The science teacher scratched his hands, poked at his glasses, and went on.
I wish more students were like Maggie in terms of class participation. What impresses me is that she’s fearless. Shrugs off mistakes. That’s unusual in a young person—they are terrified of being laughed at—you know this age! But Maggie will play with an idea. Throw something out to spark discussion. At what exact moment does inertia become momentum? Can we measure that moment? It goes to the heart of everything, said Mr. Hossel with a pensive sniff.
Again he repeated those golden words: You must be very proud of your daughter.
Then he showed them her A.
Peter and Nola beamed out of Mr. Hossel’s classroom. They crossed the parking lot holding hands, brought together by the contradictions.
Finally, a teacher who gets her, Peter said.
He really was . . .
Nola faltered.
He really was talking about Maggie, wasn’t he?
Maybe at school, she only shows her real self to him, Peter answered. She trusts Hossel the way she trusts us. I see all of those things in her, the bravery, you know? The discipline. This teacher has just opened some door for her. I don’t understand, honey, but with this experience the sky’s the limit! She always had it in her, didn’t she. Always had it.
We weren’t wrong.
Nola clutched his hand tighter. They got into the car and drove home, silent, Nola gripping Peter’s knee.
As they pulled into the driveway, Maggie opened the door, waving with a happy smile. Usually, her cheerful greeting after teacher conferences was an attempt to mitigate the misery she knew she had inflicted on her father. Up until this year, she hadn’t cared if she pained Nola. But now she did care. She wanted to avoid bringing down her mother’s mood. She didn’t want to trigger a relapse. While they were gone, she’d made oxtail and vegetable soup, plus the little frybreads Josette had showed her how to make. Maggie loved, or at least pretended to love, making soup and frybread. LaRose charmingly stole pieces as they cooled, tossing the oily, hot bits of fried dough hand to hand. Maggie chased him around the kitchen island. Nola laughed at this, giddy. Peter should have been giddy too, but something about the scene was disturbing. It was as though the two were putting on a show for Nola, giving her a warm glimpse of normal brother-sister hijinks. They glanced at their mother, from time to time, anxious to make sure she was pleased.
That weekend, in celebration of Maggie’s Physical Science A, Nola wanted to bake a cake with her daughter’s name on it. Maggie told her that eating cake gave her diarrhea.
But you love cakes, said Nola.
Mom, I wanted to make you happy. But no cakes.
Maggie had read about obsessive-compulsive behavior in a library magazine and had resolved to keep her mother from embarking on addictive binges—plus she did hate cake because of all the cake making after Dusty was killed, and after LaRose appeared. Cakes brought bad feelings, especially cakes bearing names. She didn’t want cakes in the house.
Let’s watch a vintage movie, like an eighties movie, and eat popcorn?
Because of the sale bin at Cenex, they had several unwatched VHS movies. Soothing ones from the older days, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club. Maggie talked to Nola about how she still related to these movies as a teenager although they were of this unthinkable time and place where cell phones were only in cars and big as shoe boxes. Yes, they talked. Or rather, a version of Maggie talked as though she were Molly Ringwald finally coming to terms with life’s complexities. And Nola talked to her like a parent slow on the draw but ultimately loving. Peter came home and witnessed them slouched in pillows, one of them out fast asleep and the other smiling thinly into the air.
He sat next to Nola, the smiling one, and quietly asked.
What is going on?
What do you mean?
She just kept smiling, didn’t look at him. Spooky.
What are you watching?
Peter gestured at the movie on the screen.
Nola opened her mouth and shook her head, entranced at some dialogue between two teenagers. She leaned her head on his shoulder and Maggie stirred in the pillows pushed up against her mother so the three were now connected, sitting there like normal people.
Maybe this is it, thought Peter. I feel weird because it’s all so normal. I’m the odd man out, the only one who cannot understand that we are now going to be all right.
What were you saying? asked Nola once the moment of on-screen drama had passed.
Nothing, said Peter. It’s just me.
