2. Jessica
2
Jessica
I ’m a spoiled brat. Aren’t most 18-year-old daughters of billionaires? I get what I want from who I want, when, and how I want. My yearly allowance is bigger than most multi-millionaires bank accounts. Some say I’m an entitled little bitch who lives off privilege. So. People who say they wouldn’t act like me are the same people who secretly envy people like me.
When I leave the house, I see my stepmother and her friend Winnie pulling to the house. The gold digger steps from her convertible Mercedes with a dozen bags from Memphis’ most luxurious stores. Half the shit will be hanging in a thrift store in six months. Stepmommy dearest doesn’t know it, but a few weeks ago, I saw her and Winnie fucking like two pairs of scissors in the guesthouse while Daddy was on the West Coast with the Memphis Stallions. At 85 years old, I didn’t want to break my father’s heart, so I kept my mouth shut. I don’t doubt she has dick on the side somewhere as well.
“Jessica, dear, where are you off to?” Sandy, the wicked stepmother, says. She doesn’t give two shits where I’m off to, but she would be happy if I never came back. She was the one who put the idea into my father’s head three years ago that I should be sent off to an all-girls school.
“We have a game this afternoon,” I say, walking past Winnie and her. That’s it. I have nothing else to say to the woman who wedged her way between my parents. However, to be completely honest, my mother wedged her way between my father and his second wife. All’s fair in love and war, I suppose.
I grab the Maserati keys in the garage, passing Father’s Rolls, Vette, and Lambo. He’s collected cars the way he’s collected wives. Pulling from the garage, I see two housemaids smoking a joint outside the house, thinking freshly cut bushes hide them. They aren’t; they are another example of the mice playing while the cat is away.
Barney, the guard at our front gate, opens the gate and waves. The man is nearly 90 and has been by my father’s side for over fifty years. The man makes two hundred thousand a year for opening and closing a gate. I wave back and go about my business.
I’m a Memphis girl. I love the heat and humidity, the top down on the car, and my hair blowing in the wind. I grew up Memphis strong, which is why Daddy gave me the Memphis Macabre roller derby team (Daddy let me pick the team name). He said I had it in me to take the team to the next level, and I have. We’re in first place for the first time since Daddy purchased the team ten years ago. Because the team is making money at the door, Daddy signed the team over to me last week with the understanding that if the team failed, it was on me.
I get to the rink two hours before the bout (they call it bouts instead of games or matches). Most of the team is in the locker room when I arrive. A few girls are out skating.
“Where’s Tamara?” I ask.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Emily, one of our blockers, says.
“Why do you say it like it’s a problem?”
“Kim’s not here either.” Emily sits at her locker half-dressed, her large tits every male fan’s wet dream. We aren’t stupid. We know what draws men into the arenas. They already know we are some of the best athletes in the world. Adding a little sex appeal keeps them coming back for more.
Before I have a chance to bitch about Kim not showing up, she walks through the door, stumbling, her big ass drunk as a skunk. Saliva hangs from the corner of her mouth like a slow-motion waterfall. “Sorry, I’m late, boss.” Boss comes out like the word floss.
“Where the fuck have you been, bitch?” I get up and march toward the woman who is supposed to be one of my blockers. I grab her by the arm and lead her ass into the showers, turning on the cold water and shoving her under the spray. She screams like a little bitch and tries to leave. I won’t let her. “You have two hours to sober your ass up, Kim!” I close the shower curtain and walk away.
Tamara enters the locker room, blubbering like a child who didn’t get a sucker at the store. She’s been a mental case since joining the team, not because of the team but because of her life outside the team. However, we come here to put that shit aside for a couple of hours and take out our frustrations on other women.
“Fuck, now what?” I say.
Tamara ignores me and sits at her locker, burying her tear-filled face in her hands. Not only am I the team co-owner, manager, and coach, but I’m also the resident mother. How many eighteen-year-olds claim that kind of resume? “I can’t play!” Tamara says through tears, saliva, and snot.
“I’ll get some tissues,” Heather says. She’s one of my other blockers. Sweet face but a deadly elbow that has broken at least a dozen noses.
“Yes, you can,” I tell Tamara, “and yes, you will.” Sometimes, I want to give up the managing and coaching part and just focus on the brutal play.
Tamara looks up at me. Her mascara covers her face and hands as if she’s been working in a coal mine. If it’s not shark week, it’s relationships, kids, or booze. Luckily, none of them have found coke or weed yet. She blubbers again, and something drops to the floor. It’s a pregnancy test. “I’m pregnant!”
“Motherfucker!” I get up and leave the locker room to check on Kim, who’s lying on the shower floor, passed out, cold water splashing against her face. Vomit swirls around the drain. “How the hell are we going to beat the Nashville Cannibals with only eight players?”
I go back to the locker room and find Tamara gone.
