Being Sloane Jacobs

by Lauren Morrill

  “Mmm-hmm, hard to tell which I want to taste first.” Oh ick.

  There’s a round of high fives and “aww yeahs.” I can feel the thudding in my ears again, the heat rising up my neck, but if I jump these guys like I did 22, it’ll be the cops and not Coach Butler pulling me off. That’s if the homeboys don’t give me a concussion—or worse. Out here is not like the controlled, contained world of the rink. Out here it’s the wild. Out here I have to control myself.

  “Screw off,” I mutter, and then double my pace until I’m past them. I hear the laughing and the catcalls until I’ve turned the next corner onto my street and slid my key into the lock on the front door.

  Inside, I drop my skate bag at the bottom of the stairs and leave my keys on the table next to a pile of unpaid bills and take-out flyers. I don’t hear the TV, so I call, “Dad!” He should be home from work by now.

  “Kitchen,” he calls back.

  Dad’s sitting at our little blue chipped Formica kitchen table. He looks tired, but that’s not new. Ever since Mom left last month, I don’t think he’s slept at all. And if he is sleeping, I don’t think it counts if it’s on the couch in front of the television.

  “We need to talk, Sloane,” he says, and that’s when I see that underneath the exhaustion, there’s something else. The last time we had to talk, Mom was already gone for her ninety-day stint at Pleasant Meadows or Calming Breezes or whatever pseudo-cheery name the place is called. All I remember is the pamphlet Dad slid across the table at me. The front of it showed the name in loopy blue script over a picture of a pair of smiling people who looked nothing like the disaster my mom had become, having a picnic somewhere green that looked a world away from Philly.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say. I slide the pizza box out of the bag, then wad the bag in my fist. “Let me just pop this in the oven.”

  “The pizza can wait. Just sit down.”

  I leave the frozen pizza on the counter and slump down in the seat across from his, bracing for the news.

  “Coach Butler called,” he says, his voice gruff. “Says you got in a fight. Again. He said he suspended you starting next season.”

  I’m so shocked, I can only stare. Coach Butler never rats us out, not ever. Not when Julie Romer got a hornet tattoo on her lower back (though he made the nurse look at it to make sure it wasn’t infected), not when he caught us in possession of Middlebury High’s disgusting stuffed bulldog mascot (we had to take it back), and not even when Madeline Gray showed up to practice so hungover that she barfed on the ice during sprints (she had to do five morning makeups and sign a no-alcohol pledge). We trust Coach Butler. How could he do this to me?

  “Sloane, I tolerate a lot from you.” Dad sighs. He picks at a spot on the table where the blue Formica is so chipped that particleboard is starting to show through. “That hoodlum musician boyfriend, your middle-of-the-road grades. I let you get away with a lot, because you’ve got hockey. It’s your ticket. You know we can’t afford to send you to college. You won’t go to college without it. I don’t want that for you, and you don’t want that for you, so what in the hell are you doing getting yourself suspended going into your senior year?”

  “But she came at me! And that ref was totally from Liberty! He was biased!” It all comes tumbling out, all the words I can say to hide the ones I can’t. I can’t tell him about the tingles, not when he’s just laid out all the repercussions of biting it in hockey. Oh, sorry, Dad, it’s just that I was so freaked out about not being able to hit the broad side of a barn with a four-square ball that I ended up tackling some blond bimbo from Liberty High. So you see, no big deal! Either way, my hockey career is over!

  As I’m rattling on about how I barely even touched her, Dad holds up his hand. “Save it.”

  “See? You don’t even want to hear my side.” I cross my arms over my chest and slouch further into my chair.

  Dad ignores the remark. “Luckily, your coach is looking out for you, and he called with a suggestion,” Dad says. “He thinks you need a change of scenery. One of his old college buddies runs a hockey camp up in Montreal, and he made a phone call on your behalf. You’ll leave tomorrow. You finish the summer with a good report from this camp, you can start the season with your team next fall. No harm, no foul.”

