How We Roll

by Natasha Friend

  Quinn felt a hand on her arm. She looked up.

  “What do you mean, it all fell out?” Ivy said.

  “I mean…” Quinn locked eyes with Ivy’s sparkly hoop earring. “I have an autoimmune disorder. It’s called alopecia areata. You can’t catch it from me. It doesn’t hurt or anything. It just makes my hair fall out.”

  No one said anything for what felt like an eternity. Then Carmen blurted, “Lissa was born with eleven toes.”

  “Carm!” Lissa whacked Carmen in the shoulder.

  “What? It’s true! You came out with a freaky extra toe and the doctah chopped it off and now your feet look semi-normal.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Lissa huffed. “I told you that in confidence.”

  “Sorry.” Carmen shrugged and reached for a french fry. “It just slipped out.”

  “You think you can eat my fries now?”

  “We’re best friends. We share everything.”

  “Not anymore we don’t.”

  Everyone at the table was laughing, even Lissa. Carmen winked at Quinn. For some reason, she felt tears spring into her eyes.

  “Hey.” Ivy was nudging her arm again. “You okay?”

  Quinn nodded. She’d actually done it. She’d told them. And nothing bad had happened. There had been no sideways glances, no lame excuses to get up from the table and whisper about her in a corner. Maybe that would still happen, but so far everyone was acting normal. Well, not normal. These girls were weird, no question. For one thing, they never stopped talking. And they were constantly putting on lip gloss.

  “You want?” Carmen said, holding out her little wand to Quinn. “This is a great color for you if you’re planning to stay a brunette. It’s called Potent Plum.”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said, slicking some on.

  “My favorite aunt wears a wig,” Carmen said.

  “She does?”

  “Yup. Has for years.”

  “Is she sick?” Quinn said.

  “Nope. She just doesn’t like her hair.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Carmen said. “Her wig’s pretty cool, too. It’s sort of coppery brown. It brings out her earth tones.”

  There were moments when people surprised you. Today was full of those moments.

  CHAPTER

  21

  THE THIRD WEEK OF OCTOBER, QUINN received two notices in homeroom. One was for winter sports tryouts. The other was for the art show.

  “Did you see this?” Carmen said in PE, waving the tryouts permission form in Quinn’s face. “You’re going out for hoops, right?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said.

  “Good,” Carmen said.

  “Me and Liss will cheer you guys on,” Ivy said. “Won’t we, Liss?”

  “Of course.” Lissa reached out to pat Sasha, but gently. Quinn had told them about the wig tape. They knew everything now. They knew, and they didn’t care.

  *   *   *

  “Did you see this?” Quinn said in study hall, sliding the art show announcement onto Nick’s desk. “November fifth. They want submissions.”

  “So?”

  “So, you should submit one of your drawings.”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t do shows.”

  “What do you mean, you ‘don’t do shows’? From what I hear, you used to put on a show every Friday night on the football field.”

  “That was different.”

  “You don’t want to share your art with the world?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Quinn knew Nick well enough now to read his cues. He wanted her to shut up about the art show, just like he wanted her to shut up about him wearing his legs to school. So Quinn shut up. She would text him about it later. Nick was better at texting than talking anyway. It had become a tradition. Every night, when they were lying in their separate beds, they texted each other. Sometimes about little stuff, like math homework, sometimes about big stuff. In the dark, under the covers, that was when it got interesting.

  Like the time Nick texted Quinn about this dream he kept having, where he was at football practice and he was running. How he could hear his coach blowing his whistle. He could feel the huff of his own breath, the spit forming in the corners of his mouth, the cramp in his legs. He was running so fast, faster than he’d ever run, faster than anyone. And then he woke up. He looked under the blanket. The ache was still there, but his legs weren’t. And he wanted them back so bad, it was like a bomb exploded inside him. He wanted to slam his fists into the wall until his knuckles popped, until he saw blood. Because the pain in his legs wasn’t real and he needed to feel something that was.

  Or the time Quinn texted Nick about the names she was called back in Boulder. About John Kugler ripping the hat off her head in assembly. About everyone laughing.

