Even the cameraman was laughing...

Pete's Vagina
23. Full Coverage
by Erin Halfelven

Everybody laughed. Sheila bent over her desk, gasping for air. Guy pulled his hand free, caught mine, and shook it, laughing like a kookaburra the whole time.

The two producer guys out of camera shot were laughing, Teddy Todd with both hands on top of his head like he was holding his hair down. The other guy, Link, had one hand on the wall and one on his knee, leaning like he was going to pitch forward. The guys I could see through the window into the engineering booth were wiping their eyes.

Even the cameraman was laughing, with the little red light on top of his machine glowing. We were still live. I turned my head to look directly into the camera and grinned like I’d just run a kick return for a touchdown. Cameras didn’t bother me, as long as Lee wasn’t aiming the lens at my butt.

Teddy sawed at his neck with one hand and gestured to the guys in the booth with a sweep of his arm. The red light went out.

Guy gasped, “Saved by the commercial!” He picked my hand up and held it over both our heads. “Winner and champeen, Tricksy Gayle!” He mock-glared at me. “You cheated!”

“I distracted you,” I said.

“It was a trick! You tricked me!” He was still laughing and shaking his head.

“Well,” I said, smiling now without the meat-eater grin. “I told you it was a trick!”

Sheila pointed at me. “That smile! Pure mischief. Like that girl in the beach movies. Annette Funicello!”

“Guys! Guys!” Link appealed to us. “Save it for when the cameras are back! This is gold.”

“I’m the only Guy here,” Guy said in a perfectly mild voice, and everyone laughed again.

Teddy had one hand over an ear and the phone under the booth window to the other. Talking to the engineers, I suppose.

I started to stand up, reaching for my helmet in the empty chair. “Am I done?” I asked Link. “Can I go?”

“No! No. No!” He almost sounded panicked. “We’ve got time to do more!” As soon as I was clear of the chair, he grabbed it and returned it to its original position facing the camera. “Sit!” he commanded.

I swung my butt back into the chair and sat, trying not to laugh. “You think I look like a Mouseketeer?” I asked Sheila, pointing at my jersey. “We’re the Lions. No squeaking.”

“We’ve got a reel of highlights some fricking someone sent us. You—playing—football!” Link almost shouted.

He had to mean some of the film Lee shot. I hoped it wasn’t the footage where Lee focused way too much on my ass. I sort of remembered promising to strangle him if he showed it to anyone not on the team. “Fricking Lee,” I muttered under my breath.

“Teddy!” Link called to the producer who was on the phone to the engineers. “Highlight reel!”

Teddy nodded. “We already have it cued up. Guy watched it earlier.” He got off the phone and rejoined Link on the wall out of the camera eye. “They’re gonna roll it when we come back.”

“This is live television and we’re mining gold,” Link said to him.

“I know,” said Teddy smugly. “I told Henry in the booth to ASAP our footage to network.”

“Network?” I started to say, but Guy touched my arm and pointed at the big monitor where some familiar-looking black-and-white football coverage began appearing. Lions versus Dogs, the game where the other number 17 twisted an ankle.

“And we’re back,” said Guy smoothly, “here on Sun-Day with footage of Gayle Peterson the miracle girl of the Friendly Lions! Tell us what’s going on here, Gayle?”

“Uh? This is just us, the Lions, taking the field to play the Winslow ‘Dogs. The Bulldogs,” I began.

“Shouldn’t the Winslow team be the Eagles?” Guy remarked.

“These guys weren’t just standing on the corner. They really tried to chew us up. Their running back wears the same number I do, number seventeen, and boy, is he fast!”

“Faster than you?”

“In a straight line, maybe. Watch the film and tell me what you think.”

Just then the engineers split-screen for a moment, showing the black-and-white film on half the screen and Guy and me live in color on the other half. Then they reshuffled things, Guy and I on the bigger monitor and Lee’s footage on a smaller one. They were probably cutting back and forth on which image went out over the air, or doing something fancy like an inset image. Television magic.

I blinked away a moment of dizziness. “That tall guy is Ups, our wide receiver. And the guy with the square jaw is our quarterback, Jake.”

The film cut to the actual game, and we watched. On screen, I chased down Ginger, number seventeen of the Dogs and made the tackle.

