She was scrubbing the mold out of the shower the next day when Celine popped into the bathroom. "Kortney! They have sign-ups for intramural flag football! It's 15 dollars. You should do it."
She snorted and kept scrubbing. "I don't have an athletic bone in my body."
"Oh, but everyone does, a little bit."
"Not me. I used to dance, but I'm no athlete."
"It's not about being athletic. It's just for fun. I wouldn't be signing up otherwise. You should do it with me." Celine went into an unreasonably cute pout.
"I don't know anything about flag football."
"Me neither, but I'm sure they'll teach us. It's just like regular football, except we're only playing girls, so we shouldn't get hurt too bad."
"I wouldn't bank on that." Kortney stood reluctantly and balled up the Clorox wipe. "Where's the sign-up sheet?"
"They're taking it down the hall right now, come on!"
Their team name was the Wild Wild West, since all the girls were from Crawford West second floor. The t-shirts, when they came in, were pretty cool. There was a cowboy hat and lasso and a slogan in loopy letters that said, "This field ain't big enough fer the both of us!" Kortney stood looking at hers draped over her arm and wondered how she had been persuaded to spend 15 dollars on it — not to mention the approaching athletic humiliation. The only thing she had made a point of signing up for on registration day was Freshman Family Groups. That would be a calm, non-sports way of making friends whom she would see regularly.
"Are you excited about your classes?" asked Tiffany as they chilled out in her room that night.
"I don't know. I don't know who my professors are or where the classrooms are or anything. I don't even know my advisor." Kortney's head dropped. "We set up my schedule over the phone."
"It's okay," Noelle reassured her. "It's not like any of us have done this before either."
"If you want, we can go roaming over the campus tomorrow and find all of our classrooms ahead of time," offered Noelle's suitemate Hayley Anne. "I've been wanting to do that myself."
"Sounds cool to me," Kortney said. She got Hayley Anne's phone number and met her exploring buddies at the campus Chick-fil-A the next morning. The exploration did much to settle Kortney's nerves, although she didn't know it. She was too thrilled to be in the company of such friends as she had found to remember what else she might have felt before.
FFG assignments were that night. She and Celine headed up to the student center bridge together. Celine, oddly enough, seemed as nervous as Kortney was.
"What do you have to be scared of?" Kortney reasoned with her. "Look at you. You're the belle of the ball. As usual, that is."
Celine was definitely in character. Her white, short-sleeved leather jacket gleamed over her sparsely sequined top. Her earrings, her shoes, and the glitter on her jeans all matched. A tiny breeze blew through the sultry orange evening, lifting Celine's loose blonde curls off her shoulders and sticking a few hairs in her lip gloss.
"Thanks," she told Kortney, sheepishly brushing the strands away from her mouth. "I'm just wondering if someone I know will be in our group."
"Who?"
"Oh," with a sly sideways glance, "no one really."
"Oh. That kind of no one."
Kortney reached for her short auburn ponytail, unsure if she should leave it up or let it swing free and possibly get her neck sweaty. She didn't have Celine's anti-sweat magic. The inside of the student center was stuffy; she decided to leave her hair pulled back. At least she had been fashion-savvy enough to attempt to tease up a small lift at the back of her head, above the ponytail.
The girl with the sign-in sheet found Kortney's name first and pointed her to a guy wearing cargo shorts and standing on a table. Kortney slipped up and stood near him, shyly smiling at her few new siblings already clustered around.
"Are you my daughter?" The guy pointed straight down at her.
"Yeah, I think so."
He jumped down to shake her hand. "I'm Nathaniel. This is your sister Leigh, your brother David, your brother Steven —"
"I'm Steven," said the last guy.
"Oh, sorry, your brother Steven, and — okay, dude, what was your name again?" Nathaniel asked the guy mistakenly identified as Steven.
"Nishimo," he answered, looking completely lost.
"Nishimo. I will remember that. I promise." Nathaniel was off in a second to welcome his newest daughter, Celine. "The person I was talking about is in someone else's group," she muttered as Nathaniel introduced everyone again.
"Kids, I'm sorry I don't know where your mom is. She said she'd be here before they served the pizza, which will be in … 8 minutes."
"If she doesn't show up, do we get a new mom?" asked Steven.
"Maybe. First I have to go through the divorce, pay my legal fees (and probably hers too), spend 3 months crying in my room, start dating again, make sure you all like my new girlfriend, pay for the wedding, and read all the psychology books I can find to keep our family from falling apart when you start fighting with her."
