Training Ground

by Kate Christie

  As soon as she hung up the land line, she grabbed her cell phone. It was a Sunday, and for once no one else was home. Her father was away on one of his many work-related trips, and her mother had taken her brother, Tyler, to a skate park to work on his middle school science fair project, which apparently involved measuring the effects of speed on the distance and height of his favorite skateboarding trick. Leave it to Ty to find a way to combine science with his love of skateboarding.

  “Hey. Call me!” she texted. Less than a minute later her cell rang. She picked up, laughing. “Okay, that was fast even for you.”

  “You better not have opened your presents early,” Jamie said.

  “Presents? As in, plural?”

  “Apparently you didn’t or you would know that. What’s up? I thought we weren’t going to talk until tomorrow after the family thing?”

  Emma’s father was planning to fly home from Nevada—or was it Oklahoma?—in time to whisk them all off to a fancy birthday dinner in downtown Seattle. She would believe it when she saw it. Although maybe that wasn’t entirely fair. He had been trying much harder recently, and Ty at least had forgiven him for any past transgressions.

  “I couldn’t wait for tomorrow,” she told Jamie. “Dude, I got called up to the under-19 team camp next month in LA! Can you freaking believe it?”

  “Of course I can,” Jamie exclaimed, her voice nearly as excited. “I told you, you are one badass soccer player. When’s camp?”

  Emma shared the little she knew. More details would arrive via a formal letter of invitation sometime in the next few days.

  “I can’t believe it’s happening!” she added. “I mean, I’ve worked really hard, but so have a thousand other girls our age, you know?” As soon as the words left her lips, she realized that one of those thousands was on the other end of the telephone line.

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Jamie declared, and Emma could hear the smile in her voice. “You’re totally going to show those SoCal biatches how it’s done.”

  One of the things they’d bonded over was the annoying supremacy of Southern California teams. No matter how far their own club teams went, they inevitably encountered and usually lost to a team from SoCal populated with taller and stronger than average players who tugged on jerseys and threw elbows and kicked you when you were on the ground. They were the quintessential mean girls—except that they could play soccer better than almost anyone else.

  Unsurprisingly, the junior national program had significant representation from LA and its environs.

  “Anyway, what are you up to?” Emma asked, sitting down on the tan corduroy rocker in the living room. Their house was situated at the top of a bluff above Spring Beach, and three wide picture windows offered an expansive view of Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island and, on a clear day, the snow-capped Olympic Mountains.

  “Homework. Did I tell you my chemistry teacher pulled me aside the other day and told me she thought I was one of her most talented students?”

  “No way. That’s awesome.”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said. “I kind of think chemistry is mostly memorization, and I’ve always been good at that.”

  “She probably knows what she’s talking about. Didn’t you say she’s your favorite teacher?”

  “Yeah. She’s really funny and smart, and she wears these kickass shoes and these really cute glasses...”

  “Sounds like someone has a crush,” Emma teased.

  “Ew! She’s like twenty years older than us!”

  “Ooh, so mid-thirties? Sounds hot.” She could almost hear Jamie’s blush over the phone line.

  “She’s straight and married. Get your mind out of the gutter, Blake.”

  “Not everyone who’s married is straight.”

  “I think my gaydar would have pinged by now.”

  Emma paused. This would be the perfect time to tell Jamie about her own—flexibility, as she liked to think of it. When she’d started having crushes on girls in junior high, she had assumed it was a passing stage. But the crushes didn’t stop. If anything, they’d only grown stronger. She still liked guys, and she still saw herself settling down with one. Despite the roller coaster of her parents’ marriage, she’d always wanted kids; a man seemed like a necessary part of her future. And yet, she couldn’t pretend that girls didn’t fascinate her—the way they smelled, the softness of their skin, the ease with which they shared their feelings. Most of the boys she knew got stuck on the surface of things, as if it didn’t matter what was going on underneath.

  “Earth to Emma. Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she said, and let the moment pass.

