Shelly Struggles to Shine

by Kit Rosewater

  She set the bundle next to the cash register, then craned her neck around the store.

  “Uh, hello?” Shelly asked.

  “Hi!”

  Someone popped up on the other side of the counter. “Sorry, there’s a wobbly leg under here.” It was Fen! They blinked and shook their head. “Shelly! You’re getting art supplies?”

  “Sort of,” Shelly said. “Derby supplies. My roller derby team is trying out new gear, like the claw I made from the clay.”

  “Neat,” Fen said. They rang Shelly up and added the glue and rolls of tape to her large paper bag.

  Shelly tugged the bag behind her. “See you later,” she said.

  “Wait.” Fen ducked under the counter again and brought out a handful of paintbrushes. “These were left over from a craft night a while back. You’ll need brushes for your teammates, right?”

  Shelly stared at the brushes in Fen’s hand. She wanted to have everything done before her turn at leading practice. But there wasn’t enough time. Shelly thought about what her mom had said that morning about art collaboration. It was best to have things finished, and to finish her idea, Shelly needed the team.

  “Thank you,” Shelly said. She added the brushes to her bag.

  “Teamwork makes the dream work!” Fen said cheerfully. They dipped back under the counter to continue fixing the wobbly leg.

  Shelly left the shop and walked to meet her mom by the edge of the park.

  The practice field was on the other side of the block, but Shelly thought she could see the Daredevils past the playground equipment, running and jumping back and forth. It was weird to not be with her teammates. She wondered how drills were going with one less person on the field. Were they having a hard time without her?

  She paused. What if practice was going even better without Shelly there?

  Shelly squeezed the handles of her bag. She had a solid plan to show the team how important she was. They’d see her awesome drawings, then help put the gear together and take over the track! She took out her sketchbook and jotted down an agenda for tomorrow’s practice.

  Show the designs.

  Make the gear.

  Practice for the tournament.

  She hugged her notebook to her chest and mustered a smile. Soon the others would see that Shelly had a special place on the team too.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The air felt chilly the moment Shelly stepped inside the hall at school the next morning. Shelly wasn’t sure why exactly until she turned the corner and saw Kenzie standing next to the bathroom door.

  “Hey Kenzilla.”

  Shelly had stuck her hand out for a Dynamic Duo handshake, but Kenzie didn’t unfold her arms. She didn’t say hello back, or bump fists, or pretend to spit over her shoulder. At lunch, the Daredevils sat across from one another, staring into space and chewing on tater tots.

  “Wanna swing?” Shelly asked at recess. Kenzie only shrugged and let Shelly drag her by the sleeve.

  The swing set creaked as Shelly and Kenzie swayed next to each other.

  “So . . . how was practice?” Shelly asked.

  Kenzie grunted.

  “Did you work on the plays?”

  Kenzie dug her shoe into the playground sand. “You would know if you came,” she muttered.

  Shelly squeezed the chains on either side of her swing. “Yeah,” she said. “I really wanted to. I just had to get things ready for my practice.”

  “How come your practice is more important?” Kenzie asked. She looked at Shelly. Shelly felt a weird mix of guilt and something else. Was her practice more important than Kenzie’s? Did that mean Shelly was starting to be more important too?

  “I needed supplies,” Shelly said. “We’re going to make stuff.”

  Kenzie raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “You’ll see,” Shelly said. She smiled. “It’s really cool, though. It will help us skate better.” She held a fist out to Kenzie. “I’ll be there for you next time. I promise. Dynamic Duo?”

  Her hand hovered for a moment.

  “You really promise?” Kenzie asked.

  “Cross my laces,” Shelly said.

  Kenzie sighed, then tapped her knuckles to Shelly.

  “OK. Dynamic Duo.”

  Shelly, Kenzie, Tomoko, and Jules decided to play the game “switch off” on the way to the warehouse. When it was one girl’s turn, the others would call out how she had to walk. Tomoko had to shuffle backward. Kenzie did a pretend hopscotch. Jules had to spin every five steps. Shelly took each step at a different height.

