No Stopping Us Now by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Author:Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Three Rooms Press

24

ON THE LAST DAY OF MY junior year, I find Barb in the cafeteria on my free period. I know she’ll be there because the English Resource Center is right outside the cafeteria and I often see her sitting at a table with her friends.

I get a peanut butter brownie and a carton of milk and take a seat at her table.

“Hey,” she says, and I notice she doesn’t call me chica in front of her friends.

“Hey.”

The other kids at the table look at us curiously, but then they jump back into their fiery argument about the school counselor Mrs. Evans, who some are defending and others are calling a sell-out.

“You know what?” Barb says to me, turning her back on the others. “I need a basketball nickname.”

“You do?” So maybe she misses basketball, too.

“Yeah. I mean, Spider is perfect for Helen. What about me?”

She waits, and it just pops into my head. “Lucky!”

“Lucky? That’s totally corny. Also bland.”

“It’s not bland. For one, it’s an L word.”

We both glance at the other kids at the table who have moved on to heatedly evaluating Mr. Hoppenburger, the boys counselor. One kid calls him a fag, and another tells him to shut up. Then that kid is called a fag for defending one.

Barb turns back to me and I’m afraid I’ve said something too forward. Or too suggestive. But she rolls her eyes at the kids at her back, then gives me a big grin and says, “Lucky, huh?”

“Plus,” I tell her, “there’s nothing bland about luck. We’re going to need it.”

“We?”

I flush. “I mean, next year, our team.”

“We’re playing in the rec league again?” she asks.

“Aren’t we?”

“Sure. Yeah. I guess. If we can.”

“We’ll need to be lucky,” I say. “To pull a team together. To win games. For everything.”

“You need Lucky,” she says. Then adds, “I mean if you want to win.”

“I do,” I say and flush again. “What are you doing this summer?”

“I’m counseling at church camp.”

“Oh. Is Church Girl X a counselor too?”

Barb looks away. I’ve overstepped something. Again.

“I just mean—” I don’t know how to clean this up, and besides, I really want to know. “The girl you did the pushup contest with.”

“You keep bringing her up.”

“I do?”

“Would it make you happy if I told you that you can do more pushups than her?”

How am I supposed to answer that? Luckily Helen, aka Spider, joins us with a plastic bag of apple slices she’s brought from home. She’s wearing a far-out pants suit of patched denim with a hot pink blouse.

“What’s up, team?”

I say, “I’m thinking we should get a pickup game together over the summer.”

Helen makes a face. “You know I won’t be leaving the house this summer.”

“But a basketball game?” I ask.

“Yeah, that ought to be innocent enough.”

“Except that I’ll be there,” Barb boasts, as if she’s trouble. She bats her knee against mine.

Helen smiles that gracious smile of hers and eats an apple slice. She doesn’t take Barb as seriously as I do. Which seems like a mistake to me.

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