Page 26 of False Start

six

Marty,Sean, Rory, and Zara stumbled through my door, their arms laden with grocery bags.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” Marty said, blowing her long bangs out of her face. “I sent you a flyer on Insta for a banked track charity exhibition in Philly. I thought maybe we could take a road trip, check it out. Full-blown slumber party time in a suite complete with greasy Philly cheesesteaks.”

“I turned my ringer off,” I said as I reached out to snag a few bags and drop them in the kitchen. “I keep getting calls from this same number over and over in New York. They never leave a message so it’s total bullshit. So much for no call registries.”

“Every other call on my phone either pops up spam risk or it’s an automated bullshit message to tell me my auto warranty is about to expire. Not sure how, since I’ve never owned a car with a warranty,” Sean said with a snort.

Snow fell from their hair and jackets as they kicked off their boots in my modest entryway. Really it was a five by seven rug in front of my door. Just inches beyond it, my living room with barely enough space for the six of us to dance.

For that reason alone, when the whole team met up, we crashed Rory’s place—really her aunt’s place—just outside of town. Her aunt hated the idea of leaving it empty fifty weeks out of the year, so she asked Rory to stay there year-around rent-free, and Rory worked double shifts for the two weeks her aunt was in town so she didn’t murder her with a corkscrew.

Rory insisted orange wasn’t her color.

I pointed out Maine inmates wore blue for the most part and even then, the colors changed depending on security level.

Rory didn’t appreciate the distinction.

Tonight was the core six. The originals. The misfits of the team who’d been consistently at every scrimmage and in every bout, without fail, for four years now.

Basically, the ones who had no life outside of derby.

Or made derby their life.

Distinguishing between the two really depended if you’re a glass half empty or half full sort.

Most days, I’m glass half full.

Especially days like today, when my favorite people filled my tiny home. I never really told them, but I loved having them here. So much so, I steered them toward staying overnight every single time. It finally became routine and now they just automatically tossed a change of clothes in their bags when they came over, ready to crash on the couch, three in a bed, in the oversized bean bag chair in the corner, wherever they could find a soft spot to land.

A vagabond at heart, my mother drifted around the country with me in tow for the better part of my life. A young, single mother with no real history, no family didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in other parents so sleepovers were nonexistent in the tiny studio apartments and rented rooms my mother could afford.

My apartment might have been a total of seven hundred square feet tops tucked over Banked Track. Not much more than my mother could manage for me, but then, I’m not a kid anymore and at the mercy of judgmental asshole parents of childhood friends. Hell, even if I were, I’d be hard-pressed to leave. I love it here. The brick building dominated the edge of Main Street since the early 1800s. Two stories, but tall enough to have been three, it had history, character, and a clear view of the comings and goings in town.

Despite my meager square footage, I had old cast-iron radiator heaters that chugged away, warming me to the bone. I got to pad along scuffed wood floors gouged with decades worth of scars, each with their own story I would never know, but sealed and clean with a subtle shine that made me smile.

The clawfoot bathtub didn’t hurt my feelings either. Especially after rough bouts or long days on my feet at The Shipwreck.

Cozy, warm, and something no one could take away from me.

A home.

Sure, it wasn’t much, but I’d earned every dollar that paid for each piece of secondhand furniture that filled it. It wouldn’t make the front page of magazines or be featured on any savvy home shows, but then perfection was overrated.

Perfection didn’t have secret stories to tell. You didn’t sink into perfection and make warm memories.

Most nights like these, with the snow coming down in sheets, I’d sit on the low-slung ledge of my tall windows and watch townspeople strolling along the sidewalk between the white twinkling lights that burned every night from just after Halloween all the way into early spring, casting a gentle glow along the way.

Other nights I popped downstairs to chat with Patti and steal glances of the old black and white framed photos from her derby days hanging over the bar. I imagined the sights, sounds, smells that must have filled the last of the banked track derby bouts of the seventies. What those moments in the spotlight meant to women in the midst of some of the most significant moments of the women’s rights movement. Women clawing their way free from the control of powerful men and coming to realize sometimes breaking free wasn’t done with bold moves, but with subterfuge using a corrupt system against itself to come out on top.

Those echoes of the past called to me, making this place the absolute right place for me.

I snatched up a few bags and hauled them to the kitchen while they struggled out of their jackets, hung up their purses and keys, and lined up their boots out of the way of the door.

“Where’s Eve?” I called out to them when after a couple minutes she still hadn’t come through the door.

“She’s running late. She said Astrid, Kelsie, and Sonya stopped by with some information about the WRDF that we might find useful. She’ll be along in a bit to fill us in,” Marty said as she sailed into my kitchen, grabbed the stockpot, and began filling it with water.

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