Being Sloane Jacobs (3 page)

After dinner, James takes a cab back to his dorm, and Dad heads to his office to proof some press releases. That leaves me and Mom in the car on our way home to Alexandria. The monuments whiz by as we make our way out of DC proper. At this point, I can’t wait to get to Montreal. I want to be anywhere but here.

Mom rambles on about a packing list, wondering if I’ll need two formal dresses or three. I turn away from her, press my cheek against the glass, and stare up at the night sky.

“I had Rosie pull out your navy strapless and that lovely champagne-colored one. Do you think you should take that pink one with the ruffle down the front too?” Mom asks. I don’t answer, which is good, because she apparently doesn’t need me to. She’s already moved on to shoe options.

A streak of light bursts across the darkness. A shooting star. It’s rare to see a star so bright in DC because of all the light pollution. For some reason, it makes me want to cry. I haven’t seen a shooting star since I was a little kid—since Mom and Dad were my heroes. Since I believed in them. Since they believed in me.

I close my eyes tight and make a wish.

I wish to be somebody—anybody—else.

CHAPTER 2

SLOANE DEVON

I can feel all eyes in the arena on me. The fans, my teammates, everyone. But there’s only one set of eyes I care about.

Coach Butler is pacing the sidelines. His eyes keep flickering back and forth between me, the puck, the goal, and the scoreboard. My skates, beat-up but perfectly broken in, are positioned for a shot. The puck floats on top of the ice just off the toe of my right skate. The Liberty High Belles’ goalie is twitching back and forth in her red and blue jersey, ready to block my shot. The period clock ticks down and the score shows a tie game.

This is it. I can do it this time; I can shake whatever this funk has been these last few weeks. All I needed was a do-or-die situation like this one. I got this.
I got this
.

But when I try to take a deep breath, the air comes too fast and I gasp like I’m drowning. And then I feel them.
They start in my shoulders and wash down through my arms into my fingertips. The nerves are starting. Suddenly I can’t focus. Tingles. Pins and needles. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all I can feel, all I can think about.
I have to do this. I can’t do it. I have to. Shake it off. It’s all mental. It’s in your head
. I lower my eyes back down to the puck, raise my stick back, pivoting at the waist, and—BAM!

I’m on my face, kissing ice. I roll over onto my back. My vision starts to swirl into a tunnel of bright white light, and for a second all I can see is a red and blue jersey bearing the number 22 skating away. She throws a quick glance over her shoulder at me. I turn to see Coach Butler shaking his head.

I lie there for a second, wondering whether I should be pissed that she blindsided me or thankful that I didn’t have to take—and inevitably miss—that shot. When I try to breathe, something catches in my lungs. There’s no air. I blink a few times until everything comes back, and I see my teammate Gabby Ramirez, number 63, appearing over me. She lifts her helmet until her bleached-blond ponytail comes tumbling out.

“Hey, girl, you dead?”

“Air,” I gasp. “I need—”

Gabby stands up and calls to the sidelines, “She just got the wind knocked outta her! She’s okay!”

When I finally catch my breath, Gabby takes my big sweaty glove in hers and drags me to my skates. “Slow breaths,” she says.

Then I see number 22 on the Belles, helmet off like she’s just out for a leisurely skate, waving her stick toward me, doubled over laughing.

“Screw her,” Gabby grumbles, following my gaze. “Dirty player. You totally had it, dude.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, but I’m still staring at 22. When she catches me looking, she sneers at me. I feel whatever was wound up in me unraveling fast. I feel loose, like nothing is holding me back.

I fling off my gloves. Gabby tries to grab the back of my jersey, but I’m too quick. My shooting may be off, but I can still sprint like a speed skater. In two blinks I’m in front of her, and in three I drag her to the ground.

“What the hell!” she screams.

“Dish it out but can’t take it?” I shout. I draw my arm back to deck her. This time? No tingles.

My fist connects with her face, and her head jerks back onto the ice. I see blood, but I can’t tell if it’s coming from her or me. I try to look at my fist to see if I cracked a knuckle or something, but hands grab my shoulders and suddenly I’m being dragged across the ice. Coach Butler is yelling, something about discipline, maybe having it, maybe needing it? I can’t tell; he’s yelling too fast and too loud. The rest of my team is staring, mouths open. When we get to the bench, Coach nearly shoves me over the wall.

“Locker room,” he growls.

“Game’s not over, Coach,” I pant. Shouldn’t I just be parked in the penalty box?

“Go,” he says, then turns away from me.

I burst through the metal door and lean back hard against the Hornet, a chipped yellow and black mural that’s been on the wall of our locker room since medieval times. Within seconds I hear a buzzer and cheering from the side of the arena. The wrong side. We lost.

“Dammit!” I shout, then yank my helmet off and hurl it across the room. It slams into a yellow locker, leaving a small dent. I shuffle across the rubber floor on my skates and pick it up, then go hide in one of the shower stalls. The team will be in any minute, and I can’t face them.

It takes more than half an hour of crouching in the handicapped stall in the dark corner of the locker room before I hear the last player drag her bag out the door. I wait a few more beats to make sure it’s quiet, then make my way back out to my locker to change and get out of here. I sink down onto one of the ancient wooden benches and start unlacing my skates.

I hear the door squeak open halfway. “Jacobs, you in there?”

I suck in a breath, wondering if I can make it back into the handicapped stall before Coach Butler sees me. But with my skates half unlaced and him halfway in the door, it’s pretty unlikely.

“Jacobs, I didn’t see you come out, and your team didn’t either. You’re in there, and I’m coming in. If you’re not decent, speak now.”

I could shout something about being in my underwear,
but it’s no use. I’m going to have to take the lecture from him at some point; might as well be now. “Come in,” I finally call back.

