05 | grand slam

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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?

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          "Listen, I know how it sounds—"

          "To be perfectly fair, it sounds like you're antagonizing Corinne for no good reason," she chimed in, now standing with her back turned to me, and it felt like a punch to the stomach. Out of all the ways this conversation could have gone, I never expected her to fully take Corinne's side or to have her join the dark side—Corinne's cult. "There was no good outcome to that situation and she chose the one that would hurt you both the least. Personally, I'd rather have my clothes get soaked, dirty, and ruined than to be run over by a bike and risk breaking some bones or, like, dying."

          I fell back to my bed, hands folded over my stomach, eyes glued to the ceiling. If I looked at Katrina, I'd feel the sharp sting of betrayal all over again; she, too, had crossed me, like Theo had done. I felt so stupid, knowing something so humiliatingly small had infuriated me as much as this, and I hated that I was giving Corinne this much power.

          "It doesn't matter," I said. "Am I not allowed to hold grudges?"

          She shrugged. "Yeah, but don't let them consume you. They'll poison your every thought."

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          I regretted everything about my birthday party.

          I carried a cup of water with me everywhere I went, making sure to always refill the ice just so people didn't give me a hard time over my distaste for alcoholic beverages. I knew there would be a point in the night when most of them would be too drunk to care, but I still wanted to be as far away from those people as humanly possible.

          Katrina had asked the sorority girls for help with the party so, naturally, they'd let her take the house and decorate. Things looked eerily similar to that first party, except we now had birthday decorations, complete with banners and colorful strings of lights spread around the house. I walked around with a tiara on my head to let everyone know I was Wren, The Birthday Girl, and it was absolutely mortifying to be hugged and congratulated by people I didn't even know.

          Contrary to the last party, I didn't have the luxury to sulk behind Katrina this time. I was still pissed at her for taking Corinne's side, out of all things, and I didn't need that negativity on my birthday. It wasn't like I cared that much about my birthday, even though I was turning twenty-one, but it was still my special day in theory, damn it, and Corinne wasn't going to ruin it, be it directly or indirectly.

          Fortunately for me, the rest of the roller derby girls seemed to like me—at the very least, they tolerated my presence, as one would treat a stray cat. Katrina hung around, as they'd been her friends since long before they met me, but I was secretly thankful they didn't leave me hanging on my own birthday. Marley, in particular, seemed pretty invested in making me a part of their clique.

          We'd never talked about it, but part of me felt like I should set up some ground rules. I was not interested in relationships, regardless of how cool and interesting she was, and I needed her to not expect anything else from me besides a casual thing. I had neither the time nor the interest in serious relationships and I didn't really want to get her hopes up.

          "Has anyone seen Corinne, like, at all?" one of the girls questioned. Katrina shot me a pointed look from the corner of her eye, as though she thought I'd kicked Corinne out of the party. "She asked me to go get her something to drink, then she just disappeared into thin air."

          I sipped my drink to avoid saying I hoped she would do just that.

          "She probably left," Marley replied. "It's not like she even wanted to come in the first place." I tightened my fingers around my cup. Now that was just unnecessary. "No offense, Wren, but it really isn't about you. Today's just not a good day for Corinne and your birthday just happened to land on the same day."

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