by Lindsay Eyre
“Sylvie,” my mom said. “You keep talking about being team captain. Your dad wasn’t team captain until he’d played hockey for a long time. There might be others on your team who are more qualified.”
“Did you bring Band-Aids?” I asked Miranda.
“No,” she said, sounding worried. “Do we need them?”
“Possibly,” I said. “There could be bleeding. There’s no pain, no gain in sports.”
Miranda was quiet for a moment. “Is there any way to play sports without pain?”
“Yes,” I said. “You can take ibuprofen whenever you need it. I brought an entire bottle of kids’ chewable.”
“Which you will now hand over to me,” my mom said.
* * *
The skating rink was huge, probably the most ginormous skating rink ever, and it had a giant sign stretched across the ceiling that said ICE AIN’T NICE. It was full of coldness and echoes and sweaty sweat. Skates swished around the smooth frozen oval. Sticks hit pucks. People bashed into walls and into one another.
It was awesome.
“Oh!” Miranda cried. “It’s cold. Really cold. I didn’t think it would be this cold.”
“It has to be cold if there’s going to be ice,” I explained patiently.
“Look,” she said, holding her nose so it didn’t freeze off. “There’s Georgie’s dad. And Georgie and Josh.”
I looked out over the black rubber floor next to the ice. Georgie’s dad stood in front of a bunch of kids in the bleachers. Bags of hockey stuff were everywhere. He held a clipboard in his hand and was calling out names.
“Hurry!” I said to Miranda, and we ran to the bleachers and sat down next to Josh.
“Alistair Robinson?” Georgie’s dad was saying.
“Here!” said a boy in front of Josh. His voice sounded familiar, so I leaned sideways to get a look at him. It was that kid from Georgie’s baseball team, the tiny one.
“Hi, Sylvie!” he said, turning around. “That’s so cool you guys are on the team.”
I looked at him sternly. He was so small. “Second graders aren’t supposed to play hockey,” I said. “It could be dangerous.”
“I’m in third grade,” he said.
“Sylvie Scruggs?” Georgie’s dad said.
“I’m here!” I shouted. “And Miranda Tan’s here too.”
Georgie’s dad looked up and I thought he smiled. It was hard to tell, because he was growing a mysterious beard. “Thank you, Sylvie. Good to see you. You too, Miranda. So that’s it — oh, hang on! I missed somebody.” He looked back down at his list. “Jamie Redmond — are you here?”
My pinky toes suddenly froze inside my wool socks. He could not have said that name.
“Here I am,” Jamie Redmond said from behind me in her loud, horrible voice.
I turned around, and there she was. Jamie Redmond. Her arms were crossed, her head was tilted to the side, her eyes were half-shut, and her mouth wore a smirkity smirk. Her munions, the second baseman and the shortstop on her baseball team, sat on either side of her.
No, I thought. No, no, no!!!!!!
Georgie’s dad began by explaining the hockey rules. Then he told us how to put on our uniforms, and he used Jamie as a model, because this was her fourth season playing hockey. We watched her put on her socks, her pants, her jersey, her shoulder pads, her elbow pads, her neck guard, her shin guards, her mouth guard, her helmet, her ice skates, and, okay, she was quick about it, but anyone can get dressed. Except for maybe babies and kings and queens.
When all this Jamie attention was through and we’d finished getting dressed ourselves, I raised my hand. “Who gets to be team captain?” I asked.
“The coach picks team captain,” Coach Diaz said. “I will watch everyone throughout these first four practices. Whoever is the hardest working and the most helpful to his or her teammates will get the job. I’ll announce team captain during the next to last practice before our first game.”
Hardworking, I thought. Helpful to teammates. I could do that.
When we got out on the ice, Coach told us to skate around the oval so he could see how comfortable we were with our skates. “I want to see your feet in action,” he said.
Our feet were pretty scary in action. Hardly anyone had skated before, and most of the team spent more time on their bottoms or their stomachs than on their feet. Ice-skating was easy for me, so I went around helping people up when they fell.
