The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (15 page)

Turned out it happened at a nothing game, an early morning scrimmage with the Trojans, a fairly kick-ass team, which was, like Suzi’s team, made up of girls from a few different middle schools. It was on a Saturday, and Soccer Dad was there, pacing and yelling from the sidelines—fortunately Suzi couldn’t hear what he was saying. Nance had come to watch, too. She’d driven out to the field by herself and had brought her own lawn chair and was sitting at midfield holding a goofy-looking umbrella over her head. Poor woman must really have no life. Why couldn’t it be Mom sitting there, watching her? Mom, as usual, had better things to do. She had to take Ava to support group and then out to lunch so Ava would feel good about herself even though she had to go to a support group. You had to be autistic—and whine about it—to get her mother’s attention.

The fourth quarter started and Suzi’s team, the Sharks, were behind by four. Their coach, Annika, eight months pregnant, was sitting on the bench, legs spread, chin in hand, like she’d already given up. Her goalie coach, Jorge, was pacing around, yakking on his cell phone, probably telling his son to clean up his room. Important stuff.

All the action right now was down at the Trojans’ goal, where the ground, being in the shade, was still damp. For the whole game the Sharks kept driving it down but couldn’t get it in. The Trojans’
goalie was Suzi’s friend Mykaila, who sprang around the goal box like some demented kid’s toy: Mykaila in a Box.

Suzi, from her post, called out directions. “Maddy, mark up!” It was so hot the ground was doing the wavy thing.

She was hoping, praying, that the Trojans wouldn’t bring the ball down to her goal box again. Her knee was hurting. In the past she’d had other injuries, mostly minor—a concussion; a sprained ankle when she fell in a hole in back of a goal in Monticello (crappy field); sprained fingers; and, when extension diving, had bruised her elbow.

But her lingering injury was her left knee, which she kept twisting when she landed on it just so. The bursa sack in that knee, according to the PA, had gotten inflamed. She really needed to rest it, so she’d be ready for soccer camp in July, but how could she do that? It was wrapped up tightly today, making her feel like Lurch on the
Addams Family
. Things could be worse, she kept reminding herself. Another goalie she knew, in a game just a month earlier, clutched the ball close to her face after she’d captured it—a big no-no—and had gotten kicked in the jaw. Now this girl’s jaw was broken and her mouth wired shut.

Stay down there and get a goal. Please. Her teammates in their ghostie gray jerseys reminded her of soldiers on a battlefield, some with current injuries and some haunted by past injuries: Janie with her shin splints and Haley with her torn ligament and Amanda’s turf toe and Maddy’s broken nose.

Whoa. The Trojans’ center defense, a hulking s/he, delivered a slot ball down the field toward Suzi. Their right midfielder pounced and kept it moving. Suzi tensed up into the attack position. Take it away, she urged her teammates. Take it. Because of her knee, part of her dreaded having to defend their goal, but at the same time this was when she liked the game best—when it was up close and tense and she couldn’t think about anything else. The Sharks’ midfielders weren’t
doing their jobs. Mia tried. Ali tried. A Trojan forward, little blond devil girl slipped in there, swiped the ball, and dribbled it toward Suzi.

Suzi stepped out into the penalty box. Once she came out she was committed. She had a personal goal for each game: to come out of her box at least twice. She’d already come out twice, and those two had gotten by her. Not this time.

She clapped her hands, spit on her gloves, watching the ball, and here it came, zinging toward her from left field and she lunged forward, her weight on the bad knee, and her kneecap popped.

At least she’d stopped them from scoring.

She lay there on the ground, trying to breathe. She lay there, feeling like she was underwater, the pain in her knee like a weight pulling her down. Her father was bending over her, Annika, Mykaila, her team members, saying things, but they were above the water and their words were muffled. None of this was surprising. What
was
surprising was the fact that she felt so relieved.
That’s that
. She marveled at her lack of emotion. But then Nance was kneeling beside her, getting down into the water with her, stroking her hair, holding her hand, and that’s when Suzi started crying.

* * *

Suzi didn’t listen to her iPod or to Star 98. When her friends and Davis called, she had nothing to say. She didn’t feel like reading or MySpacing. She didn’t want to be out on the couch in the den, watching TV. She wanted to lie in her room under her purple and orange sixties mod-daisy-patterned comforter and do nothing.

