CHAPTER FIVE | GRAND SLAM
when a jammer successfully laps the other opposing jammer.
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"Can I really not convince you to try out for the team?" Katrina questioned, rummaging through her closet. An absurd number of dresses were spread out on her bed and, yet, she kept adding more to the pile, as though she didn't have enough options already. "You already know how to skate, so you wouldn't have to learn from the start. Besides, it's a new way of skating, which means it's not boring and repetitive."
"I don't think that's a good idea," I replied, debating on whether I should let her look at my own clothing options. Though I liked getting dressed up and playing with makeup, Katrina took those hobbies to a whole new level; after singing and songwriting, fashion was her biggest passion. I doubted she'd be impressed with my plain clothes while wearing one of her fabulous, expensive dresses. "Corinne would agree with me."
Katrina sighed, tossing aside a salmon-colored dress. "There will come a time when you'll stop caring about whatever Corinne thinks about you. I've been doing just that for two whole years and it's the happiest I've been." She spun around on her heels, holding a teal dress and a purple one against her chest. "Which one?"
"Teal." She tossed it aside, and I realized two things. One: she had just asked me to choose a dress to discard, unbeknownst to me, as I assumed she wanted me to pick what she should wear to my birthday party. Two: she was younger than I thought she was; either that, or she'd studied somewhere else during her freshman year of college. There were so many things about her that I didn't know, most of them because I'd never bothered to ask and others because I never paid much attention. "Aren't you a senior?"
"Nope. Junior. Back to Corinne—"
"Can we talk about something else? Literally, anything else?"
"Hey, you were the one who brought her up. I was perfectly content with discussing roller derby."
"As if they're not interchangeable." She rolled her eyes. "She doesn't like me one bit and I'm pretty sure she'd kick me in the face while wearing her skates as soon as she saw me. I'm not trying to get myself killed, nor do I want to call a dentist and say I need new teeth."
"What's up with you two, anyway? What happened?"
I groaned. Maybe I'd brought that upon myself for wanting to keep talking about Corinne, but, then again, I never thought about how weird it must have been for Katrina to see me storm into her dorm room soaked from head to toe. I supposed I owed her an explanation.
"She nearly ran me over on my first day," I explained. Katrina's new choice was between a dark-gray dress with a low v-neck and the cutest neon-pink dress. I crossed my fingers, silently begging her to use the pink dress; it fit her personality perfectly—fun and bright and the center of attention. "She dodged me just in time, but there were puddles all around the parking lot. It was either a matter of dodging me or the puddle."
"So you're telling me you've been mad at Corinne for nearly a month because she didn't run you over?"
I opened my mouth to protest and kindly let her know it hadn't been like that, but then closed it again, ultimately realizing it had, in fact, been like that.
Though the outcome could have been a lot worse—Corinne could have run me over had she wanted to—I couldn't help but be mad. She'd still ruined my clothes and made me make a fool out of myself. She was not in the right here and I failed to comprehend why in the world Katrina was defending her; did it come with being part of the roller derby team?
"Listen, I know how it sounds—"
"To be perfectly fair, it sounds like you're antagonizing Corinne for no good reason," she chimed in, now standing with her back turned to me, and it felt like a punch to the stomach. Out of all the ways this conversation could have gone, I never expected her to fully take Corinne's side or to have her join the dark side—Corinne's cult. "There was no good outcome to that situation and she chose the one that would hurt you both the least. Personally, I'd rather have my clothes get soaked, dirty, and ruined than to be run over by a bike and risk breaking some bones or, like, dying."
I fell back to my bed, hands folded over my stomach, eyes glued to the ceiling. If I looked at Katrina, I'd feel the sharp sting of betrayal all over again; she, too, had crossed me, like Theo had done. I felt so stupid, knowing something so humiliatingly small had infuriated me as much as this, and I hated that I was giving Corinne this much power.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "Am I not allowed to hold grudges?"
She shrugged. "Yeah, but don't let them consume you. They'll poison your every thought."
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I regretted everything about my birthday party.
