Shelly Struggles to Shine

by Kit Rosewater

  Shelly nodded. “Like my friend Fen,” she said. She remembered what Fen had said in the craft store about teamwork. They would definitely be more of a cuttlefish than a lone wolf.

  “For our first bout,” the announcer continued, “we have the Austin Derby Daredevils up against the Albuquerque Brawling Dolls!”

  The crowd cheered again.

  Bree leaned in toward the others. “Ooh, that look is creepy.”

  The Daredevils turned over their shoulders as the first team stood up from the sidelines. Shelly gulped. While the fifteen girls she had high-fived all looked like regular kids, the Brawling Dolls now wore matching blue dresses over leggings. They also painted around their eyes and cheeks, and looked exactly like zombie dolls sprung to life.

  “Sweet uniforms,” Jules said. “We should have painted our faces!”

  “Yeah,” Tomoko said. “We should have done something for our team look.”

  Shelly bit her lip. She thought about the things sitting in her paper bag in the locker room.

  The Daredevils rose from the bench together and got ready to follow the Brawling Dolls onto the track. Shelly tugged her wrist guard into place and clipped the propellers to her skates.

  “What are you doing?” Kenzie asked.

  “You don’t have to wear my stuff,” Shelly said. “But it’s awesome, and I’m wearing it anyway. You’ll see.”

  Tomoko stood next to Kenzie. She pointed at the propellers. “What if you hurt someone?”

  “They’re made out of foam!” Shelly said. “They won’t hurt anyone.” She brushed by her teammates and sailed toward the blocker line. Tomoko and Kenzie skated quietly after her.

  Shelly took her place between the Brawling Dolls. One of the blockers glanced at Shelly’s skates uneasily. Shelly smiled. Maybe her plan would still work.

  “Pack—go!”

  Look Out blew the whistle. Shelly took off with the rest of the blockers. She bumped elbows with Kenzie, which would usually make the girls turn and smile at each other. But today, neither one smiled.

  “Jammers—go!”

  Lo blew the whistle again. This time Bree and the Brawling Dolls jammer took off from the jammer line. Mambo and Raz, who were acting as jammer referees, skated along the sidelines, watching to see which jammer would make it through the pack first. That jammer would be the “lead,” or the person who got to decide when the jam was over.

  Since Shelly didn’t know what game play the Daredevils were doing, she decided to carve a gap in the pack for Bree to get through. The clacking of Bree’s skates got closer. Shelly slammed her hip into a Dolls blocker.

  “Umph,” the blocker said.

  Shelly grinned. But then something tugged on her foot. She looked down. Her propeller had gotten stuck in the blocker’s skate!

  “Oh, no,” Shelly said. She tried to pull her skate free.

  Fffttt!

  Lo blew her whistle. Both teams came to a stop.

  “Foreign object on the track!” Lo called.

  Shelly slowly looked behind her. The now-mangled propeller sat in the middle of the rink.

  “What is that?” Mambo asked.

  Jules kicked the propeller away. “I think it’s a dead bug!” she called.

  One of the Brawling Dolls spoke up.

  “It tripped me during the jam,” she said. “It came from her skate. See? There’s another one!”

  Shelly hunched her shoulders. She wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.

  Raz skated over to Shelly. She squatted down and pulled the propeller from Shelly’s other skate.

  “What’s this, Bomb Shell?”

  “Skate boosters?” Shelly said. She was so nervous, her voice went high like she was the one asking a question.

  Raz shook her head. “Dress code mandate two point six: Accessories can’t interfere with the function or safety of basic derby gear. That means skates. I’ll give you a warning, but if anything else interferes with the jam, it’s a major penalty. Got it?”

  Shelly’s cheeks were on fire. “Got it.”

  “All good!” Raz called. “Restart!”

  The eight blockers skated back to the pack line. Kenzie glanced at Shelly. She almost looked like she felt sorry for her. But Shelly couldn’t make herself meet Kenzie’s eyes. She couldn’t look at anyone. The best she could do was blend into the group and not get in any more trouble.

  “Restart—pack—go!”

  “Restart—jammers—go!”

