Page 44 of Spectacular Things

“It’s not like you ever asked to go to Target with me,” Mia says meekly.

She reaches for a bright yellow scrub pad and begins to clean the stovetop.

Leaning against the doorframe, Cricket pinches the bridge of her nose and squints her eyes shut.

Her two favorite people have made a fool of her. She’s been emotionally nutmegged.

Cricket walks over to the sink and washes her hands for something to do.

“This is bullshit,” she says firmly, steam from the scalding water pluming in her face.

There is nothing she hates more than being caught off-guard—and by Coach, of all people, who taught her to keep her head on a swivel at all times.

She storms out of the kitchen and down the hallway to her bedroom.

Seething on her bed, Cricket presses a pillow to her face so she can scream into it.

She wants to quit the Stallions just to spite Coach but knows she can’t do that to her teammates or to him.

After all, he turned her into the player she is and the professional keeper she dreams of becoming.

Mia knocks but doesn’t wait for Cricket’s permission to let herself in.

When she opens the door, she is greeted by half a dozen all-too-familiar faces: Mia Hamm, Briana Scurry, Joy Fawcett, Kristine Lilly, Julie Foudy, and Brandi Chastain.

Sun-faded posters of the 1999 Women’s National Team line the walls—originals that Liz bought all those years ago at the World Cup Final in California.

The best and worst origin story imaginable.

“No,” Cricket says by way of greeting. It comes out muffled, her face in her pillow.

“No what?”

Cricket raises her head. “No, you can’t date him.”

“But I already am dating him,” Mia says.

She sighs in a weak attempt at a laugh, conserving her energy for what she anticipates will be several rounds of fighting.

This conversation was never going to be easy, Mia reminds herself.

There is a reason she kept it a secret for this long, and that reason is five foot eleven and scowling from across her soccer-themed bedroom.

Ever since Cricket’s eighth-grade growth spurt, her feet hang off the end of her single bed—it’s usually a comical sight, but not now.

“Break up with him,” Cricket says. Her gaze, now fixed on Mia, feels like that of a seasoned hunter. Poised but powerful, a tacit force, a deadly threat.

“I can’t.”

“If you keep hanging out with him,” Cricket says, strategizing from her opponent’s perspective, “he’ll try to come with us to California.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Yes, he will,” Cricket insists. “And that will mess up every—”

“No, he won’t,” Mia interrupts. “Because I’m going to stay here.” As Cricket wrestles with the shock, her face darkening, straining, Mia ekes out, “I can’t even get into UCLA—”

“You wrote about Mom for the personal essay,” Cricket protests, her voice thick. “You’ll get in.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“I never submitted the application.”

Cricket screams into her pillow again and then falls silent. Mia waits. After several moments, Cricket chucks her pillow at the wall with notable force and sits up. She pushes the hair out of her face. “You can still apply,” she says calmly. “The deadline is November first and I can help you—”

“I love him,” Mia says, cutting off Cricket. “That probably sounds crazy to you, but I love him, and I know that he loves me—and he loves you, too—so why does this have to be such a bad thing?”

“Because this isn’t the plan!” Cricket shouts, her eyes snapping open as she bolts upright. “We made a plan and you’re screwing it up!”

“You have soccer!” Mia explodes, meeting Cricket’s volume, her raised voice surprising them both. “Even if I got in, they’re not going to give me a full ride, so why would I go into debt over there when the only thing I know for sure is that I want to be here?”

Cricket’s mouth hangs open, unable to find words, so Mia continues, exploiting the hole in Cricket’s defense.

“Were we really just going to sell this house and never come back? There are so many real-life logistics we’ve been ignoring, not least of which is that I’d be going out there to be your security blanket.

” Mia leans in the doorway, exasperated, like she’s already been over this a hundred times.

Only now does Cricket notice how tired Mia looks. Ever since November ninth, people assume there are more than five years that separate them. While Cricket runs out her grief on the field, Mia carries it under her eyes and in the worry lines around her mouth.

“You can’t do this,” Cricket says with the same authority she uses in team huddles. Winning not only means refusing to submit but also denying the possibility of defeat. “You can’t let him derail our plan just like Mom let Q ruin her life.”

“That was different!” Mia bursts out, her body hot with defensiveness, her arms suddenly desperate to swing. “Oliver is nothing like Q! And I’m not like Mom!”

