CHAPTER NINETEEN | POINT OF NO RETURN

a line demarcating where the penalty box ends. if a skater passes the point of no return they must skate round the track in the ref lane again to enter the penalty box from a counter-clockwise direction.

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          I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I couldn't think.

          I'd never handled violence too well. I was all growl, no bite, running away from the drama I'd created as soon as things started getting serious, and I'd never expected things to escalate to the point of people getting punched in the face. Though I wasn't proud of it by any means, sometimes taking the passive-aggressive route was the high road, and I would have gotten away with it had no one else gotten involved.

          Then, Corinne was on the floor, blood smeared all over her mouth and chin, and Drew was seconds away from doing the same to the guy who had shoved her to the concrete. She looked up at me, eyes wide open in panic, then at Drew, and I understood what she wanted me to do.

          The main issue was that she and I were pretty much the same height and my upper body and arm strength was laughable, so there wasn't much I could do to pry Drew off that guy before he tore his face off. It was only then that it dawned on me just how massive of a guy Drew was, especially since I mostly saw him sitting down, hunched over a book. I'd never seen him on the field, standing straight, and beating someone black and blue.

          "Stop it!" I pleaded, trying to pull him back with Kat and Marley's help. Drew would have no trouble knocking someone else's front teeth out, and I didn't doubt for a second he'd protect Corinne to the ends of the Earth. However, we were the guests here, which left us a lot more vulnerable to punishment, justified or not, and I wouldn't let them get in trouble or cost us two games over something I should have handled by myself. "Drew, back off!"

          He tried to shrug me off with his shoulder, which wasn't hard to do, and I nearly lost my balance had I not been somewhat expecting him to not care. He was there for one reason only, and that reason was the only person who could bring him back to reality and convince him to stop before he did something stupid.

          It took the combined efforts of three people to pull him back, though most of the guy's friends hadn't even tried to break them up, probably scared they'd also end up getting hurt. Drew and his bloody knuckles were a scary sight and I couldn't blame them for wanting to stay away, but why hadn't they left me alone when it was clear I didn't want to speak to them? Why would they only listen to a man or why would they only react to violence? Why didn't my words and feelings matter to them?

          "Drew, please," Corinne begged, in one last attempt to wake him from his blind fury, and it was like she'd flipped a switch in his brain. He stopped, lowering his arms, and took two steps back, like nothing had happened, but this was something he couldn't pretend wasn't real. "Not before the game."

          The game hardly mattered now, I thought. All of us should have other priorities, including leaving before we got caught, praying no one had seen us or that we wouldn't be ratted out, and get cleaned up. Corinne was shaking when I helped her up, but her facial expression remained blank, as though she was still processing everything that had just happened. I didn't judge her for that, as it was a miracle anyone had had the strength of spirit to react and do something, but it still felt so unlike her.

          "You're done," the guy threatened, pointing his index finger at Drew, and began walking away with his friends. "You're done. It's over."

          "Don't," Kat chimed in, as soon as Drew opened his mouth to answer. Even an insult would be better than launching himself into a fist fight again and, the sooner we got out of there, the better. "You need to go get cleaned up and take a deep breath before the game. We can't win without our quarterback, and we're not losing to Harvard. Get your act together."

          "I'm fine," Drew protested, breaking free from their grip to get to Corinne, but she backed away before he could reach her. There was no fear in her eyes when she cowered away from him, no traces of what had happened besides her bloodied lip, but we all understood she needed to distance herself from all of this. I couldn't let her break down, not when she would never forgive me if I did. "Cor—"

          "Go join the rest of the team, Drew," Marley asked, quietly. "We'll be there for the game."

          "But—"

          "Go."

          Drew looked at her, receiving nothing but silence in return, and I knew leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he still did it. It would have worsened everything had he stayed, regardless of how badly they both wanted the other to stay, and they needed to be away from each other. All we had to do was get through both games and go home, where everything could be fixed; after all, Kat was convinced they were meant to be and there was nothing they couldn't overcome.

