Rusty Summer (7 page)

She's also our secret weapon. Jammers are like the golden snitch in Quidditch—they're the point of the game.

Em's got some moves. She's gonna be hard to stop! We all are!

The doorbell keeps ringing. More and more people arrive, and Beau is looking really happy. Some of his friends show up from Seattle Central. A guy and two girls.

“Rust-Rylee, I'd like to introduce my friends from school: Kathleen, Rylee. You guys remember Rylee? Fiona, Rylee. Kurtis, Rylee. Omg, Rye, we have so much fun at school! These guys are seriously hilarious! You guys; this is my best friend and roomie, Rylee.”

“Hi! Hey! Nice to meet you guys! You can call me Rusty! Yeah, so . . . welcome to the World Wide Weird!” As usual, I spaz out. My arms whip around, wildly whirling windmills.

I act like such a freak when I meet new people. I swear to gawd, I'm going to sign up for those classes on how not to sound like a dork during introductions. As well as the rest of the time.

Beau's friends don't appear to notice, though, which is something Beau continually reminds me of—that no one is as hard on me (anymore) as I am on myself.

And actually I'm beginning to think he has a point.

For example, I saw myself on a practice skate vid last week, and in real life I thought I had screwed up hugely, but watching the vid, I didn't.

I'd been blaming myself because I felt one of my skates touch my girl Thrashley's when I was drilling a “leg whip” stop, and it seemed like I had run over her finger with my skates and there had been a huge pileup immediately following, but on replay she skated for a few more seconds and then pile-drove into a bunch of girls. I hadn't run over her finger (a painful and common skate injury!).

So, yeah—I didn't maim my teammate. Once again, me = assuming the worst.

Pileup not my fault! Yay!!

Not that I haven't been responsible for a few. But I'm careful about fouls. I don't throw my weight around, so to speak. Not to foul anyone on purpose, anyway. I don't like dirty skaters. I find I don't have any trouble with legal blocking, however. I enjoy being an immovable object. To feel the smaller jammers frantically pounding themselves against my trademarked “Rock of Gibooty” block is hilarious!

Suddenly I'm being revered for the same thing for which I'd always been reviled: being gigantic.

 

More and more people start coming in as the party heats up and we crank the tunes! It's the hood, so it's not considered the deal breaker it would be in a nicer neighborhood.

Sorry, but it's true. No one calls the cops much around here.

Beau's mom and stepdad, Matt, arrive. That was quick. Gina had been over for most of the day and she'd only left to get ready at home about an hour ago.

Gina looks really nice. She used to be a super hottie, and she's still pretty, in an old kind of way. Matt is also kind of cute, but again, old. He's brought several bottles of nonalcoholic sparkling cider, which, when we notice, makes Beau and I look at each other. Oh, dear . . .

There's a keg in the shed. Then he laughs and shrugs. Whatever! Let the party commence!

I take one of the bottles. “Hey, cool, you guys, thanks! Let's open some and toast Beau being legal!” I propose. “You'll be the first!”

“Oh, great!” Gina fake sings out, and then fake laughs, “Ha-ha, ha . . . yeah,
legal
. . . ha . . . I'm old!”

Just then, Leo and my mom walk in and I sigh in relief. I have never been gladder to see them.

Let the moms play together! And the stepdad! Parent playdate!

They can all be fake-funny about how fake-glad they are that their kids are legally adults.

“Leo, let's get them something to drink,” I tell her. I grab her arm, and am practically impaled on her cold and knobby elbow. “Jeez, Vlad, lose weight much?” I ask, recoiling.

“Yeah?” She perks up. “Really? Awesome! Like, does it feel skinny?”

“Yeah,” I try to sound properly enthused for her. “Like . . . scrawny.” Like a stick. She's like Gretel after the witch starved her.

“Awesome . . . I've lost another pound!” Leo hisses gleefully, in this demented determined whisper.

“Yay, babe,” I say, lackluster-like.

“Dude,” she says, raspy and impatient, “just be glad for me. You wait—you'll be glad for you too one of these days!” I look into her crazy, determined eyes.

