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I startle when I catch her beside me, keeping pace. Her breathing is more labored, but not to the point that would make me think she’s about to keel over.
Small but mighty, huh?
“Tinker Bell.” I slow down and switch backward to my skates’ outside edges, sort of like she did earlier. “You know, because you looked like a tiny fairy figure skating out here.” To emphasize the point, I make a twirl, hands up like a ballerina.
“I have a name, and it is definitely not Tinker Bell. But surely yours must be Big Turd on a Stick.”
I shrug. “At least I’m big.”
“Good thing this isn’t a game, because I can do this.” With that, she raises her stick as if it’s a sword.
“Hold up.” I raise a gloved hand as a thought suddenly hits me harder than her stick would have. “This can’t mean you’re on the team, right?”
“Of course I’m on the damn team.”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “I didn’t sign up for some co-ed team that is supposed to be about warm and fuzzies.”
“And what makes you think I did?” She snorts, sizing me up from head to toe. “Besides, if we were on a team together, I’d trip you. Breaking all your teeth is a sure way to shut you up.”
I hiss and put my hands over my chest. “So much hatred in that small body. That’s not healthy, Tinker Bell.”
She grinds her teeth, and every word comes out with a period attached to it. “I am not Tinker Bell. My name is Luz Rodriguez, and you best remember that.”
“Luz means light, right?” I ask, pulling from my high school Spanish class. “And Tinker Bell is all shiny, so if I make that association…”I pause and grin so wide my face hurts. “Don’t worry,” I continue, wheezing with the effort not to crack up. “I will never forget your name, Tinker Bell.”
Her body tenses from the bottom up, as if it were being filled with lava about to erupt from her mouth. I skate away before the explosion.
A different kind of noise fills the arena up. Voices draw closer and finally spill onto the ice with the bodies they belong to. A bunch of guys and girls wrestle around for space, as though there isn’t enough square footage. Someone shoves someone else, who knocks into a third person, who retaliates by pushing back.
“Get out of the way, meathead, before I clean the floor with your face.” A different girl is the author of that line of poetry.
“Why don’t you go home and play with your Barbie, princess?” some guy responds, adding in baby noises.
More and more people drop onto the ice. Too many to be from the same team. And, according to the giant clock overhead, a good forty minutes too early for practice. Clearly, there are two teams here. I just have to find mine and send Tinker Bell off to her figure skating squad.
My lungs expand to capacity, taking in air I then release slowly. So much for catching a quiet skate, staking ownership of the place, working up a sweat.
Tinker Bell heads over to the fray, and from what little I know of her, I don’t think it’s to pour water on the fire but to stoke it. I pick up the pace and get there before her. I don’t know any of these people, but I grab the first guy I find from the collar of his jersey and drag him back. Before he gets testy, I wedge my stick between him and the girl he’s been heckling.
Someone does the same with the girl, holding her back. Instead of exploding like I expected, Tinker Bell helps pluck the girls from among the boys until there’s a clear line between.
I count the girls in front of me. Eighteen. Which means there are seventeen dudes behind me if they’re all early.
“Guess you were right, Tinker Bell. We’re not on the same team.”
The glare she tosses my way reminds me that she’s still a volcano about to blow up. Her dark eyes promise murder if I breathe another word.
“I see you’ve all met each other,” says a new voice from behind.
I turn, and from among a wall of heads, I catch yet more people stepping on to the ice. At the helm is the guy who scouted me, Glen Green, who is supposed to be the head coach of the St. Cloud Thunder Bolts. There’s a cohort of people behind him, men and women, too many to be the staff of one team alone.
“If you’d all followed instructions instead of arriving early, you’d have learned where you were supposed to go,” he says while folding his arms. “Strikes, off the ice. Bolts, with me.”
And he stays on the ice.
“But—” Tinker Bell complains, confirming she’s a Strike or whatever.
“Follow me,” a middle-aged woman says to her and the rest.
