CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO | JAMMER
jammers are the point scorers for their teams. each team is permitted one jammer per jam. the jammers are identified by stars on their helmet cover.
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Corinne was still shaking when I found her outside, but she walked surprisingly fast, even with heels on.
Luckily for me, my endurance had gotten better. Though she had a head start on me, I managed to catch up to her in no time, before she vanished into the darkness and something bad happened—regardless of whether that was just my fears and paranoia speaking or not.
"Corinne, wait," I called. At this time of the evening, the campus was still well lit, with people heading out and into their night-time lectures, some of them wandering around the cafeteria, and that was without mentioning the active Greek life—something we should be heading towards. Even then, Corinne knew how to hide when she didn't want to be found and, had it not been for the brightness of her hair and the soft clicking of her heels on the pavement, I might have lost her. Emphasis on might, as I highly doubted that. "Corinne, you need to cut me some slack here. I can't walk as fast as you."
The clicking stopped. That meant Corinne had, too, and she was giving me an opportunity to catch up to her. When I found her, she was still as stiff as an iron bar, arms crossed so tightly her fists were digging into the fabric of her leather jacket, right above her elbows, but her tears had dried even before she left Coach's office.
She was just standing there, waiting for me to join her, and, when I did, neither of us was quite sure how to proceed. I knew I needed to give her time to handle everything that had just happened—I knew I needed time, and I hadn't been the one going through the traumatic process of confronting an emotionally abusive parent and using those exact words to describe that treatment.
It was the first time I'd ever heard it come out of Corinne's mouth, too, and Coach would never admit to doing such a thing. When she agreed with me, all those weeks ago, she just thought she'd done something bad, an oopsie, but things were much deeper than one or two mistakes. This was Corinne's whole life, shaped and influenced by everything she'd been taught, and Coach would never understand that—not after one or two conversations, at least.
"I guess that's it," she said, after an eternity of silence. "I did it. I confronted her."
"How are you feeling?"
She exhaled, shoulders shaking, and I tentatively set my hands on them, wishing there were a way I could fix this. Realistically, I knew I couldn't, but I could be there for her and that would have to be enough. For me, it was enough.
"I don't know. I'm still in shock. I've talked back to her so many times in my life, but it felt different this time. It felt . . . definite. I'm standing here wondering if that was the right thing to do or if I just completely burned the last bridge connecting me to her for no reason. It feels like . . . all I've ever done was for her. It was always about her and what made her happy and, now that I've told her I'm not doing it anymore, what else am I supposed to do? Doing what she wanted me to do was the one thing she ever praised me for; skating, getting good grades, all that was secondary. What mattered was that I obeyed and met her expectations. It's all I've ever known how to do, but I can't do that anymore. It feels like I've thrown my life away now."
"I think you've done something really brave, for what it's worth. A few months ago, you wouldn't have bothered with confronting her."
She scoffed. "What good did it ever bring me, being brave? Bravery, dedication, tenacity. All of it just made me miserable. I even started talking to someone, a therapist"—I hoped my surprise wouldn't show in my facial expression and discourage her from continuing to talk, as she had never mentioned a therapist to me—"because I decided to take your advice and 'break the cycle'." She drew the quotation marks in the air with her fingers. "Had to go behind everyone's backs because I couldn't talk to anyone that works here without being scared word would go flying back to my mom, and then I had to find one that wouldn't tip her off by not being covered by our insurance. I've been going there for weeks, and this is the first time I've made some progress, and I should be happy about it, but I just feel so . . . dirty." She fell to a concrete bench, arms still crossed. "My therapist just sat there, looked me in the eye, and said 'you know, all you're describing sounds like emotional abuse to me'.
"No one had ever told me that. I didn't want to betray my mom by even considering the possibility of some stranger being right about someone they hadn't even met. I knew this wasn't the right way to be treated, I knew this wasn't normal, but emotional abuse just sounded like a stretch. Everything I knew, everything I've learned had to be reconstructed, and it feels like I've been living a lie all these years. I don't know where to go from here. Do I actually like roller derby, or was all of this because of her? I don't know how to live a life where she's not controlling me anymore or a life where I won't always be stuck in her shadow, never able to make her happy. I thought I was doing the right thing, but then it turns out that I would never do the right thing for her. What do I do without her?"
