Maggie is incredulous. “Are you kidding? ‘Take good aim’? ‘Bag the sweetest kind of game’? GAME? BAG? They are advocating treating women like animals. Is a hunting metaphor really the kind of message you want to be sending?”
Aidan Neal looks down at his music. He looks guilty, like he made up the words instead of just singing them.
“If you hate the play, why did you even go out for it?” says the Milly.
Mr. Coles smiles brightly. “It’s rather old-fashioned, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” says Maggie.
Mr. Coles nods his head. “I agree with you. Showbiz can be quite traditional and even misogynistic. That is the frustration of Broadway.”
“There are other plays, you know, that aren’t so offensive.”
“Anything you want to recommend for the future?”
“Urinetown? Avenue Q?”
Mr. Coles laughs. “Those are excellent! Loved them both! Book of Mormon, too, if you haven’t seen it. But many people find them offensive for other reasons.”
“How about Wicked? I’ve seen that and it’s very empowering and feministical,” chimes another cast member. Maggie looks skeptically at this uninvited ally.
“That music is complicated, even for professionals, though I’d be willing to try it. The licensing is terribly expensive, too. Beyond our budget!”
Mr. Coles calls it quits for the day. He suggests that people spend some time really diving into the script. “Think about it in the context of the times, not that I’m excusing it. What would your characters want and need? What are their opportunities and limitations compared to yours today?”
It’s a classic teacher trick. Put extra work on the complainers, and pretty soon the complaints die down. But Mr. Coles is underestimating Maggie Cleave.
CHAPTER 26
“You sounded great, except I think that girl who’s playing Milly wants to kill you now.”
“Lizzie Barnes. She already wanted to kill me. Mr. Coles took a bunch of Milly’s solos and gave them to my character because Lizzie straight up sucks.”
“There’s a lot of drama with the drama kids,” I say. We are wandering through the student lot to find Max.
“SO MUCH DRAMA,” Maggie says, even though she is contributing at least a quarter of it. “I should have done volleyball with you. How’d it go?”
“Pretty good. We find out Monday.” When we finally spot Max’s car, there are already several people in it. “Um, does Max know you’re taking me home?”
“He won’t mind.”
But when we get to the Ford Focus, in addition to Max there are two seniors and one sophomore inside.
Did you know about this, Maggie?
“Hey.” Jackson smiles and slides to the middle.
“We’re taking Greer home,” Maggie says to Max.
“Cool.”
Maggie squeezes tight into Jackson, leaving me three inches to wedge myself. They all smush harder, but these are big guys and it’s not going to work. “Just sit on top of me,” Maggie says, patting her lap.
I am not sure, but I think Jackson turns slightly pink. I’m sure I do. I stand there, blinking at her for a minute, until she says, “Fine, I’ll sit on you,” and leans forward so I can get under her.
Now I’m wedged between Jackson and the door, with Maggie’s bony butt poking into my thigh. Her legs are draped over Jackson’s. I am simultaneously glad I am not sitting there and jealous that she is.
Up front they are talking about the disappointing end to the World Series, and who should be traded to whom. The kid on the other side of Jackson hasn’t looked up from his phone the whole time. Maggie’s on her phone now, too. Jackson and I can’t take ours out because there’s a girl in our laps.
“Tryouts?” Jackson says.
I nod and squeeze my arms in even tighter, trying to preserve the millimeter of space between us. I’ve been wearing the same Zoo shirt at tryouts every day and it’s beginning to smell like the zoo. If I wasn’t already sweaty from practice, I’d be sweaty now, because I don’t usually like people touching me, and now one is literally on me (thank god it’s Maggie) and the other (oh god it’s Jackson) is one fast turn away from careening into me.
“When do you find out?”
“Monday.”
“You doing anything this weekend?”
It’s very subtle, but I notice Maggie’s body tense. She doesn’t look at us, but she’s holding perfectly still, like she doesn’t want to miss my response.
