Afterparty(7)

Mr. Tinker points to the hockey sticks.

Naturally, nobody wants us on her team. They stand there, leaning on their sticks, ignoring us as much as possible given that we’re ten inches away from them. When Mr. Tinker blows his whistle, we go trotting after them, trying to blend in. Thirty seconds later, Siobhan is on the ground and you can’t even tell who put her there, which girl is saying “whoops” over her shoulder.

“Whoops?” Siobhan says, rubbing her thigh. “Really?”

Siobhan, it turns out, is the poster girl for “Don’t get mad, get even.” Or, more accurately, “Get mad and get even.” Soon, half the girls on the field would have bruised ankles and battered shins if they weren’t wearing monster shin guards.

Equestrian Girl, who has been slashing her way up and down the field, cornering the little ball and slamming it into the goal, plants herself in front of us.

She says, “What the hell.” It isn’t even a question. “Did somebody forget to lock your cage?”

“I’m sooooo sorry,” Siobhan says. “Maybe I’m swinging too wide.”

The girl snorts, a horse’s whinny kind of snort, appropriate because it turns out she’s the queen of the eleventh-grade horsey girls. “Right,” she says. “Well, I’m Chelsea Hay, and you can’t just do whatever you want.”

Siobhan says, “Watch me.”

The whistle blows. I careen, half pushed, half stumbling, into a petite girl who elbows me as if I’d jumped her. Chelsea takes off with Siobhan at her heels, swinging (maybe at the ball and maybe not) and yelling, “Take that, bitches!”

Mr. Tinker blows his whistle until Siobhan can no longer pretend she doesn’t know it means she’s supposed to stop trying to shed blood.

“I don’t know what you did at your old school,” he says. “But at Latimer, we don’t swear at our teammates.”

“They’re my teammates?”

Mr. Tinker rubs his shaved head. “Do you play lacrosse?”

“Eastside Episcopal,” Siobhan says. “Boys’ team.”

“Varsity tryouts,” he says. “Tomorrow. Give me that stick.”





CHAPTER FOUR


“SO,” DYLAN SAYS ON THURSDAY, walking past my desk in homeroom. “I hear you’re violent for a ballerina.” You can’t tell from his face or tone or posture if he thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I say, “Not a ballerina. The bun is for PE Alternative Dance, not actual ballet.”

When he rests his hand on the back of my chair, there’s a chill at the nape of my neck under the ballerina bun, in the same general category as tingling, or a cold wind, or waves of high-frequency vibration, or possibly lust.

“I heard you got a lot of help slashing from your friend over there.”

Dylan nods toward Siobhan, who is sitting at her desk admiring her manicure, full-on lacquered gold in a room full of frosted pastels studded with small yet hideous jewel stick-ons.

“I don’t know what you heard, but all dismemberment was purely accidental.”

Dylan is too deadpan to smile, but the corners of his mouth do a little twitchy thing that’s just as good. “So. Did you grow up playing ice hockey in a Canadian street gang, or do you just have a bad temper?”

In actual fact, I grew up eating homemade pie and watching wholesome teen movies from the 1980s where the worst thing anyone does is wear criminally gigantic shoulder pads.

“Bad seed,” I say.

“Maybe you should ditch the field hockey and stick with ballet. I play for their performances—orchestra does. Seems like a more stable gang of thugs.”

“What do you play?”

“Violin. Third chair, not exactly stellar. Only class I can stand to attend on a regular basis this year.”

“You’re making me regret giving up cello.” And not for musical reasons. “I love the music, but I suck.”

He says, “You’d fit right in.”

“Anyway, thanks for the advice. I always keep my eye out for bands of thugs. Coming from a Canadian street gang and all.”

Dylan shakes his head. “You know what they’re going to do to you, right?”

“What?” I say. “Embarrass us in front of the whole French class. Knock us down when we try to be on their lame field hockey teams. Not talk to us. Avoid us. Sneer when I talk in class. Stick needles in my eyes.”

“All of it,” he says.

This is not an incorrect assessment of the situation.

Siobhan and I are a two-girl island in a sea of bobbing mean girls.

I get into (somewhat remedial) ballet that meets just before lunch, and the girls tend to eat together. But in a room of stick-thin, aspiring ballet girls, I’m the Sesame Street, one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others, doesn’t-fit-in one who eats actual food. Because the ballet teacher here pitches a fit whenever anybody jiggles, even if they’re only there to get out of field hockey.

I am not giving up food.

Siobhan, who is apparently the most terrifying lacrosse player in the history of girls’ lacrosse, has teammates swarming her (grateful she has saved them from a season of endless defeat), but she says they’re all hormonal.

And boys.

She could be eating lunch daily with the football guys at the picnic table the unattached ones—the ones who don’t spend lunch making out with their girlfriends in between huge bites of burger—like. They go, “Hey, Siobhan!” and then, as an afterthought Siobhan insists is not an afterthought, “Hey, Emma!”