I carried a cup of water with me everywhere I went, making sure to always refill the ice just so people didn't give me a hard time over my distaste for alcoholic beverages. I knew there would be a point in the night when most of them would be too drunk to care, but I still wanted to be as far away from those people as humanly possible.
Katrina had asked the sorority girls for help with the party so, naturally, they'd let her take the house and decorate. Things looked eerily similar to that first party, except we now had birthday decorations, complete with banners and colorful strings of lights spread around the house. I walked around with a tiara on my head to let everyone know I was Wren, The Birthday Girl, and it was absolutely mortifying to be hugged and congratulated by people I didn't even know.
Contrary to the last party, I didn't have the luxury to sulk behind Katrina this time. I was still pissed at her for taking Corinne's side, out of all things, and I didn't need that negativity on my birthday. It wasn't like I cared that much about my birthday, even though I was turning twenty-one, but it was still my special day in theory, damn it, and Corinne wasn't going to ruin it, be it directly or indirectly.
Fortunately for me, the rest of the roller derby girls seemed to like me—at the very least, they tolerated my presence, as one would treat a stray cat. Katrina hung around, as they'd been her friends since long before they met me, but I was secretly thankful they didn't leave me hanging on my own birthday. Marley, in particular, seemed pretty invested in making me a part of their clique.
We'd never talked about it, but part of me felt like I should set up some ground rules. I was not interested in relationships, regardless of how cool and interesting she was, and I needed her to not expect anything else from me besides a casual thing. I had neither the time nor the interest in serious relationships and I didn't really want to get her hopes up.
"Has anyone seen Corinne, like, at all?" one of the girls questioned. Katrina shot me a pointed look from the corner of her eye, as though she thought I'd kicked Corinne out of the party. "She asked me to go get her something to drink, then she just disappeared into thin air."
I sipped my drink to avoid saying I hoped she would do just that.
"She probably left," Marley replied. "It's not like she even wanted to come in the first place." I tightened my fingers around my cup. Now that was just unnecessary. "No offense, Wren, but it really isn't about you. Today's just not a good day for Corinne and your birthday just happened to land on the same day."
"What a coincidence," I commented, through gritted teeth.
Katrina graced us with a dramatic eye roll, then left the room to go do God knows what. She'd followed my advice and chose to wear the neon pink dress, which did wonders to divert all the attention to her whenever my golden crown wasn't around, and I wasn't bothered. Parties were more her thing and the main reason I'd let her throw this one was just to make her happy.
Someone commented she'd probably left to go check on Corinne, wherever the hell she might be, and I began to second guess my rant from earlier. I didn't know how deep their friendship went, but it seemed stronger than just a teammate relationship; did I really want to be the one to force a wedge between the two of them? Was that really why she was so furious?
At some point in the evening, the girls kept drinking, and I kept coming up with excuses to not touch the alcohol. Most of the guests were drinking illegally, which I wasn't even sure how it got past the radar in a place like Yale, but people kept looking the other way. As I tried to slip outside to get some air, Katrina stopped to talk to an older woman, short, yet sporting a mane of platinum hair as bright as a beacon, and I heard the latter ask Kat for Corinne yet again.
"Haven't seen her," Kat said. "I do know she wasn't feeling too well, though."
"Of course she isn't, she's wasted," the woman deadpanned. "Tell her to get herself back on track. This is just embarrassing."
Katrina looked downright conflicted. I knew she knew I was eavesdropping but made no mention of it. "Yes, Coach. I'll look for her and get her some water."
Ah. So that was the infamous Coach, the one Corinne seemed to despise more than she disliked me, though I could understand why. It would certainly be frustrating to have someone talk down to and about me the way she was doing to her, even though it agonized me to sympathize with her.
I dipped, refusing to listen to the rest of their conversation. Coach was a tiny, fiery little thing and I knew that type of person; I also knew better than to be caught listening to a heated conversation that didn't concern me about someone I didn't particularly like. It was still my birthday, damn it, and I wanted to enjoy at least some of it.
My parents still hadn't called, but Jordan's clinic had been more thoughtful than them. They let him talk to me on the phone for five whole minutes, a lot more than I thought he'd be allowed at this point in his treatment, and hearing his voice felt like a rush of blood to the head.
