Page 33 of Spectacular Things

Beep Test

Cricket doesn’t miss school.

Not yet.

The beep test starts out easy enough, providing plenty of time between beeps to hit the twenty-meter mark, turn around, hit the mark, turn around, hit the mark.

Along with her teammates, Cricket jogs and pivots, jogs and pivots, toeing the line with her cleat, anticipating the hell underway.

Level one is just the warm-up, but everyone knows what’s coming.

This is a battle of psychological toughness as much as it is an assessment of physical endurance.

Pain is inevitable, but dreading that pain is a choice.

Cricket has decided to relish the discomfort required to achieve her dream.

BEEP!

“Your mind is your strongest muscle!” Coach yells from the sideline as the beeps speed up, the pace becoming less and less sustainable.

Cricket digs deep, then deeper. She hits the mark before the beep, pivots, hits the mark, pivots, hits the mark.

Around her, teammates gasp, curse, drop out, but Cricket refuses to submit.

Her chest is on fire, her quads are trembling, her entire body feels like it’s been cranked through a meat grinder multiple times, but she will not quit.

The beep test will not beat her. This is an invitation to challenge the limits of her being.

It even feels good, for her outsides to hurt as much as her insides—a kind of perverse homeostasis, a distraction from the distraction that is her life without her mother.

BEEP!

Teammates begin to drop. There are fewer bodies in motion now, fewer mouths audibly panting, reminding Cricket of her own labored breath. She is giving her everything and barely hitting the line in time. She puts her head down, gives more. Because love always requires more than you think you have.

BEEP!

There are only a handful of Stallions still running.

At this point, especially as a goalkeeper, Cricket knows she could give up with dignity, but she is trying to cultivate the grit required for a life of professional soccer.

On either side, Cricket’s teammates choke on air until Coach calls their names, points out they didn’t quite hit the mark in time.

Cricket hears the players croak with relief as they join the chorus of sideline support.

She keeps going, trying to outrun time. The beeps cluster together but she is faster.

Hit, pivot, hit, pivot. She is the only one still on the field now, but Cricket is not alone—not now, not ever.

Because she’s here.

BEEP!

Cricket doesn’t stop until Coach calls her name, tells her that’s enough, grab some water.

The stunned applause of her teammates settles in like heavy rain because holy shit, that was level 13 .

Cricket stands still while her legs shake.

The beads of sweat that race down the sides of her face disguise the tears.

Until Mia drove Cricket to her first Stallions practice after the funeral, Cricket had thought that she’d lost her mother forever.

Lacing up her cleats, she’d endured the dramatic blather of her teammates whining about the cold snap because they didn’t know how to acknowledge her mother’s death.

During warm-ups, Cricket found it impossible to care about who was hooking up and who got a spray tan but lied about it, and she thought about quitting the Stallions altogether.

Maybe, without her mom, soccer wasn’t worthit.

But then Cricket had jogged to her position at the far end of the field, and there she was, waiting for her between the goalposts.

“Welcome back,” Liz said, beaming with her arms crossed over her red winter coat, glacier eyes sparkling. She’d always loved a surprise. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Everyone says goalkeeping is the loneliest position, but the end line is the one place where Cricket can commune with her mother.

It is the only place where Liz shows up, day after day, with her magic smile and her nails painted royal blue to match the Stallions uniform, screaming, “Wheels, Cricky!” and quoting Billie Jean King’s “Pressure is a privilege!”

After that first practice, Cricket realizes she can never give up soccer—not until she is ready to say goodbye to her mom. She arrives to practice early and stays late. Failure is not an option.

Liz is the reason why Cricket just outlasted her teammates on the beep test. Liz is the reason why Cricket operates with a newfound fearlessness that spooks her opponents and draws the ball into her possession almost supernaturally.

After every game, Coach pulls Cricket aside and applauds her quick decisions and even faster reflexes. “Your confidence is an asset,” he says. “If we keep building your game—mentally, tactically, and physically—you’ll be unstoppable.”

Cricket beams from his approval and says what she always says when she has his attention: “I want to be on the National Team.”

Coach heeds the familiar call-and-response. “You’re on your way, kid.” It’s how he answers her bold ambition, mussing her topknot but careful not to agitate the red ribbon tied in a bow. He knows the significance of that ribbon, knows to whom it originally belonged.

Together, Cricket and her mother are going to make their dream come true. All Cricket has to do to see Liz is devote her life to soccer. It’s more than just visualization. Her mom still exists between the goalposts, and that makes every sacrifice for the game worthit.

While Cricket’s teammates might complain about the early-morning games or the mandatory practices over spring break, Cricket understands that dedication is imperative to get where she wants to go.

Commitment is not the same thing as sacrifice.

But every time she sees Liz leaning against a goalpost, casually examining her freshly polished fingernails while commenting on the opposing team’s lackluster performance, Cricket imagines telling Mia.

She fantasizes about the release she’d feel, the liberating gush in her core and the gobsmacked look on Mia’s face as Cricket described their mom in every detail, down to the colorful mismatched socks she still wears.

And yet, Cricket instinctively knows she can’t share these interactions with anyone, even Mia.

Especially Mia. At first, she thinks she’s just being superstitious, but it goes beyond Cricket’s own fear of losing her mom again.

It’s less of a jinx and more of a test: Can she keep this miracle to herself?

And so the biggest sacrifice Cricket makes for soccer is not choosing an optional practice over Addie Lim’s Sweet Sixteen at the best restaurant in Portland.

It isn’t the pair of cracked ribs Cricket obtains from an attacker’s cleat, which requires sleeping upright for a week and walking around school with a large bag of ice under her shirt, giving her a very embarrassing, very lumpy third boob.

No, the greatest sacrifice Cricket makes in the name of soccer is keeping her mother a secret from her sister.