❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
chapter two: siegfried and odette
tw(s): larson and mcgill
— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —
EMMA AND HER team watch the Hawks swarm the ice rink as pre-game anxiety fills the chilly air. A shudder runs down her back. She spots her friend, Adam and gives him a small smile and a timid wave. He beams at her through the frame of his helmet. Her teammate, Charlie, curls his lip in disgust.
"Y'know, you shouldn't even be on this team, Emma. You live in the rich, snobby part of the district. You might as well be one of them," Charlie sneers, gesturing towards the rink.
"Well, I like this team, and this team likes me. So I suppose that's too damn bad," she says, staring straight forward. She resists the urge to smile wide, though. She supposes that when you like someone, even their mockery can send you into a fit of butterflies.
"Yeah, they like you. For some weird reason," Charlie mutters.
Emma bites at some loose skin her lip and pretends she didn't hear him.
It starts to bleed.
Charlie Conway is someone who simply cannot be explained to her.
Ever since they met, she's had a crush on him. First, it was noticing two or three times that his eyes were pretty. Then, it was noticing that his entire face was kind of pretty. And then, it was pure admiration.
It was when she was nine years old. In her backyard, she had, and still has, a pond. Well, the word isn't quite right to capture the enormity of this space. It is a ginormous stretch of land that they somehow own that the house doesn't cover. It's a glorious pond, lily pads and clear waters and sparkly rocks. But it is better in the winter, when it freezes over. Emma used to get out her little size three skates and stay outside until dusk. Back then, she was a figure skater instead of a hockey player. She was known by her team and the regular spectators as the Swan, so she called her frozen corner of the backyard the Swan Lake. One winter, when she stepped out onto the patio, she saw a young boy, her age, skating on her pond. She was nine, so she had never cursed until then, but she shrieked, Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my backyard? The boy stared, completely stunned, and said, This is your backyard? She nodded, like, duh. Sorry, he said. I was just walking around and I came across this. You should really get it fenced in if you don't want it available to the public. Emma pinched her lips. After that day, Emma asked her mom to fence the area. She attached a little metal can to the gate, with a taped sign that said: Five dollars an hour to skate on Swan Lake, creepy boy. She checked every day, but he never came back.
So it was a definite surprise when she turned ten and joined a pee-wee hockey team, and Charlie Conway was her teammate.
He started hating her soon after she joined the team, meaning it had nothing to do with what happened the year before. Sure, he harbored a bit of contempt when he first met her at the fact that her backyard was more square feet than his apartment, but it was a mystery to her why he really hated her.
His hatred confuses her to no end. The guy always has something to pick on her for, whether it's the color of her dress (Apparently pink looks "terrible" on her. What the hell, dude?) or a play she made in a game that didn't work out. And the weirdest thing is, other than a few playful rebuttals, she's always been super nice and friendly towards him.
Larson and McGill, two Hawks, approach the team with shit-eating grins. Averman looks down bashfully, and Emma wraps a protective arm around his shoulders. She sees Charlie, out of the corner of her eye, giving her another dirty look. Well, he looks kind of cute, even like that.
Charlie hates how buddy-buddy she is with the team, whether it's big bear hugs, a squeeze of the shoulder, or a squeal and an "I love you." It just gives him an icky feeling he can't describe.
Emma, on the other hand, loves affection. Sure, it could be considered overbearing and clingy, but the guys on the team, minus Charlie, and plus Connie, tolerate it just fine.
Emma is close with both Terry and Jesse, often exchanging sarcastic remarks, dry humor, and the occasional fist bump. She has a similar relationship with Peter and Karp, and sometimes they hang out at the arcade, just as their own trio. She's known Adam ever since she was little, since their moms often meet for drinks, and have been close friends since college. She'll give him random hugs and tousling of his hair. With Goldberg, she sometimes goes for burgers and milkshakes with him, and often visits his family's deli. Emma he always goes to Guy or Connie whenever she needs to vent about something serious. She and Connie go to the mall almost every weekend together, and gossip over a couple of Cokes. She and Averman, well, there's no reason why they shouldn't get along. He's adorable.
