At West Essex, basically every girl has long hair. Grace would be lying if she said that didn’t factor into it too. That maybe if she looked a little more like the other girls on her team, they’d do a better job remembering she was on it.
Of course, they didn’t.
Grace actually likes the length. Past her shoulders now, after a full year of growing it. She can braid it or twist it up if she chooses. It’s the color that makes her feel like a poseur. Mouse-belly brown. The lamest camouflage.
Underneath the bathroom sink, she finds a squeeze bottle holding what’s left of Chuck’s blue dye. The color looks so good. The perfect shade. And, with about half a bottle left, likely just enough.
She no longer needs to hide who she is. Grace is a Wildcat now.
And like Chuck said, maybe even the wildest.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26
1:39 P.M.
ALI
Ali Park pulls along the curb in front of her house, turns off her Jeep, and sits. Her parents haven’t left yet. Their sedan is still parked in the driveway, the trunk stuffed so full of presents—rivaling the back of Santa’s sleigh—that it can’t properly close. Her father has used a bungee cord to secure it.
She should go in. See them off. Make sure her father has the right GPS app on his phone, the one that updates live for traffic.
Instead Ali sinks low in her seat and pulls out her phone.
There’s no other way to put it. She’s turned into a stalker.
She can’t even remember what she used to look at before finding Darlene Maguire on social media. Since then Ali can pass hours like minutes scrolling through Darlene’s posted pictures, reading and rereading the comments people have left. Ali’s found Darlene in pictures posted to other people’s accounts. Friends, relatives. Figured out that the boy who took Darlene to formal was likely just a friend. She’s read Darlene’s field hockey stats back to when she was in middle school, read a movie review Darlene wrote freshman year for the Oak Knolls student newspaper. She’s found the fax number for Mr. Maguire’s accounting office, found a fundraising page Darlene’s mother set up to purchase beanbag chairs and a throw rug to make a reading nook in her second-grade classroom.
Or maybe this isn’t too different from how Grace scouted Darlene at Kissawa. Studying the way she played, noting Darlene’s favorite moves, like that breakaway fake out, so that when the time came, Grace would be ready.
The thing is, Ali could already tell Oak Knolls was about to score on her. Like some weird sixth sense, the warning manifested in a physical way, a muscle that progressively tightened in her gut.
The championship game had been scoreless for the first half. It was a grind befitting the two best teams in the division. Hardly any breakaways, hardly any passes rolling out of the midfield. Ali faced maybe three shots on goal, and none of them were direct hits. More like desperate chips.
But the Oak Knolls strikers came hard and fast at Ali in the second half. They showed zero fatigue, no trace of exhaustion. As if it were the first week of September and not the end of December. All swagger, even though the Wildcats had bested them in their two previous regular season outings.
The Wildcats, in comparison, were nervous, unsure, tentative. Her defenders kept getting beat. Ali, who normally manned her goal in silence, had taken to screaming her throat raw for the last seven or so minutes.
Right side! On the left, the left, the left! Watch her!
Ali kept glancing over at the sidelines. It was so quiet, she wasn’t sure if Coach was even still there. Maybe he’d gotten too disgusted and left.
But no, Coach was there, arms crossed in front of his chest, his mouth a firm horizontal line.
And then, off Darlene Maguire’s stick, the orange ball came whizzing. If she’d been looking at the field, Ali probably could have stopped it. But with her reaction time delayed, she only managed to get a fingertip on it, enough to shift the angle at which it hit the back of the net by a few meaningless degrees.
The Bulldogs erupted in screams and fell all over themselves. The undulating hug pile was practically a simultaneous team-wide orgasm. And Ali, alone in her goal, was choked with a painful, shameful impotence.
That’s the thing about being a goalie. Any point scored is ultimately your fault. The buck stops with you. Or it doesn’t.
Sometimes Ali will do the same kind of deep dive on herself. She’ll look at every picture she’s posted, read the comments, find herself tagged on other people’s pages. Photos of her parents, her two older brothers, John and James. Of her sister-in-law, Susan, and her wedding to John two years ago, first a ceremony at Susan’s family’s church in New Jersey in traditional hanboks, and then later a chic champagne celebration at the top of a New York skyscraper. Of Ali and baby John-John, heavy on her lap, on Ali’s seventeenth birthday. John took the train down from New York City with Susan and John-John. Ali’s brother James, who would normally get a pass because he lives in Seattle, flew in on a red-eye, tacking on a few days at home before beginning an overseas business trip.
But it’s a pointless exercise. Ali’s account has always been locked, friends only. Still, she wonders if Darlene did any recon on her? Figured out ahead of time that Ali was weaker on her right side than her left? Was she actively looking for a vulnerability to exploit? Or did she just stumble upon one?
Ali hears the front door of her house close, the lock click. She turns off her phone. Her father pulls two roller bags toward the car, her mother following with a hanging bag holding her new dress, a pink-and-black houndstooth tweed shift with black enamel buttons running up the back. Ali had been with her mother when she bought it. The dress was so expensive it gave Ali pause, but her mother didn’t hesitate. When it came to anything related to John-John, she needed no justification to splurge.
Not to mention, this was John-John’s first birthday, a big deal for any Korean. Her brother John and Susan had rented out a restaurant overlooking Central Park. Susan had three aunts and an uncle flying in from Seoul.
“They’re staying for three months,” John had whined when they last FaceTimed. Ali had sat at the breakfast bar while her parents drank smoothies before heading to the golf course. She could watch John-John for hours, the plump rolls of his cherubic body, the way he waved at her with his meaty hands and cooed when Ali sang to him.
Susan, who was on the couch behind John, threw a stuffed rabbit at her brother’s head.
“What? I love when they visit! I just hate doing the touristy stuff. It’s like, how many times in my life do I have to go to the Statue of Liberty?”
Ali let out an anguished cry. “You promised that the next time I came to New York, you’d take me to the Statue of Liberty!”
John and Susan both leaned toward the camera. “Does that mean you’re coming to John-John’s dol?”
Ali grimaced.
Of course she wanted to say yes. So much so that she waited until the last possible minute—until she heard that Coach was for sure coming back—to tell her family no.
Playing field hockey at Ali’s level is a year-round commitment, and there are always things you miss out on. Ali’s declined countless party invites and weekend trips with friends, and she even missed the Spring Fling her sophomore year for traveling team. Sacrifices she never thought twice about. But John-John’s first birthday was a special moment for her entire family, an important and revered Korean tradition. Having to miss out on it was like salt in a wound Ali was pretending not to have. Still pretending.