Shelly Struggles to Shine

by Kit Rosewater

  “Maybe we can use the basketball court behind the warehouse on Friday,” Kenzie said. “For an on-skates workout too. We can practice our plays like the Flying Circle of Doom and the Crying Banshee. You writing this all down, Bomb Shell?”

  “Uh-huh,” Shelly said. Her pencil swirled over the page as she drew herself, Kenzie, Tomoko, and Jules hovering in a circle around Bree. Tiny pairs of bat wings stuck out from the girls’ T-shirts.

  “What’s that?” Bree asked.

  “It’s us doing the Flying Circle of Doom!” Shelly said. She tapped her pencil on the bat wings. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we really could fly?”

  “Oh yeah!” Jules said. She flapped her arms and screeched.

  The other teams whipped their heads around and stared as the Daredevils laughed. Shelly made her notebook flap alongside Jules. As the chuckles died down, Tomoko wiped her eyes and leaned forward.

  “So what should we do during the off-skates workouts?” Tomoko asked.

  Kenzie leaned her chin in her hand. “Hmm. We’ll want to work on speed and stuff. But more than just that.”

  “We can work on jumping,” Jules suggested. “To avoid hitting anyone who falls on the track!”

  Shelly nodded and flipped her sketchbook to a new page.

  “I can bring some of those field cones from my house,” Bree said.

  Kenzie snapped her fingers. “Perfect. An obstacle course! We can build different ones and practice going through them!” Kenzie paused and glanced at Shelly.

  “Um . . . those don’t look like notes.”

  Shelly turned her notebook around so the others could see. “They’re jumpy skates! See the slinky springs at the bottom? We’d be able to touch the tops of trees!”

  Tomoko and Bree laughed. Shelly twisted her drawing even closer to Kenzie, who offered a smile.

  “It’s a great picture,” Kenzie said. “I was just hoping you could write down the stuff we’re saying too.”

  “Oh.” Shelly’s shoulders hunched. Even though Kenzie was smiling, Shelly felt like she was in trouble.

  Fffttt!

  Razzle Dazzle waved her arms. “That’s time, teams! We’ll see you here next week!”

  The Daredevils pushed themselves to standing, then shuffled to their regular bench and undid their laces. They were back to talking about the off-skates workouts again.

  “Tomoko should set up the blocking drills,” Kenzie said. “Bree can help us with speed work. Jules can lead the hip-check practice.”

  “What about me?” Shelly asked. Her voice felt shy.

  Kenzie furrowed her brow, thinking. “You can lead anything, really! Just come up with something this week, and you can be the leader.”

  “OK,” Shelly said. She was a little sad Kenzie didn’t have an answer right away.

  Everyone knew Tomoko was a good blocker, and Bree was fast, and Jules good at hip checks, and Kenzie the planner . . . but what was Shelly’s big role? Suddenly her funny drawings didn’t seem like enough. She crumpled the pictures of bouncy skates and bat wings in her head, balling them into a thick seed of worry.

  The light zinged off the warehouse doors as Shelly and the others left practice. Shelly’s dad stood waving from the corner of the parking lot.

  “See ya, Bomb Shell,” Kenzie said.

  “Later, Kenzilla,” Shelly said. Her backpack thunk-thunk-thunked against her as she hopped to her dad.

  “How’s my favorite kiddo?” he asked, leaning over and scooping Shelly up.

  Shelly’s dad was tall and wiry. He was one of the strongest people Shelly knew, though she wasn’t sure where he kept all his muscles.

  “Good,” Shelly said. She giggled a little. Her dad always had a way of making her laugh.

  He set her down and lifted the backpack from her shoulders.

  “You ready for home?”

  Shelly nodded. She followed her dad toward the other side of the warehouse, away from the direction she and her mom had walked earlier.

  They turned off of South Congress Avenue, passing by houses with beautiful green lawns and shutters painted in bright colors. They passed by Shelly’s favorite yard, which had a magnolia tree with giant gold and silver ornaments that hung year-round. They passed by the place with the twin poodles that loved to bark, and the house made of shipping containers, and the front yard with a chicken coop and a sign that said: PET THE CHICKENS!

