Page 55 of Spectacular Things
“It’s not a babymoon,” Mia insists on the phone.
In the fall of Cricket’s junior year at UCLA, Mia is seven weeks pregnant.
To celebrate, Oliver books a trip to Key Largo over Christmas, when Mia will have just entered the blissful second trimester.
“And because it’s not a babymoon,” Mia emphasizes, “I’d love for you to come. ”
Cricket knows Mia is terrified of jinxing her fertility luck this early in the game, which is why she’s refusing to call the trip what it clearly is. She considers the offer before asking, “Are you still puking all the time?”
“It should stop soon,” Mia answers. “I think.”
“And the Airbnb is a one-bedroom?”
“With a pullout couch in the living room.”
“Sounds delightful,” Cricket jokes. And then, because she loves mentioning it at every opportunity, Cricket adds, “I need to focus on training for camp.”
After Cricket’s third tremendous season with UCLA, Teague has once again invited her to the National Team January Camp.
Sloane is also invited, and so Cricket wants to show up in the best shape of her life.
She can’t compromise her performance at camp—or her lower back—with a week on a pullout couch.
Yaz plans to spend the entire break at her conservative grandmother’s in Laguna Beach. “I would say come with me,” Yaz says, taking out her diamond studs before bed, “but our love would literally kill her.”
And so Cricket is just beginning to entertain the idea of spending Christmas alone in Victory when Sloane calls, freaking out about camp and talking way too fast.
“Hi!OhmyGod!Youhavetocomehereandstaywithmeeeee!”
This year’s January Camp is being held in West Palm Beach, not even thirty minutes from Sloane’s childhood home.
“We can train together ahead of time,” she says.
“We’ll run fartleks on my high school track, and my parents will totally love having you here for Christmas.
Oh my God, they will actually, truly die from happiness. ”
Without hesitation, Cricket says yes, because only Sloane will understand the importance of pre-camp training.
Only Sloane won’t ask her why she’d rather do sets of box jumps than drink rounds of eggnog on Christmas Eve, or skip New Year’s altogether to wake up at five a.m. for an endurance run.
When Cricket calls back to confirm her flights, Sloane expresses her joy by singing so loudly and poorly that Cricket, out of respect for her ears, hangsup.
Yaz, however, is less thrilled. “Wow,” she says, scrolling through Sloane’s online presence as they lie side by side on her bed. “She’s really pretty.” Skimming Wikipedia, Yaz adds, “She’s taller than you?”
“By one inch, if that,” Cricket says dismissively, pulling Yaz into her arms. “You know I’d much rather go somewhere—anywhere—with you,” Cricket adds, gathering up Yaz’s hair to kiss her on the neck, and then the collarbone.
She lifts Yaz’s shirt over her head and gazes admiringly at Yaz’s body.
“Goddamn,” Cricket sighs, enjoying the warmth of Yaz’s skin on her lips.
“I’d face off against ten homophobic grannies if it meant getting to spend winter break with you. ”
Two orgasms later, Yaz gives Cricket her blessing for West Palm Beach. “The internet says Sloane only likes brunettes anyway,” Yaz smirks, pulling her shorts backon.
“Brunette runway models, ” Cricket corrects, lacing up her sneakers. She is relieved to have Yaz on the same page and excited to see Sloane in her natural habitat.
And here she is now: Sloane Jackson in a turquoise tank top, practically falling out of a white Escalade that’s fast approaching the curb at the Palm Beach International Airport.
“Ambitious witches unite!” Sloane yells. Behind the wheel, Sloane’s mother, Bonnie Jackson, honks the horn with abandon.
“Ho ho ho!” Sloane shouts, hopping out of the SUV and smothering Cricket in a hug. “Merry Christmas Eve!”
Cricket ignores the crunch in her chest as she thinks of the Christmas Prelude in Kennebunkport, where Santa arrives via lobster boat. This is the first time she won’t be there. It’s the first Christmas in Cricket’s life that she won’t spend with Mia in Maine.
“Merry Christmas, darlin’!” Bonnie says, pulling Cricket into a hug. “We’re so glad you made it!” Cupping her mouth and lowering her voice so Sloane can’t hear, Bonnie adds ominously, “If you don’t like your room, just let me know.”
“Of course I’ll like it!” Cricket says, loading her suitcase. Bonnie shoots her a look that can only be translated as: You don’t know what you don’t know .
“Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” Sloane instructs after Cricket buckles.
She does as she’s told and is rewarded with something cold.
