Roller Girl

by Vanessa North

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Well, good for you. Does Eddie know? We could do an ad buy for the shop during your segment.”

  I smack his arm. “I’m getting emo over here, and you’re plotting your advertising budget. Cold.”

  “I love you, Tina. You’re going to be great, because you’re always great. You’re funny, you’re smart, you don’t have to work hard not to say ‘ain’t’ like a big ol’ redneck. Damn right I want an ad for my pro shop to run in the middle of your perfection.”

  I can’t help it; I laugh, and let them hug me again. Ben swipes the rest of my sandwich, Dave makes new ones, and by the time I leave their house, I’ve got an appointment the last week in August with Amber at the television station to tape the interview.

  That night at practice, with heavy-duty makeup covering the hickey on my neck, I wait nervously with the other fresh meat as Joe and Stella set up cones at regular intervals down the length of the gym.

  “Suicide sprints are a simple concept. You sprint to the line, then you sprint back to the wall. Then you sprint to the next line, then back to the wall. But we’re putting a little derby twist on it. At each line, you execute a safe fall. Remember to tuck up, fall small. Then get your ass up and get back on the wall. One rule: you can’t do the same fall twice. Go.”

  I’m sweating after the first fall, when I drop to my knees. By the second, my legs are aching. By the third, I’m mentally cussing out Joe and Stella, who watch us from the sidelines.

  I was a professional athlete. For years. And I’m struggling.

  When I collapse on the floor at the end of the drill, every part of my body hurts. Joe skates over to me.

  “How’s it going?”

  “The M*A*S*H theme song is a lie.” I groan. “Suicides aren’t painless.”

  Joe laughs and sticks her hand out, hauling me back to my feet. “You did great.”

  And then she skates away. No hug. No flirting. None of the easy affection I’ve gotten used to from her.

  My stomach lurches and I blink back the sting behind my nose. What the hell? Did I imagine our intimate weekend together? I know we can’t let on to the rest of the team that we’re seeing each other, but she’s treating me like a stranger. And it hurts.

  As the rest of the skaters finish, Joe and Stella set up the cones in a different configuration—four cones to mark the inside corners of a track. Joe skates to the center of the room and dangles her stopwatch in the air. “Since you’re warmed up, who’s ready to do 27/5?”

  A few of the other new girls gasp. Doing assessments after suicides?

  Some of the assessments I’ve already passed. Safe falls I can do. Lateral jumping, I’m all over that. Speed isn’t a problem usually—but I’ve never had a speed test after suicides. I don’t need anyone questioning whether I can hack it. I don’t need to be questioning it myself.

  When the whistle blows a few minutes later, I push as hard as I can, and then I push harder. My lungs are burning, my legs protesting. My heart pounds like a heavy-metal drummer in my chest. And I push on. Heading into the last straightaway, I swing my arms and give it everything I’ve got. I fly past Joe, who calls out my time.

  “4:38. Nice work, T.”

  Slowing to a stop, I brace my hands on my knees and gulp in air in huge, heaving breaths. I still need to jump the sack at the end of the obstacle course. In order to make the team, I need to jump the sack. I can do it. I know I can—I’ve mastered lateral jumps, and managed a few head-on jumps in the last couple of practices, but it isn’t the same as jumping under pressure.

  I stare at the sacks of sand, just sitting there, taunting me.

  “You can do this.” Lauren skates up to me. “If I can do it, me? You can totally do this.”

  “I think I need to be alone for a minute.”

  I skate out into the hallway and sink down against the wall. I pick at the end of my purple LLRG laces, which I lovingly moved from the rentals to the new Riedell skates I bought when I decided yeah, I really wanted to play derby. All I need to do is jump the sack. I’ve learned how to take a fall, so even if I trip—or fudge the landing—I’m not likely to get hurt. The only thing stopping me from doing this is my stupid anxiety.

  “Tina?” Stella comes out to the hallway. “You okay?”

  “It’s just a sack of sand.”