  “Now on tiptoe! Now lunge! Now regular! Squat down! Back on tiptoe! Limbo!”

  Jules called out each step to Shelly. Shelly raised her feet like a ballerina. She squatted and leaped like a frog. She shimmied under an invisible limbo pole.

  “Crawl like a baby!” Jules called.

  “Gross. I’m not touching the sidewalk with my hands,” Shelly said.

  Jules held her chin. “Hmm, OK. Then duck down like a branch is going to smack you in the face.”

  Shelly hunched over and took a step.

  “What are you doing?” Bree asked. She met the girls at the corner.

  Jules threw her arms out. “Pre-practice warm up!”

  Bree pointed at her chest. “My turn, then.”

  “Lava round!” Shelly said. “Stay off the sidewalk. Anything else is safe.”

  “Got it,” Bree said. She jumped in the air and landed on a sewer grate. The others watched as Bree bounded from the grate to a stoplight pole to a rug in front of one of the shops.

  “You look like a grasshopper,” Kenzie said.

  Bree laughed. She sprang from one spot to the next until they reached the warehouse.

  “Guess we’re warmed up,” Tomoko said as the group walked inside.

  The Daredevils got their skates and gear from the rental counter. Shelly looked around the front entrance. She leaned across the counter and peered back where the skates were all lined up.

  Pearl Jammer was behind the counter again.

  “I already got your special skates,” Pearl said. “Yellow spot and everything.”

  Shelly smiled. “Thanks. Did my mom drop off a big bag here earlier?”

  “Hold on.” She rolled behind the rows of skates and pulled out Shelly’s bulky brown paper bag.

  “So this is the surprise,” Bree said.

  Kenzie eyed the bag suspiciously, but took hold of one handle while Shelly grabbed another.

  “Let’s head over by the snack bar first,” Shelly said. “We gotta make this stuff before we use it.”

  “Use what?” Tomoko asked.

  They dumped their gear next to the bleachers and sat at one of the tables. The giant brown bag leaned against Shelly’s side. She stood at the end of the table, the other Daredevils looking back at her, waiting.

  This was her big chance.

  Shelly fished out her notebook and cracked it open.

  “Surprise!” she cried. “The drawings are coming to life!”

  Kenzie laughed. “I’m turning into a lizard monster and stomping on people?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” Tomoko said, chuckling. “Or at least against the rules.”

  Shelly squeezed her eyes shut. Was the team laughing at her?

  “This is important,” Shelly said. She didn’t mean to yell it, but when she opened her eyes again the others were staring back at her. Shelly took a breath. “I designed new derby gear for the tournament.”

  “Like costumes?” Jules asked.

  Shelly shook her head. “No, not like costumes. This is real gear, like skates and elbow pad–level gear. We’re going to make it and then practice with it.”

  “Oh.” Bree’s eyes slid across the table and met with Kenzie’s. Shelly pretended not to notice.

  She brought out one thing after another from her bag. She piled the gloves in front of Kenzie. She set the glasses before Tomoko. She shoved the blanket over to Jules.

  “
And we’re making a cone for the back of your helmet out of this,” Shelly told Bree as she took out the foam head. “So you can go faster.”

  She brought out the glue and tape from Rough Draft Crafts, then kicked the bag toward the bleachers. The only things left inside were the old leotards Camila had packed in.

  As Shelly turned back to the table, she realized no one had reached for anything.

  “Why are we doing this?” Kenzie asked.

  “We’re adding to the basic gear so we can shine on the track,” Shelly said. “Like that one team from New Mexico. They skate with unicorn helmets, right?”

  “Well . . .” Tomoko tapped her fingers. “I think the horns are detachable once they hit the track, though. It’s just for the look.”

  Shelly’s eyes went wide. “Just for the look? Just for the look?” She held up a Kenzilla glove. “The right gear could make the difference between letting a jammer through. Or getting ahead of the other team. We have to make the best stuff so we can skate our best!”

  Shelly banged her hand on the table. Jules jolted upright and made a salute.

  “Yes, Captain!”

  The others giggled.

