Original Love. J.J. Murray
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Название: Original Love
Автор: J.J. Murray
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
isbn: 9780758236111
isbn:
And instead of being shy and waiting to be spoken to, Ebony marched right up and said, “Y’all need another player?”
I sit back from the computer and relive that moment. Mark looked at Mickey. Eddie looked at Mickey. Eric looked at Mickey. The Bruins looked at Mickey. I looked at Ebony. What must have been going through their minds! I only saw a shapely girl with a dynamite smile and more guts than I’d ever have. And that Mickey—damn, I wonder what he’s doing now. I need to thank him for what he said and did next:
“Sure. Eric, take a break.”
“I ain’t givin’ her my stick!” Eric shouted.
Mickey snatched Eric’s stick in a flash and held it out to Ebony. “You good on defense?”
Ebony rolled her neck, her chin making a constant circle in the air in front of her. “What, you think cuz I’m a girl that I can’t score?”
Mickey’s eyes got big. “Okay, you play forward. Eddie, you drop back.”
“Nah, nah,” Eddie said, puffing out his chest. “I ain’t gonna.”
Ebony stared him down. “Boy, you so fat that pigs be followin’ you home lookin’ for a date.”
And though Eddie was his teammate, Peter laughed out loud. This girl wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. And her accent—somewhere between deep South and Brooklyn or maybe even South Brooklyn—was cool and beat the snot out of the dull “Lawn GUY-land” accents in Peter’s neighborhood.
I found out later that Ebony’s family had been part of the northern migration from Virginia after what Ebony’s mother, Candace, called the “first Emancipation.” They lived in Brooklyn until the “second Emancipation” in the late sixties and early seventies that brought them east to Huntington. Ebony was a mixture of street and country, African and a little Cherokee, and the overall result was honey with a heavy dose of vinegar and salt.
Eddie, who normally had a comeback for everything since he read those little paperbacks full of mean jokes, backed off to play defense without another word.
“Let’s play,” Ebony said…and the girl could play. She was almost as good as Mickey, stealing the orange puck away from one of the Bruins and scoring on her very first shot.
“What’s the score?” she asked.
“Ten-nine us,” Mickey told her.
Chad got up in Mickey’s face. “That don’t count. She ain’t on your team. She ain’t from your neighborhood.”
Ebony stepped over to Chad. “What don’t count?”
Chad ignored her. “It’s still tied nine to nine, and you gotta put Eric back in.”
“Excuse me?” Ebony said. “You sayin’ cuz I ain’t from this neighborhood that it don’t count?”
Chad turned to her. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well,” she said, with a dynamite smile, “I am from this neighborhood. I just moved in over on Grace Lane.”
Which meant she’d be at Simpson once the holiday break was over. Peter hoped that she was in the seventh grade, but her body was definitely eighth or ninth grade, because of her breasts.
“Grace Lane ain’t Preston Street,” Chad said.
“And you ain’t shit playin’ hockey, boy,” Ebony said. “All the cool shit you got on, and you can’t play a lick. You just mad a girl scored on you. And you just scared I’m gonna score on y’all again.”
“I ain’t scared.”
“Prove it then,” she said.
We were all in that nowhere land between puberty and manhood, and to let a girl beat you—in anything—was like losing your penis. Chad didn’t know what to do or say that day, and I just had to say something.
“Why don’t you let her play?” Peter asked, though it came out more as a statement.
“You shut up,” Chad yelled at Peter.
Ebony then pushed Chad back. “Who you tellin’ to shut up, boy? You talking to”—she looked back at Peter and smiled—“what’s your name?”
“Peter.”
She put a finger on Chad’s chest. “You talkin’ to Peter, and he’s my boy. You don’t tell any of my boys to shut up.” Chad didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. “Now are we gonna play or what?”
“It still doesn’t count,” Chad said. “It’s still tied, nine to nine.”
“Whatever,” Ebony said. “Let’s play.”
They played on, but for only a few minutes more. Ebony bulled her way in for a stuff shot to put the P-Street Rangers up by one, and when the Bruins brought up the puck after that, Ebony stole it, fed Mickey through Chad’s legs, and Mickey faked out the Bruins’ goalie, leaving him lying in the street before tapping the puck into the net.
After the game, Ebony walked up to Peter. “Turn around.”
Peter turned around. He wasn’t going to argue with her.
“Number seven. That’s my favorite number, you know that?”
“Um, what’s your name?”
She smiled and looked down at the ground, proving to Peter that she had a shy streak as long as his own. That was really when Peter’s heart became Ebony’s, the image of her smiling shyness passing into his soul forever. “Ebony Mills.” She flashed her eyes briefly at him. “But you can call me ‘E’ if you like.”
“Okay.”
Then she turned to Mickey. “When am I gonna get a jersey?”
Ebony got her jersey that very day, talking Mark out of wearing number twelve.
The others had already fanned out to go home, and that left Ebony and Peter walking back toward his house.
“Are you gonna go to Simpson?” Peter asked.
“Where else am I gonna go?”
“I dunno. You could go to St. Pat’s like Eddie.”
“No, thanks. Them Catholic kids is too wild for me. I’m going to Simpson. You go there?”
“Yeah.”
“What grade you in?”
“Seventh.”
“Me, too.”
A seventh-grade girl with ninth-grade breasts? Peter thought. There is a God!
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