“It’s almost ten AM and you didn’t stay out late last night.” She hadn’t done anything at all, actually, even though it was the weekend. We could have used her help at the restaurant.
I went to her window and pulled on the string to open the blinds. The metal slats didn’t move at all but a cloud of dust did waft up. “Yuck,” I said, waving it away from my face. “Do you ever clean in here?”
She didn’t bother to give me an answer but I didn’t need one. I had climbed over piles of garbage and dirty clothes to reach the bed in order to poke her awake.
“You might feel better if you got up and did something,” I chided. “It’s beautiful today.” It was twenty degrees, but the sun was nice.
She still didn’t answer but I gave it another try. “Morgan? Please?” I stood for a few moments, waiting, and then left her alone.
My parents were already in the kitchen and I could hear them arguing about coverage at the restaurant, so I stepped quietly. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to go in, but I knew that I was going to get dragged there. Since my sister had decided to spend her life in bed and my brother was…what was he doing now? I couldn’t keep up.
Whatever. He wasn’t going to show up at Walter’s today and I thought that I also deserved a little time away, just a little. Morgan hadn’t stayed out having fun on Friday night and neither had I. I’d closed the restaurant last night with my mom and it was after some of the Junior Woodsmen players had engaged in an ice fight, throwing cubes at each other. There had been a lot to clean up and then she had been worried about some invoices, so we’d gone over those, too.
I stifled a yawn as I slowly unlocked the front door and swung it open. It didn’t squeak because I had prepared for this moment when I’d come in last night. After my mom had trudged to bed, I had stayed up a little later and sprayed the hinges with lubricantso that I could quietly exit—yes, that was weirdly wily and also more in the vibe of thirteen-year-old me, the girl with the thigh-high striped socks which I thought had made me quirky instead of clown-like.
But the grease worked, because I got away with no one sighing “Molly” (Mom) or yelling to get my ass back inside because I had work (Dad). A moment later, I was in the car that Morgan and I shared, which I had also packed up the night before. Then I was on my way before anyone could say anything.
We lived close to the restaurant, which meant we could never really get away. It also meant that we lived close to the Woodsmen practice facility, a huge building that looked like an ugly orange prison. It was where the Junior Woodsmen team played outside. Just to emphasize, they playedoutside, in northern Michigan, in the winter. I wasn’t sure what poor life choices had led them to our area instead of, say, the Caribbean, but mine were just as bad. I was going to sit on my butt in the bleachers and watch my first Junior Woodsmen game.
I had been to a game at Woodsmen Stadium, once, but that was in the fall. It hadn’t been warm but it was nothing like today, which was why I had brought a stadium seat, glove warmers, and blankets, in addition to doubling down on layers of clothes. I was prepared except…well, it would have been more fun to go with someone.
Like, for example, if I had a boyfriend. If I had a boyfriend who was a Woodsmen player—no, I wouldn’t have been going to this game, because it wouldn’t have been necessary to try to catch a guy on his way up. I wasn’t sure about this course ofaction, anyway, because if I wasn’t attractive enough for them while wearing my work uniform (even without the hat), then I also wasn’t going to make an impression while wearing so many layers topped with my down coat that was brown and made me look like a walking Tootsie Roll (or, according to my brother Max, a giant turd).
At least I was doing something a little different, not just squeezing in homework or heading back to the restaurant for another chore that I hated. I wasn’t curled in bed like my sister, never leaving my dirty room, and I wasn’t running around wasting money, like my brother.
There were more people at the game than I expected. For as long as I could remember, everyone in our area had considered this team to be a bit of a joke. But the parking lot had plenty of cars, and when I thought about it, I did realize that there had been a lot more advertising for the Junior Woodsmen this year than in prior seasons. It looked different at their facility, too. I had been at this place before, in the summer when the real Woodmen were here to practice. It had been when my brother and I were still friends and we had hung around to watch the players come out of the front of the building. They usually stopped to talk and sign autographs. Once, Max had wanted to see inside, so he had parked in this back area and we’d looked for a way in (we hadn’t succeeded and he had gotten a bad rash from poison ivy).
I remembered some things differently. Hadn’t the parking lot been dirt? Now it was paved. The bleachers looked familiar but there were big canopies built over them, which I also didn’t recall. The field seemed normal, but that wasn’t clear in my mindfrom when I was ten and running around with Max, pretending we were spies. It had been fun.
“Molly. Molly Scheffler.”
I looked up at the crowd in the bleachers toward the sound of my name, cupping my mittened hand over my eyes so that I wasn’t blinded by the sun. It really was nice today, but damned cold. I spotted an arm waving and thought I recognized the man to whom it belonged, under sunglasses and a baseball cap, so I climbed up the metal risers with my gear. Then I saw that it definitely was him, the non-quarterback from the week before who was also the high-maintenance customer that my dad hated. The Junior Woodsmen had come in since then for lunch and dinner but I hadn’t seen Shane Bishop again, not until now.
“Hi,” I said and he nodded back.
“Have a seat,” he offered. There were people around but there was plenty of room, especially in the top row where he had placed himself.
I put myself next to him. “I’m surprised you remembered me. I’m even more surprised that you recognized me.” I wasn’t in my Navy/restaurant uniform and now I was also wearing a fleece-lined beanie and sunglasses, along with the brown puffer coat that went down past my knees.
He held up a pair of binoculars. “These make everything pretty clear. You can get a great visual from up here.”
“You must be a big Junior Woodsmen fan, if you’re watching them that closely,” I said. But I had asked him before about the players and he’d been no more knowledgeable than I was.
“I’m not, not really.”
“Then why are you here?” I wondered.
He hesitated for a moment and then said, “I work for the Woodsmen. They want to keep a better eye on the Juniors, to watch for more homegrown talent. Hence, me and my binoculars.”
“You work for the Woodsmen? As a coach?” This could have been awesome! Here was a direct conduit to the team, someone who knew the players personally and could easily introduce me.
“Not a coach, a scout,” he corrected. “Here they come.”
Both teams were jogging out of the orange building and he got very focused. He watched through his binoculars as they warmed up and he started writing notes with a stylus on his tablet, the same one he had studied so intently as he’d eaten his low-salt lunch with extra tomatoes and a lettuce bun.
“I remember how you said that you were going to be an asshole about ordering at our restaurant. Are you always into healthy eating? And if so, why did you bother going to a hamburger place?” I asked.
“Hm?” He jotted something else. “I’m a what?”
