they were always asleep, drooling on their pillows, before ten thirty.
Camp was the best part of Kearson’s summer that year. And as the girls had hoped, Kearson, Marissa, and Quinn made the JV team as freshmen. Grace also got picked for JV, which really annoyed Marissa. She didn’t like the sounds Grace made when she’d dive to grab a pass. Also Marissa nearly threw up when some of Grace’s sweat flicked onto her as Grace stole the ball off Marissa’s stick.
Kearson, Marissa, and Quinn had a great JV season together. They befriended a bunch of older teammates—sophomores and a few juniors who hadn’t made the cut for varsity. Kearson and Quinn and Grace were all JV starters. Marissa played plenty too, though she was always leaving the game early, getting injured, saying someone tripped her, complaining about the referee.
Anyway, the three of them were excited to return to Kissawa as high schoolers for a full week.
But when it came time to sign up, Kearson’s mother made it clear to her daughter that she didn’t think Kearson should go. This incensed Kearson. After all, her mother had already forbid Kearson from playing spring club. She wanted Kearson to take some time off from field hockey and basically forced her to try out for the spring musical with Marissa instead.
Kearson relented then, because maybe she did need a break? But she refused to skip Kissawa. Kearson told her mother that if she didn’t want to pay for camp, then Kearson would just ask her father for the money. When they’d had this fight, Kearson was calling home from London. She had arranged her own plans to visit her father as soon as school let out. The first time in years.
That did it. Her mother wrote a check.
Marissa and Quinn were riding up with other teammates, and there was unfortunately no room for Kearson in the car. She felt weird reaching out to Grace, since they weren’t actually friends. Kearson’s mother offered to drive her up but Kearson refused. Instead, she took a commuter bus into the city, and then picked up a Greyhound bus out to the camp. The stops added an extra three hours, nearly doubling the trip, but principle was principle.
By the time Kearson arrived, the skies twinkled with country stars, the check-in tables were folded up and put away, the air smelled faintly of a summer cookout that was clearly over. She carried her things up to the main office, but it was empty and locked.
Kearson followed the smell of burning logs. More than a hundred girls sat around the campfire. It was too dark to pick her teammates out, so she simply stood by herself and pulled her arms inside her T-shirt. She forgot how cool it was up here in the woods. And she was too far from the fire to be warmed by its heat.
When she entered their bunk later, all her other JV teammates seemed surprised to see her, even though Kearson had texted Marissa and Quinn the second she’d signed up. And they weren’t exactly welcoming to her either. They smiled and waved, but Kearson wasn’t greeted like a teammate. More like some interloper who got placed here because she signed up too late to bunk with her team.
Someone else was missing.
“Is Phoebe here?”
“No. She still hasn’t been cleared to play.”
“Torn ACLs take like nine months. Plus she had that infection.”
“I bet it’s killing her. Especially because she would have been fine if she hadn’t played in the championship game.”
“That was her choice,” Quinn said quietly. She avoided looking at Kearson, but Kearson knew this was said for her benefit.
Kearson felt a squeeze in the back of her throat.
“Yeah, some choice,” Marissa snarked. “It was either come back and maybe win or not and for sure lose. Hopefully it’s not a career ender for her. Plenty of athletes are one-and-done.”
“Not Phoebe,” Kearson said. “She’ll be back.”
There was a quiet, the girls reaching for phones, for whatever shield was closest.
Kearson worked her butt off at Kissawa that week. Worked as hard as Phoebe would have, if she could have been there. To give even a drop less effort than that felt unconscionable.
And so Kearson keeps on singing the words of the Wildcat fight song, even after her sparkler goes out. It takes a second for Kearson’s eyes to adjust to the dark. When they do, she sees Mel walking back onto the field.
The girls go quiet. This time Phoebe doesn’t tell them to start singing