Read Online PopCo by Scarlett Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

to look and see where your team mates are, or to pass the ball to one of them, so you have three seconds to do that. Anyway, when you pass the ball to your team mates, or even when you are flipping it to yourself, the other team will try to intercept the ball. They can use virtually any means to do this: they can hit your Paddle with theirs to get the ball out – if you are vibing at the time – or they can try to intercept it as you are flipping it either to your other Paddle or to someone else on your team. There is no body-contact between players, so if you shove against someone or trip them up, that’s a foul. You must not hit another player with your Paddle, although that’s sometimes difficult, and you mustn’t break the general rules.’ She has been talking quite fast, and now, having finished, she slowly sighs. ‘I’m Rebecca, by the way, if you want to ask anything. Now … If everyone could just take two Paddles from the box here …’
    It’s not actually that easy to learn how to do this. The right-handed movements feel surprisingly natural, but trying to catch, and then keep, the ball in the left-handed Paddle is almost impossible for those of us, like me, who are right-handed. The lefties, like Dan, have the problem the other way around. I manage to vibe the ball OK in the right Paddle but then, having just about caught it in the left one, I only seem able to hold onto it in a vaguely egg-and-spoon way for about two seconds before it simply falls out onto the grass. Dan seems to have given up on his weaker hand and instead stands there flipping the ball up and down, and occasionally vibing it, with his left Paddle. It looks quite good but is, of course, wrong.
    Rebecca comes up to me.
    ‘Good,’ she says, uncertainly. ‘That’s it, keep it going with the right hand. Now, flip!’
    I toss the ball over to my left-hand side and catch it in the paddle, where it just sits there. I am too scared/uncoordinated to try to vibe it with this hand so I just hold it there for a second or so, my arm quivering with limpness, before trying to flip it back. It doesn’t take flight very easily and immediately falls on the grass again. I go to pick the ball up with my hand but Rebecca shows me how to scoop it up with the Paddle. ‘Like this,’ she says, bending over and hoovering it up with one of her Paddles. ‘Go at it quite quickly, though. Too slow and you’ll just push it along the grass and it won’t go in.’ I practise this for a few minutes and then she drifts on to someone else.
    ‘This is like trying to wank with the wrong hand,’ Dan says, attempting to vibe the ball in his right-hand Paddle.
    ‘Oh, yuck,’ I manage, before we are called back together as a group.
    There is going to be a small tournament, it transpires, even though we are all fairly rubbish at this. A rumour has started that Mac and Georges are both going to play, which is mildly frightening, and some people are also moaning that we are going to go way over time again and miss some activity that was supposed to happen before dinner. It turns out that two half-size pitches have been marked out on the sports field, so four teams can play at once.
    Our team is comprised of the people with whom we warmed up and learnt skills just now, with Rebecca as our captain. We are sitting on the grass in the watery, pink grapefruit sunshine, watching the first teams play, feeling slightly nervous that we are up next.
    ‘Does anyone know what they’re supposed to be doing in this game?’ a girl in new-looking trainers asks.
    ‘No,’ says another girl. She has black hair, blue eyes and turquoise eye shadow. ‘I’m more worried about this fucking meeting with Mac. Were any of you on the list?’
    I glance at Dan. ‘We were,’ he says to her. No one else says anything.
    The others start talking about positions in this game while the three of us huddle and concoct conspiracy theories as to why we may have been chosen. It turns out that the