  She grimaces. “It’s your bugbear. Lauren’s was the 27/5. Yours is jumping.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, look, you’re a damn fine skater. You’ve got more natural talent and balance in your little toe than a lot of us have in our whole bodies. You could be every bit as good as Paula Fast One or Joe Mama, or any of the badass derby babes we all love. You just gotta get your head in it.”

  “I know.”

  “Joe isn’t gonna wait for you, honey. You need to go back in there and jump that fucking bag before she moves on to the next drill.”

  “Okay.”

  She reaches out a hand to help me up, and I take it.

  Back inside the gym, my hands shake, and I draw in as many deep calming breaths as I can manage.

  “Tina, you’re up.” Joe says. “One successful run through the obstacle course, and you’re a Lake Lovelace Rollergirl.”

  One successful run after twenty-seven laps and suicide sprints. Easier said than done.

  The obstacle course changes slightly every time. The cones are set up in a line, and I need to weave in and out of them like a sine wave. Several members of the team are standing alongside the course in their sports bras, with their stinky, sweaty shirts balled up in their hands, ready to throw at me.

  And at the end of it all is my bugbear. The sack of goddamn sand.

  A woman who made a career out of jumping on water should not be afraid of jumping over one little sandbag.

  Joe blows the whistle. I throw myself forward, straight toward the cones. The first T-shirt comes flying at my face, and I duck. The second is aimed at my feet; I weave. A shirt soars straight toward the middle of my body—but too slow. I let it hit my flank, stink and all, and fall to the floor behind me. I clear the last cone and speed toward the sack.

  Every ounce of my focus narrows to that harmless-looking gray sack.

  “Butt down, Tina!”

  I get low. I bend my knees. I take a deep breath—and I fly.

  It’s inelegant, and my landing is awkward and scary and involves a tiny bit of flailing. But I’m upright. I cleared the sack.

  I’ve made the team.

  And I start crying for the third time that day.

  Three of us make the team that night. Over beers at Blue’s, Courtney becomes Wynona Spider; Jennifer becomes Jenny from the Glock; and when asked, I say the first thing that pops into my head: “Hoochie Glide”—my favorite wakeboarding trick.

  “You know we’re all gonna shorten that to Hooch, right?” Stella cackles, handing me another beer.

  “Hooch it is.” I grin. “Where’s Bex?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Went back to work after practice. She’s got appointments booked until ten every night this week.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. But I’ll see her later.” She gives a coy little smile and pushes at her afro.

  “Hoochie, can I speak to you?” Joe comes up behind me. “Somewhere private?”

  Stella glances between the two of us. “We’re talking, Joe.”

  I take a sip of my beer and study Stella’s face. She looks—not mad, but hurt.

  And honestly, I’m hurt too. Joe’s been ignoring me all night, and I don’t much feel like talking privately, but I push that down and swing around to face her.

  “Yeah, Coach. Where do you want to go?”

  She flinches at the word “coach” and then gestures with her head toward the parking lot. “Come sit in my van. It’s quiet out there.”

  Stella has folded her arms over her chest and is biting her lip like she’s trying to keep from saying something.

  “Red?” I ask. “Do you mind
?”

  “You don’t need my permission to talk to Joe.” She’s speaking to me, but she’s looking at Joe when she says it, and something about the way she emphasizes the word “talk” feels like a warning. Does she know about us?

  I follow Joe out to the parking lot, anger blooming in me with every step. The heat in the air seems to intensify my frustration—if we weren’t keeping secrets, we could be having this conversation in the comfort of air conditioning over cold beers. Although, if we weren’t keeping secrets, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation at all. By the time we get to her van, I’m so pissed I’m shaking. As she starts unlocking the door, it bursts out of me.

  “If this is how you treat all your lovers, it’s no surprise Chloe left you.”

  She rears back and her face hardens.

  “Get in the van. We’re not doing this out here.”

  “Why not? My day has been shitty enough. Why not make a big old spectacle of myself over a girl? I mean, we’re supposed to be celebrating, right? I made the team, yay!”

