“You know—same, same,” I replied as I buckled myself in behind the driver’s seat and took my breaths. Fee relayed the message, then pretended to fiddle with the mirror, then their phone, then their hair, to let me get settled in. I wondered if they’d told Caihong about my car issues and hoped they hadn’t.

On the drive to the arena, Fee explained that roller derby players all had these alter-ego names, and I listened as they and Cai tried to come up with names for themselves as we sat at a red light.

“Feisty Fury!”

“Cai-ZAM!”

“Fast and Fee-rocious?”

“Cai-OWN-You!”

Fee’s voice got increasingly high-pitched the more ridiculous their ideas became. Cai’s signs were as animated as Fee’s voice. Then they just dissolved into a fit of giggles, which managed to make me half smile, despite everything else I was still feeling—sore, exhausted, frustrated—not to mention all the other stuff I was trying to ignore.

“Nerds,” I said.

Fee stopped giggling for, like, two seconds, then burst into giggles again. Cai just kept on giggling, since she hadn’t heard me.

I let out an exaggerated sigh, even though I kind of liked their nerdiness. They were easy to be around, at least. Never pushing too hard to get me to talk about anything hard. Like now, for instance.

“Oh, come on—you know you want a roller derby name too,” Fee said, eyeing me up in the rearview mirror.

“My name would be Don’t Mess With Me, Asshole.”

They smirked and offered, “Catchy.”

“Thanks. You inspired it.”

“Sweet,” they said, bobbing their head as they checked their side mirror.

The roller derby rink was housed in a gigantic warehouse next to a bunch of big-box stores off the highway, and about fifteen minutes later, Fee swung into the arena parking lot. I left my skateboard in Fee’s car, and we all made our way inside with throngs of other folks in various forms and shapes and sizes—from parents with their little kids to teenagers to elderly folks to twentysomethings. Lots of punkish-looking people too—tattoos and dyed hair and piercings, leather, jean wear. And folks who looked like they’d just arrived from the rodeo. Yuppie types. Disco fashionistas.

So basically, everything under the sun.

I’d never seen such a collection of all sorts… except maybe at Priam and Vicki’s weird performances. At least here, though, some of the people looked like my kind of people—rough around the edges, ready to watch some fierce action on the track.

When we got inside, a couple of girls were sitting at a folding table and selling tickets. We paid our ten dollars each and followed the pounding music.

Walking into the arena felt like entering a rock concert or something. Flashing lights, loud music, a cheering crowd. I hadn’t expected everything to be so large-scale.