  Twice, Nick texted Quinn pictures of his room. He had a new comforter now, blue with red stripes. He’d tacked some of his art on the walls. Not the leg drawings, but other things. The tree in his backyard. A bird, spreading its wings in flight.

  I like ur bird, Quinn texted.

  Thx, Nick texted back. Me too.

  *   *   *

  “Can you sign this?” Quinn asked her mom after school. Mo was in the studio, her hands deep in the clay.

  “Bring it closer,” she said.

  Quinn held the permission form in front of her mom’s face.

  “You want to try out for the basketball team?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s great, Q. That’s really great.” Mo was giving her this look. She’d been doing it a lot lately, gazing at Quinn with shiny eyes.

  “What’s with the look?” Quinn said.

  “What look? There’s no look.”

  “There’s a look. You’re doing it right now. You’re gazing at me.”

  “What—a mother can’t gaze at her own daughter?” Mo reached out her clay-covered fingers like she was going to grab Quinn. “Come here and give me a hug.”

  Quinn jumped back. “No touching!” Then she laughed. “I sound like Julius.”

  “Do you know where Julius is right now?” her mom said, going back to her clay head.

  “Is this a test?”

  “Julius is on a playdate.”

  Quinn looked at her mom. “Did you just say ‘Julius is on a playdate’?”

  Mo smiled. “Her name is Randa. She goes to the Cove.”

  “Randa?”

  “Short for Miranda, I imagine. Her mother is lovely. We met last week for coffee.”

  “Huh,” Quinn said. Julius was on a playdate. She couldn’t remember him ever getting invited to someone else’s house. “What are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Mo said. “Eat snacks. Play games. Whatever kids do on playdates.”

  “Julius doesn’t play games. And what about the food? Does Randa’s mother know what he eats?”

  “I made her a list. She’s used to this, honey. Randa has many of the same challenges.”

  Quinn shook her head. “If you say so.”

  “Would you scratch my back? I have an itch, right in the middle, and I don’t want to get clay on my shirt.”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “If I can get new basketball sneakers for tryouts.”

  “What’s wrong with your old ones?”

  “I just want to start fresh, you know? I want good juju.”

  “Good juju.” Quinn’s mom was wiggling on her stool. “I understand. Now scratch. Please.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “That’s a yes. Yes.”

  Quinn scratched Mo’s back, hard through her flannel shirt.

  “Up a little … to the left … a little more … ahhh.”

  “Better?” Quinn said.

  “Much. Thanks.”

  “’Kay, well. I’m gonna go get a snack.”

  “There’s a package waiting for you on the kitchen table.”

  “For me?”

  Mo smiled. “I think you’ll be happy.”
<
br />   *   *   *

  The package was a cardboard box. The return address was Belle’s Wig Botik, Denver, CO. And inside, on top of a pile of packing peanuts, was a sheet of white paper. It read:

  Dear Quinn,

  We have successfully mended your Estetica human hair wig. We hope that you will be pleased with our work. Please remember to follow the DOs and DON’Ts of proper human hair wig care to ensure that your Estetica wig lives a long and happy life.

  DO: Use ceramic-plated heat tools to curl and straighten your hair.

  DO NOT: Try to perm or relax the hair. Chemical processing could ruin the wig.

  DO: Wash your wig every 8–14 days, or as needed. Using a dry shampoo can help you go longer between washings when sprayed on the interior of the cap. We do not recommend spraying dry shampoo on the outside of human hair wigs.

  Quinn stopped reading. The list went on and on. It was making her tired just looking at it. Taking Guinevere out of the packing peanuts made her feel tired, too. Guinevere was heavier than Sasha, which meant more wig tape. More wig tape meant more itch. More itch meant more trips to the bathroom to witch-hazel her head. The truth was that Quinn didn’t want to deal with any of it. Not Guinevere. Not Sasha. Not the washing every eight to fourteen days. Not the gently wrapping her damp wig in a towel and patting it to remove excess water. None of it. Quinn wanted to be free, like the bird on Nick’s wall. She wanted to zoom down the street on her skateboard without worrying that her wig would fly off. She wanted to soar through the air toward the basketball hoop without worrying about some girl’s bracelet getting stuck in her wig hair.