The Wars
THE PLUTO BOYS were already the Planets, so the Pluto girls were the Lady Planets. Their colors were purple and white. Their mascot was a round planet with legs, arms, a perky face. The reservation team was the Warriors, but the girls weren’t the Lady Warriors, they were just the Warriors, also. Their colors were blue and gold. They didn’t want to have themselves as a mascot, so they had an old-time shield with two eagle feathers. This was printed on their uniform. The volleyball shirts were close-fitting nylon, long-sleeved so that hitting balls on their forearms wouldn’t leave them bruised, though they were often bruised anyway. They wore tight shorts and knee pads. Coach Duke made them wear headbands and ponytails because no matter how disciplined they were, girls still got distracted and touched their hair. The girls had come to idolize Coach Duke and his mingy ponytail. The Warriors had won every game of the season except their first game with the Pluto Planets. The nights turned colder, colder, and suddenly they were 8–1, with a grudge. Tonight they were playing the Pluto team again and ready to win.
I don’t like that they call scores kills, said Nola. Nothing should die.
Peter took her hand.
Nothing dies, said Peter. It’s just a word.
They were crushed into the stands, parent knees in their backs, parent backs against their knees. Nola had packed a small padded cooler with sandwiches. An ice pack slipped into the side kept the sodas stuffed around it cold. She’d even bought green grapes, so expensive this time of year. Peter helped her take her coat off, or lower it anyway. There was no place to put it so she wrapped the puffy sleeves around her waist. The gym was stuffy and there was only one stand, so the parents of the opposing teams had to sit together. They tried to group themselves according to the team they’d come to support, but inadvertently mixed.
The teams warmed up, doing stretches first, then a pepper drill—pass, set, spike, pass, set, spike. Next each player jumped and spiked the ball off the coach’s toss. At last, both teams got court time to practice serves. The Warriors’ strategy was to look weak to the Pluto team. They would even pretend to argue.
Ravich, hissed Josette. You awake?
Invisible wink. Elaborate pout by Maggie. Lots of ball smacking. No smiles at each other. Then the girls lined up.
She’s so small, Nola whispered, always struck by the contrast between Maggie and her teammates.
And the Planets are . . . but Peter caught himself.
He was going to say massive or planetary. They were big, solid, formidable girls. Maggie had told them to watch for Braelyn.
I see her, said Nola loudly. The harsh eyeliner!
Peter put his arm around her and spoke, low, in her ear. Remember? The other parents? He hadn’t seen Braelyn’s parents for a while, but was pretty sure they were behind them.
Oh! Nola pulled an imaginary zipper across her lips.
Landreaux and Emmaline came in, found a place to sit, wedged in with a group of Warrior parents. The Warriors saluted first the parents, then their coach, then passed the opposing team fake-touching hands through the net and saying good luck to every Planet. Good luck, good luck, good luck, you wanted it, said Braelyn to Maggie with a smile pasted on her face. She passed swiftly, looking straight ahead.
Did you hear it?
Snow had been directly behind Maggie.
Hear what?
You wanted it, thought Maggie. Bugg
y had told his sister. Shake it off. Maggie had a little thing she did, a shimmy to get rid of a bad feeling or a failed hit. It was an almost invisible instantaneous all-over shake. Josette knew about it, though. The team made a circle, put their arms around one another. Coach Duke stood holding his clipboard in one hand. His other hand sliced the air with each deliberate sentence. He told them volleyball was just a game except for right now when it was more than a game. He reminded them about relaxed intensity. Focus. Bold acts. Knowing when to take their time setting up a spike. He told them to stay loose, keep focus. They were a family, sisters, warriors who would beat this team, restoring honor. Stop everything except being right here, right now, he said. And use your voice. Call the ball. Slap hands on the floor and stay positive.
Diamond was team captain. She looked at each one of them in turn. They silently rose and each put three fingers in the air. Everyone thought they were pointing to the Holy Trinity, but it was their special move, a W for Warriors. Then they roared Warriors, Warriors, Warriors, jumped high, smacked hands.
Josette was first up to serve. She loved the moment when the team slung off its false girly vagueness and became a machine.
Rock that serve, baby! Emmaline’s voice was then consumed by the other parent voices.
Josette flew up and bashed it. But one of the brutal redheaded Planet twins, Gwenna, caught it on one forearm. A mishit, but a setter managed to play it and Braelyn boomed it down the seam. Snow nonchalantly lobbed it, Diamond set with a precise fingertip pass to Regina, and that was that. Regina could drop the ball on a dime. An actual dime. For fun they had set up shots for her, twenty dimes on the floor. She kept every one she hit, and made two dollars.