All her concerns were valid, but I was glad she had someone else to talk to—a mental health professional, someone who could help her at a deeper level and provide her with the kind of support I or Kat couldn't. As always, I couldn't say I fully understood everything she'd had to go through and everything else that was still to come—the healing process would probably take a long time, as she had to dismantle an entire foundation of cognitions and beliefs that had shaped her—but I knew she had still done a lot, a lot more than she was giving herself enough credit for.
All in all, I was proud of her. I was proud of her for being brave, for taking the first steps into regaining agency over her life and her happiness, for standing up to someone who needed a reality check.
(I was also ecstatic to have my captain back for the championship finals, but that was beside the point. Things were bigger than a sport.)
I reached out both of my hands towards her. She eyed me carefully, like a cat examining her surroundings, pondering the pros and cons of giving in to vulnerability, and ultimately took them.
"Now, you live for yourself," I told her, once she was back on her feet. "As for right now, we're going to Kat's birthday party, and then you're taking me off this dress."
The intensity in her stare almost melted me on the spot. "Wouldn't want to keep you waiting."
She never dropped my hand on the walk to the sorority house. I could still feel her nerves by the way her fingers gripped mine, even when we made it past the unofficial bouncer—one of the guys from the football team, as cliché as that was—and she wasn't feeling any better once we successfully dodged a group of beaming cheerleaders.
Kat was in the main hall downstairs, being the perfect host, and she looked absolutely stunning in her baby-pink jumpsuit, complete with a lace top. We spotted her first, one our way to the kitchen so Corinne could get some fresh water to cool off—not the first time I'd seen this happen—and, when she returned the stare, I knew she could sense something was off, but this wasn't the time nor the place to discuss it. It was her birthday, after all, and we could talk later.
Corinne stayed next to me the whole evening, with a protective arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn't sure which of us she was steadying the most.
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By that point, I'd been in therapy for a little while—twice a week, along with the family therapy sessions—and I was finding it hard to find a balance between sessions that left me feeling enlightened and those that wore me out so much to the point I had to cry during the walk of shame towards the parking lot.
My therapist, bless his soul, was nothing like Doctor Nguyen.
Perhaps I'd grown too used to having three other people with me during therapy, but I felt overexposed when it was just me and him in the room. Whereas Doctor Nguyen would sometimes pretend not to notice certain reactions, Doctor Cho had an unsettling ability to hit me right where it hurt and deliver emotionally charged punches with his comments when I thought he wasn't paying attention.
I liked him, though, and I liked how brutally honest he was, but sometimes I missed Doctor Nguyen's tact.
Most of our sessions focused on what he referred to as 'my anxieties'. He had diagnosed me with GAD, which shocked me, as I'd never thought I was in such a poor state that I'd fill the diagnostic criteria, but there it was, a name for everything I'd been feeling. I liked seeing it there, as it helped explain a lot, and it left us both wondering why I hadn't ever been checked for it before.
"I've been feeling like this for years," I'd confessed. "I just thought it was normal behavior. I thought it was normal for me to be this worried all the time considering . . . well, the circumstances."
"Anxiety is more than being worried," he'd remarked, balancing a pen between his head and his ear. "Here, we're talking about something that is excessive, uncontrollable, prolonged, and disproportionate. Maybe it started off as a well-rounded, proportionate coping mechanism, but it was left untreated and escalated into other areas of your life. It became unsustainable. It's impairing your personal and work life. Healthy worries don't usually ruin your life, do they?"
He was also very dramatic, as opposed to Doctor Nguyen's down to Earth approach.
Still, even though he made me confront things I'd much rather keep buried under layers of coping mechanisms—humor, deflecting, generally pretending they didn't exist and didn't bother me—I believed we were making progress.
He had me work on my perfectionism and the realization that I didn't need to be perfect all the time and that the world wouldn't end if I weren't. He helped me open my eyes to a world where wanting to help everyone and wanting to be helped by no one was also not sustainable and proved to be quite lonely and exhausting, as one person couldn't possibly hold that much responsibility.
I wasn't responsible for other people's healing journeys, nor could I be held accountable for things that weren't just about me. I needed to take responsibility for my mistakes, but couldn't go overboard with it to the point it turned into self-pity and self-loathing; as long as I could use them as learning opportunities, as long as I could do better going forward, I was okay.