  “Stop it.” She pushes her fingertips into her temples. “Stop and think about what’s happening here.”

  “What’s happening is that you’re ruining everything.” I start toward my car, too pissed and hurt to stay and talk it out.

  “Tina, please.” It’s the catch in her voice that stops me. Her small, broken voice with its sexy rasp, trying to make something bigger of itself to call me back, and it crumbles there, in the middle of the word “please.”

  “Don’t yell. It’s not worth the risk.” I turn back to her. “I’m not worth the risk.”

  “You are. Will you please come talk to me?”

  I can’t resist her when she says “please.” I get in the van, and she immediately starts the engine and turns on the air conditioning. It feels like heaven.

  “I’m so sorry, Tina. I didn’t mean to let you think I was ignoring you or mad at you. I might have overdone it a little in trying not to show any favoritism.”

  “You made us do suicide sprints before the assessments.”

  “And you passed. No one can say you didn’t earn that. No one.”

  “What does it even matter if you’re going to treat me like a stranger in front of the team? If you keep that shit up, everyone’s going to know we had sex anyway. They’ll just think one or the other of us was terrible at it.”

  “I’m sorry. I was nervous too, okay? I was nervous about your assessment. I was nervous I made it too hard. I was scared you weren’t going to pass. And I kind of shut down because I couldn’t let any of that show.”

  “But what are we doing, Joe?” Nate’s words from the morning come back to me. “Aren’t we too old for secret girlfriends?”

  “I don’t want it to be a secret forever. I just—can we just keep it quiet until I figure out how to tell the team? Please?”

  She picks up my hand and nibbles at the tips of my fingers, sending a sharp pang of lust through me as I remember all the ways she used her teeth on me over the course of the weekend.

  “I won’t pretend we’re strangers.” She bites the inside of my wrist, and my head drops back. “Come back to my place for orgasms and waffles. Please?”

  Her voice breaks again on the “please.”

  “I think you do that on purpose.” I sigh, pulling her toward me. “And I am so weak for it.”

  Her lips meet mine in one of those kisses that stings the heart. She can hurt me—she already has, and could again. The kiss is my protest, and her apology, and all the pain between them.

  But when she bites my lower lip and then tongues the sting away, it takes the other hurts with it, and forgiveness tastes a little like blood and tears.

  The alarm on my phone goes off at 4:30 a.m., like always, but it takes me a moment to remember that my five thirty client won’t be meeting me at the gym. I turn it off and roll to my side. Joe’s arm wraps around my waist and pulls me back into the curl of her body.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good.”

  We doze a little longer, and around six, my phone rings. Jeremy. I slip out of Joe’s bed, leave her with Elvis curled up at her feet, and take the call in her kitchen.

  “Jeremy, how are you?”

  “Already jonesing for my missed leg day. I thought you’d want to know what’s going on. I mean, since you were there yesterday when it happened.”

  “Of course. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Still having the dizzy spells, and they have me on a heart rate monitor. I have a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White. Turns out I was born with it.”

  “Is it . . . is it treatable?”

  “Yeah, they do a thing where they stick catheters in my leg and zap parts of my heart until it’s normal again.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, the procedure isn’t painless or anything, so there’s a recovery time. But yeah, basically, that’s it. We’re doing the procedure tomorrow, and then I can resume normal workouts in about two weeks—earlier if I feel up to it.”

  The relief that swamps me then—I didn’t realize until that moment just how much guilt I’d been carrying over his illness, whether it was an eating disorder and I’d missed the signs, or had been working him too hard in the gym. Not only is it neither, but it’s also treatable, and he’ll be back to normal in a matter of weeks.

  “God, Jeremy. That’s . . . I’m so fucking relieved.”

  “I knew you’d understand. I was so worried I was doing something wrong. And I skipped breakfast that morning and—”

  “No, honey, that was my fault. I jumped to conclusions—”

  “But that’s the thing. We were both wrong. I was wrong about being a fuckup, and you were wrong about being a fuckup too. We’re okay, right?”

