“They can’t practice without a keeper. Can you help out? Please?” He didn’t say it loudly, but she felt the weight of the team’s focus.

She took the ball, hands fitting around it like second skin, lungs filling out. “I’m not dressed for it.” She looked down at herself in the jeans and peasant top she’d changed into.

He looked over at a redheaded woman and she brought him a duffel bag. “A clean uniform. There’s shoes in there too. Seven and a half.”

He remembered her shoe size.

“I don’t think I could even if I tried. I’ve forgotten how.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” he said with a smile from long ago, and just like that she passed the ball to him, spinning it into the air.

And the bag was in her hands.

And she was in the changing room.

And then on the pitch at the goal line.

And the world outside her box ceased to exist.

At first everything was a blur. Every inch of her skin tingled, blood rushing into vessels after being choked out. Pins and needles, numbing her. The woman with the red hair was a good striker. The first time she kicked it in, the ball sailed to the top corner. An age-old fury rolled through Ashna. It almost knocked her off her feet. As she picked up the ball and threw it back, the fury spread through her.

Not past these hands.

Words that had been her soul.

The next time the ball flew into the box, her hands slapped around it. The striker snarled at her. Ashna laughed. The sound swallowed her whole.

“You’re a one-trick pony, aren’t you?” she mumbled to the striker.

And she was. Every goal she tried was the same. Top corner. Not a single one went through after that. Ashna robbed every single one. Punching it out.

Not past these hands.

The slam of the ball against her sternum, the slap of it against her gloved palms branded her, and danced across every inch of skin, so essential it blasted her out of herself and back into herself.

The game went on for a lifetime. It was done in a flash.

Back in the locker room, the scalding spray of the shower engulfed her, gathering all that she had found of herself—the straining muscles, the stretched sinew, the wild thrumming heart—into herself.

On her way out, the captain of the team invited Ashna to join them. They played in a local league twice a week—just a bunch of women who loved the game. The pull to say yes was a whirlpool that sucked her toward itself, but that wasn’t her life anymore. She promised to think about it.

By the time they were walking back to the parking lot Ashna was exploding out of her skin. Exploding.