Being Sloane Jacobs Read online

  CHAPTER 13

  SLOANE EMILY

  I lean into the mirror, checking my teeth to make sure I brushed well. As I’m checking the spot in the back where my wisdom teeth used to be, I feel a bump from behind. I tip forward and smack my forehead on the mirror.

  “Ow!” I cry. I turn to see Melody lining up at the sink next to me. She’s been “accidentally” bumping into me all week. Both my shoulders are bruised and sore, thanks to the fact that every time I see Melody anywhere—on the ice, in the hallway, at meals in the cafeteria—she steers right into the side of me, banging into my shoulder and knocking me off balance. I’ve dropped a pair of skates, an armful of pucks, and three bottles of cranberry juice thanks to her attacks. “Would you watch it?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she sneers. “You just always seem to be in my way.”

  This has been her excuse on the ice, too, even when I’m on her team. At first I thought it was just her hating me because I was a newbie rookie, but it’s worse than that.

  If only Cameron had been able to contain her jokes about Melody and her frozen assets. But no. Two days after the fire alarm, Melody walked up behind Cameron making an “It’s a bit nipply in here, isn’t it?” joke, and things have been bad ever since.

  I rinse and spit, stopping myself just short of spitting on her, then head back to my room. Unfortunately, my brain is entirely too restless to sleep. I pull out my phone. Since my international data roaming is turned off for the summer, I can’t scroll through Facebook or play late-night games of Words with Friends. All I can do is read through my old texts. A few from Mom asking how things are going, all met with a bland fine or it’s great. There’s one from James letting me know that Haiti is awesome and that he’s already planning a return trip during spring break next year. I almost wish I could have been home to see Dad’s face when James told him that.

  And then there’s the newest one, from Sloane Devon, telling me to call my dad. It’s been two days, but I can’t bring myself to call him back. I’m worried about what he’ll say—or what he won’t say. I haven’t decided whether I want him to bring it up or apologize or pretend it never happened. I mostly don’t want to think about it at all, so I’ve been avoiding the call.

  Lying in my extralong twin bed, bruised and sore all over, the sound of a toilet whooshing on the other side of my wall and the laundry list of misery that is my life running through my head, I realize I feel just as trapped as I felt when I was back in DC, training for junior nationals and hoping against hope that I’d break my ankle. It’s the exact feeling I was trying to escape when I looked Sloane Devon in the eye back at the hotel and asked her to trade lives for the summer. I came here to escape that. I came here to be someone else.

  I need a plan.

  When my alarm goes off at seven, that’s exactly what I have. A plan. For Melody, anyway. In the breakfast line I load a plate with bacon, eggs, wheat toast, and a bowl of oatmeal. I’m going to need some serious fuel.

  I spot Cameron already at our usual table in the back and weave my way through the crowd. Her blond dreads are pulled up into a knot on top of her head, and she’s wearing her favorite powder-blue Lululemon zip hoodie. I drop my tray and plop down into my seat.

  Cameron eyes my plate over a bite of her favorite breakfast, sesame bagel with lox and capers, a Montreal standard. “You planning to trek to Toronto on foot with that?”

  “Today’s the day,” I say.

  “You’re finally going to get her?”

  “I haven’t exactly been slacking,” I shoot back.

  She shrugs. “You won’t last with that she-hulk out to get you. You have to step up and do something about it.”

  I stir the brown sugar into my oatmeal and take a huge bite. I take time to swallow and go over my story one more time. “You know I’m not much of a physical player, right? I mean, I’m not much of a defender, and I don’t really go for the hits.”

  “Sure, I guess,” Cameron says. We’ve only had a couple game-play drills, but it appears my hiding technique has been working—and in this case will work to my advantage.

  “Well, I came here to work on my aggression. You know, step up my game,” I say. I lift my eyes from my plate. Cameron is fiddling with a dread that’s escaped from the knot, and she looks curious but not suspicious. “I need your help.”

  “Sure thing,” Cameron replies. She pops the last bite of bagel into her mouth and chews hard. “Aggression is not a problem for me.”