“Iced vanilla latte with oat milk,” Sloane announces, visibly proud to know Cricket’s caffeinated drink of choice.
“It took you long enough,” Sloane says as they exit the airport, “but I’m glad you’re finally here. ”
After a thirty-minute drive up I-95, the Escalade pulls up to a high wrought-iron gate and Bonnie types a code into the kiosk that blends into a twelve-foot hedge. The gate ceremoniously opens. “Almost home,” Bonnie says, reaching back to pat Cricket’s knee.
If only that were true.
But if Cricket were really almost home, there would be a taxidermized moose in the airport, and snow in the weather forecast, the smell of sugar cookies in the oven, and Mia reciting all the words to It’s a Wonderful Life along with the movie.
There would be Canada geese trying to cross the icy street, not three girls in bikinis speeding past on a golf cart.
Sloane had warned Cricket that her family lived in a gated community, but she hadn’t said her house consumed half a city block and abutted a golf course.
She’d also failed to mention that her house was technically on the grounds of the Pelican Country Club—as they drive by the clubhouse, a member of the grounds crew operates a chain saw to tidy up the hedge that spells out Pelican just in case anyone forgot.
“You have a pool across the street?” Cricket asks, staring in disbelief.
The pool is actually several interconnected pools with two hot tubs and a mile-long lazy river, but all of it somehow understated amid the remarkable gardens.
Sloane explains that the Pelican hired a Harvard graduate of landscape architecture to design the “community campus” and Cricket nods along as if she hasn’t just landed on another planet.
At the top of a long driveway, Bonnie parks the car and Sloane skips up the steps to the largest house Cricket has ever seen, which includes the governor’s mansion in Augusta. “And to think this is where the greatest goalkeeper in soccer history spent her formative years!” Sloane announces.
“When did she sell it?” Cricket quips.
Standing in the marbled foyer of the Jackson residence, Cricket takes in the grand staircase, the framed art, the absence of mail or keys, shoes or coats.
It feels more like a hotel lobby than a home.
Cricket thinks of the old Smiling Hill Farm milk crate overflowing with sneakers by her own front door.
She suddenly wants to go home, but without Mia there, it doesn’t exist.
“There’s a gym in the basement that my dad modeled after the Carson training facility,” Sloane says, speaking quickly as she leads Cricket up the staircase. “And I know my mom made a bunch of reservations for us while you’re here, but just tell me if it’s too much and I’ll get her to dial it back.”
Cricket nods. She feels like crying for a hundred reasons and no reason at all.
“I hope you know you can change your mind,” Sloane says, stopping halfway up the staircase and turning around to stare at Cricket.
“Yeah, no, it all sounds great,” Cricket says, forcing a smile.
Sloane leans back on the banister and drops her head over the railing, exposing her stomach.
She does this when she’s thinking, a mini-inversion to promote blood flow to the brain.
Cricket has witnessed this move at camp but also over FaceTime—when she gets an unflattering view up Sloane’s nostrils.
“I didn’t mean whether or not you wanted to eat at Elisabetta’s,” Sloane says from upside down.
She rights herself and grabs Cricket’s shoulder, holds her gaze for a moment too long.
“Give me some credit,” she says before spinning on her toes to continue up the stairs.
“I meant about you being here. Since Yaz feels weird about it.”
Cricket’s skin prickles with defensiveness and so they move on in silence.
Anything she might say will sound like a betrayal.
Yaz doesn’t get it because she’s never met Sloane.
She doesn’t understand that they are friends, yes, but also fierce, ambitious-witch rivals.
Yaz wants Cricket to continue to be a star goalkeeper without necessarily realizing that earning a top spot requires competing against the best. And Sloane Jackson, even if Cricket would rather self-immolate than say it to her face, is second to none.
Yaz can’t understand because she’s not a keeper.
Upstairs, Sloane walks down a corridor as long and wide as the driveway outside, and Cricket realizes that this is the kind of house that is divided into wings.
“My mom wanted to put you in the guest room, but I vetoed that because it’s all the way down there”—she gestures behind them—“and I told her you’re the one person I don’t care about sharing a bathroom with. ”
“I’m flattered, I think.”
“You should be,” Sloane says, opening the door. The bathroom is all white marble and the size of the UCLA locker room.
“Are you serious?” Cricket asks, eyeing the two-headed shower, the infrared sauna. There is a television embedded in the wall across from the freestanding bathtub. Its gleaming hardware winks condescendingly at Cricket.