A medium blonde named Crystal, pretty, twisted to return Josette’s next serve and shanked. So it went. Josette got six serves in before the Planets called time-out.
They’ll blast back now, said Coach Duke. Maggie, you’re our secret weapon right now. They haven’t tested you. So be ready. Josette, they will try to get your next serve if it kills them, so give ’em heck. Regina, if you get a chance . . .
Don’t say it, Coach.
Take a dump, said Diamond.
Let’s call it a surprise left-hand attack, okay? And everyone, remember, an assist is as good as a kill.
Maggie didn’t think so. After each game she totaled her kills on a piece of paper taped to her bedroom wall. The scorekeepers added them up too, and if a girl reached 1,000 she got a foot-high golden trophy. Maggie wanted one. Newspaper headline: Girl of 1,000 Kills. She had developed her jump to ballerina height and perfected a sliding tip. The merest tap, never push, a deflection of trajectory that sometimes happened so quickly that it was uncanny. She could score without remembering how the ball came at her. Sometimes she’d even feel its shadow and think the shadow off her hand onto the floor of the opposing court. When she was rotated into the hitter’s position up front, the other team always wanted to show the tiny girl what. With her slippery, eccentric, high-leap blocks and tips, Maggie got to show them what.
Josette’s serving surf was upset by the interruption, as the Planets’ coach intended, and Maggie felt the energy on the court shift. The Warriors crouched, pep-talking one another, passing around Call it call it call it so they’d remember to use their voices. Braelyn was at serve. Square-shouldered, chubby-jawed, goth-eyed, she didn’t look at Maggie or seem to aim at her, but Maggie was ready anyway. Braelyn got an ace off her. The ball had hesitated, Maggie could swear, and changed direction. She flushed. But once she knew Braelyn’s trick she could handle it. She watched the ball come off the heel of Braelyn’s hand this time and saw where it would break. Maggie was there, but the ball wasn’t. That was two points. Back-to-back aces. The Planet parents were shouting. Her parents were tense and silent. Maggie shimmied all over and stepped back into the game.
She kept her eyes on the serve and pried a weak rescue off the floor, something Josette, on her knees, could put into play for Diamond. But the Planets returned the shot and there began a long, bitter, hard-fought, manic volley with miracle saves and unlikely hits tamed into dinky wattle-rolling blurps off the top of the net that drove the parents nuts. They leaped up gasping, yelling, but it was friendly pandemonium. By the time Regina finally won a joust with Crystal, everyone was in a good mood. Except Crystal, who hissed at Regina, a startling freckled cat. Regina turned away and said, Freaky. The players bounced into formation and although the Warriors continued their five- or six-point lead they fought hard for it. Luck was with them in close calls, causing a few Planet parents to grumble. The Warriors took the first two games. Then the Planets bore down, the luck went their way. So did the next two games. The tiebreaker fifth game was now on.
Most volleyball games were competitive but affable, everyone straining toward good sportsmanship. Coach Duke had even sent home a code of conduct that the player and her parents had to sign. But during the fourth game there had been hard hits, harder looks, a few jeering yells, smug high fives on points. By the fifth game, an ugly electricity had infected the gym. Nola knew which parent was for which team. There was no placatory murmur, Nice hit, when the opposing team scored a point, no friendly banter. Nola had yelled hard but held back her glee, as the coach’s flyer counseled, when the other team faulted. She had tried not to contest line hits. Tried not to call out when she thought she knew better than the player where the ball would strike. She had tried, as Coach begged, not to dishonor the game of volleyball.
Nola surreptitiously ate a grape. It was disappointing, with a tough tasteless skin, a watery chemical pulp. She tried another. Maggie didn’t always serve, but the coach did not remove her from the lineup. There she was, up. The Warriors had lost the first two points. This serve had to stop the Planets’ momentum. The pressure! Why Maggie? Peter shouted encouragement, but Nola was silent. She stared hard at her daughter, trying to pass luck into her daughter by force of love.
Maggie served into the net. Desolate, her mother threw her hands into her lap like empty gloves.