"Hi, girls," Larson taunts. He laughs. "And pretty girl," he adds, nodding towards Emma. Karp makes a move at him, eyes wild, but Emma grabs his shoulder to keep him from falling face-first onto the ice.
Their new coach, Gordon Bombay, arrives.
Emma doesn't really like their new coach. It's very crystal clear he has an undying sense of loathing for children, which she is sympathetic with, since she knows she and her friends can be annoying sometimes. But he is so blatantly rude, and makes no effort to hide the fact that he is extremely pretentious.
Both teams line up on either side of the rink, whacking their hockey sticks at their goalies' shins. The Hawks' goalie remains tough and stable, but Goldberg looks like he's about to collapse any second now.
"Sorry, Goldberg," Emma whispers, tapping her stick lightly to his leg.
"Thanks, Hart. Jeez, they won't give me a-" Goldberg is interrupted by a loud "move along!" from Charlie and a hard swing to the leg. Goldberg falls to the ground ungracefully. Charlie skates back over, and for a second, Emma wishes he was coming back to talk to her.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to do that."
"Oh, yeah, 'I didn't mean to do that,'" Goldberg imitates.
"Yeah, sure, you're on my own team," Charlie says. "Oh, sorry, Goldberg. Didn't mean to," Charlie repeats, continuously hitting the front of Goldberg's helmet.
"Would you knock it off before I clock you?"
The game commences with a sharp whistle blow.
At the face-off, Adam takes the puck, cradling it in his stick, and effortlessly scores a goal with little to no resistance from Emma's team. Damn it, Banks.
Adam sends Emma a salute, and she rolls her eyes jokingly and helps up her fallen teammates. She offers Charlie her hand, and he reluctantly takes it before shoving her with his shoulder.
"Hey, cheer up, Charlie. You didn't do too bad," she says, smiling at him.
"Yeah, whatever. Save your pep talk," Charlie replies, gliding away.
This kind of response is the one she always gets. And it kind of stings. but nevertheless, she tries my best to be nice to Charlie. Not just because she likes him. She's always had a skill for snark and quick wit, but at the same time, she's still a sugary-sweet girl to everyone. The kind of girl who makes someone want to stay, she hopes. And if she works to become universally lovable, nothing bad will happen, right?
"That's one!" Adam boasts, knocking Jesse's helmet off of his head. Jesse goes to fight him, but the ref restrains him. Emma looks at Adam and mouths, Don't be a jerk, to which he mouths back, Fine. Sorry, Em.
The game continues to go poorly.
During water break, in a fit of rage, Bombay knocks Goldberg's water bottle out of his hands.
"How lazy can you be?" he scolds in aggravation. "They're killing us out there!"
"Sorry, coach," Emma murmurs quietly.
"How many times do you have to tell you? Get those rebounds, get your heads up, get those loose pucks. Get- just- just get the hell out of here." The whistle chirps and they all file out. But Emma stays behind. She just has to have a word with this guy. His "coaching" isn't getting them anywhere.
"Hey, coach?"
"What?"
"Sorry, but respectfully, telling us to do all of those things isn't going to help," Emma tells him. "We're not that stupid. We know we have to get rebounds, We know we have to get those loose pucks. And our heads are up, we just don't know where to look. And, coach, you know we suck. And seeing as it's your job now, it's your responsibility to help us fix this. And believe it or not, you might just have to do something other than standing around and yelling aimlessly. But, you know, what do I know?" Emma skates off in a huff and joins her teammates on the ice.
Charlie clumsily controls the puck, not even bothering to cradle it or protect it somehow. Emma wants to yell out corrections, but she knows that would make him mad, so she keeps quiet. He makes a badly-executed swing towards the puck as he advances towards the goal and the momentum sends him flying into the boards with an oof. Emma skates over and kneels next to him.