Coach Butler strides in, marches across the floor, and sits down on the bench across from me. He takes off his yellow Hornets ball cap and leans down until his elbows are resting on his knees. Then he looks me dead in the eyes.

“I don’t know what you could have
possibly
been thinking out there. That kind of crap does not fly on my team,” Coach says. His voice is even and completely cold. It’s worse than yelling. “I’m ashamed of the way you behaved.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t train you to play like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I feel a lump rising in my throat, but I gulp it down. There’s no crying in hockey, not for me, at least. But I feel like I’ve been punched square in the sternum. We sit in silence for a few moments. Coach stares hard at me, and I keep my eyes firmly on the ground.

“Jacobs, you’re benched.”

My gaze snaps to his. “But the season’s over,” I say, my voice going shrill.

“Well, I’m coaching next year, and unless you plan on moving to another school, you better plan to park your butt on the bench for the first three games next season.”

“You can’t do that!” Three games? That’s a lifetime! That’s when the scouts come, when college visits start.
Benched?

“I can, and I will,” he says. “I won’t tolerate fighting. You could have really hurt that girl.”

“She came at me,” I reply, but immediately I know it’s the wrong thing to have said.

“It was a legal hit. I watched it. You were too busy reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy or some crap while you were lining that shot up. What were you expecting, an engraved invitation to the goal?”

I drop my eyes again. I can’t even begin to come up with an explanation. Not without exposing my secret. He’s right, of course. Had I been paying even a sliver of attention to what was going on around me instead of freaking out, I would have seen that girl coming a mile away. I was too busy thinking about
not
making the shot—again.

I try to take a deep breath, but I choke on a sob. It comes out as a strangled noise that I turn into an angry string of curses. Coach has heard me swear before; it’s either swear or break down in tears, which is
not
an option. Coach just watches me. His gaze is intense, his eyes narrowed in a mixture of confusion and something I can’t read.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you need to get it together. Figure out a way to control yourself, or I won’t have you on my ice,” Coach says. He runs his hand through his hair, then fits his ball cap back on his head. “Now go get showered and get out of here. Go home.”

I leave the corner bodega and shuffle home with my hands in my pockets, my hockey bag over one shoulder and a plastic bag holding a frozen pizza bouncing awkwardly against
my thigh. I try not to think about the game, the fight, the suspension … and definitely not the tingles. Because if I start thinking about any of it, especially the tingles, my brain will simply follow the path to its natural conclusion, which is that hockey is over.

And if hockey is over, then my life is over.

No hockey means no scouts. No scouts means no college scholarship, which means no life outside of this stupid neighborhood that’s half row houses bursting with kids and grandparents and aunts and uncles and half UPenn hipsters turning the Laundromats into brunch spots with all-you-can-drink mimosas. It’s only a matter of time before our landlord hikes our rent so high we can’t afford to live here anymore. And no college and no house is not a pretty equation.

As I round the next corner, I lower my head and prepare to walk the gauntlet of homeboys and hoodlums hanging out on a stoop two doors away. If they’re deep into whatever club or girl or hot new track or illegal activity du jour, I can usually get by with barely a whistle. As I get closer, I see a couple empties in brown paper bags littering the stoop, and I know right away that tonight I won’t be so lucky.

“Hey, girl, you wanna bring that pizza and that fine ass over here?”

“Mmm-hmm, hard to tell which I want to taste first.”
Oh ick
.

There’s a round of high fives and “aww yeahs.” I can
feel the thudding in my ears again, the heat rising up my neck, but if I jump these guys like I did 22, it’ll be the cops and not Coach Butler pulling me off. That’s if the homeboys don’t give me a concussion—or worse. Out here is not like the controlled, contained world of the rink. Out here it’s the wild. Out here I have to control myself.

“Screw off,” I mutter, and then double my pace until I’m past them. I hear the laughing and the catcalls until I’ve turned the next corner onto my street and slid my key into the lock on the front door.

Inside, I drop my skate bag at the bottom of the stairs and leave my keys on the table next to a pile of unpaid bills and take-out flyers. I don’t hear the TV, so I call, “Dad!” He should be home from work by now.

“Kitchen,” he calls back.

Dad’s sitting at our little blue chipped Formica kitchen table. He looks tired, but that’s not new. Ever since Mom left last month, I don’t think he’s slept at all. And if he is sleeping, I don’t think it counts if it’s on the couch in front of the television.

“We need to talk, Sloane,” he says, and that’s when I see that underneath the exhaustion, there’s something else. The last time we had to
talk
, Mom was already gone for her ninety-day stint at Pleasant Meadows or Calming Breezes or whatever pseudo-cheery name the place is called. All I remember is the pamphlet Dad slid across the table at me. The front of it showed the name in loopy blue script over a picture of a pair of smiling people who looked nothing like
the disaster my mom had become, having a picnic somewhere green that looked a world away from Philly.

“Yeah, okay,” I say. I slide the pizza box out of the bag, then wad the bag in my fist. “Let me just pop this in the oven.”

“The pizza can wait. Just sit down.”

I leave the frozen pizza on the counter and slump down in the seat across from his, bracing for the news.

“Coach Butler called,” he says, his voice gruff. “Says you got in a fight. Again. He said he suspended you starting next season.”

I’m so shocked, I can only stare. Coach Butler never rats us out, not ever. Not when Julie Romer got a hornet tattoo on her lower back (though he made the nurse look at it to make sure it wasn’t infected), not when he caught us in possession of Middlebury High’s disgusting stuffed bulldog mascot (we had to take it back), and not even when Madeline Gray showed up to practice so hungover that she barfed on the ice during sprints (she had to do five morning makeups and sign a no-alcohol pledge). We trust Coach Butler. How could he do this to me?