  Once they passed by all the usual spots (and said hello to the chickens), Shelly and her dad arrived at a tiny house on the corner. The house sat over its own garage, with a staircase leading to the door.

  Shelly and her dad clomped up the steps. Shelly patted the cow-shaped mailbox next to the door while her dad turned the key.

  “Oh boy,” her dad said once they were inside. He slipped off the backpack and sank onto the couch. “What a walk. I’m beat.”

  Shelly sank down next to him.

  “You didn’t even go to derby practice,” Shelly said. “I had to work on backward bubbles and crossovers and one, two falls and then walk home.”

  “Crossovers, huh?” Shelly’s dad said. “You mean like the ones in basketball?”

  Shelly wrinkled her forehead.

  “I don’t think so. Crossovers are when we put one skate over the other.”

  “That seems simple enough.” Shelly’s dad caught her glare. “But I’ll bet it’s harder than it looks,” he added quickly.

  “Way harder,” Shelly said. “I fall over half the time!”

  “Uh-huh,” her dad said. He leaped up and got two bottles of fizzy water from the kitchen. He held a bottle out to Shelly.

  “For the hardworking athlete,” he said.

  Shelly took a huge gulp from her bottle. She let the tiny bubbles jump and dance inside her belly. She sighed happily. This was the taste of being with her dad.

  “What are you working on this week?” Shelly asked.

  Her dad took a swig of his water and wiped his mouth.

  “You wanna see?” His eyebrows wiggled up and down. “Come on back.”

  Shelly followed him down the hall, past her small bedroom, through his room, and onto the tiny balcony looking over the backyard. They crept down a second set of rickety steps until they stood outside the garage, right in front of the side door.

  “Take a gander,” her dad said. He cracked the door open.

  Shelly watched the afternoon light spill onto a flat metal slab shaped like the Texas longhorn, a cow with long, curving horns. The sign was painted rusty orange, the same color as the jerseys on the Austin college football team. The longhorn cow was their mascot.

  “Wow,” Shelly said. “It’s huge. Where’s this one going?”

  “A restaurant over on Sixth Street,” her dad said proudly. He rapped the sign with his knuckles. The metal billowed and rumbled like thunder.

  Shelly looked around her dad’s workshop. There were sharp scraps of metal everywhere, with tools set out on benches, bottles of polish on the floor, and paint cans lining the walls. Her dad could cut and bend metal into almost any shape under the sun. But no matter when Shelly peeked into his workshop, she always saw at least a few longhorns lying around.

  “You like sports, right, Dad?”

  Shelly’s dad laughed. “Course I do. I started playing basketball when I was around your age.”

  “Really?” Shelly asked. She paused. “Who were you on the team?”

  Her dad raised an eyebrow. “Not sure I follow.”

  Shelly folded her arms. “Like . . . what did you do? Were you the fast one? Or the mean one?”

  Shelly’s dad laughed. “I was the shiny one!” he said. “At least that’s what my teammates called me. Come on, let’s watch the sky turn.”

  He closed the door and bolted the lock. Shelly cocked her head. Shiny seemed like a strange name for her dad.

  They climbed the steps back up to the balcony. Shelly’s dad brought some chairs out from the corner. The two sat down and kicked their feet up on the railing.<
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  “How come they called you Shiny?” Shelly asked.

  Her dad leaned forward. “From all the medals I won,” he said, grinning. “Placed in every tournament I went to! Took home trophies to show your granny. I even got my picture in the newspaper a few times.”

  “The real newspaper?” Shelly asked. Her eyes widened.

  “The real deal,” her dad said. He folded his arms over his lap and stared out into the evening. “I liked the nickname,” he said finally. “Sure, it sounded silly. But those guys were glad to have me on the team. Your old dad used to be a basketball-slinging star.”

  Shelly’s dad winked, and it was like night had sprung up on them right then, sliding through the branches all sneaky. Shelly realized she hadn’t watched the sky turn. She had been too busy listening to her dad.

  She looked over the yard as fireflies rose from the long grass, blinking like sputtering candles.

  “A star,” Shelly whispered.