It wasn't an easy process and I knew it wouldn't be short, either, as he was forcing me to go against behaviors and beliefs I'd held since I was a child, imposed on me by my family—not necessarily their fault, which I'd been slowly coming to terms with—and the world I lived in, and I had to reshape my entire reality. Like Jordan, like Corinne, like so many other people.
If anything, therapy made me realize I wasn't alone in this. It made me realize it was okay to depend on other people ("Wren," he'd said, "you do realize you play a team sport, right?") and that I wouldn't be any less strong and resourceful and dependable if I didn't. It helped me be better, even if it involved a lot of arguing and crying on my part.
I wasn't healed. Not by a long shot. I just knew I had it in me.
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"I'm so glad you're here," I told Theo, stepping away from the bear hug she'd pulled me into the very moment her eyes landed on me, and I meant every word of it. She looked different yet somehow still the same, though her dark hair was longer now, past her collarbones, and she was tanner than the last time I'd seen her through a screen, which made me green with envy in return. I missed sunny California every day. "Thank you so much for flying here."
"You know I wouldn't miss this for the world," she replied, brushing my hair away from my face. "What kind of best friend would I be if I left for Spring Break early?"
"Exactly."
Her lips stretched into a Cheshire cat smile. "You know I'm always in the mood to see you kick some ass. Spring Break can wait. How's your ankle?" I grimaced, while she tilted her head to get a better look at my leg. I was still wearing my sneakers, not wanting to put on my skates until right before we were due to warm up before the bout, and it left me a lot more exposed, even if the derby skates weren't much taller than my regular shoes. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. The nurse cleared me to play and it's been, like, a month or so." I tried to relax my shoulders. "I'm just . . . nervous. This is now or never. The final game of the season. I feel like I torture myself every time I have to play by thinking about how everything can fall apart in a matter of seconds, but it's even worse today. The stakes are higher than ever."
She sighed. "At least this is the last time you'll ever put yourself through something like this."
"No pressure, right?"
All my muscles felt horribly stiff, like I couldn't take another step without fumbling over my own limbs, and they creaked like old doors, which couldn't possibly be a good sign.
I'd gone through this kind of stress before—former competitive figure skater, and all—but this was different. If I were to throw a figure skating competition, I'd only be ruining it for myself, whereas with roller derby I'd be bringing an entire team down with me. After all this time, I was still unable to fully trust my own abilities, my trust in the team aside, and I couldn't break the first rule.
Pull your own weight.
Theo shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "Look, there's—"
"Wren!" Both Theo and I turned to face the source of Kat's voice, finding her quickly making her way towards us. A group of people followed her, most of them out of breath, but the one who seemed to be holding it together the best was a girl who looked just like her, only taller and older, who I assumed was her sister Dani. "Theo. Hi. Ciao. Hello." Theo returned the greeting with a shy wave, which was so unlike her. "Also, meet my family. Wren, they've been hearing all about you since August, so I thought it was about time you all finally met. Family, this is Wren and her friend Theo from California. Wren, my family. You know about Dani"—she gestured towards her sister, who grinned at me—"and these are my siblings . . ."
"It's so nice to finally meet you," Dani told me, pulling me into my second hug of the evening, and the rest of the Stone family quickly followed suit. I had never been hugged as many times as just now and it only made me realize how much I needed it. "Kitty speaks wonders of you."
"I speak wonders of her, too," I remarked. Kat playfully jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow, all in good faith, and I turned to Theo. "What was it that you were saying?"
Theo pointed at something behind me and, when I spun on my heel to check it out, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Corinne was hanging out with my parents, like she'd been doing for a few months now, but it wasn't just the three of them having a nice little chat.
It was times like these that made me glad I wasn't wearing my skates. If I were, then I wouldn't have been able to sprint away from Theo, Kat, and the Stones towards Corinne and my family—and, most importantly, to the one person I'd wanted to see tonight.
Jordan was nearly knocked down by the impact of me jumping to his arms, my own arms wrapped tightly around his torso, but he was stronger now, steadier, and it would take a lot more than this to bring him down. In the background, my mother clicked her tongue, feigning annoyance, but I'd since learned to turn it into white noise. He was here, he was doing so well, and he'd come all this way to see me skate.
If we won tonight, if he saw me win, then I'd be able to say this was all I'd ever wanted. My family, Jordan, Theo, Corinne, Kat. All the important people were here and all of them were rooting for the same thing—they were rooting for us. Having him here was an accomplishment bigger and better than anything I could have asked for.