          I wasn't thinking about Corinne, Drew's girlfriend, or Corinne, the (co-) captain of Yale's roller derby team. I was thinking about Corinne, my friend, who had stepped in to help me when I hadn't been able to do it myself, and I owed it to her to be the steady element in this situation before she spiraled. I'd always been used to being something akin to a crutch to other people, mostly because of Jordan, and I liked being dependable, but this wasn't about pathological dependence, not again. I wanted to be her friend, most importantly, and I needed her to know I was there to support her.

          She refused to head to the football field to watch Drew. I couldn't blame her for it and didn't want to leave her alone, so I got her a cup of hot chocolate, ignoring all her protests, and asked Kat and Marley to leave for the game without us. They, like Drew, didn't want to leave us and Corinne clung to their ambivalence like a lifeline, but I was persuasive enough for us to part ways.

          I managed to sit Corinne down on a wooden bench in the locker room we'd been assigned, glad for the privacy granted by the empty room. The hot chocolate wasn't doing much to comfort her, too powdery where it should have been velvety, and she had let it go cold, too stubborn to accept it. What she did accept, however, was to let me press a soaked paper towel against her lip to clean her up, a gesture that felt a thousand times more intimate when we were all alone.

          I didn't know how to handle Corinne when she was like this. I knew her when she was angry, when she was vicious, when she was nervous, when she was sad, when she was happy; blank stare Corinne was a novelty to me, unknown territory I didn't know how to explore.

          "I have to break up with him," Corinne declared, shattering the sepulchral silence in the locker room.

          Under any other circumstances, maybe part of me would have been delighted to hear her say that, even though it would leave her brokenhearted, but I was selfish enough to hang on to the sliver of a chance I'd have with her. Now, whatever my feelings about it were, they were also the least important in the pyramid of priorities or whatever that was called, especially when I couldn't even decipher Corinne's own current feelings.

          "Why?" I asked. "Because of what happened? I don't know Drew that well, but he's not violent—"

          "You're right, you don't know him. You don't know me, either."

          "Well, I'm trying to."

          "Maybe I just don't want you to. Have you ever thought about that?"

          I sighed in exasperation, resting my forehead against her shoulder. "You know you can't keep shutting people out forever, right? I know you enough to care about you, and I don't want you to be miserable. Loneliness will make you miserable." When she didn't answer, I straightened and reached out for her wrist to check her knuckles. "Look at me. Please. Can you trust me, just this once? Can you trust me and talk to me?"

          Corinne groaned, leaning forward to bury her face in her hands. "What do you want?"

          I wanted her to trust me. I wanted us to win the game. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her.

          "Is this . . . typical behavior? Has he ever done anything to hurt you?"

          She let out a bitter laugh, raising her head. "No. No, he hasn't. I don't care if you don't believe me, but don't go around spreading false rumors about him. That's not what this is about. He's not violent. He wouldn't hurt a fly." She ran a shaky hand through her hair to brush it away from her face. "I know that's what you usually hear from victims of violence, but that's not the case here. It's just . . ." She shook her head, biting down on her bottom lip and wincing in pain right after, like she'd forgotten about how she had busted it. "It's like a deal we made when we started dating. Shortly after, actually. It's not a deal, but I don't know how else to describe it. It's stupid, but we promised each other we'd keep our word. There was this . . . incident. Not with us, someone else. After a football game, some of the guys drank too much and decided to taunt the other team; we'd just won and the other guys were tired and bitter over the loss, so they went there to rub some salt in the wound. People do stupid shit when they're drunk. People do even stupider shit when their egos are massive."

          I thought back on all the stuff Jordan had done while under the influence of alcohol, all the things I'd had to cover up, and felt sick to my stomach—times two. The first time because of how painfully fresh the memories still were, the second because I shouldn't be thinking about my own brother like that. I knew him, and knew he wasn't a bad guy, in spite of everything he had done. That was still a separation I was able to make.

