Page 67 of Spectacular Things
“Your only edge is the chip on your shoulder!” Sloane snaps. “And I have to say, it’s kind of funny how this afternoon, you could joke about me riding the bench, and now you’re like—well, you’re not winning any awards for sportsmanship, I can tell you that.”
Cricket storms past Sloane and into the closet.
She bends down, rummaging for something on the bottom shelf, beneath the small hotel vault.
“Here,” she says, taking long strides across the room and shoving the sheets into Sloane’s stomach with the force of her rage.
It knocks the wind out of Sloane, but she refuses to wince.
“I made that joke because you always start,” Cricket says. “You always win, ever since we were sixteen, and you can buy five-hundred-dollar sheets on a whim, as a joke, and you know I can’t. You know I don’t have a single endorsement, let alone ten.”
“Twelve.”
Cricket rolls her eyes. “The fact is, you’ve been punching down on me for years, and you know it, and you enjoy it. You invited me to your house and then made me sleep in your trophy room, for Christ’s sake.”
Her words puncture the air. The only sound is the crinkling plastic around the five-hundred-dollar sheets. Wordlessly, Sloane backs away. At the door, she turns around.
“Maybe you think you’ve sacrificed more than I have, or deserve the start more,” she says calmly. “But you haven’t and you don’t. I earned the experience I have now, just like I earned every one of my caps.”
Cricket opens her mouth before realizing she has nothing to say.
Sloane drops the sheets on the ground by her feet. “See you at breakfast,” she says. “From now on, I’ll leave you alone.”
After Sloane leaves, Cricket stares at the sheets on the floor for a full minute before realizing the bathwater has been running all this time. She turns off the faucet just before the tub overflows, the air so thick with steam that it hides her tears.
Over the next two weeks, as the National Team advances out of the group stage and survives the knockout rounds, Sloane and Cricket barely speak. When they cannot avoid each other altogether, they interact like business associates with an inconvenient but undeniable shared interest in gold.
Sloane plays well, like she always does.
And Cricket watches from the bench, expertly performing the role of a supportive teammate.
In the first round of the group stage, she cheers for Sloane with the other game changers but when Teague calls a time-out, Cricket avoids the starting keeper.
Because that’s all Sloane is now—the starting keeper.
Not her friend. In the locker room before and after the first match, Cricket keeps her headphones on, her music loud, and her eyes down.
But as the United States advances in the Olympics, Cricket can’t help but appreciate Sloane’s poise under such immense pressure.
In the second round of the group stage, Sloane blocks a penalty kick from Zambia in the fifth minute of the game, saving her team the burden of having to dig themselves out of such an early hole.
On the sideline, Cricket remembers the tens of thousands of PKs she and Sloane shot on each other over the years, and they all just paid off.
Then, in the quarter-final against Colombia, Sloane steps off her line early to intercept a long ball.
It’s a bold move and one that Cricket and Sloane constantly debated when they reviewed game film together.
The match ends in another victory for the United States, and Sloane’s daring step feels like a win not just for Sloane but also for Cricket.
That split-second decision to step off her line resulted from years of coaching each other to think fast in real time with huge stakes.
When the United States goes into overtime with Spain in the semi-final, Sloane comes up big with a save she converts into a clear, which then becomes the game-winning goal.
As the stadium explodes with rapture, Cricket travels back to those ten days she spent with Sloane in Florida and how Sloane insisted they work on the accuracy of their clears after each speed workout.
In the moment, it seemed insane and unnecessary, but it was that work ethic that was now taking the United States to the Gold Medal match.
And so before the final against the Netherlands, Cricket swallows her pride and goes out of her way to touch Sloane on the shoulder.
“You got this,” she says in the players’ tunnel.
Despite everything that’s transpired between them, Cricket believes in Sloane.
She believes Sloane deserves to win and, even if Cricket doesn’t get to actually play, she’d still like to go home with a gold medal.
Except that in the eighty-third minute, Sloane’s leg breaks. As she’s wheeled off the field, expectations are shattered and then reimagined when Cricket takes her place in goal.
“Holy shit,” Liz says, leaning against the left goalpost and staring up into the bright stadium lights, the stories of fans screaming her daughter’s name. “You’re here. We’re here.”
Cricket nods as she tries to warm up her cold muscles quickly.
The announcers won’t stop saying her name, and they keep repeating the fact that this is her first international cap like it’s some dirty secret.
In her head, Sloane reminds her to shut out the noise and just play.
If he were here, Coach would tell her that this is her opportunity.
“Soak it in, baby girl,” Liz says, lifting her hands toward the sky as tears roll down her cheeks. Their dream is finally realized. “Soak it in and play your heart out.”
And that’s exactly what Cricket does, stopping Mila Visschers’s shot by making an unbelievable, game-winning save.
After the refs blow their whistles, the players dogpile on the field, relieved and euphoric to have once again won it all.
It’s the end of another grueling Olympics, sure, but it’s just as clear to everyone in the stands and watching at home that this is Cricket Lowe’s moment.
This is how one opportunity can fling open the gates to a thousand more.
This is how the underdog becomes the hero.