Fat Chance

"I can't do this," I decided, standing on the edge of the ice. A petrifying feeling surged through me as I watched the girls on Meredith's team run through different drills.

I can't move that fast, that agile.. and they all look really big and mean. I couldn't think of any other words to describe it, but something about women having enormous shoulder pads sitting on their shoulders scared me.

Glancing down at my appearance, I wondered how I looked to other people in the uniform I'd borrowed from Zac. This is how considerate he was: he'd loaned it to me complete with sweatstains.

Can't get much more authentic, not to mention disgusting, than this. Once again, I have Zac to thank.

"Yes, you can." I felt a warm arm around my shoulder, feeling someone's frame fitting perfectly around mine in a half-hug. Turning my head, I saw my excuse for being here, grinning from ear to ear at the scene in front of us.

"You could take down any one of them, any time of day." Somehow, Zac's compliment didn't help to raise my lower-than-life confidence levels.

"Thanks a lot," I rolled my eyes. He knew I couldn't hurt a fly, even if my life depended on it.

"Besides, this is women's hockey. There's no checking, especially not against the goalie." I giggled at the idea of someone slamming into a goalie.. well, not me. I was strongly convinced I wasn't going to actually make the team. My goal was just to make it through the tryout alive.

"Well, I'm sure it still happens." I turned my head towards Zac with a horrified expression on my face.

"You're terrible!" I raised my fist and hit him in the shoulder. Unfortunately, with the thick gloves covering my hands, I wasn't able to do much damage.

"What'd I say?"

"You're the most un-supportive-" I started to say when a shrill whistle interrupted me.

Uh-oh, that'd be my cue. I stepped onto the ice and skated to the group of girls circling around a very tall man with a wiry frame. I figured he was the coach by the way he was waving around a clipboard and yelling obscenities at the girls.

Feeling even more timid, I took my place by his side, as I'd been instructed to do by Meredith when I'd gotten here. When I looked around at the other girls, I found several of them staring back at me curiously as the coach continued his ranting spree about an emphasis of stability and speed. I didn't recognize a single one of them other than my locker neighbor. His words flew by me as I realized an important detail in the girls: they looked exhausted, their faces red and breaths coming out in short puffs of vapor in the chilly air. The sight intrigued me, but also boosted my normally diminutive confidence levels.

"So if you don't work on all of it, you'll be last again! You don't want to be god-damned losers for the rest of your lives, do you!?" Lowering their heads, a few girls shook them back and forth sheepishly. Although I remembered how Meredith had joked that the team sucked, I thought the coach was being just a tad harsh.

Isn't this just supposed to be for fun?

"Twelve laps," the coach threw his hands in the air disgustedly and waved the group away from him, as if he couldn't stand the sight of them in front of him anymore. After the girls had scattered, he turned to me:

"What!?" I jumped at the harshness he spoke with, not to mention the fact he leaned over and put his face extremely close to mine. I got a good view of every single hair in his gray eyebrows, and if I'd squinted hard enough, probably wouldn't been able to see every pore in his face; it was that close. Talk about intimidation: I nearly fell over backward. Fortunately, Meredith came to my rescue.

"Coach!" She called, breaking away from her laps. Skating up to us, she announced,

"This is Lindsey, the one I told you about." Still deathly afraid of this man, I gave him a small wave as he looked back at me.

"The goalie?" he scratched his head. Although I could come up with a few different words to call myself concerning my ability to play hockey, I nodded slightly.

"Good. Let's see what you've got. Take the north goal box." He pointed to the far end of the ice, where one lonely little goal box sat propped up. Skating over towards it, I understood again what it must feel like to be a prison sent to execution.

Glancing off the ice to where Zac was standing with me earlier, I was surprised to see he'd disappeared from the spot.

Great, the worst moment of my life and he's going to miss it. My eyes searching frantically around the ice, relaxing when I found him sitting in the last row of the bleachers. I grinned when he stood up and frantically waved both his arms in my direction, before giving me double thumbs-up signs.

"Silve, Patters, and Douglass!" Coach, I guess the girls called him, barked out three last names. The corresponding girls skated over to him, their backs turned to me. Slipping my borrowed helmet over my face, my stomach dropped when I saw a lone, black hockey puck dropped onto the ice and the three of them scattered in opposite directions. At first I couldn't figure out what they were trying to do, passing the puck forward and backward, but it became completely obvious when all three charged in my direction. If one-on-one wasn't bad enough, I'd never imagined my first chance today would be against three people.

Numbers don't matter, I reminded myself.

