Page 17 of False Start
I felt my brain rattle inside of my head before I’d even noticed my skates weren’t on the ground anymore. My teeth clanked painfully inside my mouth, my tongue splitting from the blunt force of my canines tearing through my mouthguard and my flesh. Liquid iron pooled at my gums. Simultaneously, my back hit the floor, a sick crunch beneath me raging through my body in an agonizing wave of pain.
“Oh sh—” The announcer’s microphone was still on.
“Take a knee.” Lonnie’s voice boomed through the crowd, and it went silent around me.
“Call an ambulance,” I heard not far off in the distance.
I blinked my eyes open to see Reese Ender standing above me, a ghost-white expression painted over her face.
“Her leg,” she said, a retching sound coming from another direction just as my eyes flickered closed once more.
I was in a wheelchair for seven months. It took four surgeries and almost a whole year to learn how to walk again.
While I refuse to let my fears command me,I can’t deny that I’m a much more anxious skaternow. It’s impossible not to be extra vigilant, being always on the lookout for the possibility of getting hurt. I see them everywhere now. My brain works harder than before to recognize the patterns, as if they were tiny moments of premonition, alerting me to the possibility of pain.
Precognition induced from trauma.
My self-diagnosis reminds me I’m not my mother, that I don’t need to define every little thing that’s wrong with me.
They go a few more jams before I finally feel okay to rejoin the pack, forcing Harvey to pass me the star and take her place as pivot again. I don’t miss her look of disdain as she’s made to give up the position, but I do recognize the work she’s put in. It’s practically unfair, the way she completely exhausted K-Otic and made them much easier to outskate.
The jammer I can handle, but either Scott and Mo are setting me up on purpose, or they don’t see the unfairness of pitting Harvey up against me round after round. With her targeting me, I can hardly get through the pack, let alone lap K-Otic, without getting hit.
I’m getting crushed between Harvey and Nancy Shrew when one of their wheels grind against mine, causing me to fall forward.
Overwhelmed with frustration to the brink of exploding, I do my best to contain my emotions on the track, to avoid taking it personally.
It’s nothing but personal, though.
If this was your home, you’d know Lonnie Green is dead.
The truth of that statement is painfully uncomfortable. It stabs at parts of me that have been hiding for so long, I swear they no longer exist. Bouncing back on my skates, I struggle to catch up, but right at the last minute, I feelDreadPool’s hands on my hips, sending me flying forward, helping me take my first win for the night.
Mo blows the whistle, and I practically jump into DreadPool’s arms, not caring that we’ve barely exchanged two words. Comradery is the only bridge you need sometimes. They lift me into the air, my skates coming off the ground as she squeezes me into a hug. I feel the heat of a stare, following the thread of the sensation to find Harvey’s eyes locking onto us.
It wasn’t much to anyone else, but it waseverythingto me.
My first win in five years.
Just like that, my first practice is over, and I know now more than ever that I was meant to come back. Coming home was part of my path, my journey to figure out whoever the fuck I am.
Not my injuries, not my trauma, not who my parents want me to be.
Me. Behind all that shit.
Living for me.
7
HARVEY
He’s still going to start her. Unbelievable. She has no center of gravity, no muscle to hold her up, and the only way for her to win a jam is if the other team is somehow severely injured.
Bullshit.
Scott is punishing me for not smiling and playing along with his power trips. I’m not here to coddle a grown man’s ego. I’m here to skate. With the announcement of this weekend’s Slam Night roster, I storm off the track into the locker room. Should I be grateful that I’m skating at all? That I’m starting pivot?
It’s impossible to feel that way when all I see is the opaque, blistering hate for these changes forced into my life. It’s not like I’m some immovable force, unwilling to adapt and change. It’s the opposite. I’ve been constantly molding and remolding myself to fit the circumstances of my life, an exhausting feat, for over two decades. When I moved to Devil Town four years ago, I was sure that things were changing, that being somewhere small and quietwould ease the internal noise disruption, soothe the need for chaos.