  Shelly did her best to stay in stride with everyone else. She still didn’t know the Daredevils’ blocking strategy, and she was too embarrassed to hip check another Dolls blocker. Shelly kept her arms pinned down at her sides. The pouch in her wrist guard dug into her skin.

  Clack-clack-clack.

  That was Bree.

  Shelly took a breath. All she had to do was get out of the way, and Bree could pass. Shelly shifted and leaned into her right skate. Then Bree would slip on the inside and make lead jammer.

  “Mmph!” A Brawling Dolls blocker shoved Bree into Shelly’s shoulder. Shelly tried to press Bree forward in the pack. But the other jammer hip checked Bree hard. Bree went sailing for Shelly’s left side.

  “No!” Shelly yelled.

  FOOM!

  Every skater dug their toe stops into the track. The entire warehouse went quiet. All eyes turned to Bree and Shelly, who were covered in confetti.

  Fffttt!

  This time both Raz and Mambo skated on either side of Shelly. They rummaged in the fanny packs slung across their black-and-white jerseys. Bree and Shelly watched as Raz took out a red card while Mambo took out a yellow one.

  Raz shook her head. “I already gave Bomb Shell a warning,” she said. “She’s out.”

  “Out?” Bree’s eyebrows shot up. “As in out of the game?”

  Shelly felt a pinch in her nose. Her eyes were blurry. How could this be happening? Her gear was supposed to show everyone how great she was, not get her thrown from the bout!

  “The warning was for skate interference,” Mambo said.

  “It was for distracting accessories.” Raz waved the red card again.

  Mambo pointed to the official table, where the coaches from the New Mexico league sat behind two clipboards. “You wrote it down as skate interference.”

  Suddenly Lo stood between the referees. “Do we have a consensus?” Lo asked. She glanced at Raz and Mambo, then the yellow and red cards.

  “Referee deliberation! Time-out: Two minutes.”

  Fffttt!

  As soon as the whistle dropped from Lo’s mouth, Shelly broke away from the others and flew off the track.

  She had wanted to bring her sketches to life to help the team. She thought her wrist guard might even earn her the Star Skater title. But as she ducked into the locker room, tears flowing, Shelly realized it was about to earn her a oneway ticket out of the tournament.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Shelly pushed the door to the locker room so hard that the handle knocked into the wall. The other Austin league teams jolted upright.

  “It’s over already?” one player asked. “Y’all just started!”

  Shelly didn’t say anything. She rolled to the far corner where the Daredevils had stashed their bags. Shelly crouched against a locker bay and curled into a ball.

  The door squeaked open again.

  “Um, Shelly?”

  Shelly looked up. Jules leaned into the room. “The timeout’s supposed to be on the team benches.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Shelly said.

  She sniffed. She wasn’t sure she would be coming back out. Shelly remembered the roller derby tryouts a month earlier. When Camila quit the team, they almost had to forfeit before Bree joined. Was that going to happen now? Would Shelly’s stupid exploding wrist guard yank the whole team from the tournament?

  “We said you had a bloody nose,” Bree said. Her head popped up behind Jules’s. “That bought us another five minutes.”

  Jules an
d Bree skated into the room, followed closely by Tomoko and Kenzie. Shelly wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She could feel the other teams staring her down.

  “What happened?” someone whispered.

  “What happened is the derby player seats are all empty waiting for you,” Bree said. “We need a cheer section out there! Come on.”

  The other four teams mumbled as they shifted and pulled one another up. The Daredevils stood, waiting, until every last person slid out of the locker room.

  Tomoko turned to Shelly. “Why’d you come back here, Bomb Shell?”

  Shelly dropped her legs down. She tried to sit up taller.

  “I had to get off the track,” Shelly said. “I just wanted to . . . I don’t know, disappear.”

  Kenzie raised an eyebrow. “Disappear? Why?”

  Jules and Bree sat next to Shelly against the lockers.

  “Because trying to stand out led to this,” Shelly said. She brushed some confetti off of her shirt. “They’re going to throw me out of the tournament. And it’s all my fault.”

