Carrie Soto Is Back(8)

“Okay,” I said.

My father turned the radio up and focused on the road. Soon enough, traffic slowed considerably and we came to a full stop. I looked out the window, watching kids on the beach, playing in the sand. I saw two girls around my age building a sandcastle.

The gap between myself and girls like that—girls like the ones I went to school with—had always felt significant, but it seemed nearly insurmountable now.

A half second later, we started moving again and I wondered why anyone would want to build anything out of sand, when tomorrow it will be gone, and you’d have nothing to show for your day.

“Bueno, contame,” my dad said. “What’s your plan?”

“If she’s stronger than me, I need to get her up to the net as much as I can, use my angles. And she’s probably feeling pretty confident, so I need to shake her, right at the beginning. If I can get her worrying about whether an eleven-year-old is gonna beat her, then an eleven-year-old is gonna beat her.”

“Muy bien,” he said as he lifted his hand, to give me a high five. “My Achilles. Greatest of the Greeks.”

I held back a smile as we sped down the freeway.



* * *



—

Mary-Louise won the toss and elected to serve first.

I stood at the baseline and bounced the taut strings of my racket against my palm. I held the grip and turned it over in my hand.

I looked down at my brand-new shoes. I noticed there was a scuff on the toe. So I bent down and rubbed it off.

My father and Lars were on the bench. Lars was over six feet tall, with sandy hair and a smile that never made it to his eyes. He had introduced my father as “the Jaguar” to Mary-Louise in a tone that bothered me.

Mary-Louise was standing across the court, in a white tennis skirt and sweater with a matching headband in her hair. As she stood up, I could see just how tall and lanky she was, her face angular and delicate. Maybe it was the perfect creases in her skirt or the casual way she held her wooden Dunlop Maxply Fort racket, but I could tell that while she and I might both be at home on this court, we would not recognize the rest of each other’s worlds.

She smiled at me, and I wondered if she might be the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in my life.

I fostered no illusions that I was beautiful. I was stocky and broad-shouldered, my calves and forearms thicker than those of the other girls in my class. Some of the more popular girls—the ones who wore bows in their hair and cardigans over their dresses, the ones the boys chased at recess—had started calling me names when the teacher wasn’t listening.

As I’d walked into class one morning, Christina Williams whispered loudly to Diane Richards, “There she goes. Boom, boom, boom,” as if the weight of my steps was shaking the room when I walked to my desk.

The whole class laughed.

“At least I didn’t get a D on the math quiz, you loser,” I said as I sat down.

The class laughed at that too. But then Christina started crying. My teacher noticed and called us both to the front of the room.

When pressed, Christina cried even harder and denied she’d ever teased me. I kept my head up and admitted what I’d said.

And somehow, the coward went free, and I got sent to the principal’s office, who then called my father. He came and picked me up and took me home.

After hearing my side of the story, my father reprimanded me and then made me look in the mirror. He told me I was beautiful. “Pichona, sos hermosa.”

I scanned my face for a glimpse of what he was talking about. I had my mother’s olive skin and green eyes. I had my father’s hair color. But my body, my features…I could not tell where they came from. I wanted curls like my mother and father both had, I wanted my mother’s length, her thin wrists, her perfect nose. I had none of it.

“I look nothing like Mom,” I said finally. She had been so undeniably beautiful, her worth written right across her face.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “And you are strong like her.”

My eyes took in my broad shoulders, my powerful arms. Luckily, I did not need to be pretty. My body was built to wage war.

And thank God, because I was about to use it to crush pretty Mary-Louise Bryant.

Love serving love.

Mary-Louise tossed the ball up in the air and then cut across it with her racket. As I ran for the ball, I thought that my best bet was to take it out of the air quick. But as I got in position, I saw Mary-Louise approach the net. She was assuming I didn’t have the power to hit a passing shot. And so, at the last minute, I hit a deep groundstroke. She had to rush her return and hit it into the net.

The first point was mine. Love serving 15.

I looked at my father as I made my way back to the baseline. Both he and Lars were watching me, and Lars’s eyes were wide. My father was fighting off a smile.

I crouched and waited for her next serve. Mary-Louise’s face was tight now. Suddenly, the ball came across the net, fast as a whip. I couldn’t return it.

15–all.

Serve after serve stunned me.

30–15.

40–15.

And just like that, she’d won the first game.

I glanced over at my father and saw his brow furrowed. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Now it was my serve. I landed each one exactly where I wanted it to go. I was setting up my shots a few strokes ahead. I kept her running all over the court. But every time, she returned it. Our long rallies would inevitably end in her favor.