There it is again, her gallant amazing conviction (delusion) that she's gonna be a world-famous super model and take care of all of us. Her determined willingness always makes my nose sting, taking all that responsibility on her skinny little shoulders.

I grab her by those skinny little shoulders, which feel like a bird's. I give her a little fake shake. She feels so frail. How she thinks she has
ten
more pounds to lose is loony!

“Listen, missy, I want you to have a good time tonight! Have a tiny piece of cake with Beau!”

Leo shrieks and escapes my hold. She's still strong, regardless of her looks.

“No! No! Cake! No!! Bad cake! No devil cake!” She pretends to gag. We laugh and she mimes sticking her fingers down her throat. Rather convincingly, I notice. We laugh harder.

I leave the cider in the kitchen, get a few sodas, and Leo and I take them to the moms and Matt.

We find them in the living room, listening to Bashy and Delilah as they tell of the glory and the guts that is Roller Derby.

We see that Nora and Courtney are giving the parents—or the “olds,” as my cyber Brit friends call them—some beer, and that they are accepting the red plastic cups like it's the most natural thing in the world. They even toast each other.

Next they'll be playing beer pong.

Beau and I grin at each other in relief and shrug and ditch the Cokes on an end table.

Matt and Gina actually look like they are having a laugh, listening to the wives sing my exploits, but my mom looks freaked. Her forehead is all folded up and her bottom teeth are showing, which is a habit she has, of unconsciously biting her upper lip with her crooked bottom teeth when she is hearing stuff she finds not-so-great.

It is her “dismayed face.”

What happened was . . . well, let Bashy tell it, since she is already . . .

 

“Okay, last Friday, we were having drills and there was a bout in the evening, but not till like seven p.m., and it was maybe one thirty or so, and we were all busy drilling when the Steel Belted Strumpets' bus arrived.” Bashy stops and takes a drink from her glass. “They have a bus! Must be nice! Anyway, they were like five hours early, but there they were and they wanted to get started and warm up right away! Like share our time.

“So I said it was our time for drills, and we weren't exactly thrilled, especially since they were already getting a warm-up at three thirty.

“But these girls thought they were thoroughly badass, so they start to push their agenda, so we started to explain that maybe not, when suddenly Ms. Britches here”—Bashy indicates me, bagging on the nickname I call everyone—“says, ‘Okay, how about this—let's all drill together and have a little friendly rivalry, that way you can show us how to be when we're actually RCRG's and it'll help you guys get up for the bout later.'

“So that's what we did, but what was so awesome was that Britches here starts chanting this hilarious, like stoopid-funny rap, as we basically previewed how the actual RCRG would eat their lunch, later.

“It was badass! Rusty was saying this poem or something . . . what was it, Rusty? You should do it for these guys. Seriously, she put off this one girl who was trying to shove by, and she was all chanting: ‘You think you're bad, but be on your toes . . . sumpin'-sumpin' . . . and bang, down she goes!' and then she just checked her with the special patented Gibooty-buster!” Bashy chortles, thoroughly proud. “I taught her everything she knows about skating!”

She throws her arm across my shoulders and thumps me triumphantly. I pitch a small “Rock O' Gibooty-buster” to demonstrate, and Bashy staggers and cackles harder.

I take over to tell the rest of the story.

“Basically I jump over her and get up to the next Strumpet. I'd seen her in a bout before and I knew she was the queen of fouls, so when she came over with elbows out, good to go, I just applied the mass-times-the-force equation and—”

“Yeah, but tell them what you were saying!” Bashy butts in happily.

“So, the chick I have a grudge for calls herself Jennifer Jailbreak, because she's a dork, but whatever—
I
call her Jennifer Fail-fake and so when I skate around I say: ‘Fail-fake thinks she's fast on her toes, but when the going gets tough, bam—down she goes!'

“Then when she tried to check me, I throw the Gibooty-buster and down she went; she totally had to barrel roll to stop. So that felt great to watch because she's so rude, plus she thinks she's such a hard-edge girl—but in fact she's a lotta smack. I've seen her crying her little eyes out over scratches.”