  They talked about schoolwork and soccer, team dinners and gossip. A girl on Jamie’s team was pregnant and keeping the baby even though her boyfriend didn’t want to. As a result, she wouldn’t be able to finish out the season.

  “I can’t believe she was so careless,” Jamie said. “It’s 2003, and there’s a Planned Parenthood only a few miles from our school.”

  “At least you’ve never had to worry about that, right?” Emma commented. Another advantage to dating girls.

  It was Jamie’s turn to go radio silent. Emma looked at her cell screen, but the timer kept ticking away. Maybe the call had dropped at the other end? Then Jamie’s voice returned, sounding strangely far away.

  “Right. Good thing.”

  Something about her tone took Emma back to the night they’d met, when Jamie had stared out at the ocean looking like she might cry. Weird. All Emma had said was that she’d never had to worry about getting pregnant. Jamie had told her she’d never had a boyfriend, so why would that upset her? Unless—Emma stopped the thought. Clearly she’d seen too many Lifetime movies, heard too many cautionary tales about teenaged girls.

  But still… “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  “Totally.”

  But neither of them spoke, and Emma couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened to the girl she could hear breathing over the phone line.

  “Anyway,” Jamie said at last, “I should probably get back to my homework.”

  “Yeah, I should go, too.”

  She didn’t really want to hang up, but she also didn’t know what else to say. Jamie was open in so many ways but not about this—whatever “this” was. What had she called her issues with her mom the night they met? A deep, dark secret? Apparently she preferred to keep it that way.

  “Congratulations again,” Jamie said. “I’m really happy for you, Em.”

  “Thanks, Jamie. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? I don’t want to open presents without you. Not that being on the phone is the same.”

  “My dad says a company in Belgium is working on software that will let people connect through video chat. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  “Heck yeah. Keep me posted.”

  When they finally ended the call a little while later, Emma stood up to pace the living room. Lucy, the family’s aging black lab, thumped her tail against the couch each time Emma reached one end of the Oriental rug and spun on her heel to start back.

  She talked to herself as she paced. “I can’t ask her straight out, can I? I mean, what’s the etiquette here? ‘From things you have said—and haven’t said, really—I’m wondering if there’s something you want to tell me…’ But that’s stupid. If she wanted to tell me, she would have. Or what if she’s waiting for me to ask? Aargh!”

  Suddenly she flung herself onto the couch and leaned into Lucy, resting her cheek on the old dog’s warm fur. Lucy’s tail thumped again and she reached out a paw. Obediently Emma rubbed her belly. Why did life have to be so complicated? When she was younger, everything had seemed so easy. Her parents had loved her and Ty and each other, and she had loved soccer and school and sunny summer mornings, and someday she would grow up and play soccer all over the world before settling down and having a family of her own. But then she had become a teenager and her parents had seemed to stop loving each other, at least for a t
ime, and now Ty was becoming a teenaged boy—bleh—and while soccer was definitely looking up, she wasn’t sure anymore who she was or what she wanted.

  If she wasn’t girlfriend material, if she cared more about soccer than anything else, then how would she ever manage the family bit? Who wanted a wife or mother who was never around? That role seemed reserved for men. Look at her own parents. Her father’s career had taken off eight years earlier when he’d developed a surgical technique that simplified the treatment of complex airway disorders in pediatric patients. His technique had saved the lives of thousands of children, and he traveled the country and world consulting on difficult cases and teaching his technique to other surgeons. Her mother’s career, meanwhile, had always come second. For one thing, her job was here in Seattle. She was the one who kept the household running, who made sure Emma and her brother did their homework and got to lessons, practice, and games on time.

  Speaking of being on time… She glanced at her watch. It was almost five, which meant she had to get going. Dani and Sian, her two closest friends on the soccer team, were taking her out for a pre-birthday dinner. Good, she thought, rising to her feet. A night out with the girls was exactly what she needed to take her out of her own head.

