Drumming my fingers on the dining hall table, I was oblivious to my teammates seated around me. It was still summer and the season hadn’t even begun, but I was lost once again in my season-ending fantasy. It was always the same. My friend, Jules, and I would hoist the championship trophy high in the air for all our fans to see. My grip would be so tight my fingers would stick to the cold, hard metal, yet I wouldn’t care. I’d never want to let it go ’cause having it in our possession would mean one thing. We’d be the top high school field hockey team in the state. How many other girls hungered for the same thing? I didn’t know, but one thing was sure, it would be what I would wish for when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake the next day, and if I could make two wishes the second would be … I felt a poke in my ribs. “Hey Jackie, quit your daydreaming. She just called your name,” my teammate, Lindsay Sayers, whispered, and then pointed to the hockey camp director standing in front of the university dining hall. I glanced up. The woman had been reading out a list of players chosen for the campers versus coaches all-star game when my mind had zoned out and had gone into ‘wish mode.’ “Jules Hanson,” the woman called out next. Jules, who was sitting across from me, gave me a thumbs up sign as her identical twin, Tori, slapped her on the shoulder. Warming up for the camp all-star game an hour later I could feel the flutters beginning in my stomach, the same ones I get before every game. These seemed to grow bigger with each passing moment ’cause I wasn’t surrounded by my teammates all dressed in Northfield High’s familiar blue and white. Instead I was wearing a red scrimmage vest, and except for Jules, I would be playing with a bunch of strangers and we wouldn’t be facing other high school players either. Our opponents were the college athletes who had coached at the camp, as well as two or three of the foreign coaches. What if I sucked? I missed a ball that Jules had hit to me, and as I went to retrieve it from under the bleachers, Jules jogged over to me. “Come on. We’re ready. Let’s get a drink before we start.” I followed her long, determined strides across the field — tap, tap, tapping the ball as I went. Jules looked over her shoulder. “Relax. We’re going to show them what players from Northfield are all about.” That was Jules, always confident. But she was right. I needed to ditch the nerves. How could I expect to play for a state title if I couldn’t face a simple camp all-star game? I caught up to Jules and gave her a belated fist bump, and after the all-star team gave a customary pre-game cheer, I jogged onto the field itching for the game to start. The first few minutes were action-packed, all the campers sitting in the stands totally into it, oohing and aahing the great passing combinations and awesome stick moves of both teams. I was pumped. Then the unthinkable happened. I took a shot on goal and the other team’s goalie made a solid kick, clearing the ball away from the goal cage. Two opposing players pursued the loose ball, neither player slowing down as they approached their objective. It was like watching a catastrophe in slow motion, and when they hit, it was my friend Jules who was crumbling underneath the powerful Dutch player. Hitting the ground, Jules yelled out as her ankle twisted against the Dutch player’s stick. I watched the camp trainer and Tori rush out to Jules who was rolling on the ground clutching her leg. I was stunned. Jules always seemed so indestructible to me. Tall and fit from hours spent in the gym, it had always been other players that had gotten the worst of it if they even dared to bump into Jules. More importantly, Jules was a captain and Northfield’s star defender. We needed her if we were going to do anything this year. This can’t be happening. Jules, get up. When she didn’t, I finally woke from the nightmare in front of me and began to make my way across the field to my fallen friend. I picked up Jules’ stick and tried my best to console her as Tori and some of the other players helped her to the sidelines. Eventually the game continued on, but it wasn’t the same without my friend on the field. I don’t even remember who won. I only knew I’d had enough of camp. It was time to go home. My brother, Matt, and his college roommate, Cooker, picked up the twins and me later that afternoon, and after we dropped off the crutches Jules had borrowed from the health center, we began the long five hour trip home from Virginia to New Jersey. As we left the heart of the university’s colonial campus I finally settled in, sandwiched in the back seat between my two best friends. Jules was staring out the window, her left leg stretched out over mine, a bag of ice resting on her injured ankle. Tori, on the other side of me, had her arm resting across the back of the seat. It had been like this, all of us intertwined, ever since the twins had moved to town during fifth grade. For awhile I was feeling content returning home from such a successful time spent in camp, but then Tori started leaning forward in the space between Matt and Cooker wrapping herself up in their college stories, and Jules pulled out her cell and dialed Kate Carson, our other captain. A few miles more and I began to sense that something was off, like I was in the back seat all by myself.
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