Page 79 of Spectacular Things

Under the Lights

From the hospital room in the Critical Care Unit, Oliver calls their nephrology team in Maine and puts everyone on speaker.

Mia’s organ-donor coordinator, Wendy, explains every step ahead of them, from the tests Cricket will need to take, to the timeline of the surgery, to the extent of the recovery process.

“It makes the most sense to formally begin the process with your established health care provider,” Wendy says.

“Give me a ring when you get back to Chicago and, until then, enjoy the time you have left with your team.”

After that intense conversation, Cricket steps outside to make an even tougher call.

“You sure?” Paula asks, forever economical with her words. “Want to sleep on it first?”

“I’ve been sleeping on it for almost a year,” Cricket says. “I’m sure.”

“I’ll circle back.” The call lasts under a minute.

It took twenty-four years to build the career she’d always dreamed of, and less than sixty seconds to shut it all down.

In breaking the news to Paula, Cricket’s decision takes on another dimension of reality.

Her manager is now tasked with the unpleasant job of figuring out how to breach Cricket’s contracts with as little financial and legal fallout as possible.

Next, Cricket calls Teague to apologize, and then Gogo the team captain, and then Emma, who’d stepped up and played in her stead, consequently earning her first cap and first clean sheet in front of ninety thousand people.

They’d won, 2–0, and now everyone was back at the hotel, celebrating at the rooftop bar.

Their jubilation doesn’t make Cricket feel sad or envious or angry; she’s too drained to feel anything at all except relief. She wasn’t too late.

When visiting hours end, Cricket escorts Oliver and Betty back to their hotel.

“I’m sorry,” she tells Oliver in the dark, as they both hover over Betty in her Pack ’n Play.

“I know,” Oliver says, putting his hand on her shoulder.

By the time she returns to her own hotel room, Cricket is practically sleepwalking.

Nevertheless, she packs up her suitcases, along with the life she knows.

It’s the first time she’s been alone since this morning, the first time she can try to wrap her mind around what she’s done, what she’s doing, and what she’s signed on to do next.

Maybe Sloane is right: She has to make peace with wanting more.

Ambitious witches always want more.

All evening, Cricket’s teammates have texted her their condolences about Mia, but now, as the night wears on and the drinking continues, they beg her to come join them on the roof, come celebrate, come blow off steam, so when Cricket hears the incessant knocking, she knows it’s them.

“I’m too tired,” Cricket yells to her drunk teammates as she shoves her bag of Epsom salt into her suitcase.

“That’s okay!” one of them yells. “Open the door!”

Cricket rolls her eyes but does as she’s told.

“Hi,” Sloane says. “I’m kidnapping you.” She is alone. And sober. Down the hallway, a door slams and music startsup.

“Good, you’re still dressed,” Sloane says, taking in Cricket’s bright green game jersey.

“I don’t feel like seeing anybody.”

“Perhaps you misheard me,” Sloane says, shoving her foot against the hotel door so it stays wedged open.

“I’m kidnapping you, so your consent is not of my concern.

” Sloane speaks like nothing between them has changed.

Because nothing has changed. But her being here, right now—Cricket feels a magnetic pull in her fingertips, a voltage humming between them.

Before leaving the hotel room, Sloane ties a blindfold over Cricket’s eyes and guides her along the empty hallway, down the staff elevator to the loading dock, where several employees on their smoke break recognize Sloane and ask for her autograph, oblivious to or disinterested in the hostage situation they’re witnessing.

“Unbelievable,” Cricket mutters, which makes Sloane laugh as she helps her abductee buckle her seatbelt.

On the highway, Cricket relaxes enough to recognize the smell of sweat embedded in the seatbelt strap across her chest, and the vehicle’s poor shock system that makes Cricket bump her head every time they drive over a pothole.

“How’d you get a team van?” Cricket asks.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Sloane answers.

When they park, Sloane takes Cricket by the hand and leads her through darkness with pockets of light bright enough to see through her blindfold.

Cricket hears a key card swipe, a confirmation beep from a security system, and then the artificial arctic blast of air-conditioning.

