I imagine most people would be honked if a scrawny, little, runt like Melodious Notes jabbed a pointy elbow into their ribs. But not me. She was just doing her job and I was about to do mine. The Kansas City Beautiful Blocking Queens, or the BBQs, were trying to cut me off from the rest of the rear blockers and force a penalty on us. Only thing is, we Harwell Honeykissers didn’t roll that way. Our jammer, Licorice Whipps, was coming around to lap the BBQs and I wasn’t going to let her points get erased because I was cut off from the pack.


I came up behind Melodious Notes. Her ass cheeks peeked out from under the cuffs of her pink terrycloth shorts, her treble cleft tat teasing me as it moved up and down with every pump of her lovely legs. Melodious Notes didn’t look like the average derby girl but then again I don’t know if we have an average look. We’re moms and teachers and bankers and lawyers and waitresses and we spend a couple of nights a month beating the living shit out of one another.


And some of us spend the other nights in the comfort of one another’s company, although Melanie, that is Melodious, and I try to keep the two worlds apart.


Melodious Notes winked at me over her shoulder. I had to move fast to catch all hundred and two pounds of her; she under weighed me by about fifty pounds and I outstood her by a good seven inches. I could feel the sweat rolling down from under my helmet. It ran into my eyes, stung a little bit, but I didn’t waste the energy to wipe at it with the back of my hand. Just like Luke when he torched the Death Star, I stayed on target, knowing full well if I didn’t knock her out of the way in the next few seconds, there’d be no point awarded to us. Licorice Whipps, our jammer, would be pissed at me, especially since she wasn’t the lead jammer at the moment and she was letting me know it.


Whipps yelled at me. “Move it, Triple Secular. Knock that tiny bitch out of the way.”


A back block would be illegal and guarantee we wouldn’t get a point. I came up behind Melodious on the straight away out of a sloping curve and moved up alongside her. Without hesitation, I turned my right skate in so that I was flung around in a sort of C shape. I knew I was going to hear about the hit the next night when she came over, but like I said, it was all a part of the game. She knew that, I hoped.


Our chests collided. Melodious Notes lost her balance and quickly tucked herself into as much of a ball as she could. She was falling small, or hitting the track with as little of her body as possible. If she sprawled out, she could trip up a bunch of the skaters and that would mean she’d get stuck with a major penalty. Markie Cuttz, the lead jammer for the BBQs, must have seen this happening because she tapped her hips twice bringing an end to the jam. The ref whistled the moment dead. We skated into the center of the track and took a water break at opposite ends.


“That was bullshit,” Kitty Snaps said. She plopped down next to me and took off her helmet. Kitty shook out her long blonde hair. Beneath the overhead stadium lights her glistened. “We were just about to score, too.”


“That’s why she tapped her hips,” I said. “I didn’t hit Notes that hard but she knew if Whipps got by her we were going to go up one-nothing.”


“Whipps ain’t gonna like it,” Kitty said.


I looked at her over my water bottle. “Don’t you teach grammar to third graders?” I asked.


“That’s during the day, Triples,” she said. “From eight to four I’m Miss Crawford. From eight to midnight three times a month I’m Kitty Snaps.” She purred up next to me. I laughed and pushed her away, looking to the opposite end of the infield to see if Melodious Notes had seen us kidding around. Like I said, I felt the need to keep our private life separate from the bouts. Not because I was ashamed or embarrassed, but because I didn’t want anything interfering with the match.


“Hey, Trips,” Licorice Whipps said. She rolled over to stand in front of me. “You and your little girlfriend have a tiff or something, leave it at home.”


“She’s not my girlfriend, Megan.” She hated it when I called her by her real name. I hated it when she called me out.


“You didn’t have to knock her down. All you had to do was get back with the pack. You can’t do that, maybe you should hit the gym before our next bout in two weeks.”


“Take it easy, Megan--.” Kitty said. Whipps’ glare cut her off. I don’t know but to me it seemed the silent, violent exchange was about something more than just Kitty having called Whipps by her real first name.
Whipps pointed her finger at me. “Look, all I’m saying is you want to skate for fun go to open skate at a rink. We’re here to win. First place in our division will get us to regional finals in St. Louis.”


Our manager, Benny Granger, hustled over, the nylon from his track pants brushing loudly between his thick thighs. Benny was a big guy with blue collar muscles. He was also Megan’s husband.
    

“Kitty, you’re taking over as jammer,” he said. Megan whipped her face around to her husband. Before she could say anything, he squared his jaw and stared her down. “This is about the match, Megan. It’s what’s best for the team. It’s for the good of the game.” He might have left it at that but he went a step further. “Kitty can squeeze her way through their blockers. I need you on defense.”


Megan’s eyes narrowed and again it wasn’t because he called her Megan at the track that she was mad. Ben reached for the helmet cover she wore with the star on it; whoever wore the star was the jammer. Megan knocked his hand away and removed the pantie from her helmet herself. She dropped it in Kitty’s lap and rolled away.


“Meow,” Kitty said. She clawed the air with her fingers. Something passed between her and Benny. It could have just been my mind playing tricks on me and I tried to ignore any thoughts that lovely little Kitty Snapps, teacher by day, was whoring around by night with the husband of a woman the derby world knew as Licorice Whipps.


