CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | LOSS OF RELATIVE POSITION

when a skater's position in relation to other skaters on the track is lost for a sustained period of time due to the actions of an opponent, such as a legal block or an illegal block.

▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂

          Like January before it, February flew by in the blink of an eye.

          A few months ago, I would have been ecstatic as I counted down the days until graduation, my ticket out of Connecticut, but now it was one of the very last things on my mind. I needed to think about graduation because I didn't want to be on academic probation and my grades were still very much a priority of mine, but I wasn't too keen on the idea of leaving all of this behind. Not anymore, at least.

          Roller derby kept me the busiest out of all my hobbies and remaining affairs, now that we were so close to winning the championship, and Marley and Coach Fontaine had been relentless. I'd been working harder than ever before, building my endurance so I wouldn't start heaving in the middle of the track like a dying seal after completing a jam, and I thought I'd been doing the right thing up until the moment Marley pulled me aside one afternoon.

          "Can I talk to you real quick?" she asked. She usually saved the glitter for official bouts, so the glowing layer smeared across her forehead and down her neck was just sweat.

          "Am I in trouble?"

          My mind started reeling, fearing it was something about my blossoming relationship with Corinne, which still felt so foreign to me when said out loud.

          We hadn't been keeping things a secret, though neither of us were the greatest fans of extravagant public displays of affection, and she mostly wanted us to lay low around Drew at first. I'd been slightly concerned about how the rest of the team would take it ("and we care about their opinion on something that is none of their business because . . .?" Corinne had asked, sprawled out on my bed), particularly Coach (Corinne had flipped me off then), but I didn't think Marley in particular would have an issue with it. It had been ages since they broke up, even though slivers of pettiness occasionally emerged between them, but I couldn't be too certain.

          Marley rolled her eyes. "Obviously not. I'm here as the co-captain."

          "Ah." I took a deep breath in an attempt to relax, but it felt like a direct stab into my lungs. "What's up?"

          She leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. "This is me checking up on you for the sake of the team, but also because you're my friend and I care about you. Now that the formalities are out of the way, I'm just going to dive straight in. Coach has been all up my grill these past few days because she wants you to be benched for the next bout."

          My heart sank to my stomach. "Why? I've done nothing wrong; if anything, I've been working harder than ever before."

          "Wren—"

          "If this is because I argued with her on Christmas, then she's just being unnecessarily petty and a hypocrite because I distinctly remember her telling Corinne her problem was that she took things too personally—"

          "Wren, that's not—"

          "If it's about me dating Corinne, then that's even worse"—her eyes briefly darted towards the stubbornly purple hickey marking the side of my neck, which I couldn't hide while wearing my hair up during practice—"because it really is none of her business what I do with my personal life and if she's holding that against me out of spite, then she'll just be hurting the entire team. No offense to everyone else, but I'm one of your best jammers and—"

          She smacked me upside the head to get me to finally stop rambling. "She wants to bench you exactly because you've been working too hard, and she fears you're exhausting yourself before the bout. She thinks you won't be at the top of your game and, when we're so close to the end of the season, she doesn't want to take any gambles." I gritted my teeth, firmly crossing my arms in front of my chest in frustration. "Quite frankly, I'm inclined to agree with her, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and hear your thoughts on it—"

          "Marley, I'm fine. I'm doing great. She's honestly just trying to make excuses to bench me—"

          "Can you please let me finish?" I huffed, aware she wasn't the cause of my impatience, but it wasn't like I could vent my frustrations with anyone else. Jordan was so far out of my reach, my parents would never understand, Kat would agree with her, choosing to remain neutral, Corinne would go ballistic, and Coach was the one behind all of this. "Look, I don't like this any more than you do and, objectively, you're the best jammer we have. However, if you start working yourself too hard, you're bound to get injured and we can't afford to lose a star skater, which is why we usually rotate between skaters during bouts. The other girls are good, too, and are willing and ready to step in if needed. I don't want you to think everything is hanging on your shoulders. There's an entire team backing you up. I know we're not particularly close, or anything"—a flicker of guilt struck me through the chest, as I'd never meant to stray away from her or make her feel unwanted—"and I'm not the captain most of the team wanted, but I'm really just trying to look out for all of you. I'm doing the best I can. Please, please let me know if you need anything, okay?"

          I wasn't a person who generally let others boss her around, which was why I tended to get in trouble with authority figures, particularly professors and my parents, and I knew that wasn't a good thing to be when you were part of a competitive team. I knew Marley was just looking out for me and I knew it couldn't be easy to captain a team where most of the skaters wanted someone else to be the captain, but I still refused to let my guard down.

