The upper school field hockey team for St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls was called the Lasses. So was the upper school soccer team.
What Holling would say about that!
At practice, the girls wore regulation physical education uniforms—bright white tops and short green and gold striped skirts. And they carried lethal-looking sticks as they sprinted back and forth between the chalk lines of the circles, and the whole time they quaked for fear of Heidi Kidder, who was the goaltender for the Lasses.
Wearing her pads and holding her own much larger stick, Heidi did not smile. She did not joke. She looked as grim as the guy who hauls the axe at a beheading. During the first practice, she hollered the whole time. She hollered in high decibels while waving her field hockey stick too close to people’s faces and while girls with smaller but still very hard sticks were thwacking at Meryl Lee’s legs while she was trying to dig out a ball buried in the grass and they were all yelling but not as loudly as Heidi Kidder, who said things like this:
“Clear to the side! Kowalski, clear to the side!”
“Out of the circle! Out of the circle, Kowalski!”
“Sweeper! Sweeper! Where’s my sweeper! Kowalski!”
“Kowalski! Only people with hemorrhoids run like that!”
Everything she said on the field hockey field had an exclamation point. It did not even matter if you knew what she meant or not. You just knew you’d better Do Something Right Away.
Meryl Lee was terrified of Heidi Kidder.
During the second practice, Coach Rowlandson decided to try Meryl Lee as a midfielder. “Do you know what a midfielder does?” she asked Meryl Lee.
“Is a midfielder closer or farther away from the goalie?” said Meryl Lee.
“Farther away.”
Good. This sounded promising.
“What does she do?” said Meryl Lee.
“A midfielder runs back and forth across the field hockey field until she dies,” said Coach Rowlandson.
“Until she dies?”
“Go on out and give it your best,” said Coach Rowlandson. Meryl Lee did.
Here is Meryl Lee’s conversation with Coach Rowlandson after her second practice. She was a little bit out of breath.
Coach Rowlandson: Kowalski, are you putting all you’ve got into this?
Meryl Lee: (Nods. She cannot speak just yet.)
Coach Rowlandson: Can you keep your stick on the ground?
Meryl Lee: (Nods. She still cannot speak. She is not sure she will ever speak again.)
Coach Rowlandson: Show me how you do that.
Meryl Lee: (Shows her.)
Coach Rowlandson: Kowalski, you think that’s going to stop a shot?
Meryl Lee: (What was she supposed to say? She thought it would.)
Coach Rowlandson: Sticks down! Try again. No, sticks down! Sticks down!
Meryl Lee: (Thuds her stick into the ground.)
Coach Rowlandson: Maybe we need to toughen you up with some wind sprints.
During the third practice, Coach Rowlandson had the whole field hockey team run up and down and up and down and up and down the field as fast as they could.
Heidi Kidder lapped Meryl Lee twice.
Most of the other girls lapped her once.
Here is Meryl Lee’s conversation with Coach Rowlandson after her third practice.
Coach Rowlandson: Kidder is right. You run like you have hemorrhoids.
Meryl Lee: Maybe . . . I need . . .
Coach Rowlandson: I’ll tell you what I need, Kowalski: a midfielder who can stay in the game. And right now, that means you. So how about you start to show some Effort?
Meryl Lee: Effort?
Coach Rowlandson: (A stony stare at Meryl Lee.)
Meryl Lee: Okay . . . Effort . . . But . . . I think . . . I’m . . . done for the . . . day.
Coach Rowlandson: You haven’t worked with a coach before, have you, Kowalski?
Meryl Lee: (Shakes her head.)
Coach Rowlandson: The coach decides when you’re done for the day.
Meryl Lee: Then . . . can . . . I have a . . . sip . . . of water . . . first?
Coach Rowlandson: And throw up all over my grass? Get on over to the goal and we’ll do some more wind sprints. Effort, Kowalski. Effort.
Coach Rowlandson was not a comforting presence.
During the fourth practice, Meryl Lee decided she would show Effort. She stayed up with Heidi Kidder for the first two wind sprints, and even though Heidi later lapped her, no one else did. Meryl Lee tried to run like she didn’t have hemorrhoids.
She wielded her field hockey stick so widely that most of the girls cleared away from her.
And she blocked most of the long passes that came within reach.
Except the six that went through her legs.
Here is Meryl Lee’s conversation with Coach Rowlandson after her fourth practice.
Coach Rowlandson: You weren’t as terrible as usual, Kowalski.
Meryl Lee: (Nods her head.)
Coach Rowlandson: I saw a whole lot more Effort out there.
Meryl Lee: (Nods her head.)
Coach Rowlandson: Maybe if you keep your eyes on the ball, you’ll make a half-decent midfielder.
Meryl Lee: I . . . hope so.
Coach Rowlandson: Who knows? Miracles can happen.
Meryl Lee scored a goal during the first field hockey team scrimmage—but not for her side. She was defending, which is not easy because so much happens so fast, and because whenever the ball was anywhere near the circle, Heidi Kidder was screaming her head off. So when Heidi told Meryl Lee to block block block block, Meryl Lee stuck her field hockey stick down and Julia Chall’s clearing shot ricocheted off it and up into the goal. The way Heidi Kidder went on, you would have thought this was Meryl Lee’s fault and they’d just been eliminated from the Olympic trials, and even though Meryl Lee still wanted to be Accomplished, she didn’t really want to be Accomplished in field hockey.
But everyone on her side was mad at Meryl Lee because they lost and had to run laps and Coach Rowlandson said she hoped Meryl Lee had gotten that out of her system because we wouldn’t want something like that to happen during a real game, and so Meryl Lee went back to her room because there wasn’t anything else to do and when she got there Jennifer was holding out Charlotte from Charlotte’s scarf and saying, “Oh, Charlotte, nobody wears an orange scarf with a peach blouse.”
And Charlotte—who was indeed wearing an orange scarf with a peach blouse—was looking pretty pouty until Jennifer opened a drawer and pulled out a light green scarf. “This will be perfect with your eye coloring,” she said. Then Charlotte smiled and Ashley said Jennifer ought to know since she’s traveled so much in Europe and Jennifer smiled—“Don’t make me blush,” she said—and she wrapped the scarf around Charlotte and they all giggled and hugged. And then Jennifer said she was dying, just dying, just absolutely dying, to tell Ashley and Charlotte about Alden and maybe, since she couldn’t reveal their secrets, she could tell them instead about what they were all going to do at Christmas. Would they like to know?
The three of them held hands and giggled.
Meryl Lee thought she might throw up.
“Why don’t you have to go to field hockey practice?” she said.
They looked at her as though she was such a dope.
“Because we have been excused,” said Ashley.
“Why?”
“Because,” Jennifer said, “girls should never have to sweat. Didn’t you know that?” Then she turned to Charlotte from Charlotte and said, “My sister called and she’s going to Vienna with her fiancé for Christmas and they want me to come along!”