  It’s so much information, I don’t know what to process first. I’m not benched? But I have to go to hockey camp? The coaches are going to see that I can’t make a shot. I can hide it for maybe a week, but after that someone will notice. And then that someone will call Coach Butler. They’ll call Dad. And then I’m screwed.

  But that’s not what I land on first.

  “I can’t leave tomorrow!” I burst out. “It’s summer. I have plans! I was going to apply for a job at the Freeze and save up. And I can’t leave Dylan!” As soon as I say it, the part about Dylan, I realize it’s hardly true.

  “Fine, skip hockey camp. But you’re not playing the start of next season. And the scouts aren’t seeing you, and you’ve got a suspension on your record, and then college falls off the radar.”

  I shake my head, even though I know he’s right. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

  “We make our own choices, Sloane,” Dad says. “And frankly, you’re lucky you’ve got a coach willing to compromise and make phone calls on your behalf.”

  “This is bullshit,” I say.

  “Knock it off, Sloane. Honestly, what would your mother say if she was here?”

  “Well, she’s not, because she obviously made her choices,” I retort. “But you sent her away too, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  I see the pain start in Dad’s eyes, then ripple outward like a stone disturbing the water. Immediately I feel guilty. He doesn’t say anything, just stands up from his chair. He stares at me hard. “You’ve got a nine a.m. bus, so you better pack,” he says, then walks out of the kitchen. I hear him shuffle up the stairs. A few minutes later his bedroom door slams shut.

  I stomp back to the front of the house where I dropped my bag and dig my phone out of the front pocket. Because I don’t know who else to talk to, I text Dylan, jamming on the keys so hard I worry my thumb is going to come out the other side.

  Awful day. Need to talk asap.

  I drag my bag up the stairs and into my room, then heave it onto my bed with enough force that the sound echoes my level of anger. I. Am. Pissed.

  At the Vid with guys. Come out.

  Great. He knows I don’t have a fake ID, and even if I did, he knows I wouldn’t go to the Vid and hang out while a bunch of his friends get trashed. Idiot. Life sure is a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top, isn’t it?

  I pull my big black duffel down from the top of my closet and start throwing clothes inside, not even paying attention to what I actually need. A handful of sports bras, a couple of pairs of jeans, some jerseys, some T-shirts … Who cares? I’m not going to make it past the first week anyway. Maybe after they throw me out I can just hit the road, trade in my return ticket for somewhere warmer. Somewhere hockey doesn’t even exist.

  I hear the scritch-scritch of little feet coming up the stairs; then a fuzzy black face pokes inside the door. I jump up on my bed and pat my comforter. “C’mere, Zaps.”

  Zaps is the only good thing that ever came out of Mom’s drinking. One evening, after finishing a bottle of some cheap red, Mom was flipping through the channels and saw one of those über-sad ASPCA commercials where a nineties pop starlet is warbling her old hit while pictures of abandoned and injured animals flash across the screen. Ten minutes later, Mom and I were on a bus to the local shelter, and less than an hour after that, we were getting out of a cab in front of our doorstep with Zaps, a terrier mix on a bright red leash. His name is actually Zapruder, after the guy who made that infamous Kennedy assassination film. Nerdy, I know, but it was Mom’s choice. She loved history. Maybe she still does. It’s hard to see where her affections lie beyond an empty glass or bottle.

  Zaps jumps up on the bed and nuzzle
s my armpit, then starts furiously licking my face. “Down, boy!” I cry, but pretty soon I’ve dissolved into giggles. I can’t believe I’ve got to leave this moppet behind tomorrow. Is Dad even going to remember to walk him?

  Thinking of Dad brings back that awful guilty feeling. I shouldn’t have accused him of sending Mom away. It was all her. She chose to become a drunk. She chose to drive after drinking not one but two bottles of wine. And it wasn’t the first time, either. It wasn’t even surprising when she finally hit something. Luckily it was just a city mailbox on the corner and not a small child on the sidewalk. Which means it was her choice to go to rehab, even if it seemed like the court didn’t give her much of one.

  She chose and she chose and she chose until she was gone.