"If you cry and ruin the makeup I worked so hard on, I might have a meltdown," Corinne said, as Jordan slowly put me down. Her own makeup was impeccable, complete with the three stripes of colored glitter across her cheekbones, perfectly matching those of the bi flag. She didn't own that many colors of glitter powder, so my lesbian flag-inspired makeup was missing two shades of pink, but it was still wonderful to me. "Surprise. We brought Jordan along for the ride."
"You could have told me," I complained, while Jordan used my head as an elbow rest just like old times. "If I had known—"
"That wouldn't have been much of a surprise, would it?" She playfully winked at me. Meanwhile, I was still aghast that he had gotten an early discharge and no one had bothered to keep me informed. "If we had told you, you would have been so stressed out you probably wouldn't have showed up to play tonight, and it gave us enough time to finish Jordan's Wrenking Ball t-shirt. See? It all worked out."
"I like her," Jordan told me.
"I like her too," I added, through gritted teeth, "especially when she doesn't go all secretive on me."
"You'll live." Corinne reached out a hand towards me. "We should go warm up. Meet you guys back here when we win."
The fact that she was so confident about a possible championship victory should have made me feel better, in theory, but it didn't. She did have a point when she said it would have been worse if I'd known about Jordan leaving the clinic earlier, but having him here now also made me so much more nervous about the quality of my performance. This was the one game I couldn't screw up, but the longer I thought about it, the longer I agonized over it, the higher the likelihood of me sabotaging myself.
Realist Wren knew I didn't have to prove myself to him and he had never played roller derby in his life—and probably never would—but he was the one who had taught me how to skate on ice. I owed it to him to be good, to be perfect, and I couldn't let this be something we'd look back on with regret.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Jordan, but your parents made me swear I wouldn't say a word," Corinne confessed, once everyone had warmed up. "I know this only makes things harder for you, but try not to be so up in your own head. We've all trained so hard to get here and we're not going to let some losers from Texas steal our title. It's ours by right."
"I know." I fixed my knee pads one last time for good measure. "I'll be okay. Just have to get my head in the game."
"That's the spirit." She stepped closer to me, with a finger under my chin. "One last kiss for good luck? Before the mouth guards?"
She didn't have to ask me twice, but I did have to angle my head at a dramatically low angle so I wouldn't headbutt her with the helmet. Then, it was over way too soon and we were ushered back onto the track.
I was so nauseous my brain didn't even register Coach's final speech or Corinne and Marley's words of encouragement, but I was determined to keep my nerves at bay. My feet were well grounded, knees slightly bent, and my arms were ready to help me fly forward as soon as the whistle blew.
My eyes locked on my family and Theo, watching me from the stands, and I took a deep breath. Everything I'd trained for all year, everything I'd done, all my hard work, my sweat, my tears, even my blood—it all came down to this moment. I didn't want to fall behind from the start, not with my reputation and all, but I owed it to everyone, especially to myself, to not make any mistakes tonight.
The whistle blasted around the track and I took off, easily dodging the first blocker like they weren't even there.
I didn't want to get overconfident, as it could be a dirty trick to throw me off and catch me off-guard, but things were feeling a bit too easy. I glanced to my right, finding my rival jammer being held back a few feet away from me, but that was all the time I allowed myself to dedicate to something besides looking forward and keeping my eye on the prize.
Ahead of me, Corinne instructed our blockers to skate diagonally to cover each other's blind spots instead of staying in a straight line. I sped up my pace, using my arms for the sake of aerodynamics, and tried to remember to slow down before a curve, but failed. That cost me momentum and a precious advantage, as I skidded across the floor and had to rely on my thigh strength to remain as upright as possible.
My frustration only grew when the jammer began to catch up to me, delighted that I'd fumbled, but I couldn't let it overtake me and lead to more errors. The blocker I needed to pass next was tall and bending forward to compensate for the height difference between us, but I was skating fast enough to dodge her.
To her credit, she did try to stop me, but I'd dealt with one tall blocker too many and used her as a helping hand to take off. Before she could hip check me, I jumped, still in bounds so a penalty wouldn't be signaled, and landed on both feet, still inside the legal area so she could be left behind to swallow my dust. At that point, I was just showing off, but I knew crowds went wild with apex jumps, so it couldn't hurt to demonstrate my skills.
(I could even hear Corinne's voice in my head, urging me to stop with the theatrics and focus on lapping the blockers. Music to my ears.)
