’d never even held a stick before the field hockey unit in Mr. Yancy’s gym class last spring. So it’s a little crazy to be standing here right now.”
Mr. Yancy is the West Essex Lower School’s gym teacher, and also, it turns out, the freshman field hockey coach. Over the summer, he mailed Luci info about a free skills camp for incoming freshmen. Luci decided to go, mainly because it would be a chance to see her classmates before high school started, have another crack at making friends with them. She’d been a midyear transfer during eighth grade, was still a little lost, and had spent most of her summer alone, guzzling Cheetos and Netflixing on her phone.
The skills camp had turned out to be good fun. They did drills, mostly, not the most exciting stuff, but Luci was a quick learner, and Mr. Yancy would often praise her good instincts. It was borderline embarrassing how good Luci felt to have something in her life clicking.
Coach leans forward on his elbows and laces his hands. “Luci, I know you’re green but you’ve got a hell of a lot of raw potential. Believe me, I don’t normally bother checking out the incoming freshman players. But Yancy called me and said, ‘Coach, you have to see this girl play. She’s a natural.’ And he’s right. You are.”
Luci had heard whispers during the first day of skills camp that the high school’s varsity coach was not like a typical teacher. He was hot. Also young and cool. In the abstract, Luci couldn’t picture it. But on the second day, someone pointed Coach out to Luci, standing with his arms folded at the chain-link fence, watching them play. He didn’t stay long—maybe ten minutes— but he spoke with Mr. Yancy before he left. His eyes were on Luci the entire time. And her cheeks flushed as brightly then as they probably are right now. The next day, before Luci even set down her gear, Mr. Yancy sent her to the upper field, where varsity tryouts were already in progress.
“I’ll admit, I threw you into the deep end this week. But you more than held your own. Sure, I could have left you on the freshman team, given you a season to get your bearings. Or bumped you to JV and let you be their star. But playing at the varsity level and, frankly, having me be the one to coach you will raise your game much, much faster.”
Luci feels herself stand taller. “I think it already has.”
Not to say that she hadn’t spent those three days of varsity tryouts expecting any minute to be pulled off the field by Coach. She was fast only because she was scared of getting a stick to the shins. She never stood in the right place, even if she did score. And the language everyone spoke on the field was completely foreign to her.
Help side!
Get through!
Read it!
Pressure pressure pressure!
The girls would help Luci when they could, discreetly whispering tips, lifting their chins to show Luci where to stand. Little by little, the game began to feel more instinctual, the stiffness of drills smoothing during play. And when Luci completed one turn-and-shoot move, managing to sail the ball into the back of the net during a scrimmage, every girl, regardless of what color pinny they wore, swarmed her, slapping her back, mussing her hair. It was pure joy.
When she stood around the flagpole this afternoon, Luci desperately wanted to hear Coach say her name.
Coach nods, pleased with her validation. And perhaps, as a reward, his voice downshifts to something lower, more conspiratorial. “Tell you the complete truth, Luci, I’m being