In the creamy-raspberry flesh, the Whalers are a little more substantial than on the grainy videotape supplied by a Greenspark alumnus living within satellite-dish range of Port Rose’s district. One of the Port’s starters is a six-footer—Stacey Gould, Number 6. A serious young woman is Stacey Gould, with cross-shaped studs in her ears, and a whole congregation of backwoods holyrollers praying for her success.
One of the guards, Tara Pope, is a five-ten junior who looks as if she must go one-eighty. She’s got some belly on her, but also a lot of visible muscle in her legs and arms. Her stats and the game tapes make it clear the weight doesn’t slow her down any—and that she doesn’t hesitate to drop it on an opponent if she can. A sidebar in the paper reports she’s saving for college by pulling lobster pots with her old man on the weekends.
Two of the Whalers’ starting guards are first cousins, Kelly and Heather Alley, both seniors with letters in track and field hockey. They don’t look much alike but their stats are comparable and impressive.
The fifth starter, Vonda Alley, is a distant cousin of Kelly and Heather—and in fact of Tara and Stacey, because everybody in Port Rose is everybody else’s cousin to some degree. Vonda, playing forward, is one of those bird-boned girls who look like a strong wind would carry her away but who somehow wind up working backbreaking twenty-hour days, birthing five or six yowens, burying a couple of husbands and living to be ancient. At three this morning, Vonda Alley sat straight up in bed and screamed Gauthier!
In Greenspark’s road colors, the girls look—to Sam’s appreciative eye anyway—totally savage, relentlessly bad. High-tops make the Greenspark girls’ legs look muscular and sturdy. They have scabs on their knees and shins from floorburns. Most of them have taped ankles or knees or both. These girls sweat, the damp darkening the armpits of their jerseys and spreading in deltas from the cleavages of their breasts and buttocks. When angry or hurt, their faces redden, their mouths get wobbly and their noses run. Then they pick themselves up and go back to work.
Strutting past the tight-lipped girls from Port Rose, the Mutant’s dark gaze smokes the Whalers and sweeps over the stands, looking for him. She turns up her fists, pulls them back slightly, smiles slightly.
“They’re dead,” Rick hoots. He elbows Sam to make the point. “They’re fucked. You see the look in Gauthier’s eyes. She’s taking down names. Be heads going through that hoop tonight.”
On Sam’s other side, Todd grunts. “Don’t be so sure. I hear Nat’s got bad cramps.”
“Period cramps? How’d you hear that?” Rick demands.
Todd shrugs. “Got my sources.”
“Right,” Rick agrees. “Your ass.”
On the floor the Mutant drapes an arm over Nat Linscott’s shoulder. “How ya doin’?”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Yucky. The Motrin isn’t helping much.”
“Shit. You ever tried booberry for it?”
“Big help, Gauthier,” Billie Figueroa objects. “What do you think, we’re going to ask if anybody in the crowd’s got a number on them and then Nat’s gonna squat there and smoke it.”
The Mutant grins. “If your mom had a kitty over your hair, Nat, I wonder what she’d drop if you did a little weed right here. Hey, you know what helps me with cramps? Getting off.”
The other girls groan in unison.
“Sure,” Nat says. “Lend me Sam. We’ll duck under the bleachers for a quickie.”
“Right, right,” Melissa Jandreau puts in impatiently. “Maybe if you move around some, it’ll let go, Natski.”
Nat shrugs. “Got no choice.”
Nose to chin with Stacey Gould, Nat looks a little transparent around the edges. Gould controls the tip but Heather Alley can’t get a grip on it and Melanie Jandreau has it away from her as quick as a cat takes a bird. The ball flies from one M cross court to the other M, and thence to the Mutant. Vonda Alley waves her arms in front of the Mutant, who stops dead and rolls her eyes. Tara Pope teams with Vonda to box the Mutant on the line. As Pope hovers, legs and arms akimbo to keep the Mutant trapped, Nat and Billie peel off to come in behind Pope and Vonda Alley. Pope sneaks a peek at them. When Gauthier sees the tiny shift in Pope’s eyes, she sinks suddenly and squirts the ball through the distracted guard’s knees to Billie. And Billie’s gone, racing toward the Greenspark net, with Pope and Vonda Alley in pursuit. Gould is positioned to block her at the net, with Heather and Kelly facing off with the M & M’s. The Mutant spurts down the outside past Billie, the ball flashes between the two girls, and she rockets up, for two points right from the line.
Rocked, the Whalers founder. Greenspark racks ten points—Melissa for four, Billie for four, Nat for two on the foul line after Kelly Alley grabs her wrist during a jumper—before Tara Pope gets Port Rose on the board with a three. Attempts to double-team Gauthier are quickly countered and she moves the ball with a demonic slipperiness to the other Indians. The Whalers blow their hair out of their eyes and take a time-out right after Gould finally makes her outside shot.
The game steadies down. Slowly, the Roseporters struggle out of the hole into which they have fallen, making a vital shot here and again, managing to block Greenspark there and again. At the end of the first quarter, the immediate numbers don’t show the effort—23–19 in the Indians’ favor.
Sam doesn’t like Nat Linscott’s pasty color. She’s missed her last three tries and made a turnover on a backcourt violation. A few seconds later, Tara Pope charges into her and knocks her to the floor.
“Oh fuck,” Todd groans, “you see that truck hit Nat? Oh shit, she’ll never walk again.”
“Hell of a tackle,” Rick agrees. “We could use some weight like that on the football team. She’s got an ass you could hide a missile launcher under.”
“Or in,” Kevin