As cool as it was, the apex jump could have shortened my lead, so I quickly got back to skating like a regular person instead of falling too dependent on the cheering the move had earned me. The final blocker and the pivot were no match for me, leaving me to wonder how these girls had even made it to the finals when we'd struggled so much with teams we'd defeated.
"LET'S GO, WREN!" Theo shouted, with the help of a comically large megaphone. "You show those girls who's boss!"
I grinned at myself, sincerely hoping this wouldn't lead to her being forced off the building for disrupting the game, but it wasn't like Texas' morale could get any lower, even without her intervention.
I successfully won the jam—rightfully so—and called it off before they could get a chance to recover, but I still had no time to rest and reassess my strategy. All I knew was that these girls still couldn't be underestimated, as they could be testing the waters at the cost of the first jam and the lead jammer position, only to unleash hell on us, and repeating the same actions wouldn't be wise.
Still, I trusted my team to do what was right. I trusted myself then, after spending so much time doubting my capabilities and if I was truly meant to be there with them, if I even deserved it, but I'd earned my spot next to my girls. I'd earned their trust, and they had earned mine.
The taste of victory was so close I could feel it on my tongue, even with exhaustion weighing down on my muscles, and there was nothing better than a shot of adrenaline to serve as a reminder of what I was there to do. I was there to wipe the floor with my competition, to be the wrecking ball, and I would make all these people proud.
Most importantly, I'd make myself proud.
Even with all the hip, shoulder, and even chest blocks—or attempts at doing so—I was nimble, fast, perfect. I'd worked so damn hard to get to where I was—strong, agile, resistant—and lapped them, once, twice, and the points came flowing in like gold. On the track, I was the queen. The star on my helmet was more precious than any jeweled crown could ever be.
After the most stressful hour of my life, bar none, the final whistle blew. I stopped skating so abruptly I fell on Kat, who tripped over Corinne, but we were standing. The building went quiet, so quiet one could hear a hairpin drop.
"With a whopping score of 312 to 85," the announcer declared, their booming voice losing all the composure from before and giving place to pride, "the Bulldogs win for the fourth year in a row! YALE WINS! NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!"
I could get used to being bludgeoned by blockers, but being swallowed by your team to celebrate a win was unlike anything else I'd ever felt. To even think there was a time I ever doubted these girls, doubted myself—hell, doubted Coach—felt like an event that could only occur in a parallel universe, as that would never be my reality in this world again.
I was swallowed by blue, my Bulldogs, and the trophy was so big and bright it could have blinded me, but that wasn't my sun. Corinne was.
When I found her in the middle of the crowd, free from her mouth guard, she was sobbing, with Marley telling her those had to be happy tears. Even Coach was weeping, handing Corinne and Marley the trophy before they could even ask for it.
"It's your win," Coach said, voice clogged with emotion. "You did this, girls."
"HELL YEAH WE DID!" someone yelled, from the commotion, but I couldn't tell who it was.
All I saw was my parents, Jordan, and Theo cheering for me until they lost their voices, beaming with pride—for us, for me—and I decided I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything in the world. Even if it hadn't been as challenging of a match as I'd expected it to be, it was a victory—a championship victory—and I wouldn't toss it aside.
When I turned to find Corinne, she was already next to me.
"Captain," I greeted.
"Co-captain," she replied, taking off my helmet, then crashed her lips against mine with such fervor I had to hold her so we wouldn't fall. We were still wearing our skates, after all. "I bet you're glad you didn't slash my tires."
"I'm still considering that possibility."
Corinne chuckled, the sweetest sound I'd ever heard, then pressed her forehead against mine one last time before we left to celebrate the win with the team. With her hand in mine, once and for all, I knew I would follow her anywhere.
THE END
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OVER AND OUT
there will be an acknowledgments chapter after this one but i just wanted to thank you all SO MUCH for joining me in this journey. roller derby is something i've been passionate about for years now (ever since i first saw it on the fosters) and it felt like a fun thing to write about in this sports romance era we live in. i wanted to do something different, something to celebrate women, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to do so.
where we go from here, i'm not sure. i just want everyone to know wren, corinne, and jordan all have plenty of healing to do and it's not something that can be done overnight, but, to me, they all have bright futures ahead of them.
once again, thank you so much for reading my baby. it's been a pleasure.
— cate