Chapter One: I am ready, I am ready (I am fine)
Snow swirls around the truck, big, fluffy white flakes churning, dancing, landing gently on the steaming hood and dusting the tailgate, flashing orange in time with the hazard lights, drifting to a stop upon the open door and bright rainbow mitten holding it open, melting on the straw-colored hair leaking from a gray-and-orange beanie.
"Honey, you're sure your flight wasn't cancelled?"
Brittany pulls her head back in the cab, closing the door behind her, and the snow dusting her head begins to melt in earnest. Her dad has the truck nice and cozy, the heat set to 't-shirt weather.' "When I called before we left, they said flights were leaving," she shrugs. "I guess it's supposed to stop soon."
She scratches her scalp clumsily, with all four mittened fingers, through the hat. All of these winter layers are stifling, and she's sweating. Honest to god sweating, while it's snowing and like fifteen degrees outside. "I think Mom forgot I'm going to Arizona," she says. "I don't know what I'm going to do with this stuff out there. Or in San Francisco. I mean, they say it gets cold there in the summer but it can't be this cold, right?"
"Moms," her dad sighs, in mock commiseration. "She didn't want you to freeze between the door and the truck and the truck and the door. So weird."
He laughs at her arched eyebrow and pout. "Ship your coat back, Britt. You'll be sending us a whole box of team swag anyway. Just stick that monster in there with the hats and sweatshirts. Oh, and I think your sister wants a license plate frame." He frowns. "Or was it one of those big Hulk fist beer holders? Can't remember."
"I'm pretty sure they don't make Specters Hulk fist beer holders, Dad. Kind of a men's sports thing."
"True." He grins at her, and it hits her all at once that she's leaving, not just for college upstate, but actually going somewhere where she can't go home on the weekends if she wants to do laundry for free or get her fill of family time, and it makes her feel both very grown-up and very young at the same time. "She'd look pretty awesome in one of those things, wouldn't she?"
"Definitely," she agrees. Ashley is a thousand percent more elegant than she is and never did get the Pierce baseball skills, but she could rock a Hulk fist, no problem. They fall silent for a long moment, the only sound the chugging of the engine reverberating through the cab. Finally, she sighs and cracks the door. "I better go before they do cancel my flight."
"Okay," he says quietly, looking at her like she's both five and twenty-two and he isn't sure if he should take her home for a cookie and a nap or let her leave.
(She isn't sure either.)
"Okay," she repeats, and gets out of the truck before he takes her home, taking her duffle bag and her big rolling suitcase from the backseat.
The pavement is wet with snow and the air is freezing, even through the mom-approved layers of jacket, so Brittany hurries for the door. Her dad calls her back as the automatic doors slide open. "We're proud of you, kiddo. Crazy proud. Have fun."
He loves making up movie moments like this, and she loves him for it, so she arcs her rainbow mitten over her head, waving goodbye enthusiastically. He deserves an awesome goodbye wave; for all his own magical Pierce baseball skills, he never got the major league spring training invite, and she knows that he means those cheeseball movie words of his.
As soon as she gets to the gate, Brittany drops her bag on a chair and starts stripping off her winter gear. The airport isn't quite at t-shirt weather but it's too warm for all of this. Her coat, mittens, and scarf pile on the floor while she takes her OSU team hoodie from her bag and pulls it over her still-beanied head. When she pushes the hood back, the beanie goes with it, so Brittany tugs it from her head and shoves it in the back pocket of her jeans.
She hums the Jeopardy theme song to herself as she contemplates first the pile of clothing and then the not-so-empty space vacated by her hoodie. It's all got to fit in there, but she's not sure how. She starts with the coat, since it's the bulkiest. Mittens can go anywhere.
A few minutes later, all of the extra layers are folded, rolled, and squished into her carry-on, and four magazines, a book, two granola bars, and her iPad sit in a stack on the chair next to her bag, casualties of the over-stuffed coat. No big deal; she was going need all of this for her flight anyway.
After she's seated, and the plane is high above the clouds, Brittany turns on her iPad, a gift from the team. It had arrived the first week of December, loaded with nutrition and training guides, the team's manifesto, and a calendar set with workout plans so she'd be ready by the spring training mandatory reporting date. She skips past the Day 30 leg workout sent by the training staff—college playing shape and professional playing shape are two very different things; she's never been so sore in her life—and clicks on the WBL news app.
Santana Lopez dominates the home page.
