Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

Maybe running away from home with a pair of roller skates, kneepads, elbow guards, and a helmet isn’t the sort of reasonable, rational decision that an adult is supposed to make, and if I’d been in a position to pick and choose what I was carrying, I might have taken a few things out. Like the little house Mork and Mindy had built for themselves from scavenged pieces of the carnival itself, Popsicle sticks and ticket stubs and dead weight that I couldn’t find the strength to throw away.

Sometimes planning is a luxury you just don’t get. I’d found myself in Florida with no clean bras and a pair of professional grade roller skates, and while I couldn’t say it was the best tactical decision I’d ever made, it was definitely the choice that was going to save my sanity.

I slipped my skates over my feet and the ache vanished like magic, replaced by a sense of serenity that I was going to pay for in the morning. That was fine. I was assigned to attend the actresses portraying Lizzie and Laura for the rest of the week, which meant I’d be standing mostly still, not catering to endless guest requests or running back and forth between the stockroom and the floor. I could handle a few bruises for the sake of tonight.

It only took a few seconds to do up my laces, my fingers moving on a swift, practiced autopilot that continued as I strapped on my kneepads and elbow guards, protecting my most vulnerable joints from the inevitable impact with something solid, like the ground, or the side of Princess Laura’s Library.

When I finally looked up, Fern was sitting on the bench, lacing her own skates, and Megan was looking at me sympathetically.

“You did have a bad day,” she said.

“That obvious?” I asked, strapping on my helmet. If my joints are susceptible to impact damage, my skull is even more so. One big advantage of roller derby over cheerleading: we’re allowed to wear safety gear.

(Seriously. Cheerleading is not technically considered a sport, even though a competitive cheerleader is definitely an athlete, and anyway, giving us protective gear so we don’t break our necks after leaping from the top of a six-level pyramid would make us less sexy and all that other bullshit. Because nothing says “hot” like “head trauma.”)

“Yeah,” said Megan. “What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up with the skates?”

“I don’t know. Punched a few walls maybe.” Or gone into the swampy, undeveloped fields behind our apartment complex and thrown rocks at alligators. It wasn’t nice, but it was mutually frustrating for me and the gators, and sometimes misery loves company.

Megan shook her head. “I worry about you.”

“I worry about me, too.”

“No, I mean it. Humans aren’t supposed to function in isolation. You’re pack animals. You need the rest of your pack around you to be mentally healthy.”

I paused to give her a narrow-eyed sidelong look. “I can’t decide whether you’re teasing me about some of the things I’ve said about gorgons or not.”

“Naturalism runs both ways,” she said. “If you can play Animal Planet about my species, I can do the same with yours. You have to admit, I’ve had a lot more opportunity to observe wild humans than you’ve had to observe wild gorgons. You’re like beetles. Your god must love you, because he put you everywhere.”

“Jerk,” I said mildly.

“Monkey,” she replied.

I tried not to let my smile falter. She was technically correct—humans are apes, after all—but all the word made me think of was Sam, and how worried he had to be. Thanks to Mary keeping me connected to the situation, I couldn’t even lie to myself and pretend he no longer cared what happened to me. He cared. He might always care. He just couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

A hand tagged my shoulder. I turned to see Fern go darting down a narrow nearby pathway, waving behind herself as she zipped away. “Catch me if you can!” she yelled, voice trailing off as her speed caught up with the sound.

Shooting Megan an only semi-apologetic look, I took off after Fern, and everything else—my day, my situation, the people I missed and my concerns about the people who were missing me—fell away, replaced by the sheer joy of moving.

My sister, Verity, is only really happy when she’s doing something. When we were kids, our parents used to reserve time-outs for the absolute gravest of crimes, because using them for the little things that all children get up to would have been absolute torture for her. So she wrote lines instead, or did math problems concocted by Grandma Angela (an accountant, and an absolute monster where math is concerned), or raked the yard. Making her hold still was never on the table. My brother, Alex, is almost the opposite. He’s an academic, and the reptiles he studies respond best to patience and pretending to be a rock. Time-outs were almost a gift where he was concerned, which meant he didn’t get them either. Instead, he did dishes and sharpened knives and wasn’t allowed to go back to his room, no matter how much he apologized for whatever it was he’d done.

Me, I fell somewhere in the middle. I loved the feeling of motion, the knowledge that I could run as fast as I wanted, jump as high as my legs would carry me, and count on the strength of the body I had built, one training session at a time, to carry me safely to the finish line. I also loved sitting quietly, saving my strength for when I’d need it, reading comic books and watching movies and arguing with my cousin Artie about who’d be in the objectively perfect X-Men lineup. It was a good mix. I got time-outs. I always came out of them swinging.

Skating after spending the entire day at a walking pace was like coming out of a time-out. It was freedom, it was flying, and the only thing that could have made it better would have been a wooden track beneath my wheels and the sound of my teammates grunting as they struggled to keep the opposing team from getting in my way. Fern’s hair was a bright banner against the dark. I skated after her as hard as I could, trusting physics to be on my side.

As a blocker, Fern is one of the best, because everyone looks at her lithe build and assumes that she’s an easy target. They’ll slam into her without slowing down, only to bounce off and eat track when she somehow fails to yield before them. As a jammer, Fern is unrealistically fast, using her lowered density to turn the slightest momentum into terrifying speed. But that’s on the track. The smooth, friendly, predictable track, that she knows like the back of her own hand.

The paths and walkways of Lowryland are different. They’re smooth, sure, because a smooth walkway means less wear and tear on the feet of our guests, which means they stay happy longer and spend more money, but they’re also unpredictable. They bend and twist in strange ways, looping those same guests past stores and little hidden snack bars, encouraging them to buy, buy, buy until their wallets run dry. Fern couldn’t go full tilt without risking running into something she didn’t know was about to loom up in front of her—and, maybe more importantly, she couldn’t lower her density all the way, or the slightest irregularity in the pavement would launch her into the air. The lighter she got, the more chance there was of her becoming airborne.