Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,114
mouthbreather like Paul Mahoney was coaching, you’d want to play.”
“That happened to you at the DMV?”
“That’s not the point,” she said.
“I think I’d rather play for Paul Mahoney than Bobby.”
“I won’t even entertain that idea. I saw him reach down into his pants to adjust himself today and then put that same hand into a bag of chips.” Tina winced at the memory. “But you’re obviously going to be stubborn. And I mostly wanted to deliver your equipment bag as an excuse to talk about something else.”
“Something else sounds great.” I chided myself for not asking Tina right away what was going on with her. “What’s up?”
“So you know how Todd has to be covert when he calls my house?”
I nodded.
“Well, he flubbed. He said he was Victor, my chem lab partner, but I took chemistry last year . . .”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yep.” Tina traced the opening of her soda bottle with her fingertip as she stared at our ugly yellow-and-brown wallpaper. “And my mom point-blank said, ‘Who is this, really?’ And Todd said Todd Lindholm, because he didn’t want to lie anymore.”
“So now what?”
“Well, now I have to be home by six thirty every night.” She glanced at the clock. “And no phone until I tell my parents what’s going on.”
“Have you talked to Todd?”
She nodded. “I called him after practice, from the pay phones. And I think he doesn’t understand why I won’t just own up to it. I don’t understand, either.”
I thought of the way Tina’s house was filled with photos of her, scrapbooks devoted to every certificate and achievement award she’d ever received. How her mom had even sent away for a college brochure from Oxford University in England, “just in case.”
“Maybe you know that once you tell them, it’ll change the story they have written for you,” I said, thinking of Bobby and the story I had made up for him.
“I think I’m most scared because what if my mom is right? I want a lot of the same stuff for me that she does, and what if it turns out Todd won’t fit in with my plans?”
We’d finished the Cheez Balls. I wished we hadn’t. I needed one. “Maybe he won’t. But so far, he does, and he supports you. Plus, you love him. Whatever you decide you want to do with your life, don’t you want to do it for the real you?”
Tina wrinkled her nose at me and stared at my face with skepticism, like she was accusing it of saying the wrong thing.
“You’re annoyingly right.” She flicked me on the arm.
“I know.” I flicked her back. Even if I wouldn’t have soccer, or Joe, and might have lost Candace, I still had Tina, and being able to give her good advice made me hopeful that I wouldn’t screw that up, too.
“I might have to ease my way into telling them,” Tina said.
“If you don’t kick the ball when you can, you’ll never know if you made the shot.”
“Look at you, with your soccer metaphors.” Tina looked satisfied. “You’ll be back on the team.”
“Yeah, if Bobby’s gone, I’ll come back,” I said.
“You better tell me if he’s a serial killer.”
“He’s not,” I said. “Take a shower before you talk to your mom. You smell.”
Tina smirked. “Okay, and you enjoy your fake-ass cramps.”
I thought all night about what Tina had said, but I still couldn’t see the point of playing. I had existed before soccer, and I didn’t need it to survive. It wasn’t a boyfriend like Todd who felt like a soul mate. I’d used soccer to get close to Bobby and kept playing because I thought he saw something special in me. But he was a liar. I didn’t have potential. I wasn’t going to get a scholarship. There was never anything special between us, and there never would be. I hated the girl who thought that. She was stupid, and I didn’t want to be reminded of her.
Still, all night I dreamed of playing.
I woke up Wednesday, the day Mom went in to work early so she could make it to her night class, wondering if I should go to school. It was also November 7, a date I remembered as Bobby’s birthday from Dana’s early reconnaissance on him. I wished him an awful one. Part of me wanted to go to school just so I could ignore him if I saw him.
The phone rang. I checked the clock: seven thirty. I wondered if it was Tina.