  The seed of worry in her head sparked into a seed of an idea.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The neighborhood bustled with sounds as Shelly walked to school the next morning. She could hear the hum of her dad’s saw in the garage behind her, slicing into metal that would soon become another longhorn-shaped sign. A gardening crew had pulled up outside of a house farther down the block. Their leaf blowers and lawn mowers roared. The chickens clucked in their pen. The twin poodles barked and yipped.

  Meanwhile, Shelly’s mind was bustling too. She swung her backpack around to the front and pulled her sketchbook out. Drawing things she could see in her head was easy enough. Shelly could turn a circle into a roller skate wheel without thinking. But half-formed ideas were harder to pin down.

  She grabbed the pencil she sometimes kept behind her ear, just like her mom, and let the lead swirl across the paper. She drew herself in derby gear, flying high above the track while her teammates skated below. Constellations sprouted from the backs of her skates.

  Shelly studied her drawing, squinting so the stars on the page almost seemed to twinkle. She wished she really did have flying skates. How else could she stand out in such a great team?

  Shelly tucked her pencil back behind her ear and closed her sketchbook. She spread her arms wide and skipped and soared to school, imagining wearing shooting stars on her feet.

  The sounds of chickens clucking were soon replaced with kids chatting as they scurried through the front doors of Curie Elementary. Shelly dipped through the crowd and found Kenzie standing outside her locker.

  “Hey Zilla,” Shelly said.

  Kenzie looked up from her phone, then smiled and tucked it away into her pack. The girls bumped fists and pretended to spit over their shoulders, their signature Dynamic Duo handshake. Whenever they were outside, they really did spit. Shelly had worked on her loogie technique forever before she got it just right.

  “Hey Bomb Shell,” Kenzie said. “You ready for practice today? Bree’s leading.”

  “Cool,” Shelly said. If Bree was leading, that probably meant a lot of running. Shelly still didn’t know what she would do when it was her turn to lead the group.

  Kenzie and Shelly ducked across the hall into the bathroom—the Daredevils’ morning meeting spot. The girls stood in front of the sink and made faces at each other in the mirror.

  “Oh, no! It’s the hundred-foot-tall Kenzilla!”

  “Rawwwrrr!” Kenzie clawed at the mirror. “Everyone get down! Bomb Shell’s coming!”

  “Boom!” Shelly said, tossing her arms out.

  The toilet flushed. Kenzie and Shelly held their poses perfectly still as Camila, another fifth grader and former Daredevils member, emerged from the stall. Camila didn’t seem at all surprised to be washing her hands next to a lizard girl and a human firework.

  “See you later,” Camila said.

  “See you, Camila!” Shelly called back.

  The door swished closed. Kenzie and Shelly dropped their poses and laughed. Shelly hugged her notebook to her chest.

  Kenzie patted some water on her head to smooth down her hair. “Make any new funny drawings lately?”

  “Um . . . not really,” Shelly said. She thought about the picture of her flying over the others. Usually she showed Kenzie all her drawings, but this one felt like it belonged only to her. “No funny stuff.”

  Kenzie turned the faucet off and shrugged. “OK.”

  Shelly paused. She thought of her dad’s nickname back when he was a kid. Shelly didn’t just want to make funny drawings anymore. She wanted to be important to the team.

  Should she tell Kenzie what was on her mind?

  The door squeaked open. Both Kenzie and Shelly turned away from the mirror as Tomoko and Jules stepped inside. Since Bree went to another school, this was about as complete as the Daredevils could get at Curie.

  “It’s the Tomonater!” Kenzie called.

  Tomoko grinned. “Oh yeah, that name’s feeling good. I can’t wait to wear it on the track.”

  Shelly looked back and forth between the two. “You picked a derby name? When?”

  Tomoko shrugged. “Right after you left with your dad. It came to me like a bolt of lightning. WHAM!” She smacked her palms together.

  Shelly and Kenzie laughed. Shelly propped her sketchbook open on her knee. It was the first time any of the new members had come up with a derby name, and Shelly had to document it properly. She stretched her arm toward Tomoko, holding her pencil like a line.

  “What are you doing?” Tomoko asked.

  “Measuring,” Shelly said. She dropped her arm back by her side. “OK, I actually don’t know how it works. But I see my mom doing it all the time when she’s sketching a model.”