  I can’t hold back a laugh at that. “Yeah, we’re okay. I expect you back at the gym, unless I hear otherwise, at 5:30 a.m. two weeks from Monday.”

  Thankfully he drops the phone before cheering. Then he picks it up again. “I’m the biggest asshole in the cardiology wing. I should go; Emily is giving me the look.”

  “Feel better soon, Jeremy.”

  “I will. Hey, did you mean what you said to my mom?”

  “Which part?”

  “That I’m your fav-or-ite.”

  Good grief. This kid. “Yeah. I meant it.”

  “You’re my favorite too. Bye, Coach!”

  And he hangs up like it’s nothing.

  “You are all mine tonight.” Stella grabs me as I come through the door at practice, steering me away from where the fresh meat are doing blocking drills. “I didn’t get a chance to see you again after you and Joe disappeared last night, and of course she didn’t tell you my plans for you.”

  “I’m sorry—we were in the van, and she was my ride home, and Elvis hadn’t eaten—” I’m babbling excuses, but she brushes them off.

  “Come on, we’re going to play a little game called ‘pass the panty.’”

  “Okaaaaay.” I glance around, looking for Joe, and spot her explaining something to one of the newest recruits, a skinny blonde with eyes like saucers. She smiles when she sees me and gives me a little wave. Relieved, I wave back.

  “Earth to Hoochie.” Stella snaps her fingers in front of my eyes. “Okay, so Joe and I talked about it, and we want you skating pivot. You’re fast and big, so who better to put in a position where you could be either a blocker or a jammer? So, what we need to do is practice pulling the panty off our helmets and passing it hand to hand while skating. Lauren, Bex, and Katie are going to be trying to fuck up our pass and force a penalty on us. Lauren’s husband, Chase, is joining us tonight to play zebra. He’ll call it if we make a bad pass.”

  Sure enough, there’s a guy standing with Lauren and Bex. He’s a hefty guy with ruddy round cheeks and dark curly hair shot through with gray. So that’s Chase. He laughs at something his wife says, and then looks down at the stack of papers in his hands.

&n
bsp; The drill is intense—the blockers go after us aggressively, and it takes several tries before Stella and I manage to complete a panty pass without dropping it or being forced out of bounds.

  I’m starting to hate the sound of Chase’s whistle.

  And then there’s getting the panty over my helmet without taking a hit.

  “This is why we have to practice it.” Stella gives me a hand up from the floor. “You’re doing great, by the way.”

  I flush at the praise, because it sure doesn’t feel like I’m doing great. I hand her the panty back. “Hold on, I gotta get a drink of water before we go again.”

  I skate over to my bag and dig out my water bottle, taking a long drink. Joe skates over. “You okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah, but this drill is so hard.”

  “It really is; that’s why it’s so important. How’s it working out with Chase? I talked to him about maybe learning to ref, so he and the kids can be involved and he won’t feel left behind.”

  “That was a good idea. Lauren said she hoped he and the kids would come to some bouts.” I take one last pull from my water bottle before tossing it back in my bag. “It adds to the realism of the drill, too.”

  “Tina!” Stella shouts, and I glance up. “This isn’t social hour.”

  Joe flinches as though the scolding was meant for her. “Okay, I gotta get the fresh meat working on some speed drills. I’ll come check on you and Stella in a minute.” She reaches out and gives my hand a quick, furtive squeeze, and then she’s gone.

  “You guys coming over to Blue’s?” Stella asks as Joe and I skate around, picking up the cones. The others have gone, and it’s only the three of us left.

  “Nah, not tonight. I’m beat.” Joe’s gaze flickers up to meet mine.

  “Me too. Maybe next time.” I give a little stretch. Shit, is that too obvious?

  “All right.” Stella pauses and stares at us for a minute. “I guess I’ll go over to Bex’s shop and hang out while she sketches. Maybe if she has a cancellation, I’ll get a tattoo.” She turns to leave, giving us one last look over her shoulder.

  “Have fun! Good work tonight,” Joe calls after her.