Knee Pads - Chapter 7: Chapter 7

I was pretty convinced Corinne was just trying to mess with my head.
She knew damn well I was as interested in joining the roller derby team as I would be in watching grass grow, which was exactly why she had dared me to try out. I wasn't used to skating on a rink that wasn't made of ice and using skates without sharp blades, so it would be hard to accept such a proposal. However, if I were to say no and sit right where I was, she'd point out I was scared and a coward. God knew I wouldn't be able to survive the sheer humiliation.
She had me backed into a corner, with no way out, and she knew it. The smug smirk plastered on her lips was clear evidence of that, and I found myself wondering how someone so small could possibly be so annoying.
As though she could read my mind, she giggled. "I mean, you don't have to do it if you're scared. Obviously." Some of the girls around her laughed at that comment as if she was a comedic genius. I was suddenly reminded of high school cliques. "I totally understand if you're scared of even trying, Wren, I really do. This isn't a sport made for the faint of heart."
She wasn't funny. She was far from it, and I found it hard to believe this was the same person who drunkenly spilled the beans about her trauma in a small closet. It felt like I was dealing with two completely different people, and I couldn't understand why she felt the need to be this type of person whenever she was around her team. They already looked up to her and she was the captain, so she didn't have to prove her worth to them.
Her mother, however . . .
I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of taking out her frustration on me. It wasn't my fault that she hated her mother and the pressure on her shoulders, and I refused to be intimidated by her.
I raised my chin then marched down the bleachers. I hadn't brought any equipment with me, simply because I didn't own any of it, and would have to borrow some, which I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be in debt to these people, especially Corinne's clique, but it wasn't like I could do anything about it. I cared about my safety and didn't want to bust a knee so early into the school year, or something.
"You can find spare equipment in those boxes," Katrina said, in an apologetic tone. Even if she was ashamed, even if she was sorry, even if she felt bad, she had yet to intervene whenever Corinne was being particularly nasty, so her attitude didn't make me feel much. Maybe I'd feel guilty lately, as she didn't have anything to do with my ongoing feud with Corinne Fontaine, but, at the moment, my blood was boiling in my veins. "You'll need a helmet, elbow pads, wrist guards, knee pads, a mouth guard, and skates, obviously. The roller skates are on the shelves."
I grabbed my protective gear, grumbling to myself through gritted teeth, and I forced myself to channel all this anger and use it to fuel my performance. That was what I always did back home, but I also had Jordan to keep me grounded. Here, there was no one to help me keep a cool head.
Marley remembered no one had warmed up and no one was trying to pull a muscle or ruin a tendon, so Corinne's pettiness had to wait. It shouldn't be as painful to her as it seemed to be, but she kept finding new ways to shock me. She was then forced to ask everyone who wanted to try out to come join us, which helped me fade into the crowd and not do anything that would attract unnecessary attention to myself.
Katrina tried her best to skate next to me, arguing she only wanted to make sure I was getting properly acquainted with a novel way of skating, but I pretended to have gone deaf. I didn't dare to skate faster than I currently was, feeling my legs tremble from being out of practice, but I moved towards Marley, where I felt safer.
"Hey," she greeted, her voice slightly muffled thanks to her mouth guard. Some of her curls had escaped from her ponytail, framing her face, and my stomach clenched. How in the world did she do it? How did she manage to look so perfect, even while playing a sport so violent? "How are you holding up?"
"I'm okay," I replied. The ice rink lacked the friction the wood floors beneath my wheels had, making it a lot easier for me to speed out of control and lose my balance. I would never get used to wheels, especially four of them. "It's different from what I'm used to."
"I'm sure you'll do fine."
It all happened too fast.
She playfully bumped her shoulder against mine, sending me flying to the side, and I reached out for her wrist in panic. My hands were slippery and barely missed her, with me scrambling to stay standing on two feet and knowing I'd have to fall forward, protected by the pads on my knees.
I would have fallen forward on my face, had I not wrapped my arms around the waist of the girl skating right in front of me just as I was pathetically wobbling forward, bent over my own waist. I fell, but I'd also dragged down the other poor girl with me, with her smoothing my fall. We both landed with a dry thud, which alerted people nearby and a few others in the crowd, and I wanted to crawl back to my bedroom and never come out again.
