I could practically hear Artie smile. “That’s what family is for, right? Now log onto World of Warcraft. I want to go kick some monster ass.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. It was going to be long night. We might as well spend it killing things we didn’t have to feel guilty about later.
§
The weeks before our bout against the Rose Petals passed in a haze of research, training, and setting pit traps in the woods around our property. The pit traps were for practice — it’s never a good idea to sit back and rest on your laurels — but the rest was to get me ready for my first formal encounter with the mysterious Adrienne. After a month of chasing down every trace she’d ever left on the Internet, Artie and I still didn’t know her last name, where she was from, or what she did outside of derby. The white hair didn’t seem to be a wig, but that didn’t make it a viable distinguishing feature: her failure to wear a wig when she skated didn’t mean she didn’t wear one in her off hours.
Was she a student? A truck driver? A waitress with wanderlust who sought out the nearest derby league every time she moved? Or was she some kind of psychic vampire, moving on when her food supply started to get suspicious? And most troubling of all, could I skate a good jam with this many questions cluttering my head?
“Thompson!” My team captain came up fast on my left, scowling at me. We were in the middle of warm ups. I was supposed to be weaving around my teammates, preparing for some hard skating. Instead, I was gliding around the track at a smooth, unvarying pace, too distracted by my thoughts to do anything but keep myself from falling over. “Is there a problem?”
“I banged my knee yesterday on the counter at home,” I said, choosing a believable lie. “I’m fine to skate, I just need to loosen it up before I start doing anything fancy.”
She looked at me suspiciously. Elmira Street was one of the best jammers in the league — top four, definitely. But I was better. “Are you absolutely sure about this?” she asked. “Because this is the last match before Regionals, and if you want to make the All–Star team, you need to have a solid record to carry you there. It’s good right now. You fuck up tonight…”
“I know. I’m not going to fuck up tonight.” I flashed a toothy smile in her direction. “I’m going to skate circles around those Roses.”
“I hope so, Thompson. You’ve had a really good season. I don’t want you to blow it.”
“I won’t,” I said, and sped up, finally putting my back into it as I bent my knees and began to weave my way around the track. The faster I went, the easier it became to focus on skating, rather than allowing myself to worry about what the Rose Petals’ jammer was likely to try. By the time the whistle blew to clear the track for the evening’s first match — the Stunt Troubles vs. the Grim Grinning Girls — I felt like my head was finally clear. I joined the rest of the Slasher Chicks on the left–hand bleachers, where we’d be able to watch the skaters without getting in the way.
Our position came with the unexpected bonus of giving me a perfect view of the Rose Petals — and most importantly, of the white–haired jammer with the bad track record where her teammates were concerned. The fabled Adrienne seated herself squarely in the middle of her team, watching the derby girls who now circled the track with that same predatory interest that I had observed on our first meeting. She was scoping out the skaters the way a cat scopes out songbirds, watching first the individuals and then the flock, determining their weaknesses.
I was making some pretty big assumptions — maybe she just liked to stare at people — but a large part of my training had focused on trusting my gut, and my gut told me that I was right about the way she was looking at those skaters. I lightly elbowed Fern, who was sitting next to me, and motioned with my chin toward Adrienne.
“What do you think?” I asked softly, my voice almost drowned out by the roaring of the crowd.
Fern followed my gaze to Adrienne and blanched. For just a second, her weight seemed to decrease on the bleachers until I might as well have had nothing beside me. “She looks hungry,” Fern whispered.
A commotion on the floor wrenched our attention back to the track, where a group of girls had formed, unmoving and shouting for the referees. One of the medical staffers was running toward them. I stood, trying to get a better look, and caught a glimpse of a girl in Stunt Trouble green lying at the middle of the crowd. She wasn’t moving.
Fern tugged on my wrist. “Annie, look,” she said, her thin voice barely audible above the shouting.