They are inside but it is silent, and then back outside, swaddled in the stillness of a cool summer evening in Southern California.

“How scared should I be?” Cricket asks.

“Not at all.”

Several more steps and Cricket suddenly smells her favorite smell.

“We’re here,” Sloane says, unknotting her blindfold.

Cricket looks up and her mouth drops open.

The Rose Bowl is beautiful any time of day, but it is majestic at night. The field is empty save for a cluster of soccer balls in front of the opposite goal. Cricket moves so quickly it looks like she’s flying as she sprints across the field and fires a shot at the open net.

Under the lights, Cricket’s legs are convinced they’ve never been heavy, or tired, and her ankle has never been sprained, her rotator cuff never strained.

She is an invincible, rubber-boned kid with keys to the kingdom.

She is an ambitious witch dancing at the height of her power.

She is an extraordinary keeper playing on a perfect green pitch at midnight.

Nudging one ball away from the rest, Cricket allows her momentum to carry her through the release. The soccer ball takes flight and finds the upper right corner with unapologetic audacity. She is meant to be here. She was born to be here. A part of her will always live between these pipes.

“Nice one,” Sloane calls from midfield.

“I wish I had my gloves!”

“Check the left post,” Sloane calls back.

There are Cricket’s gloves, swiped from the locker room and begging for action.

She has never belonged anywhere the way she belongs on a soccer field.

She has been appalling at so many things, all to get here.

It has required everything to be extraordinary in this one particular space, but it wasn’t for nothing.

Cricket is still Velcroing her left glove when Sloane rockets a ball past her.

“That was your one,” Cricket says, bouncing in ready position.

She watches Sloane’s face as she concentrates on the ball and can’t help but appreciate what she has always appreciated about Sloane: Her force and foresight.

The liquid in her movement, how Sloane’s hips do not shift or tilt like other players’ but flow, pouring from one motion into the next. A body of rivers.

“Ready?” Sloane asks, setting up another ball for a penalty kick.

Cricket nods and moments later the ball sails directly into her arms. Sloane curses.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Cricket yells and they both cackle with delight.

They collect the balls and go again. And again. And again.

At some point, they switch out, and Sloane hops in goal.

“You’re rusty but not horrible,” Cricket tells her.

“That’s so funny,” Sloane says, “because you’re horrible but not rusty.”

Even as it’s unfolding, Cricket tries to archive the details of this night in her memory—how the stadium lights stretch out their arms in every direction and appear like supernovas against the black sky, how her legs feel like pogo sticks, desperate for that spring of release, how Sloane grins at her every time she sneaks in a grounder, and how Cricket has never been more in love with the game, because tonight is the essence of what soccer can be: Fun.

Liberating. An invitation to run up to the future and kick it as hard as she can.

“You’re looking a little tired,” Sloane yells from eighteen yards away.

“I’m not tired,” Cricket shouts back. “But if you’re tired, we can call it.”

“Me?” Sloane doesn’t try to hide her indignation. “I could go all night.”

“Great, because I’m not calling it.”

“Neither amI.”

“Then shoot already.”

They play for another hour. By the time they silently agree to bag the balls, Cricket looks like she’s been swimming, her clothes glued to her, steady drops of sweat dripping from her high bun, which is now comically lopsided.

“I’m not a medical professional,” Sloane says, bent over at the waist and tenderly massaging her quad muscle, “but I’d say my femur is back, baby.”

“That was impressive,” Cricket agrees. “Maybe you should return as a striker.”

“Maybe you should—” Sloane starts to fire back a joke and then catches herself. The truth ripples between them: Cricket is giving up her spot just as Sloane prepares to seizeit.

By the time they arrive at the hotel, Cricket shivers under a layer of cold, dried sweat.

By the time she says good night to Sloane in the elevator, it’s nearly three a.m.

“Hey,” Sloane says over her shoulder as she steps off the elevator. “Can I make one suggestion? About your future?”

Cricket nods, her heart thumping wildly.

But before Sloane can offer her advice, and before Cricket even realizes what she is doing, she is already stepping off her line and leaning through the elevator doors, taking the biggest risk of all by kissing the greatest keeper she’s ever known.