Whisper to Me(76)

“Yeah,” you said.

“But you whooped,” said Paris. “You, whooping.”

“What? I whoop.”

“You’re not a whooper.”

“Hey!” I said. “I can whoop.”

“You don’t strike me as a natural whooper,” you said.

“Stop saying whooper, both of you!” I said.

“Maybe you could ask Julie if you could be a cheerleader,” said Paris. “You could follow the team around and—”

“Shut up.”

She smiled. It’s a picture I have pinned on the inside of my mind, to look at.

Then the jammer seemed to lock skates with one of the blocker girls from the Wild Kittens, and went spinning on her back. The play stopped and she hobbled off, and various people talked to one another, and then Julie took off the helmet with the stripe on it and put on one with stars all over it instead.

“Julie’s the jammer now,” you said.

“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” I said.

The previous jammer seemed to be okay. She sat on the ground cross-legged, rubbing her ankle, but didn’t appear to be badly injured. There was a scoreboard up on the wall of the gym, an electronic one. It said: BEES 42 KITTENS 50

So I could see that the other team was winning. But as we watched, even in the first two-minute jam, it was clear that Julie was making a difference. She flew past the Kittens’ blockers a couple of times, and there was a big cheer when she did and Paris cheered too, so I joined in; I mean, I wasn’t going to be the first to whoop. Not after the last time.

Soon after that it was 50–52 to the Kittens. Really close. There was like one more jam and then it all stopped for some reason; the skaters all went into the middle and huddled, the two teams standing far apart so as not to hear each other. Paris turned to me. “Seriously,” she said, under her breath. “Are you okay? With …” She gave a meaningful look, knowing that you were sitting there too.

I nodded. “Surviving. Just about.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s really good. Let’s talk. Not here though.”

“Okay,” I said.

(We didn’t. We didn’t get a chance.) Anyway, then the announcer, who was standing in the middle of the gym with a corded microphone, the track running in an oval around him, said it was time for the second period.

The skaters set off, the blockers first, Julie and the Kittens’ jammer behind. Some stuff happened. It’s not like I was registering every detail for later transcription. The score stayed pretty even. Julie scored some. The other blocker too. She was called Patricia Pornwell, I remember that because it was kind of a book name, and I liked that.

Even a sports illiterate like me could see that the time was running down. There were eight minutes of play left, and that’s when stuff got kind of exciting.

74–75 to the Kittens.

Julie was trying desperately to get past the pack. The Kittens’ blockers were all mixed up with the Bees, and then one of her team reached behind her and caught Julie’s hand, linked up with another girl, and kind of pivoted and slingshotted Julie past them all.

Slingshot?

Slingshooted?

Who knows.

Instantly, I was on my feet, screaming.

“She scores!” shouted the announcer. “75–75!”

Julie looked right over at us as she cruised past, and she fired a salute off the side of her forehead at us. It was like the coolest thing ever.

“**** YEAH!” screamed Paris. “**** YEAH!”

Now it got kind of rough. The blockers were jostling one another, pushing. Not violent but close. It was messy. The red jammer got past the pack and scored for the other team.

“No,” said Paris. “No no no.”

Then Julie came flying up behind, putting on speed. She closed on the pack. Her hair was in two ponytails sticking out from her helmet, and they were flying behind her like pennants.

It happened suddenly—one of the Kittens went down. I think she caught her skate on another girl’s, and she wiped out on the hard floor of the gym. She spun for what was probably a fraction of a second but felt like forever, all of us in slow motion now.

Julie was maybe four feet away when the girl fell. She couldn’t turn. She couldn’t stop.

Julie—





—jumped, right up in the air, and she kind of hugged her knees to her chest, literally five feet off the ground, and then she touched down on the other side and just kept skating.

The girl on the floor did a thumbs-up to show she was okay, and the skaters slowed so that she could get up. A medic-type guy went over, but she shook her head and went back onto the track.

“Holy cow!” said the guy on the loudspeaker, when they were all skating again. “We see stride jumps in this competition but a full jump—wow! Mega Joules back in play here, and she’s gaining and—”

I don’t even know what he said after that, because there were Bees supporters around us and they were going pretty much crazy. The noise was getting louder and louder. Actually the other team’s supporters were going wild too. It was hard not to get swept up in it, even if at the back of my mind I was counting down time for another reason, glancing over at you again and again, thinking about later. About how we would be alone together when you drove me home.