Smashed (22 page)

I’d never seen so many people at a field hockey game before. It was like playing football in Deerfield on a Saturday afternoon. Will and Ben stood on the sideline with their friends, faces painted blue and white. Bobbi Crow’s mother held a poster in one hand that read
ALL THE WAY DEERFIELD!
and a small blue-and-white pompom in the other. My mother stood apart from the crowd, hands pressed deep in her pockets, next to a man I assumed was her boyfriend, Ken. Our classmates pounded out a rhythm on the bleachers as we took our positions. “Here we go, Deerfield, here we go!” they chanted. A banner with all our names and numbers on it, strung across a nearby fence, flapped in the wind.

On our opponents’ side, Clippers fans vied with ours, their voices carrying across the field. “You can’t sink this ship! Hey! You can’t sink this ship!”

As we warmed up, Cassie pointed out one especially fast girl who played my position on the other team. She was small and dark, with a beautiful, silky black braid down her back, almost to her hips. She stood out on the team from Eastern Maine, and I wondered for a moment if she was an exchange student. Did girls play field hockey in Latin America? Coach Riley told us that this girl was their leading scorer and that Marcy needed to mark her one-to-one at all times inside the circle.

We’d never played a team this strong.

*     *     *

I heard her with my own ears.

“Fucking Spic.”

What?
I was stunned. I’d heard a lot of foul things come out of Marcy’s mouth over the years, but never anything like this. When she was mad, and you were her target, Marcy was never at a loss for words. But this was beyond an average violation. This was personal.

Bobbi Crow’s jaw dropped and she looked at me. Had anyone else heard? The referee apparently hadn’t, because rather than whip out a red card and suspend Marcy, she simply blew a loud, long whistle, indicating a goal had been scored. But the look on the other girl’s face told me
she
had. Her moment of glory had been stolen. I’d scored a goal ten minutes before, and this girl with the long black braid had just tied up
the game for her team, but her face was frozen in fury.

I was livid. I had to think fast. Marcy, it was clear from her face, was not over it. When she got that look, she was dangerous—she couldn’t control her temper. She was a time bomb. We had to act fast or she would explode.

We’ve got to get her out of here
, I thought as we sprinted back toward the fifty. We couldn’t afford to play shorthanded, even for five minutes. The ref could go right for a red card and kick her out for the whole game. If that happened, we’d be outnumbered for good.

I needed to talk to Cassie. She’d been upfield when it happened; she hadn’t heard a thing.

My concentration broken, I looked over at the sideline, searching Coach Riley’s face for some sign that she knew what was going on.
Please know—please take her out of here.
But the crowd was loud, and Coach Riley didn’t have ESP. Someone was going to have to tell her.

Coach Riley had told Cassie and me at the beginning of the season that as captains we could legally call a time-out, a privilege we should use carefully. We just had to wait until the referee made a call—any call—in our favor.

In field hockey, that doesn’t take long, but I’d already wasted precious time. The Clippers had grabbed the ball on our center pass after the goal, and I was terrified Marcy was going to open her mouth again. But thirty seconds later they lost control and it went off the sideline. It was our ball. There was no time to confer with Cassie. I just had to do it.

I wanted to whisper, but I had to say it loud enough that she could hear me. “Time-out please,” I said to the ref.

My teammates looked at me expectantly. Bobbi Crow nodded her head ever so slightly, feeding me courage. Cassie caught my eye questioningly, and we both sprinted to the sideline. We needed to get to Coach Riley before the rest of the team did.

Coach Riley was ripping mad at Marcy, but she tried to make the situation easy on me. She covered and gave us a generic pep talk, then, as if it were an afterthought, said, “Amy, go in for Marcy at center half.” Amy’s eyebrows shot up; she tried not to smile. She knew going in for Marcy meant trouble with her later, but she couldn’t wait to play.

*     *     *

The Clippers were every bit our equal. We spent the rest of game wresting the ball from one another’s control, only to get defeated by the opposing defensive players in the circle. Neither side could get off a decent shot. With five minutes left in the game, the score was 1–1. Five minutes later, when the horn blew, we were still tied.