  I sigh into the scruff of Zaps’s neck. Mom hasn’t always been like that, though the past three years have been so miserable that it seems like forever. She always enjoyed a glass of wine or two, but when I was in eighth grade she left her job teaching social studies at a magnet school in town to take care of Grandma Rosa, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. It wasn’t easy for Mom, leaving a job she loved to watch her mother get sicker and sicker. I didn’t blame her when she drank … at first. As sad as I was when Grandma Rosa died last year, I was hopeful that maybe things would go back to normal. But at that point Mom was just too far gone. She couldn’t get her old job back, and she couldn’t get herself together to apply for something new. Everything went downhill fast after that.

  I curl up on my pillow, hugging Zaps, until I’ve fallen asleep and am dreaming of somewhere far away from Montreal, far away from Philly, even. Somewhere far away from hockey and far away from home. Dreaming of being someone—anyone—other than me.

  CHAPTER 3

  SLOANE EMILY

  We’ve reached the point of no return.

  “Sloane, I want you to take this seriously. If you work hard, you’ll get back everything you lost and then some. You’re a beautiful, talented young woman, and I know you can achieve great things.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I reply. I adjust my tote bag on my shoulder and look at the growing line at security. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good, better, best, never let it rest …,” Mom quips, her photo-op smile spreading across her face.

  “… until your good is better than your best,” I finish. If the Jacobses have a family motto, that’s it. Mom and Dad have been repeating it since I was five.

  Mom puts an arm around my shoulder and sort of pats me on my back twice. Her version of a hug.

  “Excellent. Oh, and your father wanted me to give you this.” Mom reaches into her ivory quilted Chanel handbag and pulls out a crisp white envelope from the office of Senator Robert Jacobs of Virginia. I look down at the envelope and see the seal of the commonwealth in the upper right-hand corner. The envelope is sealed, and he’s signed his name across it like a recommendation letter.

  “Have a wonderful summer,” she says. There’s a brief pause where I think she might try to hug me again, but instead, she just sort of pats me on the shoulder. We’re not much of a hugging family. Encouragement toward excellence, yes. Public displays of affection? Not so much.

  “Better be getting to your gate,” she says finally. “Boarding starts in an hour, and the line is getting long.”

  “Okay,” I reply. Another pause. “Bye, Mom.”

  I make it through security without getting felt up by the agents, then bolt for the bathroom. It’s cavernous and bright white. The door slams behind me and the sound bounces off the porcelain and tile. There’s only one other woman at the sinks, reapplying eyeliner. Her eyes flit over to me, then back to the mirror. I wheel my carry-on skate bag into the handicapped stall at the end of the row and do the little dance that’s required to get all my luggage in with me and still get the door closed.

  Once I’m closed in, I sit down on top of my suitcase and pull the envelope out of my tote. There could be a confession in here, or an apology … or both.

  I run my index finger under the seal, tearing through his name, and my hands are shaking so bad that I give myself a paper cut. But when I get the envelope open, I don’t find the confession I was hoping for. Or even an apology. In fact, there’s no letter inside at all. Instead, there’s just a fat stack of crisp fifty-dollar bills.

  Confused, I flip the envelope over to see if there’s anything I missed, maybe a message or a note. But all I see is my name scrawled across the front in heavy black ink from one of his fancy fountain pens. As I look closer, I realize that the handwriting isn’t his. It’s fat and loopy, like a woman’s. He had one of his assistants prepare it. And the only other thing I can find is a note that he actually wrote himself, just under where his signature was on the back of the envelope. “For emergencies,” it says.

  I flip through the stack of bills again, counting quickly to myself. So a thousand dollars is what my dad thinks I need for emergencies. More likely that’s what he thinks my silence costs. If only he knew that I’d be happy to keep my mouth shut for free. I have no interest in even thinking about what I saw in his office two weeks ago, much less talking about it.