  Bree helped Shelly take off her wrist guard. The deflated plastic pouch fell onto Shelly’s lap.

  “The confetti thing was an accident,” Bree said. “I ran into you—you didn’t set it off. The refs won’t take you out for that.”

  “They might,” Shelly said. She stared at the wrinkled plastic and sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe they should. I don’t deserve to be on the track.”

  Kenzie shook her head. “That confetti explosion must have messed with you. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  Shelly reached over Jules’s lap and threw the empty pouch into her brown paper bag.

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly before,” Shelly said. “I wasn’t thinking about the other players on the track. I wasn’t thinking about you guys when I missed Thursday’s practice. I was just thinking about myself, really. And how bad I wanted to win Star Skater.”

  Jules cocked her head. “Star Skater?”

  “I saw it on the tournament poster,” Shelly said. “They’re giving the award to one player. I thought if my derby gear worked, and I got the award, then you would see how important I was.”

  “Hold up a sec.” Bree scooted away from Shelly so she could look at her head-on. “You think we don’t know how important you are?”

  Shelly shrugged.

  “I mean . . . you’re the fastest, Bree. And Kenzie, you’re the one in charge of game plays. Tomoko blocks better than everyone else. And Jules collects and dishes out more bruises than any of us.”

  “You do all those things too,” Kenzie said. “You’re really fast. You plan moves with me. You’re a great blocker. And I’ve gotten some gnarly bruises from your hip checks.”

  “But I’m not the best in any of them,” Shelly said. “You’re like an all-star team. And then there’s me.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Bree said. “Such lies. Bomb Shell, you single-handedly got me through the pack back there.”

  “Our plays don’t work without you,” Kenzie said. “We need you.”

  Shelly clamped down on her lip. What if the others were just being nice?

  “Hey.” Jules leaned into the paper bag. “What’s this?”

  “The rest of the gear.” Shelly tugged Jules’s shirt. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “No,” Jules said. “I mean what’s this?”

  She pulled a piece of sparkling purple fabric from the bag. The light bounced off the sequins and onto the Daredevils’ faces.

  “Oh,” Shelly said. “I made uniforms to go with the gear.”

  Jules stretched the fabric. “Is it a tube?”

  “It’s a sleeve,” Shelly said.

  Jules took off her wrist guard and elbow pad. Shelly helped shimmy the material over Jules’s arm.

  “I cut it up from an old leotard,” Shelly said. “Camila found it in the costume room at school.”

  “Camila?” Bree asked. “You mean the girl from tryouts?”

  “Yeah,” Shelly said. “She’s really cool. She does backstage theater stuff.”

  “The costume crypt is the coolest,” Jules said. “I remember that place. They never let the actors go down there.”

  Tomoko touched the sequins over Jules’s sleeve. “I love this. I want one.”

  Shelly fished out the second purple sleeve and handed it to Jules. She rooted through the bag and took out two red sequined sleeves.

  “For you,” she said to Tomoko. “I made a set for everyone. I also made cut-outs.”

  Shelly dropped several scraps of red material onto Tomoko’s lap. “They’re supposed to look like robot buttons,” Shelly said. “You know, for the Tomonater. There’s sticky stuff on the back so you can attach them to your knee pads.”

  “Oh wow.” Tomoko slapped the red circles onto her knees. “This is awesome!”

  Shelly smiled. “Really?”

  “Gimme mine!” Bree said.

  Shelly leaned into the bag and took out a purple crown cut-out she made for Jules’s helmet. She then took out blue sleeves for Bree along with two cloud cut-outs for Bree’s wrist guards. She found her own yellow sleeves and the explosion cut-outs for her elbow pads. Shelly pulled Kenzie’s green sequined sleeves out last, along with two strips of the green material cut into claw shapes.

  “They’re supposed to stick onto your skates,” Shelly said. She left them on the floor in front of Kenzie. “For Kenzilla feet. If you want them, I mean.”

  Kenzie stared at the green pile.

  “You don’t have to wear any of it,” Shelly said. “I was just trying to make something cool for the team. I’m sorry I missed your practice and made you wear those gloves. I’m sorry I was selfish.”