The stock photo taken at the beginning of the 2011 season is front and center over three links: a new article, a link to her stats and highlights, and a link titled 'Full Coverage of Recovery.' Lopez's smile beams out like a cheery DMV picture, her hair hidden under a Specters cap. Her smile is insincere; it's not a high-quality image, but Brittany can see the strain around the edges of her lips, the tightness in her dark eyes. Brittany has seen video of Lopez playing second base for years now, and when she smiles (rarely, like maybe for half a second after the team won the division in 2010), she never ever smiles like that, all toothy and eager and fake fake fake. The smiles she allows are small, smug, satisfied with a job well done. (And in all of the images after the 2011 season, there isn't a smile at all.)
"She's hot."
Brittany looks up at her seatmate. "What?"
The guy, middle-aged, paunchy, balding, creepy, points at her screen. "That's Santana Lopez, right? She's hot. You a Specters fan?"
"Something like that."
"The WBL is cool. It's no MLB but they're not bad for girls. Too bad about what happened to her, huh?" He leans in closer, smothering her nostrils with bad cologne, and whispers, "I heard she was drunk as a skunk and the league covered it up. Have you seen the pictures? Only really wasted people can wreck cars that badly and live."
"Skunks don't drink alcohol, they prefer shrooms," Brittany monotones, hoping he'll get the hint. Playing quirky-dumb usually gets this kind of weirdo to back off. Who talks to strangers on airplanes, anyway?
Creepy pretends not to hear her—the wrinkle in his forehead gives him away—and shakes his head. "Still, boozehound or not, she is smoking hot. I'd love to see her out of that uniform."
Gross. Brittany leans forward and tugs her earphones from her bag, putting each one in deliberately, and turns towards the window. When she's sure that Creepy isn't lurking over her shoulder, she clicks the link ("Lopez recovered?") under Lopez's picture.
Lopez to miss beginning of season, Specters GM says.
2010 All-Star Santana Lopez is likely to miss the first month of the season, San Francisco Specters General Manager Will Schuester says, as the Specters' second-baseman recovers from the horrific injuries sustained in an auto accident in October 2011.
"Of course we'd like to have her back on Opening Day. We are working closely with her doctors and trainers to get her in playing shape for the season," Schuester said. "However, her long-term health is the most important thing for our organization, and we will take her rehab one step at a time. If she can't come back until May or June, so be it."
Lopez, 27, was driving across the Bay Bridge to her home in San Francisco when her car was struck by a drunk driver, causing severe injuries to her left shoulder and elbow. These injuries required numerous surgeries to repair ligament and joint damage. The other driver was paralyzed in the crash and pled guilty to felony drunk driving charges.
Many have speculated that Lopez may miss a second full season, and both Specters management and fans are certainly worried that the days of spectacular throws and acrobatic defense at second base are over.
"A single joint reconstruction can take months to return to normal for an average person," said a sports medicine specialist interviewed for this article. "Add in a second reconstruction on the same arm, the dominant arm, and you've at minimum doubled the recovery time." The Specters will have to wait and see if Lopez can return to her pre-accident form. "There are no guarantees beyond typical use, which of course does not include throwing or batting."
The Specters begin Spring Training in Scottsdale, Arizona, today. Although she has not been medically cleared for baseball activities, Lopez is expected to attend.
The town car pauses for a moment at a rolling gate, where the driver rolls down the window and gives the guard his ID and her name. Both items are crossed-checked on a list, then the guard nods, hands back the driver's ID and waves them over the track. They drive alongside a large three story tan-and-white building with few windows, coming to a stop around the corner from the gate in front of a heavy steel security door. If it weren't for the large Specters logo painted on the door, Brittany would have thought this was some high-security office building, not the cornerstone of the team's spring training facilities.
The walls of the building dip abruptly about three hundred yards to her left, slipping underneath rising bleachers. Brittany feels a tiny thrill go through her at the thought of getting out on the field. Long flights, nerves, and ball fields always make her want to play. It's like that guy with the drooling dogs, only instead of a bell, it's bleachers rattling and hearing the national anthem. Baseball field, play—reflex. And maybe, if she can get her cleats in the dirt and her glove on a ball, this might feel real.
Right now, being in Arizona seems like a dream, starting from the moment she was called away from the Enterprise counter by a guy in a suit and a Specters tie before she could finalize the contract on her rental car, and directed to the town car. She tried not to be surprised when the car didn't have a team logo on it; it seems like every person and every little thing related to the team is covered in that ghosty orange-and-gray SF in one way or another.
It's only a matter of time until she's covered in it, too.