  It’s true. In just two days, I’ve seen adorable, sweet, preppy Cameron lay out enough skaters to make up an entire team. She’s like a tiny human wrecking ball, and opposing teams just crumble around her. She even took Melody down during a defensive drill yesterday afternoon.

  “We have our first scrimmage this morning,” I say. I’ve been dreading it since I first saw the schedule. I know the rules of hockey. I can technically ice-skate, and I’ve been managing okay in the drills. But lining up against a bunch of girls who’ve played since they could walk, one of whom is the size of the Jolly Green Giant and hates me, is possibly worse than flashing a boob on national television in the middle of my long program. “I’m going to get her, but I need you to help. I’ll never even get close to her if she’s got her eyes on me.”

  “You’re the boss, applesauce,” Cameron says. She winks. “I’ll distract her, and then you can come in and crush her.”

  “Something like that,” I reply. I swallow a last dry glob of oatmeal. It takes its sweet time getting down my throat. In my head I replay the YouTube videos I watched last night on my laptop. I practiced on my dresser this morning until it practically grew a mouth and begged for mercy.

  All I need now is not to be afraid.

  I manage to keep my resolve up all morning as I fumble my way through drills and the moment of truth finally arrives. Coach Hannah, a McGill hockey player and former Elite camper who’s serving as one of our den mothers for the summer, counts us off into two teams. Melody is on black; I’m on white. It’s not hard to arrange. Most of my fellow campers shuffle around in the hopes of ending up on the same team as Melody, so it’s easy to jump into the white team line of fire.

  “All right, ladies. For the last two weeks you’ve been playing in your positions, trying to show off. But enough showboating. Today I want to see you out of your comfort zones. Try out some different positions. If you usually play offense, try defense. And everyone should take a turn in the goal. Nothing to prove today, just have some fun,” Coach Hannah says, then blows two quick blasts into her whistle to indicate we need to move our butts.

  We don our practice jerseys and hit the ice. I’m placed at right defense, opposite Melody, who clearly has ignored Coach Hannah’s instructions to step out of her comfort zone. Melody lives at defense. It’s as comfortable for her as the unflattering oversized T-shirt she sleeps in. When I volunteer to guard Melody, Amanda Gallatin gasps. No one guards Melody, and certainly no one volunteers to try.

  “Just trying something new,” I say, and attempt an aw-shucks shrug. It comes out looking a little bit like a neck spasm. I swallow hard. I still feel that last bite of oatmeal sitting somewhere in my throat, making me feel like I’m going to gag.

  But I have to do this. For me. For the new me.

  “All right, skaters, let’s do this,” Coach Hannah says, pulling the striped ref shirt over her head. “Play clean. Play smart. Show me what ya got.”

  Cameron lines up at center ice against Rosie Eastman, a cute brunette from Michigan with two long pigtails streaming out below her helmet. Coach Hannah raises the puck, blows the whistle, and then drops it.

  Chaos ensues, or at least that’s what it looks like to me. Coach Hannah skates off to the sidelines, out of the line of fire, while Cameron and Rosie bat at the puck, trying to swipe it free. Cameron wins, and the puck sails over to another white player whose name I can’t remember. She drives toward the goal, but a whoosh of black comes flying in from the right. Within seconds, the white pl
ayer is on her butt and Melody is off in the opposite direction. She jukes around Cameron, who tries to steal the puck, spins off another white skater, and then shoots. The light flashes, the buzzer sounds, and the scoreboard overhead clicks to show 1–0.

  “If you’re going to volunteer to defend against Melody, you could at least try.” The white player who got leveled by Melody skates by, her dark eyes narrowed. “Just because she’s a human Mack truck doesn’t give you a free pass to just stand there.”

  I can’t even respond. My heart is pounding—everything happened too fast. I shake my head and give another shot at swallowing the lump in my throat. I need to wake up. I came here to play. I’m going to play.