“How delusional can you be?” Cricket asks, leaping to her feet to deliver the knockout punch they both see coming.

“We grew up hearing over and over again about how she gave up college when she got pregnant, and now—” Cricket shakes her head, coughs up a fake laugh.

“I mean, I miss her, too, but Jesus—do you really want to repeat her biggest mistake?”

“I already gave up college once,” Mia points out. “To move back here and take care of you, remember?”

But Cricket isn’t listening. Burrowing deep into the hurt of Mia secretly dating her coach, Cricket manically tries to fill in the cracks of their story, the reason behind Mia’s devotion. “Maybe it’s not a choice,” Cricket posits. “Maybe you’re—are you already knocked up?”

Mia’s first instinct is to charge her sister at full speed, but she doesn’t chase impulses the way Cricket does. Instead, she stands there in the entry of her sister’s room and tries to wait out the hot tension pulsing in her fists, begging for release.

“Well?” Cricket demands. “Are you?”

Mia’s eyes rest on Cricket’s neck and how she’d like to wring it as her thoughts spill out in every direction.

She can’t talk, not yet. The mess of love between her and Oliver—but also Oliver and Cricket, the girls and their mother, the suffocating chaos colliding at her heart’s center—makes Mia unable to focus.

“Jesus Christ!” Cricket yells. “Say something!”

Between sisters, the only thing louder than a screaming match is silence. The only thing more maddening than a fight is the lack thereof.

“I’m not pregnant,” Mia says, and her voice is as dangerously placid as an iced-over lake. “But I have spent the last three years choosing you, and now I’m choosing me.”

“No, you’re choosing him,” Cricket punts back. “You’re choosing a soccer coach, my soccer coach, and I’m sorry, Mia—” Cricket’s voice goes high, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry I called it a mistake, but—”

“Me,” her sister corrects. “You called me a mistake. Mom was pregnant with me. Mom didn’t go to college because of me.”

“But you know what I—listen, if you’re a mistake then so am I, but that was the past, and this is—he’s going to stop you in your tracks, and you could be anything, and I can’t just—you can’t expect me to just stand by and watch.”

“You’re not going to,” Mia says, crossing her arms. “Because you’re going to California, and I’m staying here.”

“No!” Cricket wails, doubling over like she’s had the wind knocked out of her.

Mia watches her and recognizes the opening for a surrender.

She takes a step toward Cricket, and then another.

Her proximity softens Cricket’s shoulders, then her neck, as Cricket begins to relinquish control.

“Please, Mia.” Cricket’s voice cracks on her sister’s name, the captain’s orders crumbling into a younger sibling’s plea. “Please come with me. Please?”

Cricket waits for a response, but Mia just wipes her eyes, and Cricket can’t help but wonder if women are not only destined to become their mothers but also doomed to repeat their mothers’ mistakes.

Cricket resolves to be different. She will reach her full potential.

And in doing so, she will break the Lowe women’s cycle of settling for less.

“You have a whole career ahead of you,” Mia says, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of Cricket’s bed. Deep down, she’s as outraged as Cricket, silently roiling with her right to self-determination, but she is the adult in the room. She has always been the adult in the room.

And now she is also Cricket’s legal guardian. Mia has no choice but to soften, to summon the compassion she can always find for her sister.

Pulling Cricket down next to her so they’re side by side on the single bed, Mia reaches out and touches Cricket’s arm. “You’re lucky,” she tells her. “You’ve grown up working toward such a specific dream, with the talent to pursue it, and I—I just need to see where this is going.”

Cricket looks at her sister, her eyes apologizing, her bottom lip ripe with sorrow.

This is about Coach, yes, but Mia now sees it’s also about Cricket taking the next step without her, venturing into the unknown by herself.

Going forward, Cricket’s pursuit of their mother’s dream—and whether or not she is successful in achieving it—will depend on Cricket alone.

A deep, mournful sob escapes Cricket, who slips off her bed and sinks all the way down to the ground.

She rests her cheek on the wood floor. Mia kneels beside Cricket and hugs her.

She squeezes her tightly, trying to absorb Cricket’s fear and convey that this new plan is the best plan for both of them.

“I’ll cheer for you always,” Mia whispers. “But I’m staying here, and you can choose whether or not you root for me.”