Kate Christie (13 page)

Speaking of which,” I added, checking my watch, “Sunday night football should be on. Want to see who’s playing?”

She chewed her lip. “I really do need to study.”

“Study while you watch,” I said persuasively, flashing her the same smile I’d bestowed on our beach stalkers.

“Well, okay.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I’m really going to study.” She grabbed the remote and switched the TV on. “Want a beer?”

“Sure.” I watched her cross the room and disappear momentarily behind the refrigerator door. I really should get some studying done too. I had a ten-page paper due in my Beautiful Game 3

abnormal psych class on Thursday morning. But knowing me, I probably wouldn’t start it until Wednesday night around, oh, eleven or so. If I left now, I would only sit around my room listening to music and wondering what Jess was doing.

She returned, handing me a bottle of Dos Equis. “You staying?” she asked.

Our hands brushed as I took the beer. “Is that okay? Don’t let me talk you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a slow smile that warmed her eyes. “I wouldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t, would you?”

“Watch the game.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We watched the game.

Jess and I got to be a pretty good team in the kitchen that fall.

Most Mondays after practice I would head over to her place for dinner and
Monday Night Football
. Since we were both in season, our conversations revolved around our coaches and teammates as we ranted to each other and made one another laugh. Whenever I could manage it, I attended tennis matches, always dragging soccer players with me. In return, Jess made it to the soccer games she could, bringing along her teammates too.

In mid-October, on the Monday after tennis hosted and won Big Eights, I finally met Sidney and Claire. When I pulled up in the driveway, Jess was sitting on the front steps, athletic bag at her feet. She waved when I pulled up, but otherwise stayed where she was. Behind her, I noted, her landlords were sitting on their front porch swing, one partially hidden behind a newspaper.

Beautiful Game 5

I grabbed my bag out of the backseat and headed up the front walk. Claire I recognized from the night I’d seen her through the window playing piano. As I drew closer, the person beside her on the swing lowered the newspaper, and I got my first look at Sidney. Turned out he was a she. Sidney and Claire were a middle-aged lesbian couple.

Trying to hide my surprise, I came forward to shake hands with Jess’s landlords. Claire was thin, her forearms muscular, long brown hair peppered with gray. Sidney’s short hair was graying too, her smile brisk, handshake firm. We chatted for a few minutes. They asked about my team and my studies while I complimented them on their house and garden. And wondered why exactly it felt like I was meeting Jess’s family.

As we headed upstairs a few minutes later, I said, “They really look out for you, don’t they?”

Jess shot me a questioning look as we reached the third floor.

“What do you mean?”

I dropped my bag next to hers in the hall and followed her into the kitchen. “Dude, they acted like they were your parents determining my suitability as your friend. I’m not actually sure I passed.”

“Don’t be paranoid. They were just being friendly. Want a soda?”

“Sure.” I waited until she’d handed me a can of Sprite. “Why didn’t you tell me they were both women? They are together, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they’re together.” She hesitated. “I guess I just wanted to get to know you before I introduced you. That’s all.”

“You think you know me, then?” I grinned crookedly.

“Maybe.” She smiled back. “Now, come on. Let’s get dinner going. I’m—”

“I know, you’re starving. What’s on the menu?” And we set to work dividing up tasks.

Later, after dinner, I asked Jess if I could borrow a pair of sweats. She was reading a novel for an English class and barely looked up. “There’s a pair in the bottom drawer of the dresser.”

She waved toward her bedroom.

“Sure I’m allowed in there?” I asked, only half joking.

6 Kate Christie

“You’re allowed.”

I pushed the door open, blinked at the darkness, and felt for the switch. As light flooded the room, I looked around curiously.

The ceiling was peaked, and a window lay directly ahead on the far wall. Jess had pushed her double bed up beneath it, pillows just fitting under the sill. A real mattress and box springs and everything, I noticed enviously. She’d told me the place came fully furnished. Lucky duck. The dresser was just inside the door.

I opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a pair of sweats, then flicked off the light and shut the door.

“Nice room,” I said.

“Thanks.” She watched me pull her sweats on over my shorts.

“You look cute in my clothes.”

My heart speeded up a little. I wasn’t sure what to say to this, though, so I pretended I hadn’t heard and went back to reading my calculus textbook. Jess thought I was cute, and Sidney and Claire were lesbos.

Life, I thought, was good.

Not so much on the field, though. Late in the season, tensions began to run high on the soccer team. Most people believed that this was our year to go further than we’d ever gone before. It was generally accepted that we might even have a shot at a national championship—if we could only play to our full potential. As a result, the pressure mounted throughout the season. By late October, with only two regular season games and the conference tournament left, we were ranked seventh in the country and first in our conference. All we had to do was keep our ranking and we would go to the opening round of nationals, the finals of which were set this year to be played in Seattle.

As the pressure intensified, certain personalities on the team clashed. Specifically, mine and Jamie’s. Our conflict splintered the team off the field—her buddies Sara Alexander and Kate Bzrezewicz, nicknamed Breezeway because no one could pronounce her last name, and the other four seniors except Mel took her side against me, while Holly and Laura and most of the Beautiful Game 7

underclasswomen took my side. I could see the divide widening between the two factions, but I couldn’t seem to figure out a way to stop it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jamie Betz. It was that she didn’t like me.

The Monday before our next-to-last game, a rematch against SDC set for Tuesday afternoon, Coach ended practice with a hard scrimmage, starting defense against starting offense.

He matched individual players against each other. My mark was Jamie. I liked marking her. She was always a bit more of a challenge than anyone else, even Holly, who was a finesse player and easily muscled off the ball. Jamie combined speed, skill and, most importantly, strength.

Coach ordered us to play hard—we wouldn’t be helping our teammates prepare if we didn’t play all out. So I did. At one point, Jamie was on a near breakaway. I slide-tackled her, careful not to hit her very hard, and sent the ball out of bounds. I even let her land on top of me, cushioning her fall. She sprang back up immediately.

“What the fuck, Cam?” she said, face red as she loomed over me. I was still picking myself up. “Are you trying to break my fucking ankle too?”

I felt my own face grow hot. “Jesus, Jamie. Take a chill.”

And I started to turn away. But she grabbed me by the arm and whipped me around. Fortunately, Coach jogged up just then and stepped smoothly between us.

“Take it easy, Betz,” he said. “Cam’s just playing hard. You both were. That’s the level of emotion I like to see, but save it for the game.” And he walked her away, trying to calm her down.

“Wallace, mark Holly.” He winked at me, but I was the only one who saw it.

Holly jogged over and tugged on my smelly blue pinny to annoy me. Somehow defense always ended up with the pinnies that hadn’t been washed in years and could practically run around on their own.

“Nice All-American temper,” she commented.

“No shit.” I was still off-balance. “Was it me, or was she totally out of line?”

“Completely,” Holly agreed.

Kate Christie

Then Coach punted the ball into the middle of the field—a free-for-all. Holly pushed off me and headed for the ball.

It was already past six. We scrimmaged for another ten minutes, and then Coach gave us a quick pep talk, reminding us to save our intensity for the other team. Practice over, I pulled off the pinny and headed for the field house where we kept our bags, keeping an eye out for Jess. But the tennis courts were already empty.

I was almost to the field house when Jamie brushed against my shoulder from behind, hard, growling in a low voice,

“Sometimes I’d like to kick your ass, Wallace.”

Momentarily speechless, I watched her walk away. Then I half-laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”

She turned and faced me, and our eyes locked, hers burning and angry, mine defiant.

“After the season,” she said. “After nationals.”

“Anytime, Betz.” I watched her walk away, then glanced over my shoulder as Holly drew near. “Did you hear any of that?”

“Any of what?”

I filled her in.

Holly whistled. “You’re shitting me. Doesn’t she know not to mess with you?”