  An hour later she was seated at a table in a sushi bar in the International District, munching edamame and mixing wasabi and soy in a dipping dish. She had dressed up in a red scoop-necked shirt and striped jersey skirt, pairing them with flats that wouldn’t hurt her feet if they decided to take an after-dinner walk. Her friends were similarly clad in comfortable skirts and light make-up and were currently discussing the rumor they had heard that Justin Tate, captain of the boys’ soccer team and newly single, was planning to ask Emma out.

  “You guys would be like soccer royalty,” Sian said, her cheeks flushed from the walk up the hill to the restaurant. She was in shape, but her fair skin colored at the slightest exertion. After every practice and game her entire body was pink and shiny, a fact she bemoaned regularly.

  “High school royalty,” Dani corrected, her olive skin blush-free as usual.

  “Whatever. Do you like him?” Sian gazed at Emma expectantly.

  “I don’t know. Even if I did, I just broke up with Josh. I’m not ready to date yet.”

  “That was like a month ago,” Dani said, “and it was your call.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I have time, then. I got a call from US Soccer today. They want me to go to an under-19 camp in LA next month.”

  “Oh my god!” Sian squealed.

  “No fucking way.” Dani shook her head, smiling.

  “I know, right? I hoped I would make it to the next level, but I wasn’t sure it would happen.”

  Dani rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Miss Modest. You started almost every match for the seventeens.”

  “Yeah, and you made a bunch of all-tournament teams with them, didn’t you?” Sian asked. “You had to know it was only a matter of time before the nineteens called.”

  Emma shrugged. Nothing was guaranteed when it game to the national team pool. Coaches and scouts were human, and their decisions were unpredictable and subject to change.

  “Wait.” Dani frowned. “Next month? When exactly is this camp?”

  “That’s the thing…” She stopped, grateful for the reprieve as their server delivered several trays overflowing with colorful rolls and plates of nigiri sushi. They divvied up the food and dug in, Dani’s question momentarily on hold as they oohed and ahhed over the melt-in-your-mouth quality of the fish.

  Finally Sian circled the conversation back around. “When do you have to go?”

  Emma tapped her chopsticks on her plate. “November fifteenth through the twenty-second.”

  “But that’s during states!”

  “I know. I’m really sorry, guys.”

  Lips pursed, Dani nodded slowly. “I guess you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.”

  “You know I don’t want to miss the end of the season, but this is the next step. If I do okay, it’s on to the under-23s. And if I do well there…”

  “You could get called up to the senior team,” Dani finished for her. “We get it, don’t we, Siani?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sian mumbled, and took a sip of ice water.

  “It’s just shitty timing,” Dani added, her eyes on Emma’s.

  “The shittiest,” she agreed.

  They were quiet for a few minutes while they continued to demolish their sushi. Japanese food was Emma’s absolute favorite. Did Chapel Hill even have sushi restaurants? And if they did exist, would they be any good? Somehow she hadn’t managed to ask that question when she’d visited campus the previous spring. Occasionally she wondered if she was making the right decision to move three thousand miles away from home, but UNC was a perennial national championship favorite—in fact, they’d won it two out of the last four years and were expected to win again this season—as well as a feeder school for the national team. More UNC graduates had participated in the national pool than any other school in the country. As soon as the coach had made it clear he wanted her, her decision had been made. She would be crazy to turn down the opportunity.

  After they’d gotten some food in their systems, the other girls seemed to recover enough to ask about her plans for the next day. She filled them in on her father’s promise to take the family out to Canlis, a landmark restaurant situated at the south end of the Aurora Bridge. Then she paused, wondering if she should tell them about Jamie. But why shouldn’t she? They knew she had gotten close with “Surf Cup Girl,” as they called her.

  “And then when we get home,” she finished, “I’m going to call Jamie and open the package she sent.” She popped a piece of salmon nigiri in her mouth and chewed slowly, enjoying the taste sensation as her friends exchanged a look. She swallowed the bite and regarded them across the table. “What? If you have something to say, spit it out.”