Unlike Ava’s room, which underwent a radical change every few months—Ava threw out all her dolphin posters and everything dolphin-related when she plunged into Elvis—or Otis’s room, which never had anything but science crap in it, Suzi’s room—the smallest of the three kids’ bedrooms—was layered with things from every stage of her life
and every interest she’d ever had. Her white iron bed, which her mom had rescued from a junk store and painted pink for her second birthday. The black wool carpet with colored butterflies that Suzi herself picked out at T.J. Maxx when she was four. Her old posters of animals and newer ones of rock groups—My Chemical Romance, Panic at the Disco. The clutter on her desk and dresser and in the corners of the room and under the bed—plastic Pooh figures, lip gloss, shells, bird feathers, ticket stubs, crayons, soccer trophies, Brownie badges, dusty photos of her friends, stuffed animals, American Girl dolls. Her bookcase full of board books and picture books and complete collections of Nancy Drew, Little House, Ramona, Narnia, Harry Potter, and more recent additions, books about Our Changing Bodies and Crushes and sexy vampires and Cool Girls Kicking Butt.

On Suzi’s left knee was a brace thing that went up to the middle of her thigh. She was going to have to wear the brace and keep her knee immobile for three to four weeks, and then she’d have to do physical therapy for the rest of the summer. She’d have to use crutches for at least six weeks. She could cheer her team on from the sidelines, but she couldn’t participate in any drills or weight training sessions, and, of course, no practices or games. No Olympic Development soccer camp. She was done with soccer for the summer, maybe longer, depending on how she healed.

In the evenings, her father tiptoed into her room like she was on her deathbed. He’d come in and talk and talk, update her on the latest tropical storm development, describe his day at the office assembling training packets—whatever the hell those were—and usually he’d ask her if she wanted to watch a movie with him, but she always told him she didn’t feel like it. Although he never said so, she could tell that her father was sick, sick, sick with disappointment about the Olympic Development soccer camp. He wore a pitiful hangdog expression that drove Suzi nuts and after a while made her angry. Like she could help
what happened! Play soccer yourself, she wanted to yell at him. But she felt sorrier for him than she did for herself, because he was old and had nothing but his job and she was young and had her whole life ahead of her. A
great
future ahead of her, Nance had said.

Her mother, brisk and unsentimental as always, brought her snacks and meals and pain meds on a tray, but didn’t have time to sit with her.

Ava kept looking in at Suzi like she was an animal in a zoo, and once she brought her a crayon-drawn get-well card, which was sweet, but when she came in to deliver it she spent the whole time watching herself in Suzi’s full-length mirror.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked Ava, even though she knew what Ava’s reaction would be.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You look fine. Stop worrying.”

“I’m
not
worrying. Just leave me alone.” And off she went, storming out of the room, leaving Suzi alone and realizing how much she missed Ava, not Ava as she was now, but the old Ava.

The old Ava used to read Nancy Drew books aloud in a pleasing, dramatic voice. She and Suzi played with their American Girl dolls or their stuffed animals or played dress-up—Ava the servant girl and Suzi the benevolent princess—or go fish or Dogopoly or school—Suzi the teacher and Ava the pupil. They would play together for entire days. Now all they did was fight, which was sometimes fun, but mostly tedious, and sometimes, like now, totally inadequate.

Otis never came to see Suzi, but he did encourage Parson to come in and keep her company, which Parson did for a while, until she heard the back door open and someone more interesting come into the house.

Her granddad wandered in and sat on the end of her bed and looked at the floor, and then at her. Occasionally he patted her brace. “Now what did you do to your knee, kiddo?” he kept asking her.

Only Nance had time to sit with her, bring her brownies and magazines, the kind of teen magazines her mother would never buy for her. Sometimes she brought her knitting, a brown woolly thing, and said she was knitting Suzi a sweater. A sweater? Obviously the woman hadn’t lived in Florida very long.

Nance hadn’t mentioned the Italy trip again. Suzi was disappointed that Nance had given up on it so easily. It would’ve been something to look forward to. Although, with her bad knee, they probably couldn’t have gone this August anyway.