  What would happen? This was the drumbeat running through Quinn’s mind. What would happen if she showed up at school with nothing on her head? No Guinevere. No Sasha. No hat. Nothing. She knew Nick would be fine with it. He’d seen her head already. She was 90 percent sure Ivy and Carmen and Lissa would be cool—weirded out, maybe, at first. They would be funny about it, though. Carmen would suggest a new lip gloss. But what about everyone else? What about the kids Quinn knew by name but didn’t really know? What about the three Emmas, and the two Avas, and Kacey, and Kylie, and Kelsie, and Chelsey? What about Jack, and Zach, and Mason, and Carson, and Tyler, and Darius? What about Griff, Nick’s old friend from the football team? All it took was one mean kid. All it took was one nickname.

  No one had said much when Quinn showed up wearing Sasha. Emma from homeroom had asked if Quinn was celebrating Halloween early, but she hadn’t said it in a sarcastic way, more like she was curious. A boy in Quinn’s social studies class had told Quinn that she looked like Katy Perry, and Quinn was 87 percent sure this was a compliment. Emma from art class had said, “I like how you keep changing your look.” By Quinn’s calculations, she had only changed her look once, from Guinevere to Sasha, but then Emma went on to explain, “Sometimes you’re sporty. Sometimes you’re supermodely. You just do your own thing. It’s cool.”

  Would art-class Emma think it was cool if Quinn showed up bald? Quinn had no clue. Showing up to school bald when you had no clue how people were going to react was like skateboarding down the street blindfolded and hoping you won’t get hit. Quinn wasn’t that stupid.

  CHAPTER

  22

  IT WAS FUNNY HOW THE GYM AT GULLS Head High School smelled exactly like the gym at Quinn’s old middle school in Boulder. Sweat, socks, and floor wax. Exactly the same. Quinn didn’t know why she was just realizing this now, two months after she’d moved here. Maybe because her adrenaline was pumping. Maybe because all of her senses were in hyperdrive.

  “Are you nervous?” Carmen said.

  They were sitting on the bleachers, lacing up their sneakers. Quinn was wearing her new ones, first time out. They were blue and white—Gulls Head colors—which might have been a cocky move given that she wasn’t on the team yet, but Quinn had been feeling pretty confident at Foot Locker when she picked them out.

  “Nervous?” she said. “Nah. I’m pumped.”

  “Your … um…” Carmen looked around. There were a bunch of other girls in the gym. Most of them were already shooting. Carm leaned in and whispered in Quinn’s ear, “Your wig is crooked.”

  “It is?” Quinn’s hands flew to her head. “Crap.”

  She grabbed her backpack and ran into the locker room. She shut herself in a stall. It was hard to imagine a worse time for this to be happening. Her hands, she realized as she dug around in the bottom of her backpack for her roll of wig tape, were shaking. She was picturing the worst-case scenario. Sasha flying off in the middle of a layup. Everyone in the gym staring at her. All the girls who were trying out for the team. The coach with her clipboard. The custodian with his mop. Everyone staring at Quinn’s bald head, shining under those fluorescent lights.

  “Quinn?”

  Someone was knocking on the stall.

  “It’s Carm. Are you okay?”

  Was she really supposed to answer that? Of course she wasn’t okay. If she was okay, she wouldn’t be locked in a bathroom stall two seconds before her tryout.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah.” Quinn’s nose sounded stuffy. She wasn’t crying yet, but it was coming.

  “Do you want my lucky bandanna?”

  “You have a lucky bandanna?”

  “Yeah. It has nothing to do with basketball. It’s Red Sox. I bought it at Big Papi’s third-to-last home game, and he signed it.”

  “Really?”

  “Dominican pride, baby. I wear it every time I need good luck … Do you need it?”