“Her boyfriend came and got her,” Emily says.
“Kim is shitfaced,” I say. “You’ll have to alternate between blocker and jammer. I’ll go as long as I can.”
Kat, Rosemary, and Joanne join us from the rink. All three are sweaty and wearing practice unis.
“Where’s Patty?” Kat asks.
Patty enters the locker room and raises her hand. “Present and accounted for.” She scowls and grits her teeth. “What’s wrong?”
“Tamara’s pregnant, and Kim’s shitfaced in the shower,” Emily says.
“I’ll call the devil,” Rosemary, our eldest player, says and takes out her phone. She calls, talks to the “injured” Diablo, and says, “She’s on her way. Hope we still have a uni big enough to fit her.” Rosemary is old enough to be my mother, but she has a mouth like a sailor and moves on the rink like a running back, pissed off at the world. “The whore is bigger than a New York skyscraper.”
“Yeah, if her knees don’t give out on her again,” I say. Last week, two opposing players blindsided Diablo and took out her knees. It took four men to carry her off the rink. She’d missed every practice since.
“I’ll grab her uni,” Emily says, heading to the trainer’s room.
“I need to check the box office,” I say and leave the disaster of a room. With only one game separating us and second place, every game counts. Losing today would put us in a tie for first. I don’t believe in participation trophies. We can't afford to keep losing players with four other girls on the injured list.
I walk outside and see a long line waiting to get in. Attendance has been on the upswing the last three games, putting a smile on Father’s face when discussing the Memphis Macabre. He wants to know he made the right decision, signing the team over to me.
Several young girls hold out jerseys for me to sign, and I do so without hesitation. They want to be me—how could I not give them my autograph? Several are wearing my jerseys. I’m a brat to everyone but my fans. Them, I appreciate.
Near the end of the line, I see two bikers watching me like cops watching a criminal. The younger of the two men, a guy with a beard and lots of ink, holds out his arm and a pen.
“You want me to sign your arm?” I ask.
“I’d pull out my dick for you to sign, but too many kids in line,” he says.
“Don’t bother. Probably not big enough for all the letters in my name.”
“Then just write down your number.”
“What the fuck, Watcher?” the other biker says. “Sorry, Miss Stallone. He doesn’t get out much, but the zoo knows he’s missing.”
I take the biker’s pen and sign my name, emphasizing the “I” in my first name. The biker doesn’t flinch. He smiles and rubs his beard as if I should be impressed with the mangy strings of hair hanging down to his chest. We make eye contact for way longer than I should allow.
I move on down the line and return to the rink, hoping to find Kim sobered. The other girls are sitting around the locker room, dressing. “Where’s Kim?”
“She went home,” Kat says. “Her mother came to get her.”
“Fuck. We needed her.” Tonight’s lineup will be shit if Diablo still can’t play. The locker room door opens, and the light from the other room dims. Standing in the doorway is one of the largest women we’ve ever had on the team. “You sure about this?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Diablo walks in, carrying her skates. She sits at her locker about the time Emily returns with her uniform. Diablo holds up the shirt and shorts and looks at me.
“Your special order hasn’t arrived yet,” I say and shrug. “I didn’t think you’d be back this soon.”
She puts her skates on the floor and looks around, nodding at the other girls, who are downright terrified of the woman. Fortunately, the Cannibals don’t have a player over five-nine. Diablo is six-three.
“You jamming today?” Diablo asks. I grin, and she nods with a killer’s instinct in her eyes. “Good. I think we’ll set a record today.’
“I’m the first jammer. Emily is jammer number two. Sometimes, she’ll act as the pivot. You, Kat, Rosemary, Patty, and Heather are my blockers tonight.” Talking to her is much easier when she’s sitting. At five-seven, I’d almost have to break my neck to look up at her.
Diablo leans to the left to get a look at the other girls. She snarls and lets out a breath full of garlic. “They’ll be in my way.” She winks at the others, and they let a faint chuckle escape.
Nobody says anything else. I’d heard a quote somewhere that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I doubted the validity of such a statement. People should be afraid of Diablo Collins.
Once everyone is dressed, we leave the locker room and head down the hall toward the rink. I stop the girls before leaving the hall. Diablo, standing in the back, towers over everyone.
“They’re going to want to play dirty. It’s up to us to get dirtier. Let’s kick some ass!” I say and lead the girls toward the rink entrance.
When I put together the team, I went after the meanest bitches in Memphis. I wanted girls with police records. Girls who knew how to handle themselves and fight when a fight warranted. My last requirement was not an easy one—no sex the night before or the day of a bout.
“What’s on your mind, Jessica?” Emily pulls me back from the group. She knows me better than anyone else, including my father. She was there for me when Mom died. She listened to my bitching when my father married his latest whore. I’ve yet to tell her about the man I killed.
