Knee Pads

05 | grand slam

CHAPTER FIVE | GRAND SLAM

when a jammer successfully laps the other opposing jammer.

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          "Can I really not convince you to try out for the team?" Katrina questioned, rummaging through her closet. An absurd number of dresses were spread out on her bed and, yet, she kept adding more to the pile, as though she didn't have enough options already. "You already know how to skate, so you wouldn't have to learn from the start. Besides, it's a new way of skating, which means it's not boring and repetitive."

          "I don't think that's a good idea," I replied, debating on whether I should let her look at my own clothing options. Though I liked getting dressed up and playing with makeup, Katrina took those hobbies to a whole new level; after singing and songwriting, fashion was her biggest passion. I doubted she'd be impressed with my plain clothes while wearing one of her fabulous, expensive dresses. "Corinne would agree with me."

          Katrina sighed, tossing aside a salmon-colored dress. "There will come a time when you'll stop caring about whatever Corinne thinks about you. I've been doing just that for two whole years and it's the happiest I've been." She spun around on her heels, holding a teal dress and a purple one against her chest. "Which one?"

          "Teal." She tossed it aside, and I realized two things. One: she had just asked me to choose a dress to discard, unbeknownst to me, as I assumed she wanted me to pick what she should wear to my birthday party. Two: she was younger than I thought she was; either that, or she'd studied somewhere else during her freshman year of college. There were so many things about her that I didn't know, most of them because I'd never bothered to ask and others because I never paid much attention. "Aren't you a senior?"

          "Nope. Junior. Back to Corinne—"

          "Can we talk about something else? Literally, anything else?"

          "Hey, you were the one who brought her up. I was perfectly content with discussing roller derby."

          "As if they're not interchangeable." She rolled her eyes. "She doesn't like me one bit and I'm pretty sure she'd kick me in the face while wearing her skates as soon as she saw me. I'm not trying to get myself killed, nor do I want to call a dentist and say I need new teeth."

          "What's up with you two, anyway? What happened?"

          I groaned. Maybe I'd brought that upon myself for wanting to keep talking about Corinne, but, then again, I never thought about how weird it must have been for Katrina to see me storm into her dorm room soaked from head to toe. I supposed I owed her an explanation.

          "She nearly ran me over on my first day," I explained. Katrina's new choice was between a dark-gray dress with a low v-neck and the cutest neon-pink dress. I crossed my fingers, silently begging her to use the pink dress; it fit her personality perfectly—fun and bright and the center of attention. "She dodged me just in time, but there were puddles all around the parking lot. It was either a matter of dodging me or the puddle."

          "So you're telling me you've been mad at Corinne for nearly a month because she didn't run you over?"

          I opened my mouth to protest and kindly let her know it hadn't been like that, but then closed it again, ultimately realizing it had, in fact, been like that.

          Though the outcome could have been a lot worse—Corinne could have run me over had she wanted to—I couldn't help but be mad. She'd still ruined my clothes and made me make a fool out of myself. She was not in the right here and I failed to comprehend why in the world Katrina was defending her; did it come with being part of the roller derby team?