  “It’s not funny!” Shelly said.

  And something in her voice finally went all the way over, creeping up a hill of wanting to be important to the team, and suddenly tumbling down the other side where Shelly needed the others to take her seriously. Where it wasn’t enough to have them laugh at her drawings anymore. She wanted the team to use her ideas for real.

  Shelly pointed at Tomoko. “You’re going to use the fabric paint to make the glasses red,” Shelly said. “And Kenzie, I need you to glue sticky dots on the gloves. Jules, you can cut the blanket into a cloak and then glue two corners together.”

  The team sat in silence. After a moment, Jules reached across the table and picked up a pair of scissors. Kenzie squeezed a dot of glue on one of the gloves. Bree sized up the foam head. Tomoko picked up a brush and tube of paint.

  Shelly folded her arms and nodded.

  “Teamwork makes the dream work,” she said to herself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Daredevils sat at the table, snipping and gluing and taping things together. They weren’t really laughing and goofing around, which would have been really weird a couple weeks ago. But Shelly told herself it was fine. There wasn’t a lot of time to goof around when making super-cool new derby gear.

  She finished gluing a pouch of confetti to the inside of her wrist guard, then waved her arm in front of her.

  “Bam!” Shelly said.

  Nothing happened.

  “Hmmm.” Shelly took the scissors and cut a tiny hole into the top of the pouch so confetti could come out easier. She clapped her wrists together.

  “Bomb Shell attack! Boom!”

  In her head, the confetti was supposed to shoot out of the pouch in every direction. But in real life, Shelly just felt the pouch dig into her wrist. She growled and took the wrist guard off. There had to be something she could wear at the tournament. Shelly looked over her sketchbook. The bubble boots! She could make those. She grabbed the roll of bubble wrap.

  Jules slathered half a bottle of glue over one corner of the blanket. She tossed a handful of Shelly’s discarded confetti on. “You got a derby name yet, Bree?”

  Bree shrugged. “Sort of, yeah.”

  The others paused and looked up at her.

  “Well?” Tomoko asked.

  “Well, at first I was thinking Beastly Bree. But that makes me sound like a werewolf or something. Then I was thinking Bree’s Knees, like the bee’s knees. But that’s way too cutesy.”

  “You’re so fast,” Kenzie said. “Maybe your name can be, like, a speedy name.”

  “Exactly!” Bree pointed at Kenzie. “I’m fast. But I’m also smooth on the track. Here’s what I came up with . . .”

  Everyone leaned in. Even Shelly forgot about her gear for a moment.

  “I’m going by Bree-Zee!” Bree said.

  “Awesome!” Tomoko said.

  Kenzie bumped fists with Bree.

  “The Bree-Zee jammer.” Jules made a frame around Bree’s face. “She zips past blockers before they even see her coming! All they feel is a breeze.”

  “Yeah,” Bree said, laughing.

  Shelly’s hands were on her sketchbook before she even realized. She started drawing a picture of Bree zooming across the page. She could wear sky-blue leggings and have propellers on the back of her skates and—

  “What’s that?”

  Bree’s finger landed on the helmet Shelly had drawn.

  “It’s the extra piece we’re making,” Shelly said. “I’ve seen it on cars. You’ll end up going faster on the track if your helmet comes to a point at the end.”

  “Ummm . . .” Bree held up the chunk of foam in front of her. “No offense, Bomb Shell, but I’m not gluing this to my helmet.”

  Shelly dropped her pencil. “Why not?”

  “A million reasons,” Bree said. “Jammers have to wear covers on their helmets, the cone will probably fall off and trip someone else, and oh yeah, I don’t want to glue anything to my head!”

  Shelly was just about to respond when the front doors to the derby warehouse burst open. Shelly watched as two adult derby players waltzed inside. One of them was Wreck-the-Holls, from the Hazel Nuts team. Shelly usually called her Ms. E.

  “Hey Mom,” Kenzie said.

  “Hey Daredevils!” Ms. E. waved and slung a pair of skates over her shoulder.

  “We better go,” Shelly said. “Looks like adult practice is starting.”