The ref blew his whistle and we rolled out onto the track, lining up for the bout. Ginger Ales and Dani Darling were our pivots and they took their spots in front of Kitty at the pivot line. It would be their job to set the pace of the skate. That left the rest of us behind our jammer Kitty. The BBQs rolled out and I saw that the pantie Melodious Notes wore on her helmet had two stripes meaning she was one of the two BBQ pivots. After I knocked her down her coach must have decided she’d be better suited out front.


When the next whistle blew there were no false starts and we pushed forward following the pivots around the track. It was a refurbished and raised track, one from back in the days when the derby filled the airwaves and before that when it ran underground during Prohibition. Think of a NASCAR track with the raised bends at either end only on a smaller, less inclined scale. The track rose a good ten feet off the ground at either end. A three pipe metal guard rail ran along the entire stage. Fans stayed in the stands to avoid injury if a girl flipped over the rail. Sometimes the host site dropped mats on the concrete floor to give the impression of safety.

Sometimes.


A few laps around and I sensed we were ready to make our moves. Ginger and Dani increased their speed. Kitty followed. Our pack began pushing its way up through the BBQ blockers. Whipps was hip-checking like it was going out of style, aggressively going forward like she was still the jammer. She cut a path for Kitty to slip into. Kitty put her hands on Dani’s narrow hips, hoping to get whipped forward and get in front of the BBQs jammer as we came out of a bend. If she did, we’d have the lead and she’d be able to pass through the pack. She’d still have to lap to score the point.


Dani swung her hips and Kitty shot forward. In the same instant, Whipps delivered a J-block against one of the BBQs. I had seen Whipps crouch low as Kitty reached for Dani. When Kitty rocketed forward, Whipps rose up and hit the opponent with her shoulder. The blow was thunderous. The blocker lost her balance and control and slammed into Kitty from behind, giving the teacher just enough additional inertia to send her over one of the guard rails. I saw her wheels fly high over the track as she flipped over the top rail, her throat striking the pipe. There were screams and whistles and shouts and then the arena went quiet.


Dead quiet. Both teams rolled up to the railing and looked over.


Kitty was sprawled on mats had been dropped that night. Blood flowed from her nose and mouth and probably the ear hidden beneath her awkwardly turned head. Her helmet had done little to keep her neck from snapping when she hit the rail.


The EMTs on call hurried over with their neck and back injury board. A few seconds later they told the MC to clear the hall and we knew, we all knew, Kitty was dead.


Flashes from cell phones popped all around the stands. Security guards were waving their arms in the air to block the shots as much as possible. One took off her coat and waved it up and down. The EMTs covered Kitty with a sheet and stood in front of her to shield her even more from the gawking crowd that had come for a bloodbath and had gotten one, although no one in the sport ever expects a bout to end with one of their own dead.


Melodious rolled over to me. She was sobbing. I hugged her and because I was so much taller than her, I could look at the infield of the track. Megan Granger sat on a bench taking off her skates. She stared at the floor.


I let go of Melanie and skated over to where Megan sat completely ignoring the tragedy she had caused. I smacked her helmet with my palm.


“What the fuck is that about?” she asked. She took off her helmet and threw it off to the side as she stood.


“You tell me, Megan. Why did you throw the J-block just as Kitty was going to pass the lead jammer?”


“I saw an opportunity, I took it.”


My cheeks burned. “You mean to block, right? You were just trying to block the BBQ skater so Kitty could take the lead, right?”


Her eyes got small again. “You think I did it for some other reason?”


I could hear the sirens outside. The police were in the parking lot.


Megan shoved her palm into my shoulder. “That what you think, Trips? I had some ulterior motive in mind?”


Did she know what I thought I knew? Did she know her husband was lacing skates with the third grade teacher? If she did, then her actions on the track were meant to inflict grievously bodily harm. I searched Megan’s eyes and slowly they went from extremely hostile to smug.


I stepped back. Even if what I thought had happened did take place, how would I ever convince anyone it had? What had I seen pass between Benny and Kat? A raised eyebrow? A stretched cheek? An upturn in a smile? What would I tell the cops investigating the incident? That Megan had committed murder by using a hundred and thirty pound human projectile?


Benny came over. He took Megan by the elbow. She tried to jerk it away but he held firm. “The cops want to talk to you, Megan. They want to know what happened.”


“I threw a block and knocked that BBQ broad on her ass,” Megan said. “The rest was just kinetic, baby. A chain of events that only nature could duplicate.”


“That better be all it was,” Benny said. He dropped his eyes. His fingers flexed open and closed. He looked briefly behind him at the rail where Kitty Snapps had gone over and then I knew. I was certain. The silence inside that track screamed of unspoken secrets between the husband and wife.


Megan gave Benny a devilish smile, patted his cheek. “Don’t worry, baby. It was all for the game, right?” Megan picked up her bag and walked down the ramp. Once below, she spoke to the officers, turning around and pointing at the railing then her own throat.


I could handle elbows to the ribs and I could handle rough blocking, but what I couldn’t handle was murder. Whether Benny Granger and his wife could was between them. For me, I knew that every time I laced up the skates and pulled on the pads as a Honeykisser, I’d be skating with someone who had gotten away with a crime. Next time it could be me or Melanie.


Or even Megan Granger herself.


There was no telling what I might do if I found myself coming up behind Licorice Whipps on an outside curve. Speed and force is just as deadly a weapon as a bullet from a gun. Either way, it’s the impact at the end that kills you. And when or if it happens to her, falling small will be the least of Megan Granger’s concerns.