A couch cushion muffles Chuck’s yawn. “What’s got you so cheery?”
“Oh. Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Before tiptoeing out of the room, she picks up her field hockey stick and, with a quick flick of her wrist, fires one of Nana’s crossword puzzle books stacked on the side table at Chuck’s body. “Sweet dreams.”
Grace knows plenty of siblings who spend their adolescence totally ignoring each other. But Chuck, perhaps out of lonely necessity, was always more than willing to share the things he loved with his little sister. And Grace, a thirsty sponge, was more than happy to soak those things up. Some of her favorite memories are when Chuck invited her into his bedroom to play a new song, and the two of them would dance around with their eyes closed, bumping into each other every so often. Or the times the two of them would sit across from each other on the bathroom floor, their heads slick with colorful dyes, and passionately debate whether Remus’s death was justified or if Thor’s hammer could be lifted by an elevator. Grace harbors no regrets that her formative years were shaped by her brother. If anything, she feels lucky. And, as she’s grown up and developed her own tastes, she’s been able to open Chuck’s eyes to some of the things she loves too.
Field hockey, however, isn’t one of them. For someone like her brother, someone who lived on the fringes of West Essex—as a blur of bright hair on the edges of the hallway, a faint smell of clove left behind in a classroom, a backpack abandoned on one of the study tables in the library, covered in patches naming bands no one at their high school had heard of—it’s nearly impossible for him to get that, when she’s playing, Grace feels like the best version of herself.
Though, after her experience on JV last season, it became easier for Grace not to explain. Because if Chuck knew how shitty her JV teammates made her feel on a daily basis, he would have wanted her to quit. So Grace kept her head down, ignored the drama, played hard, got better. She felt about JV the way her brother felt about his four years at West Essex. Something Grace needed to survive in order to find her people.
Now that high school is over, Chuck has a scene, a band, friends who get him. It’s been great to see her brother in a place where he can turn his volume up as loud as he wants.
Grace believes she’s found that with the Wildcats. Without a doubt. She’s seen it from a distance, and now up close, today, the way the girls have already embraced her. It’s a culture Coach has created, and where Grace intends to thrive.
Tonight’s sleepover is a perfect example. Even if it wasn’t mandatory, she’d be excited to go, but Grace appreciates that Coach has required that every girl on the team attend. It leaves no chance for someone to be excluded. What a relief to know that every weekend from now until Christmas break, she’ll have plans.
In her bedroom, Grace begins packing. She’s pleased to find Nana’s washed her favorite thing to sleep in—a Ramones concert tee that Grace’s uncle passed down to her on her thirteenth birthday. “That’s the real deal,” he told her, with love and caution. “July seventeenth, 1981, the Palladium in New York City. I was there with your dad.” It’s perfect for summer nights, thin and soft and raggedy in the best way. But also maybe a little short for a nightgown? She neatly folds a pair of spandex shorts and places them on top.
Grace shouts, “Hey, Chuck? Where’s the sleeping bag you took to camp out for those concert tickets?”
From the living room he shouts back, “James’s house, maybe? Why?”
She sits back on her heels. She could ask Chuck to pick it up for her, but it was on the city sidewalk for a night, and she might not have enough time to wash it. “Never mind!” Grace will bring some blankets to sleep on instead. Nana, for whatever reason, has hundreds and hundreds of blankets.
Chuck suddenly appears in her doorway, a blanket tight around his head like a hooded cape. His eye makeup is smeary and raccoon-ish, though Grace isn’t sure if that is from his nap or a look he created on purpose. “Hey. Was today the last day of tryouts?”
“Yep.”
“So … are you going to tell me how it went?”
“It was fine.” She smiles shyly up at him.
Chuck groans, marches into Grace’s room, and sits on her bed. “So does that mean you made varsity or what? Because you’re being super cryptic.”
She’s touched, and even a little weirded out, that he’s this worked up over it. “Yes. I made varsity.”
Chuck’s mouth lifts into a smile but then it stalls out. He hesitates, chews the inside of his cheek. “What about those JV bitches?”
Grace laughs. “A couple of other JV girls got spots too. But not the meanest ones.” Chuck lets out a long sigh. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me. I can handle myself.”
He stands up. “I was worried about me, actually.”
Grace sets her bathing suit aside. “What?” Her eyes track Chuck as he heads out of her room. “Why?”
Pausing in her doorway, his back to her, Chuck glances over his shoulder and says, “Because if you hadn’t made varsity, I would have felt embarrassed going out in public like this.” In a flash, Chuck casts aside his blanket cape with the flourish of a matador.
Grace’s hands fly to her mouth.
When her brother left the house last night, his hair had been colorless, bleached so blond it was practically translucent. But sometime between then and now, he’s dyed it blue. Bright blue.
Wildcat blue.
Through her fingers she says, “You did that for me? But what if I didn’t make varsity?”
Chuck shrugs his bony shoulders. “I may not know shit about sports, but there can’t be another Wildcat wilder than you.” And with a level of pep Grace didn’t think was chemically possible for her brother, he lifts his arms and shouts, “Gooooo, Grace!”
She jumps up and smothers Chuck in a hug.
“I can’t believe you made me drag it out of you. It was so hot under those blankets!”
“I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”
“Umm, have you forgotten that I went to West Essex? This is a huge deal.” Chuck shakes his head. Pridefully, he says, “I can’t believe my sister is a Wildcat.”
Finally, Grace lets herself release some of the giddy fizz inside her. “We have our first scrimmage tomorrow. And Ali Park told me she thinks Coach might start me.” Her brother’s eyes widen. “Ali actually drove me home. We’re tight now,” she says with a wink.
“Well, Nana and I will be there. Maybe I can convince her to dye her hair blue too.”
Grace follows Chuck into the hallway, both of them laughing because there’s a good chance Nana might do it. Then she ducks into the bathroom to get a swim towel from the linen closet. While grabbing her toothbrush, she meets her eyes in the vanity mirror. Her hair is still in a stubby little tuft at the top of her head from tryouts.
Grace takes out the elastic and rakes her fingers through it. She’d always had short hair—a chinlength bob with bangs, usually—but she’d dyed it so many times during eighth grade, the hair started to break off on her pillow. So the summer before high school, she buzzed it into a pixie and began growing it out.