I'm scornful, as are the other Rat Labs. We get all snorty with scoffing guffaws. I continue:

“So, I dodge past her and off to the next Strumpet, whose name escapes me—”

“Yeah—that bit-chick is such a bit-jerk! Wait, Rust—say what you told her!” Bashy chimes in.

(It's so funny—everyone is trying
so
hard not to swear in front of the parents! Good luck!)

“What I said was: ‘When the girl come round here my badi-tude grows, 'cuz one tap from me and bam—-down she goes!' And then she got promptly butt-checked and down she went! Hee!” I snicker with satisfaction.

“Then . . .” prompts Bashy.

“Then we're around the track and old Fail-fake's gonna do something mean. You can just see it in her eyes, but it's too late, we're in the flow and I yell: ‘Fail-fake is back with her big bloody nose, and just like before,
bam—down she goes!
' A poem she will remember for a long time, bless her murky lil' heart! Har! Ha! Woo!!”

The Rat Lab cheers. We all high-five.

I notice my mom is kind of looking at me, puzzled, like she's never seen this side of me before, busily laughing and talking to a crowd, at my house—at a party, no less!

Her face is happy, and like . . . relieved. I feel incredible. I am a functioning member of society. Mama, did we ever dare dream this big?

“So, what did you do then?” my mom asks, like she can't help herself, she's so getting into it.

I'm thoroughly touched by her thrill.

“Well, I jumped over her foot, which she was sticking out, trying to trip me, and then, when she caught up to me and threw an elbow, I basically cowcatcher-ed into her so she went flying and had to extreme leg-whip to stop.” I grin, wearing my game face.

So does my mom, though she still looks somewhat trepidatious. I touch her arm reassuringly.

“Mom, it's cool; she had a ton of pads on. See, I was talking game smack on them, so as to make them aware they were going to lose and also get a worse-than-necessary drubbing for being very rude, on top of getting embarrassingly creamed. Seriously, you can barely get hurt,” I lie. “Besides, they don't even let us skate without insurance, remember?”

“Somehow that's not helping. And that girl probably wanted to give you an extra poke in the nose for saying that stuff to her!” My mom frowns. She looks over at Gina and Matt and they all make faces and shake their heads. Then they give each other the “fake horrified parent laugh” and nod sagely, grimacing at each other sympathetically.

I improvise.

“Mom, that's roller-girl rap. I made it up. It's how we do Roller Derby. That was an Epic poem—like Beowulf!”

This causes all the girls who do Roller Derby within earshot to crack up.

“Well, it sounds like assault and battery to me!” my mom tells me over the hoots.

“There's a little of that in there too,” I joke. She smiles gamely. She's okay again, almost.

The doorbell rings and Paul walks in. He's done with the dojo for the day. He hasn't been home, as he's still carrying his gym bag with his
gi
(gee), which is that white outfit they tie their whatever-color belt around.

He looks flushed and shiny. But good. He showered at the gym because his hair's wet.

“Hey, baby bro! Come in and party!” I tell him. Our mom sees him and waves.

He comes over to us and I leave him with Mom and Matt as Gina and I sneak outside to get the large rectangular cake out of their car and put it on the kitchen table.

Just before we bring it out, I hear the doorbell again and Beau goes to answer it. He actually dashes for it. He's been acting kind of edgy all night so I go over to open it with him.

As he flings open the door I see two more of my league wives; my two hilarious homegirls, Velissa Raptor and Karen KillzDLz, standing on the porch. A tall, handsome guy is sandwiched between them. Karen and Lissa are both gorgeous, tall and buff. Karen is rocking a new short-'n'-sassy pixie 'do, and Lissa, aka “ol' olive-green eyes,” is sporting teal and pink hair. They are both attired in typical outlandish rawk-chick garb, but the guy standing between them looks like he just hopped off the cover of
GQ
.

My league wives beam gleefully to see me. They're both already in college full-time. They study hard (thus Karen KillzDLz doesn't stand for
down-low
—it stands for
dean's list
) and work hard and are now ready to party!

The tall guy smiles shyly.

“Wives! What up?!” I screech as I roll up behind Beau. We hug collectively.