Corrina said, Van, take notes.
We stayed up all night in Ian’s room, planning. I made a list in my flamingo journal. I wanted to draw a picture of the indoor lacrosse field but none of us had seen it. We weren’t people who attended sports events. We drank red sodas. We lay four on the bed: Corrina with her head on Ian’s stomach, Marigold with his head on Corrina’s. Ian said as a little boy he helped his mother dye her hair out of three-dollar boxes. He and Marigold did shots of tequila. Michael Stipe, lead singer of our favorite band, was singing we should suspicion ourselves and not get caught.
This was after they had realized their powers got greater when they were together: Corrina could make bigger things disappear; Marigold could transport bigger things. This was after Corrina had changed Sam’s name to Marigold and my name to Van but before we had heard of Katie Freeman or the rotten kidneys that would ruin our lives. Sam, she said, was a dumb name and Vanessa, she said, was a fat girl’s name.
I am a fat girl, I had said.
Bats! yelled Corrina. No, seagulls!
Bats are dicks, said Marigold. They’d come with their own agenda. And seagulls aren’t scary enough.
I crossed out bats. I crossed out seagulls.
Corrina held one elbow behind her head and stretched. Marigold put on a record, then decided against it. Corrina said, Crows! Like Hitchcock!
Can you do crows? I asked Ian.
I can, he said, but it might get messy. His mouth was red from the soda. I crossed out crows.
We debated. Ian’s roommate appeared, rolled his eyes, and left. I went to the bathroom down the hall. Passing the open doors on the long hallway, I heard Chandler forget which of Joey’s sisters he slept with. It was 1996, and everyone in America was watching Friends. When I returned, Ian said, We could just do nothing. He was skinny and fearful, not a boy who got offended on his or anyone else’s behalf.
At 6 A.M., with the help of the morning sun, the snowfall reappeared outside the window. We had figured it out. That’s that, Corrina said, her voice hazy, her hair distracted. We considered rejoining the jigsaw puzzle. We fell asleep, four on the bed.
…
Would Vanilla lacrosse be able to bypass Seneca University, throughout history its staunchest rival? The Wafer called the following week’s game “a deciding, midseason matchup.” Pretty girls in soft-looking spectator wear gnawed the tips of their French manicures. Athletes from other disciplines attended to show support, entering the stadium like princes from distant kingdoms. Old-timers pumped the hands of current faculty. The arena smelled like the hot peanuts everyone was eating out of paper cones.
Corrina wore her blue star sweatshirt that hung low over one shoulder. This is devastatingly boring, she said. She was a girl who existed in extremes. Vanilla wasn’t dull; it was mind-shatteringly pedestrian. The album Murmur wasn’t great; it was wondrous.
We sat in the first row, on all sides of us five feet of empty space.
At game time, a current rap hit exploded out of the loudspeakers and a young coed’s voice trilled: Ladies and Gentlemen, your Vanilla and Seneca University lacrosse teams! The crowd clapped and weee-ed. Led by Chris and Dan, the teams jogged out, then sat on their benches and became serious as stone.
Whistles blew. Boys took the field and pranced with their sticks. We watched. We ate peanuts. The peanuts were not bad. My roommate, Sara, who wrote for the Wafer, sat nearby with a group of journalism majors, notepads on each of their laps. I waved. She did not wave back.
Toward the end of the first quarter Vanilla was up 2–0 thanks to a power play by the Twin Bastions. Chris sat on the bench squirting water into his mouth and nodding to his coach, who pointed things out on a clipboard.
That’s when the first wild turkey appeared.
It stayed on the sidelines at first, throat quaking, head in constant negotiation, watching the game like anyone else. A few people noticed it and tittered.
Concentrate, said Corrina.
A passing player’s toss seemed to act as a cue for the turkey, because it leapt onto the field like a player freed from the penalty box and launched into a series of frenetic dances. A few minutes passed before all sections of the field caught on. The players near Seneca’s goal continued their formations oblivious to the wild turkey rubbing its long neck into the turf on the other side of the field. When they did realize they paused and idled, swishing their sticks and waiting for someone to do something.
A referee whistled, dragging his foot in a line around the turkey.
Turkey! He cried. Turkey on the field!
Chris watched from the bench, emotionless. He had come from junior lacrosse teams in the poorest part of the state where maybe he had to battle wild turkeys every day. In any case, he seemed barely interested. He retied his shoelace, no doubt assuming this disturbance was temporary and his way to glory would once again be cleared by one of the nameless blurs that orbited his life.
He wasn’t wrong. The refs corralled the turkey and led it out of the arena, playing up the escort for yuks. The crowd laughed, tilted their heads to tap the last of their peanuts into their perfect mouths. Someone near us said, That’ll make the goofy reel. The game continued.
Seneca U rallied. Toward the end of the third quarter, they led Vanilla by one. One of the girls near us wondered aloud if a loss would interfere with the sorority mingle later that night. Her friend said no way.
That’s when the turkey returned. This time the referees weren’t amused. But this time the turkey wasn’t alone. At several points of entry on the field, other wild turkeys appeared, necks trilling, feathers alighting then settling, alighting then settling.
Chris and Dan were in the midst of a power play near Seneca’s goal, alone except for the goalie and two earnest-looking members of Seneca’s defense. This time Chris and Dan couldn’t ignore the turkeys because they were bobbling and jogging toward them in a semistraight line.
That they can really haul is what most people don’t know about wild turkeys. The turkeys were halfway across the field and still no one had stopped them; they easily out-legged the refs who tried.
The Seneca players fled with no pursuit, the turkeys having no issue with them. Now Chris and Dan were alone, the number of people between them and the squawking mess exactly zero. Out of Chris’s net, the ball fell and thudded against the fake grass.
Concentrate, said Corrina.
The Twin Bastions did what you would expect successful college boys would do when faced with genuine opposition: they ran. This thrilled the turkeys. Their efforts tripled; they pursued faster, yawked louder. Any ref or old-timer attempting to intervene was attacked with a full-winged advance and a heart-splitting SQUAWK.
Chris and Dan ran toward the other side of the field. They were Division I fast, but the turkeys had skills. They split ranks. One rank continued the chase, leading the boys directly into the path of the other that stood outstretched wing to outstretched wing. The boys wheeled around. They were trapped.
The salty-throated crowd watched in horror as the turkeys struck. Amid the wartime sounds of the onslaught, we could see enough to know the turkeys had gotten the boys down on the ground. Dan’s stick like a burp flew out of the fray. The necks of the turkeys made a rhythmic unified motion. The boys yelped and flailed. Now that the birds were distracted, the refs and old-timers were able to pull them off the boys. One by one the turkeys were carried or dragged out of the arena. The last turkey, scrappier than the rest and possessing no apparent fear, led a few refs on a chase before relenting.
Go turkey, go! Corrina cheered.
By this time team medics had reached Chris and Dan and were administering salves and bandages. Their legs were hacked in several places and they were too hysterical to finish the game. Since they had been winning at the onset of the turkeys and because league rules mandate there are no rematches in Division I games, Seneca U was declared the winner. This decree was met with halfhearted hoorays from Seneca’s confused bench and with more yelling and blame-throwing from Chris and Dan, whose blood had begun to soak in to the alarming green of the field in dark pools so stubborn that the next year the field was replaced completely.