“Bitches coming through!” was the last thing I heard before a force of arms and legs tackled me from behind and I landed face-first on the green shag rug covering most of the floor, hysterical laughter roaring into my ear and what felt like a two-hundred-pound flour sack on my back.

“Whoops!” the person on my back yelled, before rolling sideways off me and onto her back.

When I looked over, it was Lena—her delirious giggling interrupted every so often by a violent hiccup. Laughter rang out from around the room too.

Pushing myself up onto my elbows and twisting to look behind me, I could see Lena had her roller skates on and three other Honeys were crowded in the doorway to the living room with their skates on as well. Unsurprisingly, Potts was one of them and was rocking out in a private dance as the others stared at me on the ground.

“And that’s what a roller derby conga line is all about, bitches!” Lena called out from beside me, stabbing the air above her with two index fingers. “Woooooooo!”

More laughter traveled around the room, and I joined in. Normally I might be pissed if someone rammed me from behind, even if it meant I got some bruising out of it, but I liked Lena. She was tough but easy to be around. And hilarious. It was hard not to laugh, and the laughter broke up a bit of the tension in my chest.

Lena finally looked over to see who she’d inadvertently tackled, and when she saw me, her eyes grew wide and she yelled, “Heeeyyyyyyy… fresh meat!” Then she rolled back on top of me and wiggled her body against mine, which was less funny. Not exactly the bodily contact I preferred.

“Okay, okay—Lena you fucking lush—get offa the rookie already.” I gazed up to see Kat standing over us. This was definitely not how I wanted Kat to find me—lying flat on my face in her living room.

But here at a party with lots of my new teammates around, I decided to play it as cool as I was capable of playing it and just continued to laugh things off, hoping that “party Kat” might be less weird than “practice Kat” had been.

Kat helped me up (a good sign?) once Lena had finally—after a couple of tries—lifted her body off mine. She rolled back out the same entrance with the rest of her conga line, seemingly unfazed by the crash or her wild hiccups.