Chapter One
I drag myself through the door, weighed down with every possible layer.
BAM! A hand protector bounces off the lockers.
THUD! A shin guard scrapes against the bench bolted to the floor.
I shuffle into the locker room like the Michelin Man, like a middle school boy who decided at the last minute to be a Transformers robot for Halloween and used couch cushions as a costume. Dad likes to say that when I step onto the field, I have the intimidation and swagger of an NFL lineman, but I don’t think that’s winning me any more sexy points than looking like a tire mascot would.
“Good practice, ladies.” Gloria, our field hockey coach, leans against the wall by the towels. She’s a bullish white woman in her fifties, with strong, pronounced shoulders and box-dyed red hair.
“Evelyn,” she says with a nod as I waddle past her.
I heave myself onto the bench as my teammates squeeze past each other and skitter inside. They yank towels down from the shelf and crowd their hockey sticks against the wall. They move with the nimbleness of people not weighed down by forty pounds of padding and the crushing demands of blocking perfection. Even their voices are light and bubbly, bouncing off the tile floors like soapsuds.
“Don’t you dare take up all the hot water.”
“Where did I put my conditioner kit?”
“Hey! That’s my towel!”
“God, my toes look disgusting.”
“I told you to wrap them after class.”
I smile and ease my other hand from its glove, enjoying the slowness that comes with missing the first round of showers. Everyone else slips off their jerseys and flings their skorts over stall doors in seconds. But for me, the transition from goalie to girl is a process. I have to take my time, removing myself piece by piece until there’s just skin. My boyfriend, Caleb, plays football, so between the two of us, we’d give the longest striptease ever.
The truth is, sometimes I’m not in a hurry to take off the uniform at all. It’s sort of like a security blanket. A badass security blanket.
I’m partway out of the massive chest-protector pad when Natalia pokes her head around the locker bay. Like me, she’s still in uniform.
“Captain?” she says, like my title is a question.
I stop fiddling with the side buckle. “Yeah?”
“I’m . . . I was just wondering . . .” Natalia intertwines her fingers and bites down on her lip. Her blond curls are neatly tucked into two braids. She’s a freshie, one of the newest members of the team, and definitely knows how to work the help-me-I’m-a-baby-deer look.
I sigh and pat a spot on the bench. Natalia totters around the corner, but stops, and stands right in front of me.
“What’s up?” I ask.
She twirls one of the braids around her finger. “I can’t . . . I can’t do back passes.”
“Ah.”
I grab my stick from behind me and stand next to Natalia. I’m about to place it in her hands when I pause, holding the stick just above her palms. “What did I tell you about the phrase I can’t?”
Natalia rolls her eyes. “That it always comes with a yet,” she says in monotone. “But seriously, Evelyn, I’ve tried so many times on the field. I can’t aim anywhere with back passes. And with the Van Darian game coming up next week, I know that I’m going to accidentally shoot the ball into the stands or even into Van Darian’s goal box and everyone’s going to hate me and—”
“Whooooa, hold it!” I squeeze Natalia’s hands until I feel her pulse settle.
I get why she’s freaked out. Van Darian’s our fiercest rival in field hockey, mostly because they’re the second-best team in the district. As an all-girls boarding school, the players have a reputation for taking their repressed sexual energy out on hockey sticks. But they’re second-best for a reason. And that reason is us.
I help Natalia take a step away from the benches.
“Like this,” I say gently. I reposition the hockey stick in her hands and turn her shoulders at a slight angle. “Now relax.”
Natalia goes stiff at the pose, then breathes in and out, softening with each exhalation. Finally I see the connect, the moment when the stick becomes an extension of her own arms. I grab an extra ball from my locker.
“Now try a back pass. Aim for the towel basket.”
She nails it on the first swing.
“Yeah!” I pump a fist in the air. Natalia breaks out into a huge grin.
“Oh my gosh, thank you! Thanks, Evelyn! Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh!”
She squeals and throws the stick to me, then skips back around the locker bay. I smile and return to my chest pad.
Another set of footsteps comes squashing around the corner.
“Hey, Katie,” I say without looking up.
Katie Lu, center midfielder and my ride-or-die field hockey wife, opens the locker right next to mine. Her towel is tucked around her torso, and her jet-black hair drips water onto the floor. She reaches for her phone and scrolls through.