  At last Kenzie looked up. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “I kind of blew off your ideas last week for being too silly. But being silly is part of our team’s charm!”

  She reached out and squeezed Shelly’s hand.

  The Daredevils slipped on their sleeves. Jules placed the crown cut-out around her helmet. Bree smoothed the cloud shapes over her wrist guards. Kenzie attached the claw cutouts onto her skates. Tomoko lined up her red buttons to look like a killer robot. Shelly wrapped the yellow-sequined explosions around her elbow pads.

  The team crowded over the sinks and checked themselves out in the mirror.

  “We look like a sparkling rainbow of destruction,” Jules said. She swiped her arm through the air. “Hi-yah!”

  “We look like an all-star team,” Kenzie said. “All of us.”

  The door to the locker room opened again.

  “OK, Daredevils,” Lo said. “Time in. Bomb Shell, we need you in the ref circle.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Shelly gulped.

  “Coming.”

  She skated through the doorway after Lo. Mambo and Raz were waiting on the rink.

  “Wait!” Bree threw the door open. “I’m coming too.”

  Bree slid onto the track and did a toe-stop right next to Shelly. “I got pushed into Shelly,” Bree said. “So if she’s out, then we’re both out.”

  “Me three!” Jules stumbled across the carpet. “I’ll go out!”

  “Don’t forget about us!” Kenzie and Tomoko glided onto the track with their team.

  The announcer tugged his flamingo cap down and clicked the microphone on. “Is it just me or have these Daredevils powered up?” he asked.

  Some of the people in the bleachers clapped.

  Mambo raised an eyebrow. “What happened back there?”

  Kenzie shrugged. “We forgot our uniforms before,” she said. “We figured while you were deliberating we could get dressed.”

  “Yeah,” Jules said. “And we look good from all angles, even the sidelines if you bench us!”

  Raz looked surprised. “Why would we bench you?”

  “Because of me,” Shelly said. “I’m the one who brought the skate boosters, and the confetti came out of my wrist guard. So if you want to take me out, you should take just me. But can�
�t the others stay in the tournament?”

  Mambo and Raz looked at each other.

  “Bomb Shell,” Raz said. “Going out means sitting in the penalty box for a minute while your team continues the jam. That’s what a major penalty is.”

  “Oh,” Shelly said. She turned to her teammates. “Well . . . that seems fair.”

  The other Daredevils shrugged and nodded.

  “We’ll be able to fend the Brawling Dolls off for a minute,” Tomoko said. She smiled. “Barely, though.”

  Shelly tipped her helmet to her teammates. “To the penalty box!” she said.

  Lo led Shelly over to a chair labeled MAJOR PENALTY. It wasn’t inside of a box at all, which was a little disappointing. But at least Shelly could watch her teammates and cheer them on.

  “Yeah Daredevils!” Shelly called. “Go get ’em!”

  The starting whistle blew and the pack of blockers took off. Shelly watched as Kenzie leaned into the other blockers. Kenzie held up four fingers to Bree, who was coming up behind them. It was an older play Shelly recognized. The four was actually American Sign Language for the letter “B,” which meant the Daredevils’ Backward game play.

  In the Backward play, Bree would call out one move, like “pass left!” or “block right!” and the blockers would do the exact opposite. That way, if the other team tried to stop them, they would have no idea what the Daredevils were really doing.

  “Passing on the right!” Bree called, which meant she was going to try to pass on the left instead.

  Tomoko and Jules swayed to the right, pinning the Brawling Dolls jammer behind them. The Dolls blockers looked around for Bree. Then one of the blockers saw Bree over her shoulder.

  They know what Bree’s doing, Shelly thought.

  Bree tried to slip behind the turned heads, but the Brawling Dolls blocker came charging for her. Shelly was usually the blocker on the inside of the pack. If she were there, Bree could have a clear shot at lead jammer.

  Oof!

  The blocker hip checked into Bree’s side. Tomoko turned to help Bree. The Dolls jammer squeezed past Tomoko and shot forward.

  “Lead jammer—Brawling Dolls!” Raz called.