The Edge of the Light (28 page)

J
enn tried to put the kiss out of her mind. She also tried to put out of her mind the fact that, when asked, she'd said yes to the whole
idea
of being kissed by a girl. Much more than that, though, she tried to put out of her mind that in that instant when Cynthia had asked if she could kiss her, Jenn had been longing for exactly that.

She hadn't thought twice about saying yes, and it had turned out to be a real kiss. It wasn't just a peck on the cheek between friends or even a peck on the mouth that happens when a kiss intended for the cheek accidentally gets misplaced.

That one kiss had segued into another. That kiss had evolved into a third. Jenn had found herself all pulsing heart and throbbing veins. Then Cynthia had murmured, “Have a good sleep,” and returned to the lower bunk. Her breathing, becoming regular and deep within minutes, told Jenn that she'd gone quickly to sleep.

Not so for Jenn. She'd wanted to ask Cynthia what it meant that she—Cynthia—had felt like kissing her—Jenn. But to ask that question would indicate that the kiss itself and those that followed meant something to her, and she didn't want to go there
in her brain let alone in a conversation. She thought, at the end of a night spent mostly observing Brian Richardson's ceiling constellations, that it might be best to forget the whole thing.

The next day comprised their final training session before tryouts for the All Island team. Despite the fact that they'd trained for weeks on end, they didn't take a break to rest on the day before tryouts. They worked as hard as ever. Cynthia knew the various stations that would be set up to test the girls' skills and their overall athleticism, and she pushed Jenn hard. Lexie did the same. At the end of it all, Jenn was dripping sweat and the other two girls were in the same condition.

In the locker room afterward, Cynthia stripped in that unselfconscious way she had, shedding workout clothes as she went: tank top first, sports bra second, shorts third, undies fourth. By the time she reached her locker, she had only her athletic shoes and socks on, and she kicked these off before she opened the locker and grabbed her soap, towel, shampoo, and conditioner. She said to Jenn, “You looked super good out there today,” and Lexie said, “You'll kick butt tomorrow, Jenn.”

Lexie strode off to the showers ahead of them, but Cynthia remained at her locker. Jenn found that she wasn't sure where to look because the thing about Cynthia was that she was sort of like someone you make up in your head. She was also like someone you wanted to look like. She had breasts that were . . . what? Well, they were luscious. That was the word. Her hips were slender and her legs were long and her stomach was a board. Between her legs the hair was darker than her head hair and . . .
Jenn turned away. She grabbed her soap and towel. What she knew was that it was completely wrong for her to be noticing Cynthia Richardson's body.

Cynthia said to her, “Jenn . . . You okay? I mean . . .” and it was the very first time that Jenn could remember Cynthia sounding anything but 110 percent self-assured.

Jenn said, “Sure. Yeah. Why?” But she had some trouble meeting the other girl's gaze.

“Oh. Good,” was Cynthia's response. Then, “You seem a little different today.”

Now, Jenn thought, was the moment to ask those questions that had kept her awake. But she just couldn't do it. So she said, “Nope. I'm cool.”

Cynthia said, after a moment, “Good. I'm glad,” and then Lexie yelled, “I'm almost done in here. You guys coming or what?” from the showers where water was blasting against the tiles.

Lexie was fast on this day. When Jenn and Cynthia got to the showers, she was finished. Although she and Jenn had a regular work night at G & G's, both Gertie and Giselle knew that the following day was tryouts for Jenn, and they'd insisted she take the night off in order to be thoroughly rested.

Lexie, however, still had to work, so she was toweling herself off by the time Cynthia ducked her head into the stream of water she'd been using. Lexie threw her towel over her shoulder and said, “I'm outa here, you guys. Good luck tomorrow.”

“You coming?” Cynthia asked her.

“Got a Skype date with Sara-Jane,” she said.

“More Europe plans?”

“Endless Europe plans.” Then she was gone, saying, “Later, 'kay?” The other two girls were left in the showers.

Jenn flipped another shower on and stepped beneath the water. She dunked her head into it while next to her, Cynthia removed the scrunchie that held her hair back from her face, allowing it to fall to her shoulder blades. She squeezed shampoo into her palm. She said, “You've got the funds for the All Island team now, right?”

“Thanks to Gertie and Giselle,” Jenn said. “Yeah, I'm good. If I make the team, I can—”

“When, not if,” Cynthia told her. “You've got to go into the tryouts with confidence. And there's not a single reason for you to be anything less than totally sure you're going to make the team.”

“Easier for you to say than me,” Jenn told her. “I got plenty of ways to screw things up.”

“Don't think about those ways, then,” Cynthia said. “Here, want some shampoo?”

She handed over the bottle and began to suds up her hair. She worked up a large amount of lather, which oozed down her breasts and across her stomach and between her legs. Jenn said, “Thanks,” and turned away. Not that she had anything to hide from Cynthia or anyone else, since she was flat as a board with boobs the size of mushroom caps. The rest of her had no shape at all, a source of unending embarrassment to her.

Jenn squeezed a dab of shampoo into her close-cropped hair. She began to do the sudsing thing. She said, “At least this year I've
done everything I can to put myself into a position to make the team. So if I don't make, it's not like I didn't give it everything.”

“What happened last year?”

Jenn didn't want to say. The distracting proximity of Annie Taylor was too embarrassing to go into. Annie Taylor and her presence in Jenn's life and in the life of Langley was the main reason Jenn had completely blown the tryouts last year, and she didn't want to come close to that happening again. She settled on saying, “I was an idiot is basically what happened.”

“I don't believe that.”

Jenn glanced in Cynthia's direction. She was covered with shampoo suds, which she was apparently also using as her soap. She dunked her head under the water again, saying, “God, it feels so good when the sweat's washed off.”