“We’re having Grandparents’ Day at my church,” Nance told Suzi one evening after she’d given her a mango smoothie from Tropical Smoothie. She rocked in a rocking chair at the end of the bed, tapping her sneakered foot on the floor. “You’re supposed to bring your grandchildren to church. Would you like to be my granddaughter for the day? It’s Genesis Church, where my neighbor, Buff Coffey, is youth minister.”

“When is it?” Stalling.

“This Sunday,” Nance told her. “Aren’t you about ready for a change of scenery? I can help you get in and out.” She gave Suzi a wink. “Bet there’ll be some cute guys there.”

What would an old lady know about cute guys? But Suzi was bored out of her mind and her friends were already making excuses about why they couldn’t stop by, and Davis was losing interest in her because she couldn’t roller-skate—hell, couldn’t even walk—so it was probably no time at all until he moved on to a girl who could put one foot in front of the other and who actually liked him back. There was plenty of time to lie here and think about how miserable she was.

* * *

“I don’t know.” Her mother was slumped over the sink, washing dishes. “Isn’t that a church of wackos? Like a cult?”

Suzi had to admit that she knew nothing about the church. She’d had to hobble into the kitchen on her crutches to talk to her mother, since her mother rarely came to her.

“Do you really want to go?”

Suzi shrugged. “It’s for Grandparents’ Day.”

“What?” Her mother turned away from the sink. “Is she calling you her granddaughter?”

“No,” Suzi said, wondering why her mother would care. “I’m just a stand-in.”

“She said that? Stand-in? You’re sure? She didn’t say that you
were
her granddaughter? She never said that? Or hinted at that?”

Suzi was confused. What exactly, had Nance said? Why did it matter? “Uh. No, she didn’t. She’s not deluded or anything. I don’t think.”

“Oh my God.” Her mother turned back to washing the dishes, scrubbing at a muffin tin like she was performing the most important job on earth.

“Why not put that in the dishwasher?” Suzi suggested.

Her mother only scrubbed harder, working on every muffin indentation. “The dishwasher doesn’t get this clean,” she said, and then sighed loudly. “We need to go back to church.”

That would never happen. They went to church only a couple of times a year, because her mother said she didn’t want to have to get up early on the weekend and hurry around making everyone get dressed and have to look presentable herself and then—horrors!—be forced to chitchat with well-meaning strangers!

“Dad would really like it if we went to church,” her mother went on. “Maybe Granddad could go with you and Nance.”

Suzi didn’t want her granddad dragging along after them. “I don’t think he’d like that kind of church,” she told her mother, even though she really had no idea what kind of church it was.

“Probably not.” Her mother turned off the water in the kitchen sink and snatched up the dish towel. She frowned at Suzi. “I just don’t know.”

“It’s a church, not a satanic temple.”

What was Mom worrying so much about this for?

* * *

Mom needn’t have worried, because by the time she sat down in the church, Suzi was too tired to even
consider
joining a cult. Most of her energy and focus was used up getting into the backseat of Nance’s car and then out again in front of the church, which was in a strip mall; then across the sidewalk and through the front door; through the lobby, which was like one you’d fine in a fancy hotel with marble floors and a guest services desk and couches and armchairs and even shops selling coffee and T-shirts and CDs; and then into the sanctuary, which was like an auditorium with padded seats and thick carpeting. She and Nance sat at the back, at the end of an aisle.

The room was huge. Red and purple spotlights shone on the stage, where, in front of a metallic backdrop a rock band played. In front of the rock band, six singers, three white and three black, exhorted the congregation to stand and feel the spirit. Suzi, thank God, couldn’t stand, and neither did Nance; but they watched the semicool-looking singers on the screen lead the congregation in a bouncy song about Jesus that went on and on. Big cameras were stationed on platforms here and there, and images of the band and musicians were projected onto two big screens on either side of the stage, along with the words to the songs.

The congregation was roughly 70 percent African American and the rest white, with a few Asians sprinkled here and there. Some people wore jeans, even old people. Quite a few tattoos. An African American woman in a silver suit and hat sat in front waving two flags
in front of her, like a starter at a car race. There was a lot of hollering and swaying.