Nantucket Blue - By Leila Howland Page 0,1

first time, Jay was starting to notice me. He’d paid me undeniable attention at Joey Rivera’s post–Spring Dance party last weekend. He followed me onto the girl-dominated sunporch, where pink wine coolers matched pedicures and shades of glittering lip gloss. He didn’t have to stay there with me, our legs touching on the sofa, for an hour and a half when the guys were drinking beer and playing video games in the basement, a mere staircase away. He didn’t have to rest his arm behind me, making it impossible for me not to lean against his boy body, making it so easy to feel comfortable in the crook of his arm.

Now he threw his head back, laughing at something his buddy Chris said. I wondered if I could make him laugh like that, if he was the kind of guy who believed that girls could also be funny.

“Get in the game, Cricket,” Miss Kang, our coach, called from the opposite sideline. I snapped out of my Jay Logan haze and turned to see my teammate Arti Rai, ambidextrous and MVP defensive player for two years running, hurtling downfield like an Acela Express.

“Out of the way, Joy,” Miss Kang called. Joy Gunther, who always had a bud of snot in her left nostril and had only been promoted to varsity because Holly and Dori had been suspended, shrieked, covered her head, and backed out of the way.

I broke right, flying past three of the red-clad Alden girls, my stick in my right hand only. I’d practiced running one-handed catches in the park last summer. By September I was able to pluck the hard orange ball out of the air as effortlessly as catching an apple falling from a tree.

Arti issued one of her signature clean, powerful passes, and it landed with a satisfying weight in my crosse. I drew my stick close to my body, pivoted, and sprinted down the field so fast I could feel the flesh of my cheeks flattening. The bleachers erupted in applause. I heard cowbells, whistles, and cheers. I saw Jules out of my peripheral vision, wide open and angling for a pass. I tossed it to her, and of course she caught it. We always made the connection. The Alden defense flocked to her, freeing me, and she passed it back.

I was in the twelve-meter fan when I decided it was a good day for a bounce shot and propelled rapidly toward the eight-meter arc, then changed my mind, thinking I’d better make it an upper-left-corner drop down, when a metal stick slammed my jaw and a cleat perforated my shin. In two dark seconds, I was on the grass, eating dirt, my hands scraped and flat, my stick flung three feet away from me. I heard a collective gasp.

“Yellow flag,” the ref called. Red flag, I thought. But before I had time to spit dirt, someone was next to me, smelling sweet and pink, like baby-powder deodorant or girlie body spray—the kind that comes in a can.

“Don’t even think of going after Jay,” a raspy voice said.

I lifted my face, holding my breath, afraid that if I inhaled, I’d start to cry, out of shock or pain or both. I turned to see Nora Malloy crouched in a posture that from a distance would suggest concern, but up close was that of a puma about to pounce. From the intensity of her glare, you’d think she was someone I not only knew well but had severely wronged. In reality, we’d probably spoken a total of four times in our lives, and one of those times was when I asked her where the bathrooms in the Alden Sports Center were.

Nora Malloy was a junior at Alden, and I guess she liked Jay so much that she was willing to disfigure the competition. Up close, her prettiness was magnified. I had seen Nora in a bikini last summer at First Beach. It’s not every girl who can pull off boy shorts. You need a bubble butt and lady legs for that. While I had nothing to complain about in the body department, I was closer to a girl than a woman. I’m built like my mother, who even at forty-four is still more girl than woman.

I drew my shin to my chest. No skin had been broken, but I could feel a warm prune-colored bruise blooming on my bone.

“Hey, you got that?” she asked. “Stay away.”

“Whatever,” I said, removing my mouth guard and wiping my mouth.