Page 14 of Catch and Cradle

Every person on the UNS lacrosse team has their heart in the game. That means something. It shows in the way we play. It shows in the way we’ve performed and risen to the top. It’s what gets me up before six in the morning and keeps me at the athletics centre late at night.

This team is something I can trust. It’s something I can belong to and always have a place in. Sometimes it feels like the only thing I can count on, and I never want to come close to losing that again. After everything that happened in my freshman year, I’ve been regimenting my thoughts just like I regiment my morning routine: precise repetition with no room for mistakes.

I let my feet carry me through the sleepy streets. There are no sounds except the birds and the rumble of a few distant cars downtown. This is my favourite time of day to be outside. It feels like I’m watching the city shake off the last of its dreams, smiling down at it the way you do when you’re waiting for someone you love to roll over in bed beside you and open their eyes.

The pavement under me starts to tilt into an incline as I make my way towards Citadel Hill. The city is notorious for the steep pitch of its streets, but I love the way my lungs burn as I trudge upwards. The hill makes up a park in the middle of the city that used to be an old military fort.

I wind my way along my usual route through the grass lawns, all the way to a lookout point where I can see Halifax stretched out on every side of me. To the east, it slopes down all the way to the sea. The harbour is already in action, white-sailed boats and huge cargo ships dotting the water.

A cool gust of air off the ocean lifts the ends of my ponytail. I breathe deep and smell the salt. Everything is at peace here. Everything has a place in a bigger picture that makes sense.

I’m a kinesiology major, but the courses for my minor in environmental science always make me feel like I’m standing right here on top of this hill, so high above a complicated world that it isn’t complicated anymore. Studying nature in school never makes me fail to marvel at the patterns that tie us all together, the ones we move within each day without even being aware of the ways the world shapes us and we shape it.

Maybe I should switch my major.

I shake my head to push the pointless thought away, the one that still crops up from time to time. I’m too far into my degree to switch now, and my lacrosse schedule would make it too difficult to switch to a double major and still play on the team.

So kinesiology it is.

I don’t want to lose the rhythm of my run, so I only pause for a few seconds before heading back down the hill. I run all the way to campus and slow to a walk outside the athletics centre. After a few laps of the lawn outside to cool down and a quick stretch, I swipe my card to get in and head for the lacrosse locker room. We share it with a few other sports teams, but it’s better than having to use the ones for the student gym.

I’ve already claimed my usual locker for the year. I grab my backpack and gear and then head to the supply closet to grab a few things for practice. Coach will appreciate the head start. I load some pylons, jump ropes, and stretch bands into a milk crate and then shuffle my gear around so I can carry everything out to the field.

I glance up at the empty shelf that usually houses Jim the inflatable lobster, and I feel the corners of my mouth lift.

That’s quickly followed by a spike in my heart rate and then a surge of guilt.

Now is not the time. It will never be the time.

I reach the field well before practice time and set the milk crate down on the close-cropped grass spray-painted with the markings of the game. Setting up the pylons is enough to distract me from Hope for a bit, and it only takes a few minutes before the same thrill of passion and purpose that sent me sprinting through the start of my run takes over again.

This is where I belong. It doesn’t matter what happens anywhere else, because this field right here will always be my home.

4

Hope

“Mi amiga! Cómo estás?”

Iz comes pounding down the stairs and stops behind the couch in the Babe Cave’s living room to give me an impromptu shoulder rub. I let my head drop back on the cushion and set the laptop I’ve been squinting at for the past three hours aside.

“Uh...Buen...o? Is that right?”

Paulina, Jane, and I are always begging Iz for Spanish lessons. I haven’t managed to retain much from them.

Iz laughs and keeps working on my shoulders. I groan when they hit just the right spot. We had our fourth morning practice today, and my body is still getting re-acquainted with the intensity of university lacrosse training. The extra laps and sets of push-ups Coach Jamal punished us with after we showed up on the first day of training camp with a kidnapped lobster and raging hangovers may also be factoring in there.

Jim’s triumphant appearance didn’t inspire CJ’s mercy like we hoped it would.

“Pretty much,” Iz answers. “What are you working on? Your shoulders are like tense little rocks.”

“I’ll put that in my Tinder bio: shoulders like tense little rocks. Need massages.”

They laugh again. “Could work, you know. Campus Tinder is dead at the moment, though. I would wait until the semester starts.”

Now it’s me who’s laughing. “Of course you’re on Tinder already.”

Iz is the definition of the ‘lover not a fighter’ type. They’re always pining after some girl and making big romantic gestures with flowers and curated playlists.