I didn’t need to see which way she was pointing. I looked up, and there was Adrienne, still sitting in the same spot on the bleachers… but her eyes were closed, a look of serene pleasure suffusing her face. She looked like a woman who’d just had a really good orgasm, or a really good slice of pizza: satiated and fulfilled on a deep, primal level. Everyone around her was shouting. Half of them, like me, were standing up. And Adrienne just sat there, smiling like everything was perfect.
Maybe for her, everything was perfect.
Play was halted until medical could take care of the blocker from the Stunt Troubles. By the time they had her bundled off to the hospital, accompanied by her anxious boyfriend and two of her teammates, it was too late to get through a second match. The Rose Petals and the Slasher Chicks would not be playing against each other this season.
Elsie came to find me in the bathroom as I was stripping off my gear. She looked worried. “Annie? Are you okay?”
“I’m frustrated, I’m irritated, and I’m not going to skate tonight, so no, I’m not going to the after party,” I snapped, shoving my kneepads into my bag. “What about you?”
“Um, I’m going to drive you home, and then I’m meeting up with Carly for a little private time. The blocker who fell down, Hailey Mary? She used to skate for the Concussion Stand, and Carly’s really shaken up about it.”
I blinked, cheeks going red. Elsie wasn’t even a skater, and she knew more about what was going on in my league than I did. “Oh, hell, I didn’t even think of that. I can find my own way home if that would work better for you…”
“I can drive her home,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind us. We turned to see Adrienne standing in the bathroom doorway, her helmet held against her hip and a small smirk on her face. She looked faintly amused, like everything was a play being put on just for her. “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow, and giving someone else a ride is a great excuse for missing the party.”
“I don’t think —” began Elsie.
“That’s so great of you, thank you so much,” I said, cutting my cousin off before she could refuse Adrienne’s offer on my behalf. “We haven’t even been introduced yet, have we?”
“Not really, but I’ve seen you around. I’m Ivana Cutya. You’re Final Girl, right? You’re on the Slasher Chicks. Pretty cocky name if you ask me. Are you that sure you’d be the one to survive if we all wound up in a horror movie?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Good catch, though. Most people think my name just means I’m the last one to stop skating.”
Adrienne snorted amusement. “On a team with a horror movie theme? Yeah, right. Most people are morons. Anyway, one of your teammates told me you lived somewhere out east. That’s the way I’m going, so I’m happy to take you.”
“Cool. Let me get my stuff.”
Elsie’s hand clamped down over my wrist as I reached for my bag. She pulled me close, smiling sweetly as she said, “It’s really no trouble. I think it’s best if I drive my cousin home.”
“No, really, Elsie.” I pulled myself free, smiling back as I willed her to understand what I was going for. “Carly needs you, and it’ll be good for me and Ivana to get to know each other a little better.”
“Know thy enemy,” said Adrienne.
I glanced back at her. “Yeah,” I said, after a momentary pause. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
§
Adrienne was a good driver: calm, confident, and unhurried. She broke the speed limit on every street
we drove down — she was a derby girl, after all — but she stopped for red lights and never did anything I could interpret as dangerous. The GPS on her dash spat out periodic directions that would lead us to the house of an old classmate of mine who lived three miles from my parents’ house, as the crow flies. It was a small ruse, but enough that I didn’t feel bad about potentially leading a predator home.
We were most of the way there when Adrienne said, “I saw you watching me during the match today. You want to tell me what that was all about, or should I guess?”
“Sorry. Your hair it’s just so… white. How do you manage that without bleach–frying it into straw?”
To my surprise, she laughed. “Oh, please. ‘Your hair is so white’? This is derby. I think you’re the only girl with undyed hair that I’ve seen in the last week.”
Stung, I reached up and touched one reddish–brown braid. “I henna,” I said.
“Henna is not the same as dye, little girl, just like temporary tattoos are not the same as real ink, and bravado is not the same as bravery. Why were you really staring at me?”
