MOTION SICKNESS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, JJ!

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@beckmorgan

Phoebe Bridgers | Motion Sickness

Alanna’s supported the Foxes since day one, but she’s not the only one now. Her orange sweaters and ribbons, once markers of the cheer team no one cared about, help her stand out the way she likes now. And Alanna, despite her best intentions to study this week, isn’t able to say no when someone actually invites her to a party that she isn’t already hosting. It’s an honest to God house party. That’s the cliche of college life, and she can’t pass it up.

Unfortunately, for all that shiny brand new energy, it’s also terrifying. She’s used to the Vixens; she trusts them. But these are only her classmates, people she hardly knows, and she can’t tell where she stands with them. Do they like her? Was this a pity invite? They haven’t invited her out before tonight, after all. 

It means that by the time she’s on her way out, Alanna’s had more shots than intended, all in the name of liquid courage. It leaves her warm and giggly and a little dizzy. It also leaves her willing to follow any silly whim, and that’s how Alanna ends up in the dining hall right before they close for the night, her plate loaded with their signature chocolate chip cookies.

“Beck!” Alanna says, too loud and too bright as she makes her way over to this familiar face. Beck’s a Fox; she’s a Vixen. That makes them friends, right? Alanna sits down at the table beside Beck, practically collapsing into the cheap plastic chair. “Have you had their late night cookies? I don’t know how they do it, but they’re always warm. Here, take one of mine.”

She finishes her part of the Alkenes and Alkynes group project and sends it in through an email, not sure if anyone else has even started. Group projects are always like this — half the group does what they’re supposed to and the rest disappear into literal oblivion — only to reappear in front of the class and claim credit on the day everything’s due. Maybe Beck should grow pettier and learn to give a bad peer review but it’s whatever at this point, and at least she can finally head out and go to bed now. Or...not. 

“Alanna, hey. You look...interesting,” she manages, wrapping a hand around the Vixen’s back to keep her from tipping over in her chair. Beck’s not really a cookie person but she takes what’s offered anyway, folding it into a napkin to save for Glory or Stella or something. Beside her, Alanna reeks like a frat house and her face glows redder than a traffic light, but at least she’s not an angry drunk or puking or anything. “Are you, uh, okay?” Beck asks. “You seem a little more...uncoordinated than usual.”

It was easier to ignore their presence when on the field; they were just a nagging thought popping up sporadically, but easily discarded when the focus was diving for close shots on goal. But now she’s on the side, pacing her intake of water as Wymack drives the second set of drills for the other half of the team, and her eyes can’t stop from glancing to the side.

The cameras, the scouts, the knowledge that they are all here, right now — they’re a stark reminder of how much she hates being fucking judged.

“It’s like they’re bloody vultures,” she grumbles under her breath. “Just — waiting for someone to fuck up.

“Vultures. Well, they certainly do seem to like trash,” she replies, resting her racquet against the team bench. “Not that you’re trash or the team’s trash, just that...their news is...trash, and you’re pretty not trash, so... Yee-haw.”

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Rebecka “Beck” Morgan Age: Nineteen Class Year: Freshman Position: Backliner, #31 Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: racism, violence, incarceration

She’d always known it was inside her, the fire that would swallow her whole—that this was something to run from instead of towards. Call it a primal instinct—the way a ratite knows its flightlessness and a deer its own reflection—that anger takes, takes, takes until there’s nothing left to burn. 

She’d never had much to lose in the first place: a perch in a one-bedroom above a crumbling Asian grocery, a father who left and never came back. Maybe this was why falling so far seemed so easy. Her mother worked two jobs, six days a week, but no amount of labor seemed enough to sustain the two of them. The Morgans always seemed to be straddling the brink of survival: an hour of rest instead of working, and heat went out in the household. One forgotten bill, and no more light. All of Chinatown suffered like this, but when you had nothing, Beck learned, those in power could take everything. The threshold for failure was thinner the bones in her wrists.

There was always school, though, her mother said. Get good enough grades, and you could be someone, make something of yourself. Mostly, Beck wanted to get her mom someplace warm. Homework seemed a light burden compared to all her mother sacrificed, and midnights hunched over equations seemed a small way to mirror that love. Come her first year at a new middle school, Beck managed to squeeze into a few honors classes, though being the only Asian kid in school, this only seemed to paint a bigger target on her back. 

The bullying began with small harms: slurs and stretched out eyelids, boys taunting you love me long time. She’d watched her mother endure similar abuse all her life, watched her hero become small as men thrusted at her, watched her role model turn cheek as tourists pushed glass lembuswanas from shelves. They’re not worth it, Beck, her mother always said afterwards, running her hand in circles over her daughter’s back. Sorry, mom, Beck wanted to say, but I can’t shrink away like you anymore.

She’d like to say she regretted it, beating the consciousness out of the last boy who taunted her. She’d like to say it wasn’t the first time she’d felt powerful in her pathetic life. What scared her most wasn’t how badly she’d hurt him but how good it felt, how ineludible the release from within. For so long, she’d held down everything—every injury, every morsel of rage. Do you regret it? The judge asked her, and when Beck couldn’t nod, she was carted off to a detention facility with the rest of the school-to-prison pipeline. Four years. Her mom wouldn’t look at her. She wouldn’t look at her the way she used to for a long time. 

Juvie was a sad place. Thank God there was Exy behind bars, even though most people didn’t think the girls in there deserved to engage in anything interesting. Once a year, the facility’s Exy team faced off in a charity game against the Pendleton Panthers—a team from a prestigious all-girls boarding school and a notorious Big Three feeder. With no other outlets, the juvie team poured all their rage, grit, and sweat into practicing Exy, and with much less emotion, Beck spent as much time as possible alone in front of the goal. 

The team lost three games against Pendleton before they won one, when Beck managed a shut-out during her fourth year. What she lacked as a team player, she made up for in the ability to study plays and rely on logic instead of feeling. Exy was never a passion project for her, it was only something to do to pass the time, but it was something Pendleton’s coach thought she was good enough at to recruit her for. Maybe this opportunity was the way to her mother’s heart again, another chance to get them out of the hell they’d come from.

At Pendleton, Beck did as she’d always done: worked hard and bit her cheek when faced with animosity from other players. On most teams, insulting a goalkeeper would inevitably lead to a fight, but the Panthers turned a blind eye to every transgression. What had she been expecting? She wasn’t stupid enough to expect to make any friends, but it still hurt to see her teammates look past her as if she was nothing, to be excluded from the group chats, from team hangouts, from feeling like she was part of anything at all.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t matter when Beck threw her championship game, when she let a few slurs from a rival striker come to blows. After landing the player in the hospital, Beck found herself curled alone again in a holding cell facing potential charges for a repeat offense. It should’ve worried her, her situation, but mostly, she was just relieved she didn’t have to try anymore. To be no one with nowhere to go would be nice for a while. To have nothing to give or lose or want or burn. 

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

Her charges were dropped in exchange for nondisclosure on the incident. Apparently, some coach raised the possibility of the assaulted striker being banned from college Exy for hate speech, forcing a choice between prosecution and the striker’s chance at a college career. Her parents chose the latter, and when Beck walked free through the station doors, Coach David Wymack was waiting with a Palmetto State contract, offering more people to let down, more to lose.

Swapping into a backliner position hasn’t been easy for Beck, but she sees Exy as a job, something she has to do to secure funding. Wymack included the swap in a revision of her initial contract, partially due to a recruit dropping out at the last minute and partially in an attempt to improve her collaborative skills. She finds the position interesting so far, though being closer to opponents feels like putting kerosine near a lit match—it’s only a matter of time before it all burns.