“Yay, you brought new people,” a boy says while giving Chris a much more legitimate hug than I expect two athletes to share—usually jocks are all about toxic masculinity and stunted emotions, right? The rest of the kids all gather around. Chris starts to rattle off introductions, but a voice stops us.
“Hey, quidditch! Listen up!”
A short Black girl with visible biceps sticking out of her bro tank is walking up to the tree, and it’s pretty obvious that she’s someone who runs things around here. Everyone turns and smiles, and if they don’t exactly get quiet, at least they all seem to be talking to or about the newcomer.
“First summer practice!” the girl says with a smile. “Who’s excited?” Enough people cheer that I feel obligated to clap a little, too. “Awesome! So hoops are in my car . . .” She points to the red VW bug parked at the curb behind her with a hand that is also holding a shopping bag full of something soft and colorful. “Everyone’s got sunscreen?” We all nod or reach for the bottles that have been passed around. “Great. Can I get all the new people to circle up for a second while the rest of y’all unload? I want to get started as soon as we can.”
Melissa and I stay in the shade with a few other people and the leader girl, dropping our bags in the pile around the tree. The chattier players head to the curb to start pulling a clown car’s worth of hula hoops and PVC pipe out of the tiny car.
“So hi! I’m Karey,” the girl says, running her free hand over her buzzed head. “Team captain, rising sophomore at A&M, chaser . . . um, anything I’m missing?”
“Badass,” Chris says as he walks by with an armful of playground balls, earning an affectionate grimace from Karey.
“We’re really happy to have y’all here for the summer,” she continues. “And y’all are . . . ?”
We are me, Melissa, two white girls in tank tops whose names I immediately forget because I’m terrible, a white frat-boy type in a backward baseball cap who might be Carl or Kyle, and Jackson, a burly East Asian boy in an oversized Ninja Turtles T-shirt whose name I do catch, since he introduces himself last.
“And you two are Chris’s high school friends, right?” Karey asks. “Super psyched to meet you. You have to be at least seventeen to play officially, but it’s the summer, so definitely come out and learn the ropes, and then maybe in a couple of years . . .”
“I’m eighteen,” Melissa bristles, and I nod along even though I’ll still be seventeen for the rest of the summer. Stupid baby faces.
“Oh, got it, my bad. I guess Chris gets to stay team youngling, then.” Karey raises her voice a little and grins as Chris passes again, struggling with a bunch of long white poles. He makes a face and scoffs while several poles slip out of his grasp and clatter around him.
“I prefer ‘prodigy,’” he calls, making Karey snort.
“Have you all read Harry Potter?” Karey asks, turning back to the whole group. We nod, except for a dark-haired girl who “watched the movies, sort of.” “Don’t worry, you’re not missing anything except an easy way to explain the rules. Anyone remember the speech Oliver Wood gives?”
“Quidditch is easy enough to understand,” I say, and Melissa rolls her eyes at me like I’m the dork here. “Even if it’s not too easy to play.”
“Exactly.” Karey grins at me. “Well, basically Wood is a stinking liar, because quidditch is confusing as hell to understand. If anything, it actually gets a bit easier once you start playing.
“So I guess you already know the positions to some degree. Six players per team on the field when the game starts—three chasers, who score with the quaffle, which is a volleyball; one keeper, who’s basically a goalie who can also score if they want; two beaters, who knock out opponents . . . Oh, they don’t use bats. That’s important. The bludgers are just dodgeballs that you throw to knock people ‘off broom’ and send them back to their hoops. Um, and then there’s a seventh player who comes in later, the seeker. If you know anything about the series, you know they try to catch the snitch. Which in our game is less of a ball and more a speedy, slippery, asshole-type person with a ball attached to their shorts. Oh, and all of this is done while holding a broom between your legs. So . . . how completely baffled are you?”
None of us answer, but if my expression looks anything like Jackson’s, I’m betting Karey knows exactly how baffled we are. I know how the game works in the wizarding world, but in the wizarding world they fly twenty feet off the ground, so clearly some things are going to be different here. Jackson whispers, “Wait, how many balls are there?”
“So you’ll pick a position for today,” Karey says, “but you don’t have to be married to it at first. Umm . . . let’s start with you.” Of course it’s me she’s pointing at. I stare blankly. Karey smiles. “Okay, look, do you play any sports?”
Why did I have to go all Hermione Granger on that first question? I do not handle pressure well. The answer to Karey’s question is no, but I’m so desperate not to say no that I say something even worse.
“Uh, I’m in choir.”
The group behind me erupts into laughter (at least that’s what it feels like), and Karey definitely gives a little snort-laugh that she quickly tries to cover. She crosses her arms and looks me up and down, and I know she’s seeing every undefined muscle, every ounce and inch I’m missing to be any kind of athlete.
“I mean, because we have to practice breathing and . . . uh, breath control.” Why am I still talking? I wish Xiumiao were here to back me up—choir breath exercises are no joke, really!
I risk a glance backward. Melissa is chewing on her thumbnail, which is one step below face-in-hands mortification on the “How much is Ellen embarrassing me?” scale. Sorry, we can’t all be delightfully nerdy and socially well-adjusted.
I realize that I’m projecting and catastrophizing, but that doesn’t stop my face from burning.
“Okay, choir girl, do you have any games you like to play in gym or anything?” Karey is smiling, trying to help me out, but I wish she would just move on to someone competent and let me sit on the bench, like most of my gym teachers ended up doing.
“Um, I like basketball a little, maybe? I actually played when I was really tiny. At the YMCA.” It feels silly to bring this up, but not as silly as admitting to this muscular, sports-bra-rocking badass what a sedentary lump I actually am.
“What are your skills? Did you like scoring? Are you a fast runner? How’s your arm?”
“I don’t . . .” I shoot telepathic hate beams along with a look of panic at Melissa. This was supposed to be Harry Potter nerd bonding, my telepathic hate beams accuse, not boot camp. “I, uh, I think I didn’t like scoring?” I couldn’t get the ball up to the basket, so . . .