“I remembered you from the match last month. The one where a Bad News Bear got hurt.”
“Ah, so we start telling the truth.” Adrienne turned down a side street. “I’m the new girl, so I’m a good place to point the finger. They talk about you, you know. Unfriendly, stand–offish, but always so ready to tell tales out of school. I’m on to you, Final Girl. You think you can survive the horror movie by refusing to drink, smoke, or fool around with boys. Well, you can’t. Not if you decide to fuck around with monsters instead.”
“What are you —”
She slammed her foot down on the brakes. I jerked forward against my seatbelt, gasping at the impact. “Get out of my car.”
“What?”
“You stared at me. It was rude and it made me uncomfortable.” Adrienne’s expression was unreadable in the dim cabin light. “Now I’m throwing you out of my car in the woods at night, which is rude, and should make you uncomfortable. You’re not a threat, Final Girl, and we’re even. Get out.”
“…Right.” I got out. Quickly, since I was more than a little afraid she’d start the car while I only had one foot on the pavement. Hugging my bag to my chest, I slammed the door. She hit the gas, and roared off down the road, vanishing into the trees. “What a bitch,” I said wonderingly.
Somewhere in the dark, an owl hooted loudly. I sighed and slung my bag over my shoulder before turning to start the four–mile trek home. At least I wasn’t much further than I’d planned to be. If Adrienne had been trying to scare me, she’d failed. But she’d told me one thing for sure:
Whatever she was, she was afraid of me.
§
I dialed Elmira’s number at the crack of noon the next day, which was the earliest I figured she’d be out of bed and ready to deal with derby questions. “Hello?” she said, sounding faintly muzzy, like she’d just woken from a deep sleep.
Oh, well. Too late to avoid waking her now. “It’s Annie Thompson — Final Girl. Do you have a second?”
“Oh my God, Annie, what time is it?”
“Noon.”
She groaned. “You’re a morning person, aren’t you? I thought morning people were banned from roller derby.”
“Technically, the morning ended when the clock struck twelve.”
“Yeah, but you were awake to make the call.” There was a rustling sound from the other end of the phone. “God, my mouth tastes like the wrong end of a cat.”
“There’s a right end?”
“Don’t quip at me, it’s fucking noon. Talk fast, Thompson, or I’m finding an excuse to kick you off the team.”
“It’s about Regionals.”
There was a pause before she said, sounding much more awake now, “You want to know if last night’s cancellation means you’re not going to make the All–Star team. That’s why you’re calling me first thing in the morning.”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Fuck. Couldn’t you have waited until I was awake?”
“I’m sorry, but no. It’s really important that I make the team.” The league Adrienne skated for had already posted their roster. She was jamming for them at Regionals, and that meant it was vital that I not only be there, but I be on my skates.
“Every derby girl thinks it’s important that she make the team. Every skater wants an excuse to put on her skates one more time. None of them think it’s important enough to call me while I’m still in bed.”
Shit. “In my defense, most people are awake at noon.”
“Well, I’m not.” Elmira sighed. “Last night’s cancellation will have no impact on your overall stats, okay? You have exactly as much of a shot as you did before Hailey Mary ate track.”
“Is it a good shot?”
“Why do you care?” Now Elmira sounded suspicious. “You didn’t care this much last year. I’m pretty sure you fucked up a few times on purpose so you wouldn’t make the All–Stars. What aren’t you telling me?”
I hesitated. Finally, I said, “There are some things I can’t discuss. But it’s important I be able to keep an eye on things, and that means I need to be on the All–Star team. That’s what’s going to keep me in the best position to help out.”
“Is this about the girls who’ve been blacking out during play?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to take that as a yes. Look, Annie, I don’t know what your deal is — nobody knows what your deal is. You’re a good skater, and you’re about as friendly as a wolverine in a box.”
“Has the box been shaken?” I ventured, trying to make a joke.
