“All right, honeybees! Time to taste that sweet, sweet nectar!” Lena began. “Blockers, look out for number eight—Huck Sin—she’s fast and crafty, so watch her torso, not her feet, and keep low so you can react quickly. Kat and I’ll call plays as we need to, so listen up for our cues.”

Kat added, “The Skintastics are fierce, but we’ve got depth.” She turned to Sage, Grace, and Potts and offered, “Rookies, we’re gonna get you in tonight, don’t worry. Just keep warm and be ready.” Then she turned to me. “Shit’s about to get real. You good?”

I nodded. “I’m good.”

As we skated out to the starting line, a surge of adrenaline blasted through my chest. I swung my arms across my body to work out some of the excess energy.

A shout of “Killa Skillz” soared over the arena. I looked behind me. The crowd practically foamed—whooping and applause pierced by sometimes sharp, sometimes lengthy whistles, folks decorated in colors of all four teams: yellow and black, blue and green, black and red plaid, gray and pink. Placards waving back and forth, the announcer’s fanatical excitement calling out our names and numbers.

Maybe it was because this was the season opener, maybe because my senses were heightened, but it felt like everything was in Technicolor and surround sound. More vivid, louder, right in my ear, and washing over me. A horn blasted. At first I thought it was the ref, but then I realized it was just a superfan with a giant kazoo. Who has a giant kazoo? Roller derby fans, that’s who.

When the starting whistle did blow, there was a frenzy of pushing and shoving. Dom, me, and our third blocker, Jin, immediately managed to trap their jammer while Lena attached herself to their blockers to make way for Kat, allowing Kat to push through the Skintastics’ blockers in seconds. Soon she was burning around the track, diving right back into the pack again even before their jammer had been able to get by us.

By the end of the first jam, we were up by four points, Kat managing to evade the other team’s hits and push through the pack easily, thanks in part, of course, to her blockers. I’d played aggressively—shoving and pulling and bracing hard—and could feel the tenderness along my upper arms and my thighs already. After just two minutes of play.

Promising.

But, being my first time out there, I’d also been less sure of myself than I thought I’d be, so though my body was burning to explode around the track, I’d held back a bit, trying to gauge exactly where I should be and how much I could get away with when it came to hitting.