Guy whistled. “You are faster.”

I shook my head. “Watch close—he’s zigging and zagging, which cuts your speed. I ran right to where I knew he would be.”

Guy whistled again. “I bet you beat him arm wrestling, too, Tricksy.”

“My name is Gayle,” I reminded him. “Not Trixie. And we never arm wrestled.” I turned another grin toward the camera. “He wouldn’t be a challenge, too skinny.”

Guy laughed. “He probably outweighs you by twenty, thirty pounds.”

“No bet on that because you are never going to find out what I weigh.”

“You said one-forty earlier,” he objected.

“I said closer to one-forty when you guessed one-twenty. That’s all you’re getting.”

Sheila startled both of us with another cackle. Maybe she does regular chicken impressions.

On the screen, I took a hand-off from Jake and dived through a wall of defenders. I remembered this play and felt bad that the camera angle didn’t show Matt’s masterful opening of a hole I could go through. I came out the other side of the ‘Dogs line and put some distance between me and their safety.

I drifted toward the center, then cut swiftly toward the sideline when a second defender showed up in the first one’s path. I went around both of them, letting them dance with each other in the middle of the field. Goal was twenty yards away, with no one close enough to matter.

“You—” Guy began, then coughed a laugh. “I thought you were making a mistake there, heading toward the middle.”

“I needed them close enough to each other to do the rhumba.”

He laughed again. Then pointed to Teddy, who was signaling another break. “And we’ll be right back after this commercial and station identification.”

“That wasn’t much of the footage?” I commented.

“Black-and-white gets old to viewers fast. And this is a longer break. Did you say you had other clothes to wear?”

“I—I brought a couple of dresses.” The red light on the camera was off, but everyone was grinning at me.

“Dresses,” said Link like that was his favorite flavor of ice cream.

“Are we bumping the pastor from the White Mountain Apache reservation?” Sheila asked.

“He’s got his lambs to tend,” Teddy said. “I’ve got a Lion.”

* * *

Mom met me in the hallway with Amy and Maude. “They want to see me in a dress,” I told them.

“Six minutes, max,” Teddy called after us.

Mom turned on him. “You’ve never had a teenage daughter, have you? She’s gonna need fifteen, at least!” Amy and Maude backed Mom up with nods.

“Bah!” said the producer. “I guess we don’t bump the sheep wrangler, we’ll just shear a few minutes off his fleece.” He waved us on. “And oh, I saw the dresses earlier. We’re going with the blue shimmery one!”

Mom rolled her eyes but looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. The blue party dress showed more leg and fit tighter, but the fuzzy one with the daisies had a plunging neckline. I trusted my legs. They had gotten me out of trouble before.

Amy reached the dressing room first, but I caught up with her and touched her arm. “Can Mom and I have ten minutes alone?” I asked.

Maude and Amy traded glances, then both nodded. “Sure,” said Maude. “We’ll stay out here and keep the wolves away.”

Mom followed me in and closed the door. I put my helmet down, and Mom helped me drag the jersey over my shoulder pads. As soon as she lifted the pads away, I wrapped her in a hug and rested my head on her shoulder.

I tend to forget I’m six inches taller than her, but right then she was the perfect height. “I think I’m going to cry,” I said with a bit of wonder.

“You do that,” Mom said. “I know I’d probably need to. That or break something.” She led me toward a sort of couch or daybed. “Sit here or lie down and you just cry it out, honey”

I sat, then stretched out sideways. My eyes burned, and there was something the size of an artichoke stuck in my throat. Tears ran down my cheeks, some of them going into my nose. Mom handed me a tissue from somewhere, and I clutched it. “Sorry, sorry,” I murmured.

Mom made a noise spelled “Pshh!” She brushed my bangs out of my eyes. “Sometimes a body needs to cry a bit. You’ll feel better.”

I knew I would. And I knew the Pete I had been six weeks before would have fought back tears, swallowed the artichoke and pretended nothing was wrong. He couldn’t have asked for ten minutes to cry and wouldn’t have felt better for the tears if he had.

But I was a girl now, and I had permission to be emotional. Came with the job, I guess.

I wept, and it felt so good that I almost laughed.