by Ali Benjamin
Interview: Fiona
Everyone has their thing, you know? The thing that makes them feel more like themselves. Every time you see Shakespeare, he’s got a quill pen. Every image of Athena, she’s got her shield. Artemis has a bow and arrow, Zeus has a thunderbolt.
I have the power of the blazer.
Just before I took the field, I slipped it on. Instantly, I felt more powerful. So when the second half started, I shouted, “I am Fiona!” I saw a couple of the Devlinshire kids glance at me, then at each other, like, Ooookay, what’s the matter with this girl? Which just made me scream even louder, “And I am a strong and powerful woman!”
And here’s an interesting thing. Already, Devlinshire had taken control of the ball, just like they did in the first half. But as soon as I shouted the thing about being a strong and powerful woman, the kid with the ball lost his focus. Just for a second. A nanosecond, even. But a nanosecond was all Diego needed. He swiped the ball out from under that kid. Then he charged forward.
I ran down the field alongside Diego. He looked so confident. Weren’t those gods and goddesses always coming down to earth in disguise and giving temporary powers to the mortals? That’s what Diego looked like: like he’d just been given superpowers by Zeus or whatever.
“Artemis, goddess of the hunt!” I shouted, thinking maybe she’d want to give me some powers. And then I thought, why stop with some made-up goddess? Why not ask for help from real strong and powerful women?
So when Devlinshire got the ball back, I ran at them screaming “Mae Jemison!” She’s a really famous, great astronaut, and I know about her from a book that Henry gave me filled with facts about great women in history.
And it worked! I got that ball, and I managed to pass it to Diego. So that’s when I started trying to remember other names—women who weren’t “well-behaved,” and who made history because of that. “Nellie Bly!” I shouted, thinking of the reporter who rode around the world in a hot-air balloon. “Komako Kimura! Shirley Chisholm! Frida Kahlo!” An activist who fought for women to be able to vote. The first woman to run for president of the United States. An artist who turned painting inside out.
Disruptors, Gabby might call them.
It felt good, shouting those names. But even better than that: It flustered Devlinshire every time.
That’s when I realized, Caitlyn: You were on to something. The element of surprise really works.
It Gets Weird
It’s the craziest thing. How Fiona manages to break their concentration so quickly. And then it’s not just Fiona. Like when the little muscular guy powers the ball up the center of the field toward our goal, Gabby hollers, “Fake it till you make it!” She sprints straight at him, doesn’t swerve or anything. Which you can tell he isn’t expecting.
Gabby grabs the ball and sends it over to Yumi. And Yumi… oh, man, the girl leaps toward it. And when I say leaps, I mean like a ballet dancer flying across the stage. As she moves through the air, she makes this singing sound—kind of an opera singer meets dying coyote noise. Yumi crosses the ball to Fiona, who shouts, “Uhhhh, that lady who discovered radiation!”
Then get this: From the sideline, Glebus shouts to Fiona, “Marie Curie!”
Fiona looks over, kind of confused.
“She’s also the first person ever to have won two Nobel Prizes!” Glebus adds.
Fiona’s shock—Glebus is helping her out!—lasts only an instant. She flashes a quick thumbs-up, repeats the name, then passes the ball to me. I take a shot. Paulie catches it, so it’s a miss. But already I sense the game changing.
I guess everyone else senses it, too. As Paulie punts the ball toward the center of the field, Sam shouts, “Do the Fiona!” Every player in green—including me—starts jumping up and down.
I barely even notice the news cameras rolling.
Interview: Diego
The game shifted. At first I figured it was because we’d managed to throw Devlinshire off. We’d broken their concentration. I thought they’d get used to the antics after a few minutes and then we’d be right back where we’d been all along.
Except they didn’t get used to it. They started getting annoyed. And the more irritated they got, the better we got. I can’t explain it. But we were faster, tighter, more accurate. Like we were a unit.
It’s almost like the way Mr. Farabi described it: We were the ultimate ecosystem.
And that made me think about the whole competition we’d been through. Shakespeare. The goat-food fight. The Minis. The fight over banana peels. Getting stuck in that closet, then realizing that our lives were going to change.
The real Paulie hadn’t been there for any of that. Yet every bit of it was just as memorable as that stupid, hilarious, ridiculous chicken suit of his.
Now it was the last challenge, and we were getting under Devlinshire’s skin, and if this was really the ultimate ecosystem, I was going to have to go all-in.
So the next time the ball came to me, I decided to release my inner chicken. I just ran toward the thing screaming, “Caw-caw-caw-CAW!”
Which isn’t even a chicken sound, really. I think it’s more like a crow. But who cares about the exactness of my chicken imitation? Not me.
The thing I cared about was that we were all in this together.
Do the Caitlyn
That’s how the second half goes, more or less: with Diego making some crazy bird noise, and Yumi leaping across the field, and Gabby quoting Jadelicious, and Fiona shouting about people I’ve mostly never heard of, occasionally looking to Glebus for help, and all the rest of us dancing around doing the Fiona, the Yumi, the Diego.
The twins even start their zombie-werewolf game, calling out things to each other like Ninja! Rabid raccoon! and running across the field all funny.