"I am so sorry," I blabbered, fixing my helmet. I tried to get up, just so that the two of us could stop looking ridiculous in front of dozens of people, but her legs were tangled with mine in an almost impossible way. Whenever she tried to move and free herself, she'd drag me back down. "I lost my balance and didn't see where I was going—"
"I can see that," Corinne protested, struggling to get up. For a split second, I was worried she might have gotten injured, which would cause yet another strain in her relationship with her mother. I didn't want to be responsible for that. "Can you"—she huffed—"get off me?"
"I'm trying!"
"Marley, if I ever see you do something like that again, I'm benching you for the entire season," a cold voice threatened, and Corinne immediately stiffened under me. Marley, who had skated towards us, gulped. I barely dared to look up, finding an older version of Corinne with lighter hair, wearing the same pissed off expression Corinne usually reserved for me. "Corinne, get up. You look ridiculous."
Corinne shoved me aside, miraculously gathering the strength to do so, and I slammed my hip on the floor. She threw her mother a venomous look, almost as though she was about to trip her—all it would take would be her swinging her leg in an arch—but nothing ever happened. She didn't come up with any snarky comments or tried to make her mother fall; all she did was glare, but I saw past the fury.
Behind the fury, there was hurt. That was so much worse.
Marley helped me get up, as she didn't have to worry about my mother-slash-coach hovering in the background and writing down every single mistake, and I was the one to reach out a hand towards Corinne. She appeared to be genuinely shocked by the gesture, but I had underestimated just how tricky it was to pull someone who was wearing roller skates up while wearing skates myself.
I thought of it as a truce. Waving the white flag. Both Corinne and I had more pressing problems in our personal lives besides not liking each other.
"Cor," a male voice called. Corinne turned to face the source of it, dropping my hand as if I had burned her or was covered in some radioactive substance, and we both found a tall, broad shouldered guy standing behind the rails. It was Drew himself, Corinne's boyfriend, with much darker hair than the one he sported in the one photo I'd ever seen of him. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she replied, throwing him a small smile. "I'm wearing pads."
He returned the smile, blue eyes twinkling, and I had to look away. Even though there were so many people around us, it still felt like I was interrupting an intimate moment between them, but not everyone had as much tact as Marley and me.
"Drew, you're interrupting practice," Coach coldly stated. Drew didn't strike me as the type of person that was easily intimidated, especially by someone who was, at the very least, seven inches shorter than him, but he still backed away from the rails. However, none of us missed the worried look he shot Corinne's way. "If you ladies are done with your little chit-chat, get back to skating. God knows you need to get back into shape. Marley, your posture is horrendous."
Corinne looked about to explode, but fixed her helmet and skated away, easily gliding across the floor without a care in the world. For the sake of my sanity and the well-being of all my limbs, I decided to do my laps by myself, ignoring the disappointed look plastered on Marley's face when I left.
If that was what Corinne had to be put through every day, I couldn't completely blame her for being the way that she was. It didn't explain everything and it certainly didn't excuse the way she treated me, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, it couldn't be easy.
Once Coach Fontaine decided we'd completed enough laps and I was sweating like a mad woman, everyone came to a halt. It was time to test everyone's individual technique—posture, stride, speed and endurance, amongst other skills. I was well out of my comfort zone, as most of the stuff she named had never been on my mind while on ice; there, I had other things to worry about. Pirouettes, jumps.
On one hand, Corinne no longer had an aura of superiority around her, which should help me stay focused on what I was doing instead of worrying about the reasons why I was doing them. On the other hand, she was still the team captain. She was the pivot. She was supposed to lead the team and influence their morale; needless to say, the atmosphere in the stadium wasn't great. I didn't want to waste my time feeling bad for her, as I had already reached the brilliant conclusion that she'd skin me alive as soon as she sensed the slightest bit of pity being thrown her way, but I couldn't ignore how she seemed to be on the verge of tears.
She was utterly isolated—her mother, her friends, her teammates, her boyfriend all seemed to have been taken away from her, one at a time, and all she had was this stupid sport.
It must be pretty lonely to be Corinne Fontaine.