We went into a ten-minute overtime, a “sudden death” period in which the first team to score wins the game, even if there is time left on the clock.

Ten minutes later, neither side had scored.

We took a five-minute break. The coaches and refs huddled, deciding our fate. The fans were getting edgy, irritable. A Clipper fan with a cowbell broke the silence with a series of deafening clanks.

“Give it a rest!” someone yelled, and the bell went silent.

It was getting late, getting dark. All of us were exhausted. The refs called for a series of penalty strokes to decide the game. It would be another sudden death situation: The first team to score more goals than their opponent after an equal number of strokes would win the game.

We won the coin toss and chose to go second, so that we’d have the last shot.

Up to five strokes would be taken by each team, by five different players. Cassie, Cheryl, and Sally Foster, our first three shooters, went up to the line one at a time. All three missed, their shots stopped by the goalie’s feet or her glove. But the Clippers’ first three shooters failed to score, too, and then their fourth.

The stadium was hushed. Overhead, a flock of birds, tiny black specks against the setting sun, headed toward a warmer clime. I was shooting fourth for our team, my whole body vibrating in anticipation. I had to stay calm.

I braced for the shot. Their goalie, too, was frozen still—mitt to one side, stick to the other, not allowed to move until the whistle blew and the split-second competition began and ended in a blink. Hovering low to the ground, my mind focused on the upper left corner, the goalie’s stick side, the hardest place for my opponent to reach.

“Wheeeet!” As the whistle blew, I stepped, twisted my stick, and flicked the ball fast into the corner. The goalie lunged and missed it. The fans and my teammates erupted into a roaring cheer. Then they realized what the referee had already seen.

The ball had missed the net by an inch.

My heart dropped to my toes. We could lose and it would be my fault. I hit my stick on the ground, hard, and walked back behind the twenty-five yard line. I couldn’t look at Coach Riley or at the stand full of Deerfield fans who had come so far to see this.

I knew the Clippers’ next shooter well from the game. She was the halfback who’d made my life miserable every time I went anywhere near the circle, shadowing me like a Siamese twin. She was relentless. Would she flick it? That, I hadn’t seen. I could only imagine what it must be like to be in Megan’s shoes, anticipating what was next.

The girl placed her stick at an angle under the ball’s curve. The whistle blew and she scooped it. It’s a less forceful stroke by far, but it makes it easier to raise the ball high. It was heading in the right direction now, toward a top corner of the goal, but in slow motion. Its rainbow arc gave Megan enough time to gauge it. She threw her stick in front of it like she was bunting an out-of-control pitch. It dropped to the ground. Another roar erupted from our side of the bleachers. We were still in the game.

Bobbi Crow stepped up to the line. She was our last chance in this round. She looked calm, focused. The whistle blew. She lifted the ball and it flew. The goalie lunged, but the ball was moving too fast, and she was too late. It zoomed past her stick side and bounced into the net.

I’d never loved anyone more than I did Bobbi Crow in that instant.

The entire team sprinted onto the field. We threw ourselves
onto Bobbi, into each other, in the center of the field—laughing, crying, shouting. We’d won! We were state champions.

Coach Riley pulled me aside, away from the other players and Marcy, who was crying, as we waited to receive our awards in the post-game ceremony.

“You did the right thing today, Katie,” Coach Riley assured me. “I’m very,
very
proud of you.”

*     *     *

For the rest of the weekend, I relived the game over and over in my mind. It’s true you can’t remember every play, or exactly how it went down, but you remember the
feeling
: the moment when your stick hits the ball on the sweet spot and just sends it, the exhilaration when you reverse stick and pull the ball around the defender who’s coming at you and you break away, the thrill of intercepting a cross-pass running at full speed and carrying it inside the circle for an open shot. The breakaway or penalty shot, when it’s just you and the goalie and your shot misses the goal by inches—you remember that, too. But it’s the high of getting it
just right
—that’s the feeling you chase. That’s what makes you go back for more and never want to stop playing. No matter how tired you are, how exhausted, how beat, it’s that feeling of getting it right that makes you dread the long whistle ending the game, because you just want to keep playing forever.