On the sidelines, a few parents start doing the wave. My mom joins in, and then so does Mags. I notice that the two of them are cracking up together, like they’re already best friends.
About ten minutes into the second half, I pass the ball to Diego. He catches it, makes a run toward the goal, zigzagging around some blond Devlinshire kid.
He pulls his foot back, and bam. He pockets it right into the upper-left corner of the net.
The score is 3–2. Not much time left.
He turns around and points at me. “Do the Caitlyn!”
And everyone looks at me, because I still don’t have my own dance.
I don’t even think about it. I start wagging my pointer finger in an exaggerated way, like I’m scolding someone, or telling them what to do.
Behind me, I hear Gabby cheer, “This is the best reality show ever!”
Flying
One of the Devlinshire kids shouts to the coach in blue: “Tell them to stop!”
But their coach just lifts her hands, helpless. There are no rules against singing on the field. Or against dancing while you run. Or calling out the names of historic women. Or laughing so hard your stomach hurts. There might be conventions, but that’s not the same thing as rules.
The ball pings around the field until a Devlinshire kid makes a breakout run toward goal. He’s got a clean shot.
Henry leaps, catches the ball. No goal. Still 3–2.
Mr. Farabi shouts from the sidelines, “A minute left, Mitchell! One minute left in the game.”
Henry sends the ball to midfield. I watch it move closer—from Sam to Yumi to Fiona.
Paulie’s in ready position: knees bent, eyes on Fiona. Behind him is the Paulie statue, nothing now but a fallen branch and a chewed-up T-shirt.
I have no idea who Paulie Fink is. I will never really know who he is, or anyone else for that matter. There is so, so much I don’t know.
But I do know a few things.
I know about Plato, and his cave. I know that everyone has a cave of their own, and that walking out of it, into the light, is one of the scariest things there is. I know about Mount Olympus, and about how people used to make up stories to try to make sense of their world. I kno
w how to design a competition, and how to keep it going when everyone around me is falling apart. I know the difference between funny and mean, and I know how to make a shy Mini smile.
Fiona flicks the ball to me. By now, my legs are so exhausted that running feels like slogging through mud. But my insides are light as air.
Is the girl braver than she used to be? Yes. She is.
Less than a minute, and we’re down by a goal. We can’t possibly win this game. There’s not a chance in the world.
But I’m running anyway. Because that thing Mags was talking about before? Arete? Being your best self? I know what it feels like now.
It feels like flying.
Everything—my teammates, the spectators, the goats—all of it just kind of vanishes. There’s nothing but the ball and the goal ahead of me. Paulie’s waiting for me there, and he’s already proven that he knows how to make a save. Maybe he knew it all along.
My kick is perfect: the force, the lift, the angle.
I watch the ball sail toward Paulie, watch him stretch. Leap. Reach.
Miss.
There’s no sound. Nothing but that whoosh of the ball hitting the net, tying up the game.
The world returns: the grass and the cheers, and my mother’s voice on the sidelines, mixed in with all the others. My classmates barreling down the field toward me.
Paulie looks at me, and one side of his mouth curls upward. “New kid’s got game,” he says.
I don’t have a chance to respond. Fiona slams into me. “Caitlynnnn!” she hollers, wrapping her arms around me. And then Diego’s there, and Willow, and Yumi, and then there are so many green T-shirts surrounding me that I can’t even tell who’s who anymore. It’s like we’re a single creature—one giant breathless tangle of relief and joy.
They’re still hugging me when the ref blows the final whistle.
Interview: Fiona
In all the excitement of the last-minute tie, I just plain forgot about Paulie Fink. That isn’t something I ever expected. It was only after we’d caught our breath, and finished dumping water over our heads, saying stuff like “Can you believe it, I just can’t believe it,” that I even looked over at him.
There he was: Paulie Fink, all by himself, taking his cleats off. That’s when it all came rushing back.
Paulie was a Devlinshire kid now. And he never even told us.
The Devlinshire players were zipping up their bags, walking toward their coach, one by one. Paulie stood. Put on a sweatshirt, zipped it up.
There he goes.
Then I was on my feet, moving toward him. “Paulie,” I said to his back.
He turned around. Blinked a couple of times. “Oh. Hey, Fiona,” he said sort of awkwardly.
I looked over to where the teachers were walking the Minis back toward their classrooms.
I wanted to say, Give the signal. I wanted him to call out to the Minis, exactly the same way he did during Mini-geddon. I wanted to say, They’ll come. They’ll remember. They’ll come if you call.
I wanted to see it so badly—the Minis hearing that siren sound, then sprinting toward him with their short little legs and their light-up sneakers and their glittery, falling-down tights. I wanted to know that they remembered his infamous Whoop-whoop-whoop-WEEE! Whoop-whoop-whoop-WEEE!
But I didn’t say anything. I just stood there and looked at him.
His hair is shorter he is taller his eyes are sadder he used to have a disco ball spinning around behind his eyes but where is it now?
I could tell him about the competition, all the stupid stuff we’d been doing. I’d catch him up on everything, and then we would laugh and the disco ball would be there to stay.