I handled myself reasonably well. I didn't slip and fall again and, after all those laps, I was slowly getting used to this new way of practicing my favorite hobby. I felt confident enough in my skills to not let Coach Fontaine scare the living shit out of me, and I'd successfully completed—and passed—her speed and endurance tests. She said my posture was better than most and that I seemed to have steady legs and quick reflexes, which would be helpful once the actual roller derby training started.
"Do you have any experience with skating?" she asked. Corinne purposefully looked away from me, while Katrina barely managed to hide her excitement. I knew she was dying to tell me 'I told you so', but not even she was brave enough to interrupt try-outs like that.
"I used to be an ice skater back in California," I clarified, aware of how many eyes were on me. I expected people at Yale to be competitive—I was the most competitive person I knew, and I knew Theo Duval—but the glances some of the other girls gave me from the corner of their eyes was poisonous. "I didn't do it competitively at first, it was mostly a hobby, but then I started doing it." Because my brother encouraged me to do it, I mentally added. She didn't need to know about that part; no one here did.
"I've seen her trophies, Coach," Katrina added, with an elbow casually resting on my shoulder. Someone scoffed behind us. "If you look her up on YouTube, you'll see what she's all about. It's like she was levitating."
Coach Fontaine's eyes sparkled with sudden interest. "What's your name, fresh meat?"
"It's what we call the newbies," Katrina whispered, although I didn't need her to.
"Wren," I said, too quickly. "Wren Wu, ma'am."
She waved the formalities away. "Coach works just fine." Corinne was shaking in anger at this point, so I just nodded, not wanting to make things even worse. I didn't know how much agency she had in deciding whoever made it into the team and who didn't, and I had my eye set on the prize: internal validation. "I'll check you out later. If you can skate here as well as you apparently do on ice, I'll be happy to welcome you into the team."
That sounded a lot like favoritism. There were girls who had been skating a lot better than I was, even the freshmen, and my only advantage was my time on the ice. Some of them had experience with roller skating and with roller derby, yet I was the only one being praised for it. Under any other circumstances, my chest would be bursting with pride. Now, it all felt hollow.
When they slapped a star on my borrowed helmet, I wanted to barf.
The girls in front of me were a lot bigger and taller than I was, meaning they'd have an easy time blocking me. Corinne was my pivot, which wasn't too bad, and I knew that, if this was an actual match, she'd want me to succeed and score points. She wouldn't screw me over . . . right? Gulping, I bent my legs and tilted my shoulders back, leaning forward, and refused to glance at the girl standing next to me, afraid I'd lose focus.
Coach Fontaine blew the whistle to start the jam, and I immediately shot forward.
It was like running face first into a brick wall. The blockers were doing their job, all right, and I was easy to block thanks to my size. All they had to do was get in my way, blocking every path I could take, and I understood why this was a team sport. It wasn't something I could do on my own, unlike figure skating.
Corinne looked back over her shoulder, realizing I was taking too long. "Help her! You have to help the goddamn jammer!" Someone slammed their shoulder against mine, making me tumble, and my blockers blocked the opposing jammer with a quick hip check. For a split second, I wondered if they'd injure me just to keep me from scoring.
Then, they messed up. One of the blockers tried to stop me by skating backwards into me, but I shouldered my way through two of them, doing a full three-sixty to get away. I couldn't believe my luck, faced with a clear path, while the other jammer was still struggling to free herself.
"WREN, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Corinne yelled, interrupting my inner marvel. "Complete the goddamn jam!"
Huffing, I obeyed like a well-behaved puppy, and became the lead jammer. I knew matches would be a thousand times harder than a practice session at try-outs, and I assumed the upperclassmen were holding back, but I still felt oddly proud of myself.
After everyone rotated through the positions—except for pivot, a spot reserved for both Corinne and Marley—Coach Fontaine blew the whistle one final time to signal the end of try-outs. She said results would be out by the end of the week, which did nothing to ease my anxiety, and I slid towards the boxes to remove my padding in silence.
"You looked really happy there," Katrina told me, already free from her mouth guard, "and you skated beautifully."
I shrugged. "I thought this wasn't meant to be a pretty sport."
"It's not, but that doesn't mean you don't have to love what you do. Your passion shows." She freed her hair from her bun. "I really hope you make it into the team, Wren. Truly."
I found myself wishing the same thing.