There's still only one puck.. keep your eyes on it. Since they all wore the same uniform, after a few seconds I couldn't tell who was who anymore. The best I could do was shift my weight slightly from one foot to the other, trying to stay in rhythm with the puck's position on the ice.

Another problem this time was that it kept changing so fast, I found myself falling terribly behind. When a girl finally approached me, I was surprised when she merely stopped two feet in front of the net, before deciding to pass the puck backward, at about a forty-five degree angle to my right. Moving as fast as I could, complying with my direct expectations of where the shot would come from next, I pushed off to the right side, leaving the left completely unguarded like an idiot.

It was a simple set up, I'd seen it a thousand times on television. Yet I personally had never seen a rebound positioning play unfold two inches in front of my face. My heart racing wildly in anticipation, I squatted lower over the ice, bore down and easily blocked the oncoming long shot from the girl on my right. However, the puck bounced off my stick, deflecting directly to the girl in front of me as if I'd passed it right along to her. She easily slapped it into the net behind me.

At first, I hadn't realized what had happened, it was all so quick. Sinking to my knees, I realized I'd been holding my breathe in the entire time, and now gasped for oxygen. Hearing the girl's cheers, I turned over my shoulder and found the puck near my left foot. I stared at it.

I missed.. all my expectations of beginner's luck are true.

Swallowing deeply, my eyes widened with fear as I looked around the ice. Their laps completed, all fifteen girls had stopped and witnessed the entire event. A few whispered to each other, sending looks of disapproval of my performance. I couldn't take it. Immediately, I threw down my goal stick and skated off the ice, ignoring the hush of whispers that rang through the group gathered at the center of the ice.

"What are you doing!?" Someone ripped my helmet off my face and fiercely whispered at me. Tears in my eyes, I looked at Zac as he shook my shoulders roughly, as if trying to get me to come to my senses. He'd flown down several flights of bleachers to meet up with me, to stop me from making what he felt was the biggest mistake of my life.

"I knew it." I replied, my eyes starting to sting. "Let me go."

"Bullshit. Bull. Shit." He tightened his grip on my shoulders, forcing me to look at the determined, almost enraged, look in his eyes. His jaw was clenched tightly, making the muscles lining the corners of his mouth tense.

"One shot. So what if you missed one darn shot? It's not worth giving up now, Linds."

"I.. I can't," I pleaded with him.

"For the first time since I've known you, you're completely wrong.. Why is it so hard for you to believe you can do it?" He asked me.

"Because I'm terrible," I whispered softly, closing my eyes.

"Look at me," he commanded me with another slight rattling shake of my shoulders. Opening my eyes, I found his expression had softened, a smile of sympathy on his lips. Staring deeply into my eyes, my best friend came through for me once again:

"The only thing terrible about you is that attitude. I've seen you play, and I think deep down you know you're good." Unable to answer him, I looked shyly at the floor, but a smile crept onto my face.

"See?" He repeated, "You know you're good. Now come on, go try it again."

"No." My tiny smile instantly disappeared.

"Lindsey.." He said in a teasing voice.

"Come on, you can do it!!" He used a husky, rumbling voice, perfectly imitating my favorite character in 'The Water Boy.' It was a shared love of ours, the fondness for Adam Sandler movies. Now, just like any time hearing that impression, I cracked a big smile.

"Like I said last time, you owe me for this one."

"That's my girl." Zac surprised me by leaning forward and brushing a kiss softly on my forehead. Staring up at him as he pulled back, I felt my cheeks blushing warmly, my mouth parted slightly in dumbfoundness. Although hugs between us were universally given, we'd never shared any form of kissing before.. until now. Hockey couldn't have been further from my mind until he reminded me:

"Go on, silly. Your team's waiting." He pointed at the ice. With the courage I'd never imagined having, that I probably would've never had except for the given circumstances, I got back on the ice. Skating over to the group, I took a deep breathe and approached the coach, who was scribbling notes onto his clipboard. Everyone watched silently as he didn't so much as glance at me, until I spoke up.

"W-would you mind if I tried again?" I asked tentatively. I prayed he would give me a second chance. Closing his pen with a click, he glanced at me. I held my breath for a second in anticipation.

What's he going to say? Will he-

"Sure, no problem. Everyone gets the jitters first time." I let out a sigh of relief at his lenience toward me. Looking around the group of girls, I caught Meredith smiling at me, as well as a few others. As I slid my helmet back over my face, I turned and skated back to the goal box with a grin. Upon reaching my position in front of the net, a new feeling surged through me. For what seemed like the first time in my life, I felt like I actually belonged there.