But I didn’t even know how to begin telling him all of that, and before I figured it out, his coach was shouting. “Mr. Fink, let’s GO!”
Paulie’s eyes flicked to his coach, then back to me. “I wanted to help,” he said. “Before, when you were all chasing the goats. I wanted to come out to help. My coach wouldn’t let me.”
I could picture that. Paulie running around with us, cracking jokes, wrapping his arms around a goat and leading it back to the pen.
“You’d have had fun,” was all I said.
Just before he turned away, he grinned. And there it was: just a glimmer, but real. The old disco ball.
I watched him get smaller and smaller. A minute later, I heard the Devlinshire bus start up and roll away, taking Paulie Fink with them.
We’re on TV
The story airs late that night, on the ten o’clock news. Mom and I watch it together.
It was a lively afternoon at the Mitchell School, the newscaster says. First, the school—which has been threatened with closure due to budgetary constraints—had some… unusual happenings.
Then there are goats running across my screen, and we’re chasing them. A goat with the Paulie head in its mouth, the big guy barreling forward and dragging the net with him. It’s all right there, as if Yumi’s Next Great Goat Escape reality show had become… well… actual reality. Then it cuts to us on the field, all of us doing my finger-wag dance in our mismatched shirts.
I stare at the screen. “Oh wow. Oh no. We look ridiculous.”
“You look like you’re having fun,” Mom tells me. “That’s what you look like.”
The shots from the game are just a lead-in for the bigger story: the one about the school closing. The segment ends with that shot of me and Fuzzy walking across the field, away from the fort, with Real Rabbit between us. The community remains hopeful, the voiceover says. But they’re running out of time.
It’s the strangest thing: I recognize everything they’re showing on-screen, but it doesn’t look right somehow. The clips they’re showing aren’t wrong, exactly. They’re just… incomplete.
The segment doesn’t show me afraid to get out of the car at the start of the year or standing in front of the classroom with those dumb rules tucked into my pocket, or getting knocked down by the mean old goat and trying not to cry. It doesn’t show me barely knowing how to talk to Fuzzy on the first day, or fumbling for words in the fort. It doesn’t show me with Anna Spang, or anything about my old life. It doesn’t show what came before, or what will come after, or what my insides feel like.
It’s just this one moment out of thousands, seen from the outside, with someone else picking the angle, the lighting, the frame, the view.
WXTE posts the story online the same night. I remember Gabby saying we just need the story to go viral, and for a few hours, I’m hopeful. When I go to bed, we’re the number-three news story on the WXTE website. By morning, the video’s had 290 views, and some comments have appeared:
LOL, funny!
Shouldn’t these kids be learning math or something?
I know, right? Good luck holding a job someday, kids.
Wish I’d gone to a school like that.
Me 2.
Me 3.
By the following morning, there are even more comments:
Most pathetic thing I ever seen!!!!
Face it: nobody cares about rural folk anymore.
I wish my son could go to a school like that.
Oh, this is one of those everyone-gets-a-trophy places. Just wait till these kids enter the real world.
But it’s as if none of those commenters even read the story. Or if they did, the story doesn’t matter. Like people decided what they believed about the world long ago, and now whatever they see or hear is just proof that they were right all along.
Anyway. No one starts an online fund-raiser, like Gabby had hoped.
Then other news replaces the Mitchell School on the WXTE home page. Over near Burlington, a rescue dog saves a toddler from a fire. In Springfield, a woman comes home to find a bear rummaging through her refrigerator. Nationally, some famous Hollywood actress gives birth to twins. The next day, a disgraced banker goes on trial. Then the day after that, Rexx Rowdy—Jadelicious’s archenemy—announces he’s running for Congress, which sets off
an around-the-clock media blitz.
Just like that, Mitchell’s not in the news anymore. Which means Glebus was right: We’re going to have to figure things out on our own.
Interview: Gabby
After the game, I kept thinking about that thing that Yumi said to me: about how nothing on Megastar is real. I understood what she meant, but my point was that Jadelicious the persona began as an idea, dreamed up by an ordinary person. Maybe she faked it… but she did make it.
Now Jadelicious is a fragrance. Jadelicious is also an instantly recognizable line of footwear. And factories all over the world are pumping out T-shirts and jackets covered in purple sequins. Jadelicious the ultimate Megastar is already on her third world tour, and she’s selling out the biggest stadiums in London and Sydney and New York.
Those audiences are real. So are those factories. So are all the people who slip on a pair of Jadelicious shoes or a purple-sparkle sweatshirt and maybe feel just a little more inspired to step into their own spotlight.
I’m just saying: Something doesn’t have to be exactly, literally true to be real. Just about everything real in this world began as a flicker in someone’s imagination. You don’t have to believe in reality TV to understand that.
Something I Don’t Send, and Something I Do
A few days after the game, I take out a blank piece of paper and begin to write.
Dear Anna
Hey, Anna, Remember Me?
Funny, I was just sitting here thinking about you, Anna
I tap my pen against my teeth a bunch of times and try again.
Anna,
Probably you don’t want to hear from me. And I’m not even sure why I’m writing exactly.