  Rosie and Cameron are center ice again. Coach Hannah has the puck. The whistle blows, the tussling begins, but this time I keep my eyes on Melody. Where she goes, I go. I may not be super familiar with the intricacies of hockey, but I’m a pretty good skater. Fast, too. Most people don’t realize how much speed is necessary to get those jumps off the ground. So when I put a little effort into my skating, I’ve got no problem whatsoever keeping up.

  I can tell Melody is surprised. She’s only seen me in drills at this point, never in a game-play scenario. She keeps changing directions, juking left and right, sprinting and stopping, her braids flying, and the whole time I’m right with her.

  Cameron is nearing the opposing goal. She passes the puck to Jen, another white player, who lines up for the shot. Melody goes after her immediately, but I hold back. When Jen sees Melody coming at her full-force, she passes the puck quickly back to Cameron. Melody turns and goes for Cameron, positioning herself perfectly between my friend and the boards. This is my moment, I know it.

  My heart is pounding practically out of my jersey. I skate as hard as I can, head down, shoulder forward. It takes only three strides, and I’m on her. She’s watching Cameron and the puck, so she doesn’t see me, my hip and shoulder aimed right at her chest.

  The crash is riotous. It sounds like a thousand Sloanes have taken a million Melodys right into the wall. She grunts loudly. Her hockey stick clatters to the ice, and she goes down backward. I manage to right myself and sweep a circle around her. She looks up, and I just grin down at her like I’ve landed a triple-triple while she’s still lacing her skates. From the expression on her face, I got her. I know it, and she knows it.

  “Nice defense, Sloane,” Coach Hannah calls across the ice. “You saved Cameron’s shot.”

  I didn’t even notice the light flashing or the buzzer, but I do see the scoreboard flip: 1–1.

  Melody grabs her stick and climbs to her feet. Now she’s towering over me. She looks down, eyes narrowed. But after a second, her face softens just a little, just a teeny tiny bit, so that only I can see it because we’re helmet-to-helmet. Then she nods, almost imperceptibly, and skates away.

  I nearly pee my pants.

  The rest of the game plays out without too much drama, and we lose 4–2. But I don’t care. Melody played hard. She took me down a couple times, but only when I was in her way. She wasn’t gunning for me, not anymore.

  And the best part? I survived my first hockey game without looking like a total spaz. Sure, I managed to handle the puck only once (Cameron passed it to me, and I passed it quickly on to Jen), but I didn’t do anything stupid like shoot for the wrong goal or pick up the puck and attempt to throw it in.

  The rest of the afternoon is filled with drills and strategy talks, and I find myself paying really close attention. High off my own personal miracle on ice, I wonder what could happen if I really try to get good at this. Maybe team sports are the way to go. Less pressure, less judging, and no one here has cried yet.

  By the time I get back to my room after dinner, I’m exhausted. I take the longest, hottest shower of my life. I pull on a pair of Sloane Devon’s comfy sweats and a soft, washed-just-the-right-number-of-times T-shirt. Maybe there’s something to this whole dressing-like-a-thirteen-year-old-boy thing.

  Then I climb onto my bed. I check my phone, but there are no messages or texts. All I see is the old text from Sloane Devon at the top of the list, telling me to call Dad ASAP.

  I’ve worked one miracle today. Maybe it’s time for another one.

  If I’ve learned anything from the near-constant whooshing of the toilet, it’s that these cinder-block walls with their hollow insides are annoyingly thin. So I tuck my phone into the deep pocket of my sweat pants, slip on a pair of flip-flops, and tiptoe out into the common room.

  “Nice take-out.” Melody is sitting in the common room. Considering that she’s barely spoken a word to me since we moved in, I didn’t expect her to say anything, much less pay me a compliment of sorts.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Watch your ass,” she says, but there’s a hint of a smile on her face. She doesn’t look exactly friendly, but she doesn’t look like she’s preparing to roast me on a spit either. Oh, she’s going to get me, but I think maybe only on the ice. And that I can live with. At least down there I’m wearing pads and a helmet.

  I nod at her, then slide out the door to the hallway.

