Fifteen #2
“Phoebe and Alice’s mom!” she said, waving as if we were meeting for a mimosa brunch.
“You know her? You take her,” Gucci whispered. “Besides, I want the thick one.”
“I don’t think that’s a good—” I started, but was cut off by a barbaric yawp coming from the WWE lookalike. “Okay, you might
be right.”
“On three, our four powerful ladies will step into the pool and start mashing the patriarchy,” the emcee cried.
The crowd chanted with the emcee. “One! Two! Three!”
Tentatively, I stepped into the kiddie pool.
Ankle deep in mounds of mashed potato, Principal Cruz and I circled each other while Gucci charged Ms. WWE and hooked a leg behind one of her knees.
The two women crashed into the white slop, which caused me and Principal Cruz to shield our eyes from the creamy splash.
“Come on, Ms. Turner,” she taunted. “Aren’t you gonna take me?”
I tried to tap into my inner rage, but nothing about my twins’ cool principal triggered it. Still, I was gearing up to make
a move when I spotted Agent Nate Duran, beer in hand, mouth hanging open.
Our eyes caught. Time froze. As the split second stretched on, the rest of the crowd dropped away. I no longer saw Gucci and
her opponent grappling in the white gloop. All I saw was Nate.
But Principal Cruz hadn’t actually vanished—she rammed me in the gut with her shoulder and I landed on my back in the potato
mash. Gucci had Ms. WWE on her stomach and was pulling her head up by the shoulders, both to pin her and keep her from inhaling
spuds. “I’ve got mine!” Gucci screamed. “Now pin yours!”
Struggling and thrashing in four inches of slippery potatoes as the full weight of my kids’ elementary school principal pressed
down on me was an incredibly visceral experience, and not one I would recommend. Since Gucci was still firmly atop Ms. WWE,
the audience howled for me to wriggle out from under Principal Cruz and pin her. Or maybe they were cheering for Principal
Cruz to crush me?
As she fought to grab my arms, I thrashed like a greased pig at the Ada County Fair. She caught one of my wrists.
“I think my brother likes you,” she said.
“Really?” I managed as I tried to scissor-kick out from under her. One of my ears filled with sludge and I could feel potato
squelching in my butt crack.
“He only told me about five times how hilarious you are,” she said. She stretched out the word hilarious in the singsong of sibling torment.
“He did?” I panted, so dumbfounded she had a chance to grab my other wrist and pin it. I struggled hard but couldn’t twist
free.
“One!” the emcee cried. “Two!”
I yanked hard in a futile attempt to free myself.
“Three! Four! Five!” the crowd screamed.
“And the match ends in a TIE!” the emcee said. “Looks like we’ll have to split the prize money between the two teams!”
The crowd bayed its approval.
Principal Cruz staggered to her feet as I rolled over onto my hands and knees. She patted my back. “Good effort!”
“Sorry,” I said to Gucci when I’d climbed out.
“Are you kidding? Nobody else would’ve done that for me,” Gucci said.
“You won your fight, and I lost mine, so you should get all the money,” I said, using a finger to scoop tater from my ear.
When Gucci started to protest, I raised my palm. “No. I insist. Two hundred dollars will cover the rest of your pole classes.”
It would also buy groceries for my kids, but I didn’t say that. I wished so hard I hadn’t taken all that money from my mom.
This somehow felt like a tiny (if indirect) amends.
“You sure?” Gucci asked. When I nodded, she thumped her chest. “You are my ride-or-die. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”
She threw both arms around me. My mom used to say, “The Universe gives you what you need when you need it.” And it wasn’t
lost on me that the person hugging me right now while declaring she owed me a favor had forensics expertise.
Instead I asked if she’d seen Salma Hayek smashing the “dirtbag that got thrown out of Huckleberry’s” over the head with a
beer bottle. But Gucci reported she hadn’t spotted anything noteworthy at the club after I left, except for Layna climbing
on-stage to show off her (very amateur) body rolls.
Disappointed, I was heading to the bathroom to change—holding my sweatsuit at arm’s length to keep it from getting covered in mashed potatoes—when Agent Nate Duran stepped out in front of me.
“Job Talk Tuesday and now this?” he said. “Please tell me this is not a normal weekday for you.”
I also learned a floorwork move called the Vagina Monster and hid a dead body in my kids’ playhouse. But what I said was: “I wouldn’t say normal. But the real question is: Why was your sister wrestling me? Or anyone, for that matter?”
“She lives to get rowdy,” he said. “Also, I dared her. The woman will not pass up a dare. It’s how she ended up an elementary
school principal, but that’s a story for another time.”
Layna rocked up and introduced herself to Nate, tossing one of her fake ponytails over her shoulder and holding out a hand
for him to kiss. Which was as awkward as it sounds.
“She has no game,” I explained.
She looked at me. “I love you, but you are not riding home in my Porsche like that.”
“I can Uber. I’ll just find a trash bag to sit on.”
“I’m already gonna have one mashed-potato-covered woman in my car,” Nate said. “Why not two?”