“Yes,” said Elmira, without amusement. I wilted. She continued, “But that’s not the important part. I’ve seen you with Meggie, and with Princess Leya, and with the other skaters who are… special. I’m pretty sure that whatever your deal is, it’s about helping those girls cope with their… difabilities.”
“Like different abilities,” I said. “Nice portmanteau.”
“We’re just going to ignore the part where normal people don’t use the word ‘portmanteau’ in conversation, and you’re going to answer a question for me. You’re going to answer it honestly, or I’m hanging up, and I won’t take any more calls from this number. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly.
“Are you trying to make the All–Star team this year because you want to protect us from whatever’s causing the accidents?”
“Yes,” I repeated, more firmly this time. Protection was familiar ground, even if discussing it with the captain of my roller derby team wasn’t.
“All right. I’ll keep that in mind when I put in my recommendations. Don’t fuck it up, Thompson, or I’m going to figure out who got left off the roster to make room for you, and then I’m going to help her kick your ass.”
“Aye–aye, Captain.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and hung up on me.
§
A roller derby All–Star team is sort of like one of those Capcom fighting games, the ones where characters from all different franchises would come together to kick each other’s asses. Each league fields an All–Star team made up of the best skaters from that league’s teams. In the case of the Silver Screams, that meant that our All–Stars would be drawing from the Slasher Chicks, the Concussion Stand, the Block Busters, and the Stunt Troubles. A normal derby team will have between ten and twenty players, with five of them taking the floor during each jam. The All–Star team for our league was hard–capped at twenty. No matter how you cut it, for some of us, the skating season was over.
Practice was called as normal. Elsie dropped me off out front, and I walked inside the warehouse only to be promptly grabbed in a headlock by Carlotta. I managed, barely, to restrain the urge to grab and break her wrists.
“There’s the bitch of the hour!” she crowed. “How’s it feel to be hated and envied by your peers?”
“Like I can’t breathe,�
�� I said, making a show of ineffectually shoving her off. Carlotta didn’t budge. I wasn’t really trying. “Let go. This isn’t funny.”
“Wow, your life is tragedy. Your cousin got the looks and the sense of humor.” Carlotta released me. “The All–Stars roster is up.”
I straightened, blinking at her. “It is? And?”
“And you’re one of the four jammers to make the team. Congratulations.” Then she grinned and punched me in the arm. “I may even stop most of the opposing players from turning you into a thin stain on the floor.”
“You’re on the team?”
“Co–captain and blocker bitch extraordinaire for the third year in a row.” Carlotta put two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly. Heads turned our way. She beckoned them over. “Come on, girls! Say hello to your new teammate!”
Girls from all four teams in our league — including, I was relieved to see, Fern and Marnie — swarmed around me, laughing, while Carlotta raced off to intercept another All–Star who had just come unwittingly through the front door. Fern flung her arms around my neck in a hug that was substantially friendlier than Carlotta’s chokehold. I laughed and hugged her back.
It’s nice to be a part of something. That’s what derby’s really all about: finding a place where you can be a part of something. And I tried to hold fast to that thought as our captains — Elmira and Carlotta, because what every hard–ass needs is someone even harder — put us through the most grueling practice I had ever experienced in my life. After an hour on the floor, I was ready to die. After two hours, I was ready to kill. After three hours, I was ready to die again, but I was too tired to be sure I’d do it correctly.
The whistle blew to mark the end of our session. I collapsed onto the mats, panting and staring up at the ceiling. Elmira skated into view, smiling sweetly.
“A little tired, Thompson?” she asked.
“I hate you,” I replied.
“Same to you, perky girl,” she said, and skated away. “Remember, you asked for this.”
I groaned as I rolled into an upright position. Inwardly, I was rejoicing. I had what I wanted: I was on the All–Stars. I was going to skate against Adrienne, and she was going to learn what it really meant to be afraid of me.
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