Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me

Chapter 1

            “FASTER! SKATE HARDER! WHAT ARE YOU, A BUNCH OF GIRLS?” I grimaced and dug in my skates as the coach yelled at every single player on the ice. We knew try-outs were going to be rough, but nobody had expected it to be this bad. Our coach was like Satan in a short, overweight little man’s body; complete with the whole purple in the face thing from yelling so much in the past two and a half hours.

            “Damn it, how many damn lines is he gonna make us skate?” Josh grumbled, to which I shrugged.

            “No idea,” he nodded, turning and heading back. My knee was starting to hurt; the hard skating followed by so many sharp turns so repetitively was just killing it, and silently I wished I’d been intelligent enough to wear my knee brace to camp today.

            “Bates! Get your ass in gear boy!” I dug in some more, the smirk playing at my lips. I’d hated cutting my hair short two weeks ago, but to play with the boys everybody has to think you’re one, and having hair halfway down my back didn’t help me out. I lucked out; having the name Cameron and being a whole five foot seven made me passable for a guy, if the coach didn’t look too closely. I was small, but I made up for it with being fast, and that had saved me on other teams before.

            “Yeah Bates, stop skating like a girl,” another guy sneered. Some of them I’m sure suspected I was a girl, either that or I was ‘gay’ because I wouldn’t change in their locker room and refused to make idiotic comments about one of the female student reporters here doing an article for the local newspaper on the team. I was used to not getting along overly well with my teammates; I mean, if they didn’t suspect anything it was usually okay, but if they did life was hell.

            “Good! Hit the showers and I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he said, turning on his heel without a second look to the thirty-one players sweating like mid-July out on the ice.

            “Fuck my life,” I groaned, feeling my knee protesting as I stepped off the ice and onto it.

            “What?”

            “Knee. Buggered it when I was playing high school basketball,” I explained, and Josh nodded.

            “My little sister did that two years ago; it’s never been the same since,”

            “Yeah, you’re telling me,” I agreed, not wanting to get too into detail. It was too easy to slip; better to have people suspect but not really know I wasn’t who I was supposed to be than get too close and let it slip myself.

            “Anyway, you did really good. That sick backhand shot should seriously get you on the team, you skated circles around all of us out there,” he grinned.

            “Shut the hell up, I did not,”

            “Did too, don’t even deny it. I wish I could skate like that,” he sighed, making me shake my head.

            “Well I wish I was six foot four and two hundred some pounds; I’ll trade you,” I offered, to which he laughed.

            “Sometimes it sucks; I mean, you’re expected to be the big stupid lug out there. Some of the stuff guys say out there…” he shook his head. He was going to Brown University with a full scholarship; working on his Mechanical Engineering degree, and even with playing NCAA Hockey he had an 89% average. The guy’s a genius.

            “Yeah, don’t worry; I hear the same shit,”

            “Yeah, but people expect you to get mad; people expect me to not know what the hell they’re talking about like I’m some kind of Neanderthal,” he began walking towards the locker room, but I hung back. I didn’t want to see every guy who just tried out for the team naked, no thank you.