“I, um, I’m, I have to help Maggie rewrite the script for the musical.” She raises her eyebrows at me. I swear my shirt gives off an entire wave of stink.
I am wrong about Max Cleave not knowing I exist. He jerks to a stop in front of my house without asking which one.
“Good luck with the script,” says Jackson, as I peel myself out of the back seat.
“Yeah, Greer. I’m looking forward to your help,” says Maggie, who has scored herself an accomplice.
CHAPTER 27
None of the furniture is where it was when I left for school.
The couch is where the chairs used to be. One chair is next to it, instead of facing it. The other chair is missing altogether, and the rug is rolled up in the corner. Everything, including the end tables, is lined up in a row.
I walk through the living room to the dining room, where the table has been rotated 90 degrees. My mother is chewing on the side of her thumb. She won’t bite her nails—she keeps very nice nails—but she will chew on her actual fingers if she’s really bothered.
“Hi?”
“Oh hi, sweetie.” She doesn’t look at me. She tips her head sideways and frowns at the table. She should frown. There is no space to get around the sides, like if you tried to shove a shoe in a shoebox the perpendicular way.
“Did you try out one of those feng shui consultants?” I bet it was the lady who had a bird on her shoulder in her headshot.
“No, I just read a couple of articles and tried some things myself.”
Even better. Mom is a feng shui consultant.
“I think the table was better the other way,” she says. “Or we need a shorter table.”
“It was good the other way. It had a nice flow,” I add, and pick up one end of the table. The two of us reorient the dining room and the world feels slightly more logical again.
She looks satisfied and walks me back to the living room. “What do you think about the couch there?”
“I guess it’s fun to change things up sometimes,” I say. One of the bookcases is half emptied; the books are stacked in three piles on the floor. Snow White and six dwarfs are still where they’ve always been, and I wonder if I’m ever going to see Grumpy again. Maybe one of the other dwarfs has had to take on his personality to keep things in balance. Maybe Bashful has started acting like a dick.
She takes my comment to mean I approve. “Yeah, I think so. Just get out of your comfort zone.” For Kathryn Walsh, moving the couch represents a move from her comfort zone.
“What are you doing with those books?”
“Oh! I’m de-cluttering.”
“Books aren’t clutter, Mom.”
“When there are so many of them, they are.”
I completely disagree. I start sliding the books back onto their shelf. Most of them are my old ones.
She goes on. “Have you heard of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up? It’s about the Japanese art of organizing.”
“You read that?”
“I didn’t read the actual book . . .”
“But you watched the show?”
“Not really, but I get the drift.”
Perfect. My mother believes she has gotten “the drift” of an ancient Chinese philosophical view of space and energy flow and a modern Japanese take on what to put in a garage sale, and
has arranged our house like a weird obstacle course. “Well, please don’t ‘tidy up’ my books.”
“You’re supposed to get rid of all the things that don’t bring you joy.”
“Does that thing give you joy?” I say, as Tyler blows in like a blast of nuclear energy.
Tyler doesn’t even notice that the furniture is all wonky. He just drops all his crap where there isn’t a rug anymore, sniffs the air, and says, “Are we having cabbage for dinner?”
If Tyler can smell me, I really need to change this T-shirt.
CHAPTER 28
I reach for my phone when it beeps and remember that I plugged the heating pad into the outlet next to my bed last night. I might have been too enthusiastic at tryouts on Friday, because it’s Sunday and I’m still sore.
So the phone is all the way over on my dresser, beeping. “Accio phone.”
Still a Muggle.
The things that hurt hurt even more when I drag them out of bed. Dad says there’s a good kind of sore, the kind you feel when you gave it your all. If that’s true, Jessa must feel delightfully agonized all the time. He neglected to mention that sore is still sore.
Beep. Ow.
In big, bright, uncaring numbers my phone tells me it’s 7:06 a.m. on a Sunday, which is not a time that the people who ordinarily text me would text me.