  I take a deep breath and count backward from ten. There’s nothing more embarrassing than crying in an airport bathroom over daddy issues. Once I’m sure I’m not about to be the basket case of Terminal B, I put the money back in the envelope and shove it back into the tote as deep as it can go, this time not so I don’t lose it, but so I don’t have to think about it. One of the reasons I agreed to go this summer was to get as far away from my dad as possible. Now, knowing that that envelope is sitting at the bottom of my bag makes it feel like I’m carrying him around with me, or at least a heavy dose of his guilt. I’m not stupid enough to throw away a thousand dollars, but I’m not going to look at it if I don’t have to.

  “Out of sight, out of mind” is another one of my family’s mottos.

  It will take me two planes, a layover in Toronto, a trip through customs, and one very shiny town car to get to the hotel where I’ll be staying for my first night in Montreal. Move-in day at camp isn’t until tomorrow afternoon, but my parents booked my flight for a day early. Mom claimed it was so I could have a day to relax from travel before diving in, but more and more I’m starting to think that Dad just wanted to be rid of me a day earlier.

  I’m pissed. Totally pissed. Pissed because of what my dad did, pissed because I saw, and pissed that my father thinks he can give me an envelope of cash and get me to shut up, as if I’m one of those political gossip bloggers (who, from what I’ve heard, are very easily bought).

  The hours of travel have done nothing to quiet the mass of misery whirling around inside my brain. All they’ve done is switch my anxiety gears from the past to the future, because the reality has started to set in: Skate camp. A comeback. Junior nationals. Ugh. I spend the car ride from the airport to the hotel coming up with creative yet totally impractical plans to break one of my legs.

  The car pulls off the street into an overhang driveway crowded with bellmen speaking French. A young blond bellhop takes my hand and guides me away from the car onto the patio in front of the hotel. “Checking in?”

  “Yes,” I reply, and give him a slight smile. I’m exhausted, and I smell like airplane. I’m in no mood to flirt.

  “Name? And perhaps your phone number?” The bellhop is giving me the kind of crooked grin that looks all too practiced. I scowl at him.

  “Sloane Jacobs,” I say, “and no.” The bellhop chuckles as if I’m playing hard to get and scribbles on a luggage tag, which he affixes to the handle of my suitcase. He makes another for my skate bag, and then reaches to take my tote off my shoulder. I instantly think of the envelope of cash and pull back.

  “No thanks,” I reply, and grip the handle tighter. “I’ll keep this one with me.”

  “I will personally make sure it arrives in your room,” the bellhop says, in a way that makes it clear he’s used to getting girls to hand over much more than their bags. He
pulls on the handle, which slips off my shoulder, and the tote tumbles to the ground. A couple of books, my phone, and a collection of ChapSticks go skittering everywhere.

  “I’m so sorry!” The bellhop’s face loses all the confidence. He immediately goes into panic mode. He drops to his knees and chases after a tube of cherry ChapStick.

  I reach down and snatch my bag, standing up so fast I have to take a quick step back. My foot lands on something other than the ground. It’s soft and lumpy and gives way underneath me. I feel my ankle wrench to one side, and I start to pitch backward.

  My hand closes around a fistful of fabric, but it’s only a temporary save. I’m on the ground, lying on top of some kind of oversized duffel bag that smells like a foot, while a dark-haired girl next to me is on her butt on top of my suitcase, glaring. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie and loose jeans.

  “What the hell?” She tosses her long black hair out of her face as she stands up, wincing.

  “I’m sorry.” I pick myself up, rotating my ankles to test for pain. “I was falling and—”

  She cuts me off. “You didn’t care who you took with you? Why don’t you watch it next time?”

  “I’m so sorry, it was an accident,” I say. What is her problem?

  “Whatever,” she snaps, then shoots me a look that contains so much venom I’m shocked I don’t fall over dead on the spot. Suddenly, with that look, all the exhaustion and anger of the day comes rushing into my chest. Even though every part of my brain is screaming at me to just turn around and let it go, the next words are out of my mouth before I can even stop them.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t left your luggage on the ground. Seriously, who does that?” I say in my nastiest mean-girl competition voice. She doesn’t even blink. Something tells me I’m not even close to the baddest person she’s ever encountered.

  She takes a step closer. I may be in over my head here. “Most people watch where they’re going, princess.”