We were only supposed to be skating with our sticks, but partway through practice, Jamie Redmond dropped a puck on the ice and began pushing it toward the net. She moved slow and easy like a big, ugly swan. When she reached the net, she skidded to a stop, her stick high in the air. Then she swung it forward and hit the puck as hard as she could.
Swish. Score.
Miranda clapped. Georgie clapped. Josh clapped. The rest of the team clapped. Coach Diaz clapped. The people at the front desk clapped. If the president of the United States had been there, he would have clapped too.
“Wow,” the tiny boy said to me with his mouth full of mouth guard. “Jamie’s really good with the puck. Really, really good. And you’re fat. Really, really fat. Probably the fattest.”
“You think I’m fat?” I said.
“No!” He spit his mouth guard out inside his helmet. “I think you’re fast, not fat!”
“Huh,” I said.
The boy pulled off his helmet. “Do you want to come over to my house today? We could practice swinging our sticks.”
“I can’t,” I told him. Coach wanted the team captain to be the hardest worker. I had to be a harder worker than Jamie Redmond. “I have to practice hockey,” I said, “for reals.”
“Time to try shooting!” Coach Diaz called.
“Oh, good!” I said, because this would be easy. If I could hit a baseball, I’d have no trouble hitting a puck. Pucks were flat! Way easier to hit than a round ball.
Everyone took a puck from Coach’s bag except for Jamie Redmond. She was already in the center of the ice, moving one of her personal pucks around. Unlike Jamie, I am not a show-offy person, so I skated over to the side to try out my awesome hitting skills. My puck might fly far really fast, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
With the puck on the ice, I raised my stick. I took a deep breath of power. I closed my eyes.
Whoosh. That was the sound my stick made as it flew through the air.
Nothing. That was the sound my puck made as it stayed in the exact same place.
“Good effort, Sylvie!” Coach Diaz called in front of everybody. “But let’s try that again!”
Jamie Redmond skated up and hit my puck into the net. Swish. “You have to watch the puck,” she said with an evil smirk.
Coach hit another puck my way. I tried to stop it with my skate and fell over.
“That’s okay,” Josh said, helping me up.
“Man, our team’s going to stink this year,” one of Jamie’s munions said to her in a whisper that was not really a whisper.
“It’s all these little kids,” Jamie said. “They’re all third and fourth graders.”
My face burned with anger. My bottom hurt from my fall. I hate Jamie Redmond, I thought. And she hates me. Over my aching body was she going to be team captain. No way.
I skated over to the bench and practically fell onto it from exhaustion. Miranda came over to join me. The skin on my cheeks felt dry, so I got out my special bottle of lotion that smelled like strawberries and rubbed some in. Then I picked up my water bottle, brought it to my mouth, and tilted my head back for a drink.
The lid popped off, hitting me smack in the face. Water gushed all over me.
“Oh!” I cried. “Oh no!” My face, my jersey, everything was sopping wet.
“Oh no!” Miranda echoed. “You’re wet!”
“Quick!” I covered my soggy face with my hands. “Get me a towel.”
Miranda handed me her towel. “Did you mean to do that?”
“No!” I shouted. So
me of the others were looking. Josh. Jamie Redmond. That tiny boy, what’s-his-name.
“You must have unscrewed the lid by accident,” Miranda said.
I didn’t argue, because I didn’t want to discuss it out loud, but I knew she was wrong. I always screw my water bottle lids on tightly. Always.
Someone else must have loosened it.
My dad came home late that night. I waited patiently while he played with Ginny. I waited patiently while he listened to the twins’ knock-knock jokes, which were the same ones they told him yesterday. I waited patiently while my mom gave him a report on exactly how tired she was. I waited and waited and waited for him to ask me about practice.
Finally, I said, “I had hockey practice today.”
“Oh!” my dad said. “That’s right! I nearly forgot. How’d it go? I’m starving. Is that pot roast I smell?”
“Frozen burritos,” Cale said.
