Page 42 of Spectacular Things
Ambitious Witches
On the last night of camp and in full sweatsuits, Sloane and Cricket lie on the carpeted floor of Cricket’s room with their legs up the wall.
“Can I cut your hair?” Sloane asks with her eyes closed, already half asleep.
“Why?” Cricket grabs her high bun protectively.
“Because I want it!” Sloane reaches over to palm Cricket’s blond pouf, a sly grin across her face, her eyes still shut.
“But you have amazing hair,” Cricket argues.
It’s true. In fact, most people would contend that Sloane has the nicest locks of anyone at camp—raven black tresses that cascade down her back like ocean waves at midnight.
For training sessions, however, Sloane gathers all of that undulating silk into what’s become her signature bubble ponytail, although their teammates are now calling it the “Sloaney tail” and trying to outlaw it because during drills that tail whips at them like a medieval weapon.
Sloane sighs dramatically, releases Cricket’s bun, and stares up at the ceiling. “Isn’t it sort of pathetic how we always want what we can’t have?”
Cricket nods and allows her own eyes to close.
There are so many things she wants that she can’t have: She wants her mother to be alive, and she wants a verbal scholarship offer from UCLA.
She wants to win the NCAA championship all four years as a Bruin, and then she wants to become the starting goalkeeper of the National Team without having to oust Alyssa Naeher or hurt Sloane’s feelings.
She wants to earn clean sheets in every match, and win the Olympics and the World Cup, and she wants to stay on this floor with Sloane Jackson forever because the carpet is like plush quicksand and she’s so tired and also her right foot is asleep and she’s scared to moveit.
“I’ve thought about bailing on college,” Sloane blurts out.
“What?”
“When I visited Stanford, everyone on the team seemed cool and the campus was sick, but for a couple of weeks I thought, What if I just went pro? You know Alyssa will retire in a few years—she’s thirty-four now—so if I skipped—”
Sloane cuts herself short. What she doesn’t say is that if she were to go pro now, she’d have a four-year head start on Cricket for Alyssa’s starting spot on the full National Team.
Friends or not, the competition between them is always lurking just below the surface.
Rivalry isn’t in the water—it is the water. It’s what can buoy or drown them.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Sloane says, turning to face Cricket. “No one else gets it.”
Smiling through a grimace, Cricket tries to wake up her right foot by rolling her ankle in the air. “How could they?” she asks.
“I know we need to compete against each other, but can we stay friends through it?”
“Totally,” Cricket says. “Just don’t expect me to take it easy on you.”
“Seriously?” Sloane says with a theatrical scoff. “We only get along because we’re both ruthless brutes.”
“That might be the truest thing you’ve ever said.” They both bring their legs back down to Earth and Cricket adds, “Although I’m more of an ambitious witch than a ruthless brute.”
“Yes!” Sloane says. “Ambitious witches sound way cuter.”
“You know,” Cricket says, sitting up. “Unless one of us really starts to suck, we’ll never get to play on the same club team because we’ll both be starters.”
“I think we should talk every Sunday,” Sloane says, getting to her feet. “We review each other’s game over the weekend and talk about it Sunday night.”
“Why?” Cricket stays put on the floor and looks up at the only person who wholly understands what she wants and the only person who could stand in her way.
“To hold each other accountable and point out what no one else will,” Sloane says. “Deal?”
“Deal,” Cricket says, sticking out her hand.
Sloane shakes it but doesn’t let go. Instead, she extends her other hand as well, offering to pull Cricket up off the floor. Cricket doesn’t hesitate to reach for Sloane’s open palms. Their crossed arms form an X as they find their footing.
They cannot yet fathom how far offtrack their careers will veer from their original design.
They cannot yet know about the black eyes and bloody noses and stress fractures and ingrown toenails and black toenails and missing toenails.
They cannot yet lament how prioritizing soccer means not pursuing other sources of fulfillment.
They cannot yet appreciate how they will grow and improve, and how they will prematurely develop crow’s-feet from double training sessions in the sun and deep worry lines from playing a game.
There in Cricket’s hotel room, they cannot yet imagine how soccer will unequivocally fill, torment, mend, and mangle both of their hearts.