“Guess she missed that part of my personal history.”

Even my mother didn’t know about the self-defense lessons her younger brother had given me whenever we visited him in Seattle. Uncle Alex was cool. A former Air Force engineer, he lived on Lake Washington in a sun-filled condo and worked at Microsoft. When I was a teenager, he’d taught me how to fight because, he said, a girl like me should know how to defend herself. I’d only recently realized that he actually meant a big ole dyke like me. Being a military engineer had helped him develop advanced gaydar, I liked to joke.

In reality, I didn’t want to fight Jamie. I wanted everyone to like me. Whenever someone didn’t, I tried to figure out what it was about me that irked them. To no avail, usually.

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said, slinging her arm over my shoulder. “She probably just wants you. Kidding! She’s an ass, Beautiful Game

that’s all. Come on. You don’t want to be late to your girlfriend’s, do you?”

I shoved her away. “Watch it, or it’ll be your ass I kick.”

“Ooh, I’m shaking.” But she danced out of my reach, just in case.It was Jess who trotted out the psychoanalysis over dinner that night and told me that Jamie didn’t hate me, per se. She was under a lot of pressure to score goals and was taking it out on me because I was handy.

“I’m under pressure too,” I said, frowning at Jess across the kitchen table.

“Yeah,” she agreed, “but it’s not in your nature to take it out on the people around you. Anyway, you said yourself that Jamie stuck up for you during the game against SDC. Doesn’t sound like she hates you.”

“She even joked around with me that night.”

“See? It isn’t you. Maybe she just gets annoyed when you trip her. Can’t blame her, really.”

“It’s called a slide tackle,” I corrected her. “A trip is illegal.”

“You know what I mean.” She took a sip of Gatorade. “Just don’t take it personally, okay? She’s frustrated and acting out, and you happen to be a pretty good target. It’s not like you’d react. What’d you do, laugh at her?”

I bit my lip. “Not exactly. I might have said I’d fight her whenever she wanted, something like that.” At her raised eyebrows, I added, “What? It’s not like I could just back down.”

“No, of course not. That would be the mature thing to do.”

Her eyes darkened, and she looked away.

I hated it when she got like that, cold and supercilious like the Jess everyone else thought was the real her. I tried to change the mood. “Not like it’ll ever happen. Can you see it, me and Jamie throwing down? She’s such a closet case. That’s why she’s pissed at me, because I’m out and people still treat me the same.”

“You think? Everyone knows she’s seeing that basketball player. What’s her name?” Jess asked, spearing a tomato with her fork.

“Joy Lassiter, who is totally cute, by the way. What she sees in Jamie I’ll never know.”

100 Kate Christie

“Sounds like someone’s jealous.”

“Hardly.” Not when I was here with—I cut off the thought.

Dangerous territory. “Who’s playing on
MNF
tonight, anyway?”

On to more immediate matters.

Despite the drama leading up to our last conference match of the season, we ended up winning 2-0 in fairly straightforward fashion on the road at SDC, thereby securing top seed in the upcoming conference tournament. Holly scored both goals on assists from Laura and Kate, and we carried her from the field on our shoulders when the final whistle blew. I was psyched someone other than Jamie was getting recognition. Didn’t hurt that it was my best friend.

We celebrated briefly with friends and family on the sidelines, but we weren’t on our home field so the win was a bit anticlimactic. Coach said a few words, and then we headed back to the SDC gym where the bus was parked.

The girl whose ankle I had broken had been on the sidelines during the game in street clothes, a cast poking out from under the cuff of her pants. As we walked back to the gym, I saw her maneuvering on her crutches ahead of me and jogged to catch up.

“Hey,” I said as I drew near.

She glanced back, and her face grew serious. She recognized me. “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about…” I waved at the cast.

“Breaking my ankle?” she challenged.

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” I squirmed under her hard gaze.

After a minute, she relented. “I know. I’ve gone over it in my head a million times. You thought I’d pull up, right?”

“Totally,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone in so hard.”