Jenn rinsed her hair of shampoo. “Well, it's true,” she said in reference to her idiocy.

Cynthia reached for another plastic bottle and squeezed a quarter-size daub of something into her palm. She gestured for Jenn to extend her own hand, saying, “Conditioner. You want? Never mind. Wait. I'll do it for you.”

She worked it into her own hair and then crossed to Jenn's to do the same for Jenn. The other girl's fingers were strong, and the pressure of them against Jenn's skull was soothing. She figured this was what a massage was like, and she thought how she could just stand there forever with the warm water beating against her and her head loving the stroke of someone else's fingers upon it.

“Feels good, huh?” Cynthia said. “Next time, I'll make you do me.”

Since tryouts were tomorrow, Jenn didn't see how there would be a next time. She wondered if Cynthia wanted there to be one. She wondered if she did, too.

• • •

THE NEXT DAY
dawned glorious. The tryouts for the team were taking place up in Coupeville, on the field at the high school. Girls could easily converge upon this spot: driving south from the northernmost town of Oak Harbor, driving north from the southernmost town of Clinton.

To Jenn's surprise, all of the Richardsons intended to go along and to cheer their efforts to make the team, so shortly after seven-thirty she and Cynthia climbed into Cynthia's Honda while the rest of the family piled into their SUV. They headed for the highway where the annual invasion of Scotch broom made bursts of bright yellow flowers along the road's shoulders and within the island's empty fields.

There were going to be two full days of activities. At the end of the first day there would be an A team comprising girls who had definitely been chosen by the coaches and a B team comprising girls whom the coaches would like to see on the second day.

“The key is to try to get chosen the first day,” Cynthia told Jenn. “So make sure you don't hold anything back.”

“You, too,” Jenn said.

“Oh. I'm not trying out,” Cynthia told her.

Jenn stared at her, completely nonplussed. “What? But then why did you . . . ?”

“I need to stay in shape for UV,” Cynthia said. “Plus, there was you.”

Jenn wasn't sure what she meant by this. “Me?”

“I wanted to help you out. So did Lexie. It was a challenge for us. Well, mostly it was a challenge for me, and Lexie went along, since she was working out anyway.”

“Don't you want to be on the team?” Jenn wasn't sure how she felt about being on the All Island Girls' Soccer team if Cynthia wasn't going to be there with her.

She had her path already, Cynthia explained. During the coming summer, she would stay in shape, but no way did she want to risk getting hurt when University of Virginia was waiting for her to join their team.

“But how come your family . . . ?”

All of the Richardsons were going to the tryouts in a show of support for Jenn, Cynthia told her. Cynthia glanced at her, then back at the road and the family's SUV before them. “You make the A team, and we're celebrating, you and me. That's why we're going in separate cars. The rest of the fam . . . ? They'll have had enough soccer at that point, believe me.”

In Coupeville, the family set up a picnic area about thirty yards away from the tryout activities. This featured a card table and camping chairs with cup holders in them, one for every member of the family and another for Jenn.

There were more people at the All Island tryout than Jenn had
expected. Fifty girls had shown up, and it seemed that each of them had brought along supporters, whether family, friends, boyfriends, or personal coaches. There was even a team of little girls who'd come to watch and perhaps get some pointers. They had their uniforms on, and they were jumping around energetically.

Jenn looked among the throng. She told Cynthia that she was checking everything out, but the truth was that she was thinking about what it all meant or if it had to mean anything at all that both Cynthia Richardson and Lexie Olanov had shown such kindness to her.

Five women with clipboards and whistles came onto the field from the parking lot. One of them blew her whistle and yelled, “Let's get this going,” and gestured for the potential players to gather around. She turned out to be the head coach, a former UW player who worked privately with girls on the Olympic team. Without any formalities, she assigned the girls and the other coaches to individual stations around the field where their skills would be tested.

Jenn shot looks at her competition as she walked with them to the first station. Some of the girls she recognized because she'd played against them before. Some were strangers to her.

From the number of girls and the number of stations, Jenn could tell that this first round of tryouts would last the entire day. During this time, the coaches would be looking at everything: shooting, ball control, speed, flexibility while running, aggression with the ball, guarding . . . the entire package.

As Jenn made her way through the first three stations, she
recognized how much she owed Cynthia and Lexie. She was in the best shape she'd ever been in. Her speed had increased, her ball control had improved, and her coordination was excellent. As she went through the paces being demanded of her, Jenn found herself getting back to the joy of playing soccer.

There was a break for lunch. Jenn rejoined the Richardsons, where Cynthia's mom was unpacking an impressive picnic basket onto the card table while Brian Richardson voiced his concerns over the length of time the potato salad had gone without a serious control of the temperature which, he intoned, should be no more than thirty-eight degrees, although a brief period at a higher temperature would not actually hurt anyone, since the eggs had only just now been added and most people knew that eggs kept in their shells could—

“
Bri
an,” the rest of his family said at the same time.

“Whoops. Asperger's moment,” was his reply, and he lowered his gaze to the astronomy book he'd brought with him.

Jenn laughed with the others. Then she heard a cry of “Jenn! Jenn!” and she swung round to see Petey hurtling across the lawn from the parking lot. Andy was not far behind him. At some distance to the boys, Jenn saw her dad sauntering in their wake.

Away from what Jenn thought of as his natural habitat, Bruce McDaniels was even more of an oddity than he was at Possession Point, with his long gray hair ringing a very bald pate and his outfit comprising a striped T-shirt, white patent leather loafers of a vintage Jenn could only guess at, striped black-and-white knee socks, and khaki shorts over which his beer belly burgeoned like
a life preserver. He'd shaved in honor of the occasion, and no matter his get-up and overall appearance, Jenn was happy to see him.