Mel’s answer remained a firm nope, even after tryouts began this week and the girls who were on last year’s varsity team were reunited after the different leagues and camps and club teams that scattered them in the off-season.
They seemed nervous to be around one another again. But in the aftermath of last season, the girls had never turned on one another, never pointed fingers or threw blame at another player’s feet. So it didn’t take long for things to warm back up. Muscle memory to kick in.
Mel felt this most acutely with Phoebe. Those nine long months of having not played together compressed into seconds as soon as Coach blew his whistle Monday morning. They knew each other again.
Technically speaking, this week the girls performed as well as maybe they ever have. Each of Mel’s teammates was sharp, focused, committed, determined. They played like they had everything to prove.
Which apparently they did.
What else could explain Coach’s punishing final workout today, which lasted almost twice as long as years past? Her teammates probably accepted it as an overdue penance. But Mel suspected there was more to Coach’s methods. It was as if he were trying to physically wring any lingering effects of last season out of their bodies. As if he could see, somehow, that they still carried it with them, a shadow stapled to the turf on a week of sunny summer days.
Standing with her teammates around the flagpole this afternoon, Mel had a nagging feeling that she’d made the wrong call with her Psych-Up approach. That she, as team captain, could hinder Coach’s efforts instead of help, was completely out of the question.
Even though the returning players had individually dealt with last season’s losses, they hadn’t ever processed it as a team. Maybe they needed to. The timing wasn’t ideal, especially with so many new players, who had nothing to do with the championship loss, joining them. But it might be good for the new players to see—up close and unvarnished—how deeply it still mattered to the ones who did.
It was a delicate situation, sure, but when Mel finally let Phoebe pull her up onto the classroom chair, she looked out at her teammates dancing and remembered that the girls themselves weren’t. They were strong. Not only that, they would become even stronger tonight, when standing side by side in their varsity jerseys, as Wildcats.
It dawned on Mel how cowardly her decision had been to treat last season like some kind of dirty secret. Nope. Instead she would help her team face the past head-on.
She just needed to figure out how. And fast.
It came to her when she ducked into Party City to grab boxes of sparklers for the varsity jersey ceremony. She loved the idea of each teammate lighting one sparkler off another, forming a glittering chain that would brighten the midnight dark. On her way down the aisle, she breezed right past the piñatas.
Then Mel stopped. Hustled back. Moved a papier-mâché rainbow to the side. Shifted over a unicorn.
And there it was. A giant golden number 2. Probably made for a little kid’s birthday party.
Mel, however, saw an effigy of a runner-up trophy.
Like the best ideas, it came together in a snap, the whole thing playing out like a movie in her mind. Her teammates, blindfolded and spun around one by one, each getting to take a crack at it with a field hockey stick. It would be lots of laughs, watching the girls stumble and sway before getting their bearings. But working together, using all their might and mettle, fueled by their heartache and frustration and disappointment, they would smash that 2 to smithereens and gorge themselves on the candy that spilled out.
I mean, could anything be more perfectly Wildcat?
The only thing Mel hasn’t yet figured out is how to string the piñata up at the field tonight. But something will come to her. Today proved yet again, as always, that Mel only needs to trust herself, trust what Coach has cultivated in her. In all of the girls.
Mel closes the trunk and hurries across the parking lot to the Starbucks. Her hand is on the door when her phone rings in the back pocket of her cutoffs. Her heart lifts. Wondering.
But it’s only Gordy.
Shit.
Through the window, Mel meets eyes with Phoebe, who’s already in line. She points to her ringing phone and mouths, “One sec!”
The first words out of Gordy’s mouth are, “Did you make the team?”
It seems so stupid now, how stressed Mel let herself get last night. Making Gordy stay up late with her on the phone, way later than she should have, reassuring her that she wouldn’t be cut. Especially after she’d so artfully dodged Gordy’s calls and texts these last few weeks, found plausible excuses to decline his repeated invites to hang out with him.
“Yes, I made the team,” she tells him sheepishly.
Though honestly? With Coach, you really never know.
Gordy lets out a breath he’d apparently been holding. “When I didn’t hear from you, I got nervous.”
“Sorry. Phoebe and I have been out—”
“And you’re still team captain?” Gordy asks tentatively.
“Yup.” Hearing Gordy’s sad sigh, Mel reminds him, “Um, that’s good news, Gordy.”
“For you, maybe. I’m about to be dumped.”
She could correct him. They were never officially together. Mel was careful about that from the start. Making it clear to Gordy that this, whatever this was, was super low-key, a summer thing. Not to say it hadn’t been nice. Maybe even really nice. But it didn’t change the fact that come September, she would need to devote herself completely to her field hockey team. Anyway, Gordy goes to West Essex. He already knows how it is with the Wildcats.
Mel says sweetly, “I wasn’t planning to dump you. Just ghost you.”
Gordy lets out a little puff of breath instead of a laugh. Mel can almost feel it against her forehead, the way she would if she were curled up in his arms.
“Wow, that’s really cool of you, Mel. Thanks so much.”
Mel teases him like this sometimes. As if she didn’t care about him. But hearing him pout, already missing her, tugs at Mel. No joke.
She should get off the phone.
Instead Mel walks the curb like a balance beam, setting one white canvas sneaker in front of the other and asks, “Where are you?”
“I just got to the lookout on the Frick trail. Where are you?”
“Starbucks.”
“Oh wait. Yeah. I see you down there.”
Gordy’s turn to tease her.
The first time they hiked the Frick trail together, Mel had sworn she could see the Starbucks from the lookout. Not because she actually could, though she did follow the highway with her finger to a spot that was surely a decent guess. It was amazing, dizzying really, to see the entire valley from that vantage point, lush with the greens of summer. Her universe normally fit neatly inside a rectangle of Astroturf.
Granted, she was in a weird place. So much was in flux and none of it in her control. There was her scholarship to Truman, Phoebe’s knee injury, whether or not Coach would be coming back to West Essex, whether or not she would be team captain. Mel was haunted by how she’d let Coach down. His lead scorer unable to put up a single point. Not just in the championship game, either. Mel didn’t score in their last two regular-season games. That she’d played well in the off-season for her club team coaches was no consolation. Actually, it made Mel feel worse.