          "We were there," Corinne continued, resting her elbows on her knees. We sat so close to each other our shoulders brushed whenever we breathed. "You know Drew. He always wants to do the right thing and he's the quarterback, so the team is kind of his responsibility, like me with all of you. He tried to get them to stop before anyone got hurt, but there were too many of them and just one of him, so it was like he wasn't even there. It flew out of control really fast and, before anyone could do anything, there was this guy from our football team bleeding on the floor, beaten to a pulp, and we all thought . . . we thought he wouldn't make it. Drew was covered in blood that wasn't even his, looking so lost, so empty that I didn't know what to do. I just remember feeling terrified out of my mind while we waited for the ambulance to arrive, wondering if that was going to be it. If that would be the end of a nineteen-year-old." I could only assume Drew looked the same as she currently did, only with a lot more blood involved, and it wasn't a pretty sight to imagine. She twisted her hands around each other, staring at them. "Drew then turned to me and said, 'if that's ever me, I don't want us to be together anymore'. I didn't understand at first and thought he was just saying that because of the strain and the stress, but, once the dust settled, he didn't change his mind. He didn't want to see me be with someone capable of such violence. I told him it didn't matter to me, because I knew he would never, ever nearly beat someone to death, but what if he hadn't stopped today? What if it had been just me and him there, and there was no one to pull him back?"

           "You pulled him back, Corinne. He only reacted to your voice. He pushed me—"

           "That's the problem. Had I not been there, you three would never be strong enough to physically stop him. I can't . . . I can't have someone depend on me like that. I just can't. I know he'd feel the same way if the roles were reversed." She sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve, and I risked moving even closer to her, my hip pressed against hers. She didn't look that crestfallen over a potential breakup—with the guy everyone described as the love of her life, even—and that was what stressed me out the most. If she seemed fine now, she was bound to explode eventually, with no one to pick up the pieces. "We never even discussed that possibility. He always assumed he'd be the one to break the promise, but never considered I'd be capable of doing something like that. Maybe if Kat hadn't stopped me, I would have."

          "Would you?"

          "Maybe. For you." Those three words alone felt like being slapped in the face with a cinder block. "Look, I'm sorry for dumping all of this on you. You already have so much going on with your family and all; you really don't need to listen to my boyfriend drama. This is stupid. I'm pathetic. That's the guy I was going to marry and now I can't even cry about it. It's like there's a brick wall blocking all these . . . emotions. Maybe I really am broken, huh? So much for proving people wrong." She huffed, pressing the heels of her hands against her forehead, and exhaled deeply through her mouth. Her shoulders shook, like she was about to start crying, but it only got worse when I tentatively slid an arm around her in an awkward attempt to hug her. She was small and bony and, when she leaned forward, her spine dug into my arm, but I wasn't complaining. "Things hadn't been okay in a long time, so maybe this was the last straw. I can't blame him for not wanting to stay. I wouldn't either."

          She leaned into the hug, finally, but I still knew I was doing a lousy job at trying to comfort her. If anything, she was feeling even worse after having confessed all of that to me, and I couldn't shake off the thought that I had built up that brick wall, at least partially.

           It couldn't have been easy for her to be in a relationship with someone and have another person threaten the stability in her life thanks to their own feelings for her, but I didn't want to make it all about me. That was how I'd be dealing with things had they happened to me, but she was right when she said I didn't know her. There was still so much about Corinne I didn't know and, with her pushing me away this much, I feared she'd never let me in.

          I knew they had been fighting for a while, even before Thanksgiving, and I'd never bothered to talk to her and ask what it had been about. All I could do was assume—something she hated and had no problem reminding everyone of that—but I didn't want to face a reality where I could be one of the reasons. It had never been my intention to come between them, not when everything that had happened between me and Corinne had been completely unexpected. All I'd ever wanted was to finish my degree and now I was sitting in a locker room in Massachusetts, right before a roller derby bout I'd be playing in.

          "Corinne," I began, unsure if this was where the conversation should be headed. She turned her head to look at me. "I don't want to make this about me, but I have to ask. All those fights and disagreements you two had been having lately . . ."

          "It's not because of you." She crossed her arms, pressing them against her ribs. "He doesn't know. It's never been a problem, anyway. With Drew, it's . . ." She sighed. "Drew and I have a lot of history. We've known each other for a long time, and there are things we didn't work on when we should have, so they were bound to come up eventually, now that we don't know how to deal with them. Had it been about you, we would have fixed it."