Tate nodded. “But we’re not allowed to say, ‘Oh, man, again?’ ”
“Too true!” my dad said. “That’s a rude thing to say, and frozen burritos never get old. Where’s the salsa?”
“We’re out,” my mom said.
“Good!” my dad said. “Because I certainly don’t want any.”
“I was the fastest skater on the team,” I said.
“Ginny only took two naps today,” my mom said. “She’s too young to be giving up her third.”
“Who’s there, Dad, who’s there?” Tate said.
“You mean, knock, knock,” Cale said.
“Underwear!” Tate said. Then he and Cale laughed so hard they knocked over their glasses of red punch.
“We only have three more practices until Coach Diaz picks team captain,” I said while my dad mopped up the mess. “Just three.”
“How was your math test today?” my mom asked me.
“Um, it happened,” I said. I turned to the twins before my mom forced me to tell her more. “Isn’t that a banana under there?”
“Underwear!” they both said, knocking over their glasses again.
* * *
“Dad?” I said later, after my mom and the twins and Ginny left to get ready for bed. He was staring at his cell phone while I cleared the table.
He rubbed his face, cursed modern technology, and jabbed the OFF button on his phone. “Yes, honey?” he said.
He was looking at me now, which made me forget what I wanted to say.
“Did you have a question?” he said.
“Yes!” I said. “I did. I mean, do. I do have a question. It’s about team captains. What is the most important thing to do if you want to be team captain? Be a good skater, or be a good shooter?”
My dad rubbed his face again, but he didn’t get up or turn on his cell phone. “Both are equally important,” he said. “But what really matters is how you unify the team. Build up the other players.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Compliment your teammates when they do well,” he said. “Steer clear of fighting. You have to be the one everyone looks up to as a model of good behavior.”
My face scrunched up. Wow. A model of good behavior. That would be hard.
“Our next practice is this Friday,” I said. “After school. You could come watch.”
“Oh, I’d like to, sweetheart, but I’ve got a meeting. I’ll be at your first game for sure.”
Mom called him then to help put the boys down once and for all and forever. He rubbed his hand over his face one more time and left.
I finished clearing the table and stuck the dishes in the dishwasher. Then, with three chocolate-chip cookies in my pocket, I went to the bathroom, turned on the fan, and shut the door. I climbed up next to the sink and stared at my freckly face. Jamie Redmond would not be good at uniting the team. I could skate and she could shoot, but the one who united the team would probably win.
“Good job, Carolina!” I said into the mirror, thinking of the girl on my team who hadn’t let go of the wall during practice. “Way not to cry too hard when you fall down. Yo, Michael!” I said. “Nice swing. I like the way you bend that elbow. Way to go, Ravi! Don’t let anyone tell you you’re too tall. Good job, Josh. That was great how you stopped going the wrong way.”
I smiled in the mirror, letting my teeth show. Then I stopped.
I’d have to be careful not to smile like that while I unified people. It was a little scary.
* * *
At Friday’s practice, Coach gathered us around before we got on the ice. “I want everyone to start thinking of names for our team. We’ll vote on a team name before our first game, which is just four practices away now.”
A team name! What would make a good hockey team name? I wondered. The Killers, maybe? The Pouncers? The Ice Cheetahs?
Then practice began. “Good job, Miranda!” I called as she skated up to me. “Ooo, that was quick!” I said to Michael as he went past. “Really, really quick. Love the way you bend your knees, Tamara. It makes a nice angle. Nice job, Georgie. Way to, um, glide.”
Georgie looked like he wished I would glide all the way to Africa. Unifying him was going to be hard.
“I like your attitude, Sylvie!” Coach Diaz called to me.
I smiled without showing my teeth.
“Watch this, Sylvie!” that small kid said, the one from Georgie’s baseball team. He turned around and skated away so fast, he didn’t see the three biggest kids on our team standing in his way. He looked like a runaway bowling ball heading toward three gigantic pins. They knocked him over instead of the other way around.
Puck practice came next. The first time I tried to shoot, I missed. The second time I tried to shoot, I missed. The third time I tried to shoot, I accidentally let go of my stick and it flew halfway across the rink.