At the annual Fall Sports Banquet, our school presented each of us with a trophy and our own beautiful varsity jacket. Big and warm, they had a round patch that said
MAINE CLASS B STATE FIELD HOCKEY CHAMPIONS
on one side and our name on the other. Only state champion teams got them, and since no other team at Deerfield High School had won the States in five years, we were the only kids in school with them.

Alec and a couple of his friends tried to ruin my moment at the banquet, calling out, “Martini, have another drink!” from behind cupped hands when it was time for me to receive my award. But Cassie, who stood beside me with our teammates at the front of the auditorium, squeezed my arm in solidarity. I focused my eyes on Coach Riley’s proud face beaming at me from the podium as I stepped up, shook her hand, and hugged her.

The next day, all sixteen varsity hockey players wore their coats with pride. It was November now, and the heat rising from the school’s antiquated radiators roasted us in some classrooms,
but we didn’t want to take the coats off, not even for a second. Finally, before going to art class, I gave in and hung mine in my locker. The last thing I wanted was to spill some paint on it or smudge it with a pastel or charcoal pencil. I locked the padlock, pulled to check it, and left.

I stayed a few minutes late in art class to finish up a project, then got a hall pass from the teacher to my next period, study hall. The corridor was quiet and empty when I went to my locker to retrieve my coat and a history book I needed.

Pulling out my jacket first, I paused to admire the patch and my name on the breast before slipping it back on. For four years I’d wanted one of these coats. Then, kneeling on the floor, I slid my history text into my backpack and put my hand into my jacket pocket, searching for a tube of Chapstick I’d left there.

The Chapstick was there, but I felt something else, too. It felt like a small cotton rag, one you would use to dust furniture. Puzzled, I pulled it out.

My face burned red the instant I saw it. Shoving the cloth back into my pocket, I leaned into my locker, trying to catch my breath. I scanned the hallway furtively, to make sure I was alone, then hunched over to look again. It was unmistakable: a pair of dirty, torn underwear—my own—retrieved from where Alec had thrown them out of his car window the night of that party in Bethel. I remembered crawling in the dark on my hands and knees trying to find them, just so that no one else would.

Apparently, someone had.

No one knew they’d been left there except Alec. Though for
all I knew, he’d told the whole football team the story, thinking it was some kind of joke. Maybe he’d even changed the ending, telling it so that, instead of jumping out of the car, I’d thrown the panties out the window myself in a fit of passion.

My heart hammered in my chest. The hallway was still deserted. I wanted to get rid of them, but nowhere felt safe. What if someone found them again? What if
Alec
did? No, I had to take them home myself, where I would burn them in the woodstove. In the meantime, the bottom of my backpack, hidden under heavy textbooks, would be the safest place.

I stumbled to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall.
Damn him
, I thought, emptying the contents of my pack onto the tiled floor. Why would he— why would
anyone—
do something like this? I ripped blank pages out of a notebook and folded the panties into them, hiding them under layers and layers of paper until the whole thing looked like some crazy Christmas package wrapped by a kid. Then I shoved them into the bottom of the pack, adding all my books on top. If anyone wanted to find them, they’d have to get through me and a lot of other shit first.

I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes had passed—almost twenty—since my art teacher had written my pass. Now the study hall teacher would be on my case, asking me where I’d been all this time. I’d have to tell her that I felt sick, that I’d been in the bathroom. Both were true.

I rounded the corner out of the bathroom and walked quickly down the hall.

“How you doing today, Martini? Nice
coat
.” Alec stepped out
of his math class, lavatory pass in hand. His eyes swept over me from head to toe and back again.

For a moment, I was too stunned to speak.

“What’s the matter?” He smirked. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Get off my back, Alec,” I hissed. My face was burning, but it was with fury now, not shame. I stepped around him, heading down the corridor toward my study hall.