Just like in San Francisco, the Specters' stadium is on the outskirts of town, a few miles from the Giants' downtown spring training home. On the way from the airport, Brittany had gawked at the people in shorts, T-shirts and various team caps, the jagged mountains along the horizon, the cacti she last saw in a Road Runner cartoon.
Yep. Arizona is some kind of beige dream land.
She startles when her door opens, letting in a blast of intense, dry heat and a short-haired blonde woman in a Specters jersey. She instantly starts sweating. Holy hell, it's hot. Hot like the house gets when her mom puts the oven on self-clean and it goes to five hundred degrees and vaporizes all the stuck-on stuff at the bottom. It's only February. She can't imagine how people actually live here in the summer, if it's like this now.
(The morning's snow seems like a hundred years ago.)
"Hi," the woman says as she leans in, one hand on the door, the other hand jutting out for her to take. How the hell can she stand to touch the door? "I'm Quinn Fabray."
"I'm really glad I took off my mittens," Brittany muses, and the words come out louder than she intended because Quinn smirks, biting back a laugh.
"You're Pierce, right? The shortstop? Beiste asked me to meet you, give you the tour before practice starts."
Brittany hums in assent. "And you…" She narrows her eyes at Quinn, recalling last season's roster. "…first base?" Quinn nods. "Kinda short for a first baseman, aren't you?"
Quinn laughs, a short, high disbelieving laugh. "Yeah, I guess. I used to play second before I got traded here." She shoots a pointed look at Brittany's long legs and says, "Besides, you're kinda tall for a shortstop, aren't you?"
"That...is one hundred percent true," Brittany concedes. "Sorry."
The heat is melting her verbal filter. It's the only explanation.
"No problem, rookie." Quinn gets a troublesome gleam in her eye. "Or is there something else you like to be called? Maybe Phenom? Legend-in-the-making?"
Of course her reputation and all the crazy media talk has preceded her. She hopes it won't cause problems with her new teammates, all of whom have worked their asses off to get to this level, and not all of whom are guaranteed a spot in the big leagues. There is a delicate line she's going to have to walk: she can't pretend that she isn't as good as she is, but she can't act like she is as good as the talking heads say she is. She has a feeling, though, that if she turns it into a joke, people will let it go. "I like future-Hall-of-Famer myself," she says, "but you can call me Brittany."
Quinn rolls her eyes, but a smile comes with the gesture. "We can work with that. Let's get inside. It's crazy-hot out here."
"That's what I've been saying," Brittany mumbles as she shoulders her bag and follows Quinn through the door.
"Fifteen degrees?" Quinn rounds on her, gaping at the idea. "God, you must be roasting. I came up from winter ball in the Dominican yesterday, and it was seventy-five when I left. This feels great."
"It was snowing," Brittany says, pulling her beanie from her back pocket and waving it at Quinn, who chuckles. "I didn't think I was going to make my flight, but the snow stopped just before they puddle-jumped us to Chicago, and it seemed okay there."
They turn a corner, heading down a long hallway with multiple doors, interspersed with framed photographs of past teams. "It's kind of a labyrinth down here," Quinn explains. "I'll show you the other way in, since this hallway is where most of the coaches' offices are, and you'll get snagged by someone first thing in the morning if you're not careful. That's Schuester's office, and he's a nice guy and all, but when you haven't had your coffee yet—"
"Fuck!"
Brittany jumps, twisting her head sharply towards the sound, muffled by the closed door they've just passed. "What—"
"The trainer's room," Quinn says, continuing down the hall like nothing's happened. "The door's typically open, but they're working on Lopez right now and she won't let anyone see her when she's rehabbing."
"Santana Lopez?" Brittany looks back at the door. "Like, Santana-Lopez-busted-arm Santana Lopez?"
Quinn chuckles. "Yeah, how many Lopezes are there?"
Brittany thinks about it for a second. "In the league? Seventeen." Quinn gives her that odd look, that um, okay look she started getting when she was a kid, and tapered off as she grew up. But apparently rattling off random facts as a rookie is received about the same as it was when she was in third grade; her athletic ability gave her wiggle room with her peers then, she hopes it does now. "I saw that article about her this morning. So is it true, that she isn't—"
"She isn't ready?" A hard look comes over Quinn's face. "She's not. But you better pray she's ready to play by the time we break camp."
Brittany's brow furrows in confusion. "I don't understand."
"Santana is…" Quinn stops, tosses her head, laughs cynically. "You'll see, Pierce. Come on, let's get your gear to the locker room and get you set up. Afternoon practice starts in half an hour."
With one final glance at the door, Brittany follows Quinn down the hall.