  “It’s nothing.” Dani fiddled with her chopsticks. “Except, I don’t know, you’ve been talking about this girl a lot lately.”

  “So? We’re friends.”

  Sian elbowed Dani, who said, “Are you sure that’s all you are? Tamara pointed her out in some of the Surf Cup photos, and I totally remember her now. She’s cute, if you like that sort of thing.”

  Emma stared at her. “You were looking for pictures of her?”

  “No. Tamara happened to point her out, that’s all.”

  “Okay,” Emma said, leaning away from the table. “Well, you’re right, she is cute. And smart, and nice, and a good soccer player, and we’re friends. Not sure how else to say it, and frankly, I’m a little pissed I have to.”

  “Sorry,” Sian offered immediately.

  “Well, I for one am glad you’re not lezzing out on us,” Dani said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just didn’t believe what people were saying.”

  “Wait. People have been talking about me being gay?”

  Since when did being friends with a lesbian automatically make you one? Not that the gossip was that far off base. Or maybe it was. God, did she really have to figure it out right this second? Why couldn’t people mind their own freaking business?

  “Some of Josh’s friends are saying you broke up with him because of Surf Cup Girl,” Sian explained. “I think because of the timing.”

  “That, and wounded male pride,” Dani added.

  “I broke up with Josh because I thought he was a douchebag, and this conversation only confirms it.”

  “Um, duh,” Dani said. “Took you long enough to figure that one out.”

  “Jamie said almost the same thing. You guys would really like her. Assuming you could get past the lezzing out thing.” And she stared hard at Dani.

  “Don’t get your panties all in a bunch. You know I don’t have anything against the gays.”

  “Then maybe don’t call them ‘the gays?’” Emma shook her head, trying not to smile.

  Dani smirked. “See? I can always make you laugh.”
/>
  Emma threw an edamame shell at her. “Sometimes I think being born in New Jersey ruined you for life.”

  “Hey, don’t be taking pot shots at my family,” Dani said in a heavy Jersey accent. “Otherwise my boys might have to come over and teach you some respect.” She stuck out her bottom lip and held up a fist.

  Emma wanted to stay annoyed at Dani, but she couldn’t keep a straight face at the sight of her best friend channeling Tony Soprano. Friends since kindergarten, they had always had each other’s backs. When Emma’s parents were separated the previous year, Dani had been there for her, lending a shoulder and doling out tissues as needed. The year before that, when one of Dani’s brothers had caused a car accident that had seriously injured a young boy, Emma had stuck by her despite the stares and whispers that followed them through the school halls. Now, as seniors, they had realized their childhood dream of captaining their high school team together.

  An all-state striker, Dani was headed to UCLA on scholarship next fall, so soon enough they would be living on opposite coasts. But Emma couldn’t imagine not being friends with her. Dani knew her better than anyone. And yet, she didn’t know that the rumors about Emma’s sexuality weren’t entirely unfounded. No one did.

  That was going to have to change, Emma told herself as she drove home that evening. They had gone for a sunset walk at Alki Beach in West Seattle, throwing rocks into the water and talking about soccer and families and boys and how impossibly fast their senior year seemed to be moving. Despite several chances to come clean, Emma had kept her secret to herself. She didn’t want to risk losing her closest friends over something that may or may not ever happen. What was the point? She thought of Jamie, who had come out to her family and friends when she was thirteen and to everyone else—teachers, classmates, aunts, uncles, cousins—a year later. Emma couldn’t even imagine the courage that whole process must have taken.

  Then again, maybe coming out was easier for someone like Jamie. No one would look at her and think, “Wow, that chick looks totally straight.” But that was exactly what people saw when they looked at Emma. To be honest, it was what she saw when she looked in the mirror, too. How could she be attracted to girls? She simply didn’t look like the type. That was partly why she kept waiting for it to pass—life would be so much simpler if she’d only ever thought that way about guys.