  Quinn looked at Sasha, sitting in her lap. She still hadn’t found her wig tape. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

  *   *   *

  Standing at the foul line, ready to do her best-of-ten, Quinn glanced over at Carmen. Carm pointed at the ceiling, Big Papi style. Quinn could feel the lucky bandanna, snug around her ears. It felt like her dad’s hand on her head. Warm. Strong. Sitting on the bleachers behind Carmen were Ivy and Lissa. They were huddled together in a tight knot, watching Quinn.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” the coach said. She was standing under the hoop, holding her clipboard. Short, bushy hair. Whistle around her neck.

  “I’m ready,” Quinn said.

  Bounce, bounce, catch. Bounce, bounce, catch. Elbow. Eyes. Release. Swish.

  *   *   *

  After dinner that night, Quinn’s phone pinged. It was a text from Carm. Did u c the list?

  Quinn:???

  Carm: The team’s posted.

  Quinn: Already?

  Carm: Check the website. GHHSathletics.edu. Click on girls basketball.

  Quinn: Can’t u just tell me?

  Carm: Nope.

  Quinn plugged in the website. She clicked on Girls’ Basketball. There were ten names listed. Carmen Garcia was number 4. Quinn McAvoy was number 7.

  Quinn: OMG!

  Carm: OMG OMG OMG!

  Quinn: I think it was the lucky bandanna.

  Carm: Obv. Jk. It was all u. Welcome to the Gulls.

  Quinn: Thx!

  Carm: So glad we r teammates.

  Quinn: Me too. ☺☺☺☺

  Carm: I’m going to text the girls. C u tmrw?

  Quinn: Def.

  The next person Quinn texted was Nick. Guess what?

  Nick:?

  Quinn: I made the team!

  Nick: I knew u would. Congrats.

  Quinn: Thx.

  Quinn: That’s not even the best part. I tried out w/o a wig.

  Nick: U did?

  Quinn: I wore Carmen’s lucky bandanna. I guess it worked.

  Nick: Way to go.

  Quinn: Thx.

  Nick: That’s a great birthday present.

  Quinn: It’s not my birthday.

  Nick: Ik. It’s mine.

  Quinn: I missed your birthday????

  Nick: Its ok.

  Quinn: Y didn’t u tell me????

  Nick: Idk.

  Quinn: I would have made cupcakes.

&nb
sp; Nick: U can bake?

  Quinn: I am a woman of many talents. What r u doing to celebrate?

  Nick: Not much. Family dinner.

  Quinn: Meet me @ the beach in the AM? I want to celebrate w/ u.

  Nick: U don’t have to do that.

  Quinn: U don’t think making the bball team deserves a celebration?

  Nick: Ha ha.

  Quinn: Jk. 7:15?

  Nick: Ok.

  Quinn: Happy birthday.

  Nick: Thx.

  CHAPTER

  23

  THE NEXT MORNING, QUINN MADE A DETOUR on her way to the beach. Luckily her skateboard got her from her house to 7-Eleven to the basketball court by 7:15. When Quinn rolled across the beach parking lot, there was Nick, standing on the foul line. Standing.

  “Hey,” she said, hopping off her board, dropping her backpack on the sand.

  “Hey.”

  She looked around. No wheelchair. No car. “You walked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.” Quinn knew not to make a big deal about it, so she bent over and unzipped her backpack. She could feel Sasha brush against her cheeks. “Here,” she said, holding out the package to Nick. “Happy birthday.”

  Silence. For a moment, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. “I know it’s a weird present, but…”

  “You got me black licorice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love black licorice.”

  “I know. I remembered.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled.

  Agh, that smile. Quinn didn’t know what to do with that smile. She was sure that Nick could tell it was making her neck hot, her cheeks, her whole head.

  She shrugged. “No biggie.”

  “You want one?” Nick said, tearing open the cellophane and holding out a licorice whip, coiled on his palm like a shiny black snail.

  “No thanks,” Quinn said, because she hated black licorice. But then she thought about it. The last time she’d actually tried black licorice was when she was little, eating Jelly Bellys at Easter. Maybe her taste buds had evolved. “Aw, what the heck,” she said, and popped the black snail into her mouth. It was sweet and spicy and bitter all at once. It made her nose water, just like she remembered. She spat it back into her hand. “Ugh.”