  She collected all the supplies—including Bree’s helmet piece—back into her bag. The Daredevils then picked up their own pairs of skates, helmets, and pads and dragged everything to the side door of the warehouse. They spilled out into the basketball court and squeezed onto the one bench to lace up.

  Shelly finished knotting her laces at the front, then reached for the bubble wrap roll. She began to twist it around and around her skates, adding pieces of duct tape.

  Jules nudged Shelly’s skate with her own. The plastic crinkled under Jules’s toe stop.

  “What’s that?” Jules asked.

  “Bubble boots,” Shelly said. She fastened on her knee and elbow pads, then stood up, her arms waving. “For keeping balance.”

  “Right,” Bree said, clipping on her helmet.

  Shelly stared at the foam head left in the paper bag. She turned to Tomoko.

  “All right, Tomonater,” Shelly said. “The idea is that these are like laser glasses that let you see exactly where the other team’s jammer is.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tomoko said. She put on the red glasses. “The only problem is, I can’t see at all.”

  “Really?” Shelly asked. She had imagined those infrared goggles she saw in movies that could pick out certain people from a group. Those were always red on the outside, just like Tomoko’s glasses.

  Shelly slipped the pair on.

  “Oh wow.”

  The court in front of Shelly wasn’t even red. It was just dark. Shelly took off the glasses and frowned at them. “I’ll work on these more tonight,” she said. She added them back to the bag.

  Kenzie stood up and clipped on her helmet. “We’re wasting time talking,” she said. “Let’s try out our new game plays on wheels.”

  Shelly waddled over to Jules and helped fasten her cloak.

  “Ugh, why is this so sticky?”

  Jules shrugged. “I wanted to add some decoration. Otherwise it’s just a gross blanket.”

  “It’s not gross,” Shelly said. She sniffed at it. “OK, so it’s a little gross. But it will be flying behind you the whole time. Hey—maybe it will keep the other players away!”

  Jules didn’t look totally convinced.

  The Daredevils lined up on the court, crouching behind an invisible blocker line. Bree waited a ways behind them.

  “And go!” Shelly said. She tried to roll forward, but her bubble boo
ts were tough to skate in. The end flaps of the packing material kept getting caught in the wheels.

  Kenzie frowned at Shelly. “What game play are we trying?”

  “It’s a test jam,” Shelly said. She grunted as she pulled her skates forward. “We’re testing the new gear.”

  “Hmmm.” Kenzie glanced at the gloves on the bench.

  Bree took off from the jammer line.

  Clack-clack-clack.

  “Try running into me or Jules,” Shelly called. Maybe her derby gear wouldn’t look super cool, like the unicorn helmets. But her bubble boots and bruise prevention cloak would help her and Jules bounce right back from a fall. The Daredevils could still shine in the tournament! Shelly’s gear would all make sense on the track.

  Oof!

  Bree slammed her hip into Shelly. Shelly barely picked one skate up before tumbling over sideways. She landed on her back instead of her knee pads—not a good fall. She watched as Bree smacked into Jules like a bowling pin. Jules’s feet flew out in front of her.

  Tomoko and Kenzie swerved around and stopped.

  “Well?” Bree asked. “Did they work?”

  Jules looked at the blanket spread around her.

  “It cushioned your fall,” Shelly pointed out.

  “Yeah . . .” Jules frowned. “But it’s super heavy. I feel like I’d just fall more with it on.”

  Kenzie prodded Shelly’s bubble boots. “Same with these,” she said. “You can hardly move out there, Bomb Shell.”

  Shelly stayed very quiet. She looked at her bubble boots, then at the cushioning cloak as Jules shrugged it off. She turned to the brown paper bag with Bree’s speed helmet attachment and Tomoko’s laser glasses. It was starting to look like a big brown creative block.

  What had happened? What went wrong?

  Shelly had spent so much time building up her idea. She wasn’t just drawing doodles anymore. She was making lists and collecting things. All the while her plan had gotten bigger in her head, inflating more and more until there wasn’t any room for it to go wrong.

  “Ugh, I can’t get these off.”