The fourth time I missed, I fell onto my back and stayed there for a very long time.
“Sylvie,” Coach said, “you look like you’re giving up. You’re not, are you?”
“No, Coach,” I said, still not moving because I couldn’t remember how. What is the matter with me? I wondered. How could someone who is so good at pitching stink so much at hitting a tiny little puck?
“Hey, Georgie!” the tiny boy said as he skated by again.
“Hey, Alistair,” Georgie said.
“Don’t encourage him,” I whispered to Georgie. “Alisonair’s too little to play. He’s going to get hurt.”
“His name is Alistair,” Georgie said.
I nodded. “And he’s way too small.”
The boy was standing beside us all of a sudden. “Are you talking about me?”
“We were talking about smallness,” I said. Then I patted him on the shoulder pad to make him feel better.
“Break!” Coach Diaz called, and everyone took off for the benches.
Before I sat down on the bench, I checked my water-bottle lid for tightness. It was as tight as a tiger’s jaw, so I took a drink, then got out my special strawberry lotion. You will not give up, I chanted to myself as I popped open the lid. You will work harder than anyone else! I took a deep breath, expecting to smell strawberries. I couldn’t smell them. You will unify everyone, I thought as I shook the bottle hard. The lotion wasn’t coming out. Jamie will never be team captain. At last, out plopped a blob. And Dad will come to all my games.
I put some lotion on my arm. Then I sniffed. Definitely not strawberries.
“Why does it stink in here?” Georgie said.
That tiny boy — I think Georgie called him Avatar — sat down next to me on the bench. He looked at my arm. He sniffed.
Miranda has especially good nostrils because she’s a scientist. “It smells like mayonnaise,” she said.
I looked down at my hand. The lotion was extra-blobby and extra-slimy. It wouldn’t rub in. I sniffed again. “Ugh!” I cried. “It is mayonnaise!”
“You put mayonnaise on your arm?” one of Jamie’s munions said. “Nasty!”
“Mega-gross,” the other one said.
“Mayb
e she’s saving it as a snack for later,” Jamie said.
Oh boy, the munions thought that was funny.
“Go to the bathroom and clean it off,” Miranda whispered. I got up and hurried to the bathroom with my lotion bottle in my hand. Everyone laughed as I fled.
Inside the bathroom, I locked my stall door and stood over the toilet. I squeezed the rest of the white gloopy stuff into the toilet bowl. Was it really mayonnaise? Or had something happened to my lotion? How could mayonnaise get into my strawberry lotion bottle?
Coach Diaz was setting up a demonstration when I returned to the ice. “Oh, there you are,” he said to me. “I want you and Jamie to show us what it will look like when you’re racing down the ice with an opponent on your tail. Jamie will have the puck” — the munions grinned — “and Sylvie will follow, showing us how to block her.”
I looked at Miranda. She gave me a smile and a thumbs-up and a “You can do this, Sylvie!” look. I skated over to Coach. I nodded my head. I tried not to think about mayonnaise.
Coach blew his whistle. He slid a puck toward us. Jamie caught it with her stick and took off for the net.
Go! I told myself. Go get her! So I did. I shot off like a cheetah, my skates sliding down the ice. I caught up to Jamie in no time, then pushed myself ahead of her so she had to dodge out of my way. I forced her to the right; I forced her to the left.
“Go away,” she said with a snarl. “You’re going to knock me over, mayonnaise girl!”
But I didn’t go away, and she didn’t score. Not until she tripped me with her stick. After that, she scored.
“Good shot, Jamie!” Coach said. “Good defense, Sylvie!”
“She tripped me with her stick!” I said. “Isn’t that against hockey rules?”
But Coach was already putting everyone else in pairs to practice. “Jamie and Sylvie, switch positions!” he shouted. Then he blew his whistle.
Jamie dropped a puck on the ice. “You should pay more attention,” she said.
Pay attention — I always paid attention! I swung my stick and paid attention. The puck went flying up into the air. Hooray! I thought. I did it!