“Come on,” you said. “How can you resist a trip in that sweet ride of mine?” You gestured at the pickup.
“It’s tough, I’ll give you that,” I said. “It’s the big Piers logo that really makes it.”
You smiled. The world got a bit brighter. “Please?”
I sighed. “Well if you say please … Fine. Let me get my Vans.”
“Awesome,” you said, a bit too enthusiastically. Then you paused. “Um, I mean, for Paris …”
I saw the embarrassment on your face, and inside I smiled. I grabbed my shoes and slipped them on and then you let me into the passenger seat of the F-150. It was still clean in there; I was kind of surprised. I figured, you know, seventeen-year-old boy in a pickup. I thought there would be McDonald’s bags and whatever. Eighteen-year-old? I’ve just realized I don’t know how old you are. But you’ve finished high school—so you have to be eighteen or nineteen, right?
I digress.
You drove us in your spookily clean pickup to what I thought was going to be some cool velodrome-type place but was actually a high school gym on the outer edge of town.
“It’s a gym,” I said, as we parked the truck and got out.
“Yeah.”
“Disappointing.”
“Hmm,” you said. “I was picturing an arena with, like, sloping sides.”
“Me too. Same exact thing.”
“Oh well,” you said. “It’s—”
But I never knew what it was because …
“CASS! CASS, YOU ******** ****! CASS, I ********* LOVE YOU, YOU SPECTACULAR ******* PERSON! ****.”
Paris ran over. She had been standing in the shadows outside the gym, invisible, and I guessed we were late because there was no one else out there in the parking lot but light was coming from the windows of the gym. She picked me up and spun me around.
“You came!” she said.
“Evidently,” I said. But I couldn’t help smiling.
“I knew you couldn’t resist him.”
“Actually,” I said. “It was his sweet ride.”
Paris looked over at the pickup, nodded sagely. “The iconography of the Piers has ever been potent. Once I hooked up with a guy just because he was wearing one of those mascot costumes. You know, the Piers dolphins?”
“Ha-ha,” you said.
“No,” said Paris. “That’s actually true.”
“When he was in the costume?” I asked.
“Well,” said Paris, “he took the head off.”
“Wow,” you said.
“Follow,” said Paris, gesturing to the gym. “The game is already afoot and we squander precious time.” She led the way through double doors and then down a corridor with lockers running down it. She was carrying a really big purse. Prada, I think? Black leather with a gold clasp thing.
When we stepped into the hall the roar took me by surprise—the hall was flat, there was no sloping track, but there was a running track around the outside of the hall; it was big, I guess that was why it was chosen, and the bleachers were packed with people.
The skaters were already racing around the running track, some of them in yellow and black, like wasps, the others in bright red.
“Which is her team?” I asked.
“Places first,” said Paris. She pushed past people, alternately charming and elbowing them, until we came to a good spot roughly in the middle, one bench back from the front. A rigged-up fence was between the audience and the skaters, those metal barriers that kind of slot together?
You know this already. I keep forgetting.
Anyway, so we sat down and started to watch the … match? Game? I don’t know. I would look it up, but I’m conscious of not wasting your time. Ironic, I know. There were lots of people in the center of the gym, inside the track the skaters were skating around. More skaters, in the same uniforms but not skating. Plus coaches, I think? And also people in black-and-white-checkered tops who I took to be referees.
“See Julie?” said Paris. She pointed and, yes, I saw her. Yellow-and-black uniform, a helmet with a bright yellow stripe on it, her name emblazoned across her back: ONE THOUSAND MEGA JOULES. “They’re the Oakwood Miss-Spelling Bees,” she said. “Other team is the Wildwood Wild Kittens.”
“She’s fast,” I said. Julie was behind a pack of the red skaters and closing on them quick.
“She’s a jammer,” said Paris. “Well, right now, she’s a pivot, but—”
“Excuse me, what?”
“It means the jammer can designate her to take over as jammer, if she gets injured or whatever,” you said.
I raised my eyebrows at you.
“What? I read up on it.”
“Suck-up.”
“Scr—”
“Children,” said Paris. “No bickering.”
We watched some more of the play. I couldn’t really follow what was going on. After a minute or so they stopped skating and milled around, and then some of the players swapped with the ones waiting in the center space. It seemed like there were about fifteen girls on the team, but only about five of them were skating at any one time. Julie was one of the ones who stopped … playing? Competing? Skating? Anyway, she stopped. She looked around at the bleachers, finally saw us, and waved. We waved back.