  I head all the way outside and around the back of the building. I don’t want anyone overhearing me. Satisfied that no one is around, I lean against the bike rack and click my dad’s cell number in my favorites menu. It only rings twice before he answers.

  “Sloane?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “How’s camp?” There’s some static, or maybe it’s wind, but his voice sounds strange, maybe a little strained.

  “Oh, you know, the usual,” I reply, and I have to stop myself from nearly laughing at the absurdity of the statement. “Lots of skating.”

  “I’m glad you’re having a good time,” he says. “Sounds like your cold is gone too.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Your cold. Two days ago, when I called, you were hacking into the phone.”

  Oh my God. Sloane Devon must have actually spoken to him. “Oh, right,” I squeak. “All gone!”

  “Listen, I’m glad you called. I’ve been wanting to talk with you.”

  “What about?” There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. I hear him clear his throat a few times. “Dad, it’s late and I’m exhausted. If you’re not going to talk, I’m going to bed.”

  I shock myself a little with the statement. I’ve never spoken to either of my parents so plainly before. Maybe I really am exhausted, or maybe I’m just high from my win on the ice. Whatever it is, it obviously shocks my father too.

  “I don’t like your tone, Sloane,” he says. His voice no longer sounds strained. Now it’s clipped and angry, like when he’s on Meet the Press getting grilled about something he doesn’t want to discuss.

  “That makes two of us, Dad,” I shoot back. “Listen, I know it’s an election year. I’ll be a good daughter. You don’t have to worry about me. I know you’re busy, with everything—and everyone—else you have to worry about.”

  I hear him suck in a hard breath. He sputters for a few seconds.

  “That is completely out of line,” he says. “You are completely out of line.”

  “I’ll see you back in DC,” I say, then jam my finger down on the red End Call button. I grasp my phone tight in my hand. My heart is pounding so fast that I just want to throw the phone as hard and as far as I can. The urge is so strong that I actually raise my arm over my head, aiming for the parking lot next door.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  I turn around and see Matt, the keys to his bike lock in his hand. He’s wearing a black zip hoodie over a pair of loose, worn-in jeans, and his hair is wet and curled up around his jaw, fresh from the shower. Oh my God, he’s so hot. Oh my God, stop it. Oh my God, how long has he been standing there?

  “Bad phone call,” I reply. More. I need more. Think. “Just a friend having guy troubles.”

  He seems to buy it, thankfully. I’d be toast if he overheard anything about DC, or worse, the campaign. I tell my
self to be more careful next time. But there won’t be a next time. I don’t plan to call my father again this summer. I loosen my grip on my phone and slide it back into my pocket.

  He shoots me a patented Matt O’Neill half grin and shrugs. “Guys,” he says. “Nothing but trouble.”

  “You would know,” I say, before I can stop myself.

  His smile falters. “Listen, I’m not sure what you’ve heard about me—”

  I cut him off. “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “I think you have,” he says. He steps closer, and I catch a whiff of his smell: mint and clover and something smoky. I try not to sway on my feet. “I know I have a bit of a reputation, but I don’t want you to think—”

  “Is it true?” Again, I cut him off.

  “Is what true?”

  “The story about the girl and the janitor’s closet?” I see the recognition flash across his face in waves, first shock, then anger, then something else. Embarrassment? Shame? I can’t tell in the dim light.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” he says. He opens his mouth to continue, but I stop him.

  “That’s all I need to know,” I say. I start back into the dorm. I hear him call to me from the bike rack.

  “Sloane, wait, let me explain,” he says, but I don’t need an explanation.

  Not from him. And definitely not from my dad.

  CHAPTER 14

  SLOANE DEVON

  Pairs sucks.

  I was under the impression it would be half as hard. I thought my incompetence would stick out half as much. But it turns out pairs just sucks times two. It double sucks.

  Even though we’re going to be exhibition partners, in class Andy is in the good group, whereas I am in the sucky group. And in most of the classes I’m paired with Roman Andrews, a lanky, pizza-faced blond guy from Kansas whose long program costume is an exact replica of Captain Kirk’s uniform. He started sweating the moment our names appeared next to each other on the training lists.