Jordan is already packing her stuff up, having a wrestling match with her duffel bag to get the overflowing thing to close. ‘Chores?’ she grunts between shoves, a simple one-word question.

‘Yep,’ I reply. I pop my right cleat off my foot and toss it to the side, getting to work on the left. ‘Cattle.’

‘Same.’ She finally manages to get the zipper all the way around her bag and turns to me. ‘How are you feeling about this season?’

I make a dismissive psshh sound, to which my best friend raises an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘May. Be nice. I’m asking as a concerned citizen.’

I stop in my tracks and give her a look. ‘You sure about that?’

‘Asking as a concerned citizen who’s going to be playing alongside you this year and doesn’t want to be tanked for senior season,’ she adds with a snort.

‘Jordan!’

‘You asked!’

I got to know a lot of the girls through lacrosse, and I know all of them well now, but it’s different with Jordan. She’s the only one I’d allow to talk shit about my terrible junior year. We’ve been joined at the hip since we started playing in elementary, when Jordan Gutierrez-Hawkins walked up to me one day, tapped her stick against mine, gave me a partial-toothed grin, and told me we were going to be friends. We were the only two girls of colour on the team – we still are – but our connection went way deeper from the first game we played together. People confuse us not only because we look the same from the back (wavy black hair, exactly five foot six), but also because we’re more often found side by side than we are apart. They’re partially right, considering one word, sometimes even one look, is all we need to get our points across.

We grew up together in Eagle Rock, just outside Prosperity, bought our first crosses together, broke our first bones in the same game. When it came time to join the local branch of 4-H, affectionately ‘farm kid club’, meant to teach us the importance of agriculture and rearing animals, Jordan and I did every single cattle show right beside one another in the line-up. We match hairstyles every game, our braids so identical it looks like someone has copied and pasted them. In our freshman year of high school, when Tuck Decker called Jordan a disgusting slur in the middle of the hallway, we were totally ready to pummel his face in – together.

‘Fine,’ I give in with a hard roll of my eyes. ‘I feel … better. I was drilling alright today. It’s not gonna be like last year. I promise. I guess now we just have to see how far we go this time.’