In small, beautiful, mysterious letters it tells me that Jackson Oates is congratulating me. I don’t know for what. For getting a text from Jackson Oates?
Congrats!!!
For what?
Glad you’re up. Didn’t want to wake you
Why are you congratsing me?
His thought dots take forever.
You’re a volleyballerina!
Volleyball emoji, ballerina emoji, volleyball, ballerina, volleyball.
The butterfly that hatched when I met Jackson wakes up annoyed, but the second she sees the messages, she starts jumping up and down and clapping her wings together. I haven’t peed yet, so I wish she’d calm down, but neither one of us can. I want to believe him, but I can’t figure out how Jackson would have inside information I don’t have. I’ve taken too long to respond, so he writes again:
It’s already posted
I yank my computer off my desk and pull up the school website. Athletics has its own page but there’s nothing there besides a note congratulating girls varsity soccer on winning the conference finals. I find the tab for volleyball, then instead of just having the list up, there’s a PDF for Varsity Roster and a PDF for Junior Varsity Roster. I click on the JV one, and it opens a spreadsheet with a list of names. There, near the bottom, is Walsh, Greer Eleanor. Soph. I made the team? I made the team! The bottom of the team, but still, I made the team! And then I look at the rest of the list and realize that it’s alphabetical—Kate Wood is after me—so I’m only the bottom of the list because of Walsh! I’m on the team!
Jackson keeps sending GIFs of fist pumps and runners crossing the finish line and one of SpongeBob giving me the thumbs-up. I will love all of them later, but right now, they are getting in the way of me scrolling the list and quadruple-checking that it’s really the real list and not some list of rejected players that I’m on.
Nope. I’m really there. And so are Nasrah Abdullahi and Kate Wood and Sylvia Suprenant and a bunch of other good players. And Jessa is listed as captain! I check the varsity list and see all the people I expected to see.
I didn’t realize how much I cared until I saw my name on this list. This is the list. And I’m on the list. Now I can’t stop smiling. The Stabilizer and I are on the team. Maude and Mavis are on the team. We’re all on the team!
I page through the emojis and GIFs to find a good one to show how excited I am. They are all stupid. On a whim, I take a selfie. In the background you can just see a corner of the whiteboard Maggie and I were supposed to use to map out ideas for Seven Brides but which turned into a hundred games of Hangman; a bookshelf full of books, dusty Rubik’s Cubes, dustier stuffed animals, tiny boxes and containers, and a Bluetooth speaker; and my crumply bed.
In the middle of all this, me, with my mouth and eyes wide open like I’ve just won my own private space shuttle. I don’t have the stiff look I usually do in a picture, when I’m so uncomfortable that someone is permanently recording what I’m wearing and how I’m standing. I look happy. Just plain happy. My hair and face are all 7:06 a.m. on a Sunday, but still, it looks exactly how I feel. It’s how I wish I looked all the time. Before I can change my mind, I hit send.
A half second passes and Jackson sends back a heart emoji. I wouldn’t even want to see my expression if I took a selfie now. Probably like a startled moose who is about to either be run over by a motor home or has found her way to a secret forest of willow branches and blueberries. A startled, happy, volleyballerina moose who still really needs to pee.
CHAPTER 29
Practice has been brutal, but we are all getting better and stronger, and people are starting to work together really well. We know who will go for an impossible dig and who will save her knees if it’s a lost cause. We know who will blame the setter and who will blame herself for a bad hit. We can tell when someone needs a Lärabar, and we know if someone hands us one it means we’re acting hangry.
I still won’t change in front of any of them.
I’ve got a system for getting in and out of the Stabilizer, but it involves some arm waving and pinning myself up against a wall. I duck into one of the single, all-gender bathrooms on the third floor on my way down from Mr. Feiler’s room. I’ve worked a couple more T-shirts into the rotation, too, so I’m not just practicing in Run for the Zoo all the time.