  “Model?” Tomoko struck a pose. She turned to the side, then looked at Shelly over her shoulder. “How’s this?”

  “Perfect,” Shelly said. She huddled close to the pages as she drew a picture of Tomoko with lights and buttons up and down her leggings so she looked like a killer robot. She drew glasses over Tomoko’s eyes to make them look like one big laser.

  The Tomonater! Shelly wrote underneath.

  “That’s wicked awesome!” Kenzie said.

  Tomoko made a robot wave with her arm. “I love it. Looks just like me.”

  “Thanks.” Shelly smiled and snapped her sketchbook shut.

  “Have you decided on a name yet?” Shelly asked Jules.

  But Jules didn’t answer. She had been unusually quiet as she scrolled through her phone.

  “Hello . . . Jules?” Tomoko asked.

  “One sec,” Jules mumbled. She held her screen close, reading line after line.

  “Oh. My. Gosh.”

  Jules waved her phone in the air. “You’re never going to believe this!”

  “Believe what?” Kenzie asked.

  But Jules only jumped and waved her phone around until Kenzie snatched it out of her hand so the whole group could see. The screen showed the Austin roller derby league website. On the homepage was a colorful poster of two derby players going head-to-head.

  Shelly squinted at the image. “There’s an adult bout coming up?”

  “Nope,” Jules said. She zoomed into the part of the poster with all the information.

  The Daredevils crowded together to read.

  TX VS. NM JUNIOR LEAGUE TOURNAMENT

  REFRESHMENTS! GAMES! PRIZES!

  ONE PLAYER NAMED STAR SKATER

  SATURDAY. DOORS OPEN 1:30 P.M. FIRST BOUT 2 P.M.

  TICKETS $12. KIDS UNDER 8, FREE.

  “They’re charging admission?” Tomoko’s jaw hung open.

  Jules clapped and nodded. “It’s the big time! We’re going to be real derby players!”

  Kenzie’s eyes gleamed as she handed Jules’s phone back. “I wish Bree were here.”

  “I’ll bet,” Tomoko said, smiling.

  Kenzie’s cheeks turned pink. Everyone knew she had a crush on Bree.

  Shelly threw her arm around Kenzie. “I wish she went here too,” Shelly said.
“But we’ll see her today at the park. She’s going to flip!”

  “Yeah,” Kenzie said wistfully. She leaned into Shelly.

  The Daredevils all bumped fists and headed out to class. When they saw one another later at lunch, and again at recess, they talked about the tournament. Kenzie wondered if they’d get to keep any of the money from admission. Tomoko wondered if the prizes were for the skaters or the audience. Jules wanted to know if skaters would get free snacks at the snack bar.

  Shelly wondered about all those things too. Or at least, she would have wondered about them if she weren’t so focused on the one line of the poster everyone else seemed to miss.

  The line made Shelly’s seed of an idea bloom and stretch open. Her eyes got sparkly just thinking about it. Winning Star Skater was the perfect way to prove how important she was to the Daredevils! Then Shelly would have a special role like everyone else. Maybe she would even earn her dad’s nickname, Shiny!

  She just had to shine on the track enough to win.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shelly had fire on her heels as she zoomed out of school after the last bell.

  “Wait!” Kenzie called.

  Kenzie, Tomoko, and Jules stood at the top of the steps. Shelly paused at the sidewalk and looked over her shoulder.

  “Race me!” Shelly said.

  Tomoko and Jules kept walking normally, but Kenzie broke out and sprinted until she was at Shelly’s side.

  “How far?” Kenzie asked.

  “To the park!” Shelly said. “And no hot lava game. Just racing.”

  Kenzie’s eyebrows went up. Every time the girls raced, it was more like a make-believe adventure than running. But secretly, Shelly was already getting her plan started. If she practiced her speed off the track, it might help her win Star Skater at the tournament.

  “And—go!”

  Shelly and Kenzie puffed out their cheeks. They pumped their arms hard. Shelly’s chest burned from running so fast. She zipped past all the usual Daredevils stops: the pizza place, the taco stand, the home of the Sour Birthday ice pop. All the shapes she usually stared at during their walk from school looked like a blurred watercolor painting.