          "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. I'll . . ." I gulped, drawing back my hand, and she straightened her shoulders, fully turning to face me. Somehow, I thought speaking was much easier when she wasn't looking me in the eye. "I'll back off. Maybe you can still fix things and I won't be around making it worse."

          "I meant what I said. You did nothing wrong. If anyone should be apologizing, that would be me." She eyed me carefully, pondering her next words, but ultimately swung her legs to the other side of the bench and stood up. The air between us shifted, colder now, and I forced myself to look away. "I don't think I can be what you need, Wren. I'm sorry."

          Then, she turned around and left the locker room, closing the door behind her.

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          No one knew how, but we won the two games against Harvard.

          Both victories were bittersweet, as they culminated in Corinne and Drew keeping their promise to each other by breaking up right after, and we were all still concerned about the consequences of that and the brawl before the matches. Word had quickly spread about what had happened, which was to be expected, and we knew Coach Fontaine had been informed about it, but she hadn't said a word. That only worsened the team's morale, as we were all well aware she wouldn't let it slide, but no one had the courage to even bring it up. If we all pretended enough, it was like nothing had happened.

          "I just wish you'd talk to me," Kat confessed, on the ride back home. "I don't know why the two of you keep freezing me out."

          "It's not personal," I said.

          "Still." She curled on her seat, arms crossed and knees pulled up to her chest. "It would be nice to not be shut out of conversations when I've done nothing wrong."

          We spent the following day in agony, barely managing to focus during our lectures, suffering in anticipation over what would happen later during practice. Coach Fontaine had let us rest during the night, one last kind gesture before deciding to drill us with questions, but I had barely slept. Even if I'd wanted to get a good night of sleep, I would have still been woken up around three in the morning by Katrina's phone lighting up the room, blinding me in the process, when Corinne called her.

          I didn't bother feeling hurt over Corinne calling her instead of me. It made sense why she had done things this way—I was beginning to suspect she didn't leave anything up to chance—and, after what Kat had said about us leaving her out of every conversation, like we were keeping secrets, I wasn't one to complain.

          Though I'd turned my back to Kat and the light and she hadn't raised her voice above a whisper, I could still make out the subject of the conversation and Corinne sobbing on her side of the line. With a tight chest and a heavy heart, I'd curled into a ball and pretended not to hear a thing.

          By the time practice was scheduled to begin, Corinne was wrecked. If I looked exhausted, she looked a hundred times worse, with red, puffy eyes, and skin so pale one could almost see right through her. I didn't want to stare at her too much and make her feel like she was being watched, but I'd never been great at acting like she wasn't in the room. When Coach Fontaine skated towards us, Corinne looked even smaller, if that was possible, and kept her head down, eyes glued to the track's floor.

          "I'd start today's practice by congratulating you for your win against Harvard, but things can never go our way," Coach started. "I don't think you need me to elaborate on what happened yesterday; some of you were there, others learned about it, but everyone knows. I know about it, too, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed." She paused, looking at each of us, and I realized how stupid it had been of me, Kat, and Marley to stand together and leave Corinne all by herself on the opposite end of the semi-circle the team had formed. "That was absolutely abhorrent behavior. When I heard about it, I refused to believe my team, my girls would ever do such a thing." Her eyes sparked when she glanced at Corinne, who had never hesitated to look her mother in the eye. "You know better than picking fights with rival teams, especially before or after a big game, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying or violence of any kind. I will not have you ruin the good name of this team, no matter how good of a skater you are or how valuable you have been to the team. If you don't agree with the team's ideals or if you fail to represent them, there's no place for you here."

          "Coach, please," Marley began. "You have to understand—"

          "No, Marley. I understood it perfectly."

          Corinne raised her head, with tear-filled eyes. "Mom."

          Coach Fontaine turned to face her so quickly she would have lost her balance, were she anyone else. "You're off the team."

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tHeRe'S nOtHiNg DrAmAtIc AbOuT rOlLeR dErBy

well then explain THIS