“Shit,” she mutters.
I pull off one of my shoes. “What is it?”
“Shiiiiiiit.” Katie throws her head back and slumps onto the bench. “Mr. Figuel doesn’t think I should get to play next week.”
“What?” I pause at the other shoe and read the email over Katie’s shoulder. “Academic probation? We’ve only been in school for a month.”
Katie looks at me dolefully. “I sort of failed the last three weekly quizzes.”
I blow a raspberry and grab the phone from Katie’s hand. “All right,” I say, already typing. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to email Mr. Figuel and ask for a retest next Friday.”
Katie’s eyes go wide. “But—”
I hold up a finger. “Melanie’s in advanced calculus. She aced Mr. Fig’s class last year.”
I hop on the bench and shout over to the showers. “Melanie!”
“What?” Melanie yells back. She sticks her head out of a shower curtain. Soap slips down her copper hair and onto her thick, freckled shoulders.
“Can you tutor Katie next week after practice?” I ask. “She can’t play the homecoming game unless she passes a trigonometry test on Friday.”
Melanie rolls her eyes and disappears back behind the shower curtain. I grin down at Katie. When it comes to Melanie, no means Hell no and silence means Fine, but you’re a pain in my ass. Which is technically still a yes.
Katie takes hold of her phone. “You think this will work?”
“Definitely,” I say. “Melanie’s a math genius. And as long as Gloria sees that you’re trying, she’ll make sure you’re in the game.”
“Thanks, friend.” Katie smooshes her head into my shoulder. She pulls back and looks at me. “You smell super sweaty.”
“Yeah, and hugging you is like hugging a wet sponge.”
She flips her hair into my face and we both laugh.
Katie dresses next to me while I continue to remove the last of my gear. Our teammates leave in twos and threes, drifting out the door until there are only a few of us left.
Just as I get down to an undershirt and shorts, Katie slams her locker closed and slings her bag over a shoulder.
“You seeing Caleb, or you want me to wait?”
“Um . . . no need to wait,” I say with a cheesy grin.
Katie smiles.
“Have fun, lovebirds!” she sings as she disappears down the hall.
The door closes and I sigh, then turn for the showers.
The truth is, I’m not meeting Caleb anywhere. He and I don’t really hang out beyond breaks at school or the occasional hookup in his truck. But Katie’s the type of friend who will talk over the shower curtain the entire time I’m scrubbing down, and let’s face it: sometimes getting the sweat and grime off everywhere requires a little more privacy than having an incredibly energetic best friend affords.
I latch my stall closed and hang up my towel, praying there’s at least a tiny bit of hot water left as I reach for the faucet.
But the water’s cold as fuck. As usual.
Goose bumps rise on my arms and legs as I slap soap all over my body. I can hear the few remaining teammates blow-dry their hair, laugh over inside jokes as they get dressed, slam their lockers closed, and burst out the side door. The steady slowness drifts back into the locker room, settling around me.
There’s a calm I get from being the very last one out. Sometimes it seems like every other member of the team is always spinning around, freaking out over school or practice or flaky boyfriends or clingy girlfriends. But I get to stand in the center of the hurricane, helping everyone else stay on track. It’s nice to have that kind of role on the team. Whenever I’m on the field, or even in the locker room, I know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. That I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.
The water finally gets too cold to stand, and I switch the showerhead off. I hang back in the stall, wringing my hair out, when two voices slowly rise from over by the sinks. It’s August and Jade, two juniors the rest of the team nicknamed The Twins when they first started back as freshies. Technically they don’t look like twins at all. Jade has dark brown skin, whereas August is white, and ridiculously pale. But the two spend so much time together, they might as well be conjoined.
“Did you hear about Van Darian’s new forward?” August asks.
“Oh yeah . . .” Jade’s voice trails off. “That’s the professional recruit, right?”
I freeze, still halfway hunched under my towel.
Professional recruit?
“Uh-huh,” August says. “I heard they got her from the Southwest. Paid her to move here and everything. She’s scored every Van Darian goal so far this season.”
Jade laughs. “Which is, what, like, three goals?”
“Nine,” August says.
My breath hitches.
Copyright © 2025 by Kit Rosewater. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