The Planet parents with the knobby knees in the Raviches’ backs, the Wildstrands, cackled in pleasure. Peter caught Nola as she turned, put his arm around her.
Don’t go there, honey, he said into her hair.
The Warriors were relaxed and intent on the next serve. Coach had directed them to breathe from the gut, focus, and high-five every play even if it ended in a lost point. His philosophy was based on developing what he called team mind meld, where each player visualized exactly where her teammates were on the floor and where each player had the power of the whole team inside of her. But Nola only saw that Maggie was now stuck. Right in the line of fire. A sob of anxiety caught in Nola’s chest. But a buttery warmth now spread across Maggie’s shoulders.
Maggie looked so small and vulnerable, with her sylph frame and spindle legs. She could have been standing on the court alone. She crouched, arms out. Crystal served straight to her and Maggie set for Regina’s surprise left dump. Point. Next serve, from Snow, the other redhead burned the ball down Maggie’s left but Maggie flipped underneath and socked it high. Josette assisted Diamond, who landed a swift spike. Another point. Another. Tie. Braelyn stepped up and flared her vixen fury eyes. Maggie’s stomach boiled. Braelyn slammed the ball twice on the floor, impassive and stony mad. With a flick of power she sent Maggie her booby-trap special. It was supposed to break just over Maggie’s head and land behind her, but Maggie knew Braelyn’s arm now and with a surge of exuberance lifted off her feet. She swerve-spiked the ball into the donut. Kill.
Nola had been standing the whole time. A parent nudged Peter and he tried to pull her down.
Kill! She screamed into a spot of silence. Kill! Kill! Kill!
Maggie heard it and the butter swirled down around her heart. Peter tightened his arm around Nola’s shoulder, whispered in her ear, but she was someplace else. And this, oddly, filled him with relief. Because this was not fake or unreal, there was no hidden meaning. This was the Nola he knew, not t
he supersmiley one. This was the family dynamic, not the manufactured happy family with no aggravation, no anger, no loud voices, no pain allowed, where he felt alone.
He was for sure not alone now because Nola was going batshit.
Sit the goddamn hell down! It was the woman behind her.
Nola heard that command with a grape in her cheek. She turned, opened her mouth to give a dignified piece of her mind, and out it flew, exactly like a glob of green snot-spit, landing on the mother’s broad pink nose. A shocked pause. The father lifted himself, a squarish, bearlike man with sloping shoulders, a walrus mustache, a trucker hat that said Dakota Sand and Gravel. He put his arms out to shove Nola down, but having perfected her move on Father Travis she leaned forward and popped her breast into his grip. Trucker Hat yelped.
Get your paws off me, shrieked Nola.
Peter saw only the hands. Mrs. Trucker Hat was still wiping grape off her face when Peter let his fist fly. It felt so good to let the rage out, then instant remorse as Trucker Hat bent over, face in hands. Nola, however, went numb with pleasure. The game was stopped and thin, apprehensive Mr. Hossel was forced to extract the four parents from the stands. Nola dreamily slid out, clinging tight to Peter’s arm. Both failed to see that their daughter had blazed a beanball straight at Braelyn as the whistle sounded to stop play. Distracted, Braelyn let down her guard and sustained a facial. Now her nose was bleeding all over the floor.
The referee held up a yellow card and out went Maggie to the boos of Planet moms and dads. The Planets, hearts blistering, played with vengeant energy but lost control, faulted, missed easy returns, tried for nasty cut shots without the setup, and lost by eight points. The Warriors high-fived it and made a subdued exit. It didn’t feel exactly good, like a win; it felt like something bigger and darker had just played out.
They didn’t know the half of it, thought Maggie, still quiet with joy at the sight of Braelyn’s blood on the floor.
When Peter and Nola were escorted out, Landreaux and Emmaline followed. Braelyn’s bearlike father with the sore nose, and his wife, who was stocky and had a sensible Prince Valiant haircut, walked over to their pickup. There was no one in the lot to make sure the parents didn’t start another brawl, but the fight was out of the Wildstrands. And Maggie’s parents were embarrassed to be escorted out by Maggie’s science teacher. Mr. Hossel turned his soul-wounded gaze upon them, gestured apologetically with his scraped hands, and turned away. Nola was hyperventilating.