"You forgot working out our visitation schedule with our first mom," said Kortney.
Nathaniel stuck out his chin and shook his head. "An absentee mom shouldn't get any visitation rights. I'll fight to keep you kids with me."
To take up time, Kortney perused the ground and played a little game with herself. Every time she saw someone new, she asked herself what had been the first thing she noticed about that person. With Celine, it had been her flawless makeup and white teeth. It had been Rayne's perpetual smirk, Noelle's straight flaxen hair and calm eyes, Tiffany's puppylike tilt of her head as she talked, and that kinesiology guy's messy hair. It had been Nathaniel's off-white cargo shorts from a distance, and his comically crooked hawk nose up close. There was not much remarkable about her new siblings. David had a long face … and there were Nishimo's obviously Asian features. That was something Kortney hadn't seen every day in rural Wisconsin.
"Wife! You're here!" yelled Nathaniel.
"Dad was gonna divorce you if you didn't show up for dinner," joked Leigh.
Wheelchair, thought Kortney. That was unquestionably the first thing she noticed about her new mom. It was a motorized chair. The girl drove it with a little keypad at the end of her armrest.
"Kids, this is your mother, Shara. This is Celine, Kortney, David," etc.
Shara lifted her hand. "Hi. Yes, I'm in a wheelchair. I had a flag football accident freshman year."
Celine and Kortney looked at each other.
"We totally signed up for flag football," Celine told her. "Should we drop out?"
"Well, I was playing against some boys, which was a stupid decision. As long as you stay on the field with girls, you should be fine."
Nathaniel and Shara had everyone sit and list their names, hometowns, and majors, starting with themselves. When newcomers straggled over, they were welcomed with gusto.
"So, I was thinking we need a family outing to get to know each other," Nathaniel said, looking at Shara. "How do you kids feel about bowling?"
Everyone looked at each other and shrugged. That was okay with them. While her new upperclassman parents tried to sort out what would be the best time for everyone to meet, where was the nearest bowling alley, and who would drive everyone there, Kortney went back to looking around. Celine was sneaking glances at someone in a group across from them. Whoever she was looking at never looked back. The organizers sounded the call to pizza, and it was several minutes before the group was again in a position to talk.
"So I think we'll put off the bowling trip until everyone's more comfortable with their schedules. In the meantime, we can have family dinners. Most other families do theirs in the caf, but we're gonna be cool and go to Chick. Is that cool with everybody?"
More acquiescent shrugs.
"Okay, so we'll say 6 on Thursdays. Is everyone free then?"
They all thought so.
"Sweet. And if you run out of money, don't worry about it. Your mom never goes to Chick, so she'll probably be paying for all of us at the end of the semester."
Shara smiled a little, nodding. "It's true. I'm a caf wimp."
A guy with a huge scar up the back of his shin walked past Kortney on his way to the group that Celine had been spying out. Shara glanced up and saw him. Her face went dark.
"I'm sorry, you guys, but I really have to go," she said hurriedly. "It was nice to meet all of you. See you at Chick on Thursday. Enjoy your first day of classes."
She whizzed off through the crowd, finding the widest paths she could. People moved over to let her by when they heard her wheelchair approaching.
"O-kay then," said Nathaniel.
"Why'd she leave?" asked a new sister, Elise.
"I think I know," he murmured, looking around. He saw the guy with the scar sitting at the head of his group. "Yeah, I do." Scar Guy had seen Shara flee and was now trying to pretend that he hadn't.
"She can't stand that guy over there."
"Which one?"
"The one with the Mountain Dew shirt and the black buzz cut. They had a fight freshman year and haven't talked to each other since." He pointed at them. "This is why you don't date while you're freshmen, kids."
"He was her boyfriend?" asked Celine.
Nathaniel looked at her from under his lowered eyebrows. "No, I just made a totally unrelated comment about dating for no reason connected with them. Anyway, that guy, Seth, is thinking about transferring out next semester, so maybe you'll see your mom in a better mood after that."
Groups broke up and drifted apart as the pizza boxes emptied and the sun set. Kortney and Celine's family parted somberly, with no guarantee of seeing each other before Thursday evening. Kortney was excited to see if the group would become closer-knit over the next months. She also wondered who Celine had been staring at.
"Flag football practice starts tomorrow night," Celine reminded Kortney as they turned their lights off.
"Yay," Kortney muttered. Classes the next morning were what she was really looking forward to.