But today is uniform day. The first game is tomorrow, and Coach had to rush the order to get everything on time. Everybody else is thinking about the game and how that’s going to go with so many new players. Kaia Beaumont, Nasrah, and I are still trying to understand substitutions, and I swear they are making up new rules every day. Every time someone says we’re not ready, Jessa tells them “We were BORN ready!” and then explains that Chatham High School is famously terrible and so there’s nothing to worry about.
That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s the uniform.
Coach R is sitting on an overturned five-gallon paint bucket straddling a big cardboard box. She pulls plastic bags out of the box and reads the label on each. “Cappell? Where’s Cappell? Make sure everything fits.” She tosses a bag to Cappell, who just steps to the side, whips off her shirt and slides into the uniform top. It’s a long-sleeve V-neck, and it’s not the washed-out maroon of the school swimsuits. It’s deep and rich, like a more expensive version of red, and the sleeves have got gold creeping up from the wrists so that right around the elbows it’s like an oil slick of the two colors. There’s a gold 11 in the middle of the chest and Kennedy in script.
It’s awesome.
“Woot-woot!”
“This just got real!”
“You look fierce, girl!” say the varsity girls, while Coach keeps handing out uniforms.
“Patel? Anyone seen Patel? How ’bout Vang-Ellis? Vang-Ellis, make sure everything fits. Suprenant— Oh, you’re right there.”
One by one, the mismatched jocks of Kennedy High become a maroon-suited army. The minute that jersey slides over their heads their ponytails get tighter, they stand a little taller, and they look, well, this is going to sound obvious, but they look like a team. An unstoppable team.
But as cool as that is, it’s also getting harder to swallow, because I’m looking at these girls admiring each other in their uniforms (now people have started dropping their sweats and sliding into the tiny little butt-hugging black shorts, too) and realizing that those shirts are even tighter than I thought. They are made out of fabric like a compression shirt—the kind of squeezy thing Ty wears under his lacrosse uni if it’s a cold early-spring game.
; I asked Coach to order me the largest they had, but these things are made to be formfitting. Even twiggy Mena Patel’s shirt is tight, and I would have thought a toddler size would be blousy on her. There are only a few uniforms left to pass out, and part of me is hoping that mine is missing from the order, so I can play in my Zoo tee.
“Lah-HEE!” yells Jessa, drawing everyone’s attention to Nasrah Abdullahi, who looks like a Nike ad. She keeps her legs covered, so they’ve given her black leggings instead of the short-shorts, which make her already long legs look a mile high. The shirt just barely rounds the curve of her butt, and even the sleeves hit the exact right spot on her wrists. Everything fits her perfectly, like the designers at Custom Team Gear, Inc. had chosen her as their model of what the ideal player should be in every dimension and then sewed a uniform around her. She happens to be wearing a plain black hijab instead of the teal-and-yellow one she sometimes wears, so it looks like part of the uniform, too. She looks like a professional athlete.
If I was on the other team and that girl walked onto the court, I think I’d forfeit. I’m glad she is on my team.
“Walsh! Try your uniform on, make sure everything fits.” I grab the bag, trying to feel hopeful. Everyone else looks so good in their gear. The rest of them are taking selfies, posting group shots, and sorting through the socks—there is some argument about whether we should wear the maroon or gold ones tomorrow—so I slip into the locker room instead of changing in the gym like everyone else.
Behind me, Coach is saying, “Ladies! Let’s get to work! Change out of those jerseys so we don’t sweat ’em up before the game tomorrow.”
Alone in the locker room, I hold up the jersey. 18! My number is 18! It’s just a coincidence, but my birthday is May 18. I love the number 18. The fabric is slippery, like the edge of my old blankie, and I love the way the gold 18 stands out against the maroon. The oil slick design on the arms looks scientific, like some engineer calculated the mythical viscosity of color to determine how they’d flow if forced together.
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