"Hey," she says, out of breath. "You okay?"
"I'm fine, Emma. I don't need help from you," he says, stumbling to get up.
"Okay, sorry. I just trying to help," Emma mumbles, barely audible.
The rare times when Charlie Conway smiles at her, the whole world seems to go quiet. Maybe that's another reason why she's nice to him. She wants to do something to earn that smile.
Adam rushes over and slams his stick against Charlie's upper back with a sickening sound.
Emma angrily flips the helmet off of Adam's head.
"What did I say, Banks?" she whispers into his ear.
"Jeez, Em, isn't that the guy who's a total jerk to you? Quit defending him. And he was right there, basically asking for it." Emma sends Adam a warning look and tosses the helmet back into his face.
Recently, Adam's been acting different. She swears, when she first met him, he was nothing like this. Granted, they had been three when they were introduced, but still. Adam has been tagging along more often with Larson and McGill. It started out with going to McGill's house to check out his Atari, and then it was participating in their awful schemes and their incessant bullying.
Emma spots Charlie's mom, Casey, in the stands, and waves. Emma loves Casey, and Casey loves Emma just the same. Sometimes, Emma picks up shifts at Mickey's Diner, Casey's workplace. Unofficially, of course. Child labor laws don't allow it to be a real job.
Emma's eyes search the stands for her own mom.
Nothing.
Ever since the divorce, her mom hasn't been as active in Emma's life as usual. That includes the full stop of going to any of her hockey games. Her mom always has a new case on her hands, and is always working late hours. It's not like they need the money; they are perfectly assured in the financial safety domain, but her mom needs a lot more time alone with her thoughts, so she locks herself in her office and loses herself in her work. And while Emma is very appreciative that her mom's hard work is what allows her privilege and comfort, she wishes things could go back to the way they used to be.
"Nice fan, Charlie. Keep swingin', maybe you'll give them a cold," Bombay says.
"Great words of affirmation, coach. See how nothing changed? But it's your way or the highway, right?" Emma utters, pouring water from her bottle into her mouth.
"Leave it alone, kid. I know what I'm doing," Bombay says.
"Oh, no, I'm sure you do. That's why we won, right?" Emma scoffs.
She usually cans the snark at some point, but this man is annoying her to no end, and she has no intention of getting him to like her.
Bombay turns to the rest of the group.
"You guys stink!" he yells.
Wow, what a revelation.
"I thought we came here to play hockey," he continues.
"Y'know, I knew we forgot something," Peter quips. Emma breathes out a short laugh through her nose and ruffles his hair.
"Oh, you think this is funny? You think losing is funny?"
"Well, not at first, but once you get the hang of it," Averman says.
"We're the ones out there gettin' our butts kicked," Jesse protests.
"Yeah, it's not like you coach us or anything. At least we tried," Terry argues.
"Took the words straight out of my mouth, Ter," Emma agrees, bumping her fist against his.
"You didn't listen to a word I said. I said 'keep your heads up,' you put your heads down. I said 'hustle,' you went slower! That was the sloppiest playing I've ever seen. Why the hell don't you just listen to me?"
"Why the hell should we?" Jesse retorts. He puts his helmet on and stalks off.
"He's got a point. If it worked that way, we'd be crowded around an instruction manual right now. At least it can't talk," Emma says under her breath.
"You want to lose? Fine. You're the ones who look like idiots out there."
— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —
CLARA'S CORNER
i hate that i made charlie so sucky since he's genuinely one of the sweetest ducks, except maybe averman. but i promise, he gets better; hang in there.
the backstory with emma, charlie, and swan lake is so cute. why didn't you come back to skate at the pond charlie?? why???
i love emma so much for trying to put bombay in his place. he ticked me off in the beginning, and probably would have been my 13th reason why if he wasn't played by emilio estevez.