Page 40 of Spectacular Things
California Dreaming
In September of her senior year, Cricket receives the news she’s imagined hearing for a decade: She’s been invited to the full U.S.
Women’s National Team Training Camp in Carson, California.
“The National Team!” she shrieks at Mia.
“The full team! The real, actual National Team! I’m officially in the pool! ”
Cricket knows there’s no way she’ll make the roster for any of their upcoming friendly matches or tournaments, let alone the World Cup next summer in Australia and New Zealand, but it’s an honor to be brought into the pool of talent.
Sloane Jackson is the only other goalkeeper still in high school to be invited, so Cricket’s focus is on outperforming the towering Floridian.
“Just play,” Coach tells her at the last Stallions practice before her departure. “Stay grounded and show up—you know how to do that.”
The morning Cricket arrives in California, she recognizes Sloane from thirty feet away at LAX baggage claim.
It doesn’t matter that Sloane is dressed down to the point of incognito celebrity: black baseball cap with the rim pulled low, black zip-up hoodie, black leggings, white recovery slides on her feet.
Even in the bad lighting, Sloane sticks out.
She’s a human exclamation point, and when she tilts her head back to watch another load of bags descend the silver slide, Cricket is hardly the only one to gawk.
Online, Sloane is pretty; in person, she’s a six-foot stun gun of gorgeous.
Cricket watches others clock Sloane, nudging elbows to ask each other, Who is that? They assume she’s a model and Cricket smirks at their ignorance. They mistake Sloane for a fawn or some other leggy herbivore.
Just then, Sloane spots her, proving Cricket right. Predators always sense the competition. The two keepers are connected by a mutual respect as much as a high prey drive.
“Hey!” Sloane shouts from the other side of the room.
She strides to close the space between them, giving Cricket just enough time to realize Sloane Jackson is the Tom Brady of women’s soccer—too attractive to also be so talented, like her parents double-dipped in the genetic fondue of good fortune.
“Thank God you’re here!” Sloane says, pulling Cricket into an unexpected hug.
“Can we split an Uber to campus? I’m so nervous right now I want to puke.
” She smiles and Cricket notices the dimple in Sloane’s left cheek, the sharp points of her canine teeth.
“I’ve been waiting to meet you for so long—like, actually meet you, not just play against you in that Little Rhody tournament that suuucked.
Also Meg Vinson says you’re better than me—she says hi, by the way.
I can’t believe she tore her ACL again. Do you think they’ll let us be roommates? ”
Over the first twenty-four hours of camp, Cricket is shocked by how much she enjoys Sloane’s company on and off the field.
No one understands the pressure of being a goalkeeper quite like another goalkeeper.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Sloane says under her breath during a water break.
“You had to come out or she would have literally walked the ball into the goal.”
Cricket repays Sloane’s insights in kind, paying close attention when she’s not in goal.
“You narrowed the angle but you could have shut her down completely,” Cricket says after Sloane lets in a shot.
“You need to set quicker—I know, it was chaos in the box, but you’ve got to set first and then manage the chaos, not the other way around. ”
Sloane squints at her, debating whether to thank Cricket or tell her to piss off. Ultimately, she does neither. Instead, Sloane says dryly, “It’s too bad you’re better at coaching than keeping.”
Around them, a few low defenders laugh at this, but none of them join in the banter.
They are too worried about their own performance.
This is called training camp, but everyone knows it’s a tryout.
On their iPads and in their exchanged raised eyebrows, the coaching staff takes copious notes on who exceeds, meets, and falls short of their expectations.
Cricket understands that every field is an audition and that her top competitor over these ten days is also the closest thing she has to a friend.
“Did you see you that video of Messi rating his favorite power snacks?” Sloane asks at lunch, emptying a square packet of pumpkin seeds on top of her salad.
Cricket stares at the salad and then up at Sloane. “Did you bring those from home?”
“Sure did,” Sloane says. “These were at the top of Messi’s list—they’re loaded with iron.”
Cricket has never paid as much attention to what she eats as maybe she should—she’s always just consumed whatever Mia threw together on a shoestring budget. But at camp, she copies what Sloane puts on her tray, and maybe it’s just the placebo effect, but she’s bursting with energy by day three.
“Do you always feel like this?” Cricket asks, taking a sip of water from one of the four glasses on her tray.
For the first time in her life, she is properly hydrated, thanks to an electrolyte-tracking app Sloane shared with her.
And despite the long, physically exhausting, and emotionally taxing days, her body is eager to push itself, which Cricket attributes to the protein shake that the National Team’s performance coach custom makes for her each morning at six a.m.
“Do I always feel like what?” Sloane spools zucchini pasta onto her fork.
“Like the Incredible Hulk?”
Sloane snarfs, nearly choking on her pasta, and Cricket notices the veteran players look over with curious smiles. They know of Sloane from the lucrative endorsements she’s already signed as a high schooler and the murmurs that she’ll be the next Gatorade Player of the Year.
“My dad says the only way to play like a pro athlete is to eat like one,” Sloane says. “He’s such a nerd but really supportive.”
Cricket nods, thinking of her own dad. Every day on the soccer field, she sets out to prove that she is not like Q, that she is the opposite of him.
He may not be supportive like Sloane’s dad, but Q is most certainly a source of motivation.
Right there at the lunch table, Cricket nearly admits to Sloane that while she is sometimes scared of her own ambition, it’s the possibility of failing that truly terrifies her.
Instead, Cricket says nothing. Camp isn’t the place for such vulnerability; camp is a battlefield. Cricket swallows the truth of her father and uses it for fuel to fight for her spot on the National Team.
“Damn, Lowe!” Sloane catcalls from the sideline after Cricket lays out for a block in a warm-up drill.
The intense flash of contact with the ball always feels like coming home to herself.
Cricket slams her gloves together and even through the thick padding, she can feel the voltage of her own potential.
“She better watch out,” Liz says, appearing at the left goalpost. The tails of her red hair ribbon reach for Cricket in the breeze. “Sloane is impressed by you—threatened, even.” Cricket eagerly imbibes the mystical boost of maternal support as she visualizes her future on the National Team.
In the days to come, Cricket refuses to yield.
She is smarter, more vocal, and more willing to come off her line, forcing the attacker to make a mistake.
Her playing builds her confidence, and her confidence boosts her playing, and as she reaches new heights while deepening her flow state, Cricket becomes unstoppable.
“This is called training camp for a reason,” Teague, the National Team head coach, tells Cricket on the sideline toward the end of the week.
“This isn’t the championship match; this is the laboratory, where you see what works and what doesn’t, and let me just say, I’m seeing a lot of stuff that works. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Thank you, Coach,” Cricket says, squirting water into her mouth to hide her grin. In her periphery, she feels Sloane’s envious gaze, but Cricket stares past her to the vast green field of her destiny.