On one hand, it almost made me think things were normal. Under normal circumstances, he'd wish me a happy birthday over the phone anyway, as I would have already left for college, and it would be fine. In Connecticut, it just served as a harsh reminder that every moment I had with him was finite and numbered and that he was so close, yet so far out of my reach.
Though it was still September, the temperatures were already dropping, and it was now extremely uncomfortable to be outside without a jacket. I'd conveniently forgotten to bring one, still used to the California weather, and regretted it as soon as I took a step out of the sorority house.
There were plenty of things I regretted, actually.
Corinne, with red-rimmed eyes and looking downright wrecked, immediately stopped in her tracks as soon as she saw me. Against my better judgment, I continued making my way towards her, ignoring the wobble on her step when she tried to back away.
"Did you know everyone's looking for you?" I asked, offering her my water. Surprisingly, she took it, albeit keeping her distance like a wounded animal, as though she thought I'd poisoned my own drink. "Even your coach is here."
"Wren," she muttered, "please get out of the way."
"This is my party. I kind of call the shots, and you don't get to boss me around. I don't know how things work in your little roller derby squad, but I'm not part of it."
She let out a shaky, exasperated sigh. "I mean it. I'm having the worst day and I can't be here, so, if you can please get the hell out of my way—"
"Well, can you please get over it and stop sulking before you ruin my birthday party?" She blinked. "Your bad mood is distracting. If you're not in the mood to party, can you go back to your dorm room, or whatever? You're pissed drunk and upset, which means you're bound to do something really stupid."
Corinne huffed. "That's cute. If you'll excuse me, I'm not in the mood to deal with you, so—"
People were starting to stare. I wondered if some of them remembered that scene from the parking lot and knew we had never gotten along and were just buzzing for some drunken birthday drama, but I wasn't going to give them that. She was too drunk, too upset to be in public, and I knew damn well how it was going to end.
I'd seen it a million times. It was always up to me to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess the following morning.
"You're a wreck," I told her, standing my ground. She looked over my head, panicked. "You either drink that water and start sobering up, or you're leaving. I'm not putting up with this crap."
Without waiting for me to complain about anything else, she curled her fingers around my wrist, then dragged me outside. She was far stronger than me, ignoring my protests, and seemed a lot more concerned about looking back over her shoulder than about my well-being. If people weren't staring before, they certainly were now.
She threw me into a closet without any courtesy, which was so characteristic of Corinne Fontaine, and I almost thought she was going to lock me inside for complaining about her, but then she followed me and closed the door behind her. The closet was too small for the two of us, even though we didn't take that much space individually, and the racks of clothes hanging around us didn't allow for much room to move.
I could sense the alcohol in her breath. That's how close to each other we were standing.
She slid down until she sat on the floor, hair glowing silver under the light, and cowered against the wall when Coach's voice reverberated on the hallway outside of the closet. I backed away as well, as much as the minuscule closet allowed me to, and I thanked myself for deciding to wear shorts that evening instead of following Katrina's advice.
"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked. She shook her head, arms wrapped around her knees, looking like a small child. It was the first time I'd seen her show some kind of emotion that wasn't minimally smug or taunting and I supposed I should be happy about it, but it was a type of suffering that brought me no joy. "Are you in trouble?"
"Kind of," she replied, in a voice so low I could barely hear her. "It's complicated. I don't expect you to understand."
"Do you honestly think I'm that obtuse?"
"Yeah." She leaned her head back against the wall behind her, staring up at the ceiling. "To put it in a simple enough way that even you can comprehend, Coach expects way, way too much from me and it's not humanly possible to match those expectations. I bend and break myself to try and keep her satisfied, but she always wants more. There's only so much I can do."
"So?"
"So," she echoed, already losing whatever patience she'd gathered, "when a national champion wants you to be better than her but will also resent you for the rest of your lives if you beat her, you're kind of stuck in limbo."
"And why do you care so much about what she thinks? If you're doing your best, that should be enough."
She sighed again, then looked straight at me, face softening. "Because she's my mom."