          Coach was watching us. Even when she pretended not to, I still knew she was. I assumed she expected me to break, expected me to snap at Marley so she'd have an excuse to agree to keep me benched. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of seeing me lose my cool.

          It still hurt, though. All I'd ever done since I first joined the team was give it my all, everything that had ever been asked of me, and, suddenly, I was apparently giving them too much. Kat's famous words passed through my head—the nagging fear of being too much for other people—and I found myself so sick to my stomach I thought I could vomit right then and there. I didn't want to let Coach get under my skin, and it was even worse that she was using Marley as a means to an end, like she was some pawn, but she made it look so easy.

          In the end, that's all we ever were—means to an end, instruments to win the championship. After some of us graduated, next year's team would go through the same thing, and they wouldn't have Corinne or Marley to guide them. Kat would be gone by the end of that year, too, and, one day, it would be like we hadn't ever been there. We were just numbers, just skaters that had barely left a mark on the team's history, and Coach's name would be the only one praised for our achievements.

          I couldn't even defend myself. Anything I said to try and prove her wrong wouldn't mean a thing and, at the end of the day, fighting with her wouldn't help my case. Her methods were wrong and, sometimes, her priorities seemed so skewed I feared they would shift the entire world off its axis, but her main goal was the championship. I wouldn't cost my team a win just because Coach and I weren't seeing eye to eye.

          "I'll be careful," I eventually said, through gritted teeth.

          Marley's face softened significantly, like she could see how much effort I was putting into being cordial for both our sakes. "Thank you. We might have to rotate between jammers at the bout, but if you lay low then there's a high chance you'll get to skate. Coach isn't stupid. She knows we need you. She knows she needs you."

           I reached out a hand to gently squeeze her arm. "We also need you. Don't ever let her get in your head. She chose you for a reason."

          Maybe once that reason had been just to piss Corinne off, I wasn't sure, but, like Marley had said, Coach wasn't stupid and could recognize genuine, valuable talent when she saw it, even when others couldn't. She'd seen it in me, she'd seen it in other people, and we all knew Marley was good.

          She strategized first, thinking smart instead of hard, finding ways to help the jammer without entirely relying on brute force. When I'd struggled to make my way past the pack, with shoulders ramming into my ribs and threatening to send me flying back across the rink, she could find flaws in their strategy we could exploit and use to our advantage. Even without Corinne on the team, she was pulling her weight and doing the best she could.

          I couldn't let her down.

          "I just hope she's trusting me for all the right reasons," Marley confessed. "I don't want to disappoint her, but I don't want to turn my back on the team to do it, either. Sometimes, it feels like she has me trapped, you know?"

          "We'll follow you, wherever you decide to go, whatever you decide to do. You're our captain." I finally dropped my hand. "She might be the Coach, but she's not God. On the track, you are."

          Marley chuckled, bumping her hip against mine. "Watch out. All that flattery might get to my head and I'll end up trying to overthrow Coach."

          "Don't let her hear that."

          She shrugged. "Guess she'd just have to deal with it."

▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂

          Doctor Nguyen was late.

          My punctuality-obsessed parents weren't fans of this behavior and the positive opinion of her they had begrudgingly built was slowly crumbling like a house of cards. Every minute we spent sitting in her office, just the four of us, and her empty chair remained empty was like a card being flicked away. They were growing impatient, with my father hiding it a lot better than my mother, who had crossed both her arms and legs so tightly, clicking her tongue.

          Meanwhile, Jordan was restless. He kept shifting in his seat, like he knew something the rest of us didn't, but I couldn't try to get it out of him with our parents in the room. If it was something big, I knew they'd make a big deal out of it, possibly undermining all the progress he'd made, and I wouldn't allow my curiosity to ruin things.

          "This is so disrespectful," my mother complained, leg bouncing up and down. The heel of her stiletto occasionally clacked against the carpeted floor. "We're paying for her to not even bother to keep up with her own schedules. If we'd been the ones getting here late—"

          "I'm sure there's a rational explanation for this," I tried to argue, only to be silenced with a glare from the corner of her eye.

          I didn't want to fight with my family in front of Jordan, not when we needed to put up a united front, but also because I didn't want to face a reality where this whole therapeutic process had done nothing to help us. I refused to let Jordan come home to a dysfunctional family who had maintained all their toxic behaviors and dynamics, and I refused to be a part of a system that would trigger a relapse. I refused to play a part in this game.

