Whisper to Me(77)

I wondered what might happen when we got out of the pickup. When we stood in the warm night air, outside the house.

Then you caught me looking, and I turned away embarrassed.

I looked up at the board.

Two minutes to go. Still 75–75.

“What happens if they tie?” I asked.

“I don’t know actually,” you said.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” said the announcer. “We haven’t had a tie in the Eastern league before, but it might just happen tonight. If so, we’ll go into extra time. Oh, oh! Patricia Pornwell almost past there, but edged out by a human chain of Bees. Still a tie, everyone!”

“There you go,” you said. “Extra time.”

“Sport sucks,” I said. It was too tense for me. “Couldn’t they just have a tie and everyone be friends?”

“Shut up,” said Paris.

It may have been two minutes, but it felt like more. It was intense. Both of the jammers were pushing and pushing, trying to get past the group. But they couldn’t. The Bees did this thing where four of them linked arms and made like a diamond, trapping the Kittens’ jammer inside. It didn’t seem fair to me, but you said it was legal.

It didn’t help though. Julie couldn’t get past the Kittens either—she was trying, but every time there’d be a girl in a red uniform there, blocking her with a hip, or dropping onto the track just in front of her, preventing her from overtaking.

On the scoreboard, the time was ticking down.

Sixty seconds.

Thirty seconds.

The diamond was still in place, and the Kittens’ jammer was powerless. But it was no good because their blockers were in a chain and there was no way for Julie to dodge past them.

Fifteen seconds.

The pack was skating down the hall on the far side from us, toward the turn after the straight, and there was still no way past, and there was still no way past, and—

Eight seconds.

And—

Five seconds.

And then they came to the turn, the pack right on the inside of it, and Julie was there, suddenly, going faster than I had seen before, really powering up behind the blockers and then she leaned into the corner, leaned much too far into the corner and she kind of dived and I thought she was going to fall—

No.

She jumped, again, only this time with one leg and then the other, so that she kind of leaped past the blockers by cutting across the sharpest part of the turn in the air—without her skates ever touching down outside the track—and came down again just past them, just past the most acute angle of the turn, and we were on our feet before I even really knew what was happening.

“The Bees WIN!” the announcer screamed. “Mega Joules jumps the apex and wins the final for the Bees! 76–75! Unbelievable!”





After the end of play it was actually kind of anticlimactic. The crowd—at least the Bees’ supporters anyway—kept cheering for a while, and that was fun, being caught up in that.

In the middle of the gym the announcer got both teams together. He had the mike in one hand and a framed certificate in the other. “The Oakwood Miss-Spelling Bees!” he said. “Winners of the New Jersey Eastern League!”

Applause.

He handed over the certificate to Julie. She smiled.

And that’s when Paris slung her bag over her shoulder and vaulted over the bench in front of us, her bag knocking the head of a girl with red hair who turned and said, “Hey!”

Paris turned at the safety barrier. “Come on,” she said. “Boost me.”

“Wh—” I started, but you were already on your feet and jumping down beside her. I guess boys are just better at obeying commands without thinking about them at all.

You cupped your hands and crouched; Paris got one foot on them and you powered her up. Everything was happening very fast, and I wasn’t really processing any of it because I had two conflicting thoughts in my mind:



— He’s helping, that’s so sweet, he doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it, I don’t even know, but he jumped right up to help her over the fence, like a knight in shining armor.



And:



— He’s helping, that’s so awful, he doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she’s doing it, but he jumped right down and he put his hands out, and they’re touching oh God I’m so jealous her foot was in his hand and her hand was on his shoulder, just for a moment, and THIS MEANS HE LIKES HER DOESN’T IT? He’s only here for her, he’s a knight in shining armor, but he’s a knight in shining armor for her.



It made me feel sick, that feeling, that envy, seeing your bodies touch, just for that moment.

And, yes, I know this is repetitive, I know it’s just like when I thought you were into Jane from the library, and I apologize for that. But the thing is that minds are repetitive. They tend to get into fixed patterns.

This is something I know better than most.

Anyway. Those two thoughts were warring in my mind, but it was so much faster than I am conveying it here. It all happened in an instant.

Paris pivoted over the top of the fence, using the momentum you had provided with surprising grace, at first anyway. Then … then it kind of went wrong, her leading foot was over but her back one caught, and she flipped suddenly, scary-fast, like someone being hit by a bull, and for a frozen instant she was upside down on the other side of the fence.