I turn and look down the hallway. “I want more for these women.”
“I know you do. I know you care about us.”
“Like sisters.”
Emily nods. “You’re not going to find the happiness you’re looking for here, Jess.” Emily holds my hand. “Don’t keep letting your father’s whore get you down.”
“It’s not just that, Em.”
“That fucking Jeremy guy?” Emily rolls her eyes and sighs. “Let that asshole go. The right guy is out there. He’ll probably surprise you and pop up when you least expect it.”
“Dad’s not doing well. He called me when they landed in Memphis.”
“I’m sorry. You know I’ll do whatever you need.”
“I know.”
The music in the auditorium ends, and we cut off our conversation, rolling out to thousands of cheers.
Diablo and the other blockers make several warmup laps around the rink, trash-talking the other team as they do so. The women on the other team are obviously scared of her. We’ve already won the battle of minds.
Emily and I take several warmup laps. Though life is kind of in the shitter at the moment, seeing all the young girls cheering me on gives me a temporary escape from all that’s wrong. The hardest part about the roller derby team is that Mom isn’t around to see how well we’re doing. She’d be proud. That’s what I need—to hear those words from her lips. I miss the pep talks and the advice she gave without judgment. What did I get as a trade for my mom? A fucking wicked stepmother and fairytale that just keeps on giving.
We take two more laps around, adjusting our knee and elbow pads. I grab the jammer helmet as we pass the bench and then stop along the railing, where there’s a slight rise in front of the crowd.
The biker whose arm I signed sits in the front row, close to the rail. He winks, and I scowl. The guy is obviously old enough to be my father. It wouldn’t be the first time I had a perv removed from the arena.
The biker gets up and comes to the rail. I face away, careful not to make eye contact again.
“We got off on the wrong foot outside.” He places his hands on the rail, and from the corner of my eye, I see the veins under his tanned skin popping out. He speaks with a northern accent, an outsider to these parts.
“We didn’t get off on a foot at all.” I roll away, leaving him at the rail the way a woman leaves a cheating man at the altar and join my team. I look back only out of macabre curiosity to see if he’s still standing there. He’s not. He’s returned to his big redneck biker friend.
“What was that all about?” Emily asks.
“Some perv hitting on me again.”
“He’s kinda cute.”
“Yeah, in a helpless old man kind of way.”
The ref blows the whistle, and I skate onto the floor with my five blockers. He briefly goes over the rules, mainly about no roughhousing. He looks at me, and a bead of sweat races down his temple. Fuck that. He knows what time it is. He knows when the next whistle blows that it’s on.
The blockers move into position, separating into two small groups, one blocking on offense and one blocking on defense. Diablo glances back, a chuckle bouncing her tits. The whistle blows, and I press my hand against Diablo’s back.
To say we have an unfair advantage is an understatement as Diablo bulls forward. She knocks three Cannibals to the side, and I skate around the rink, finishing the game’s first score.
We set up for the next jam, and Diablo moves in front of me again. Like the first jam, Diablo knocks Cannibals to the side, and I score.
The next jam starts much like the first two, but this time, one of the Cannibals breaks from offense and comes straight at Diablo. For a moment, I think the Cannibal is going high, but at the last second, she drops and takes out Diablo’s knees. Diablo drops to the floor, screaming, and everyone stops. The ref blows the whistle, and as he’s about to throw the Cannibal out of the game, I get up just enough speed to leap over Diablo and hit the Cannibal with an elbow.
I hear a crunch and then see blood erupt from the woman’s nose.
Unlike when men get into a tussle during sports games, where they push and hide behind each other, we aren’t anything like that. We’re out for blood, looking to throat punch and break bones.
Two Cannibals come at me but are intercepted by Kat and Rosemary. Rosemary knocks a Cannibal on her ass, but Kat isn’t so lucky. The Cannibal gets in a lucky knee to Kat’s gut, and she goes down hard.
I see the crowd rushing the rail from the corner of my eye. Just that short second of not paying attention to what’s in front of me causes me to get knocked on my ass. Two Cannibals come with skates rising, ready to smash my skull. I cover, but nothing comes down on my head. When I look up, I see the Cannibals airborne.
The two large men roll the Cannibals away. The one named Watcher smiles, but his smile only lasts a few seconds as he’s hit in the back with a chair. The other biker turns in time to get a chair to the face. He drops next to Watcher, and then there are shots fired.
The place is just about cleared out when the police arrive to find our two teams still fighting. The bikers get to the railing but are met by guns in their faces. They would have been fine if they’d not come onto the rink. I would have been fine if I’d not continued fighting after the cops pulled me away from a Cannibal.
It wasn’t my first trip to county jail; I assumed it wouldn’t be my last. I never took shit off anyone and never would. Consequences were consequences. They came with the territory. They came with standing up for yourself.