          "She's never been late for anything," Jordan pointed out, which was both a bold and a smart move. They would never dare to glare at him now, and I was happy to know not everything had changed—he was still on my side. "Besides, her assistant did let us know she'd be running late. It's not like we didn't know."

          "Yes, but still. This is precious time being wasted waiting around for someone we're not certain will show up—"

          "She's never let us down before, either."

          "Jordan, be realistic," my father intervened. It was ironic of him to say that, I thought, when Jordan was the only person in the room being the slightest bit realistic and my parents were being dramatic just for the sake of it, but I couldn't bring myself to speak. I didn't want to be the one to cause a scene and an entire argument in the room, especially when Doctor Nguyen could come bursting into the office unexpectedly. "It just goes to show all her speeches about staying together and following the rules are just a façade this place puts up to take our money—"

          "Can you hear yourself right now? You guys were the ones who found this clinic in the first place, you were the ones who pitched it to me and were so adamant about me being treated here!"

          I cowered into my seat, wishing I could somehow turn invisible.

          Objectively, I knew Jordan was doing better, much better than he was when we first moved to Connecticut, and he couldn't spiral into a physical relapse while being inside the clinic without any access to alcohol. However, part of me still worried about his mental state and how these stupid arguments would affect him; a few months ago, everyone was always so scared of saying the wrong thing. Now, it was like they thought the clinic would protect him from everything, but they didn't even trust Doctor Nguyen thanks to the one mistake she'd ever made.

          The three of them kept butting heads like I wasn't even in the office with them, momentarily granting me my invisibility wish, but I remained focused on Jordan, my main priority.

          Though he certainly held his own against both our parents, he wasn't unbeatable and there was a reason he was here with all of us. He'd never been great at handling stressful situations and the only escape from everything he had was alcohol, something he couldn't use to remove himself from this argument, and my parents wouldn't let him off the hook.

          Our family therapy appointments rarely ever touched on private details of his personal therapy, details that were protected by patient-doctor confidentiality, and Doctor Nguyen would only ever bring them up in case they were relevant to the session's topic or to any major decisions we needed to discuss. Everything in this office revolved around our family as a system and our particular dynamics and interactions, not Jordan's alcoholism, and we'd since learned to not focus on the problem as much—it was a mere symptom of a bigger issue. That was something we all agreed on after much arguing between Doctor Nguyen and my parents.

          I wasn't quite sure where he stood at an individual level, seeing as we got limited one-on-one time and it was always under the supervision of an actual adult, and assuming things about people had gotten me in trouble before. I wanted to believe he was okay, he was better, and he could handle this on his own, but I was fine and still had a hard time facing my parents' wrath and outdated beliefs. Was this really a safe environment for him?

          "You're here because you want me to get better," Jordan continued. I swallowed the lump in my throat, still in awe of his bravery. The Jordan from a few months ago would have let them keep fighting, with no strength of his own to use to defend himself. "All this arguing is stupid. You've been looking for a reason to undermine Doctor Nguyen's hard work ever since you first met her and she's been nothing short of exceptional until now, but you're choosing to throw it all away over the one thing she ever did wrong." He crossed his arms in a posture so straight it could rival my mother's. "I didn't expect anything else from you. You did the exact thing with me; I was the prodigal son until I got injured and, suddenly, nothing I did mattered anymore, and I was the family disappointment. You just left me there to rot."

          The silence that descended upon the office could cut through diamonds.

          I barely dared to breathe, scared anyone would ask me for an opinion on Jordan's outburst, but we were never given enough time to properly process what had just happened. Doctor Nguyen chose that moment to enter the room, looking so disheveled I almost thought she'd just rolled out of bed after sleeping through her alarm, and her current state raised immediate red flags in everyone else.

          "I'm sorry I'm late," she said, tossing her blazer to the vacant chair behind her desk. "We had . . . an incident with a patient. It should be handled now, but I was needed there."

          "You were needed here, too," my mother added, through gritted teeth, and I elbowed her. I was certain Doctor Nguyen could feel the palpable tension in the room and there was no need to worsen it.

          Doctor Nguyen ignored the snide comment. "I understand punctuality is important and stability is one of the key foundations for recovery, but sometimes unexpected situations happen. It's vital to be prepared for sudden changes or, at the very least, be equipped to properly deal with them." She flipped through her notebook. "With that being said, I think it's time for us to start discussing an eventual discharge."