Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,122

I said. “Maybe it’s about screwing up, and knowing that what matters about our mistakes is fixing them.”

He gave me a wry smile. “You might be right,” he said, not apologizing.

But then, did he really owe me an apology? He was just a man. Everything else I’d thought of him had been my own creation.

“I can stay out of your way for a while, let you lead the team,” he said. “But I hope you’ll want me to be your coach again.”

I let this settle. The notion that he wanted some role in my life was flattering, and I almost felt sorry for him as he stood there in his algebra teacher clothes. His collar was a little yellow. I wondered if it always had been, and I just hadn’t let myself notice.

“All I want is to kick a goal so hard past Ken’s face that it feels like a close shave of the beard he can’t grow,” I told him. “Whether you’re my coach or not.”

Together, we walked out into the hallway, now mostly empty except for a smattering of students late for class. “I’m your coach,” he said. “All the way.”

“Then it’s settled,” I told him.

We walked next to each other, without talking, to the end of the hall and turned separate ways when we reached the trophy case at the end.

“See you at practice,” Bobby said.

“Okay,” I said. Then added, “Coach.”

Some habits were hard to break.

Thirty-Four

Bobby and Tina might have been on board with the St. Mark’s rematch—or, first match, technically—but the team was taking some convincing. Even as we practiced longer, and were now allowed to use the football field at night when the boys were done with it, the school’s attention was going to winter sports, and whatever small amount of money the school had been funneling toward us was coming in a much narrower trickle. We had started the season with nearly twenty balls and now were down to ten serviceable ones. The temporary goals we had to use on the football field needed new nets, and some of Bobby’s beloved cones had been crushed to the point that they couldn’t be revived. One night, the grounds crew even turned off the field lights on us midpractice.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” Dana asked me that night as we brought equipment back inside to the athletic office. “Playing an actual game against them?”

“We know it is,” I told her, trying to forget a few sloppy moments in practice when it felt like we’d gone back to the soccer know-nothings we’d been in September. “We just need to treat them like any other team.”

“We’ve only played one other team, though.” She was trying to knock out a dent in one of the remaining cones, and focusing on her task. She looked up and said, “I didn’t mean that to sound snotty.”

“It didn’t,” I said. She had a point, too. We’d played only one game in nearly three months. The team wasn’t forgetting how to play; we were tired, and having no one at the school seem to give a rat’s ass about us wasn’t exactly a morale booster. “We need something to cheer everyone up.”

“There’s the pep rally,” she said.

The pep rally for fall sports was the capper to the season. One last all-school assembly to give a hurrah to the fall athletes before the winter dance and the transition to winter sports. It was due to take place right before the winter dance, the day before our game.

“Perfect,” I said.

While Bobby had been calling most of the shots during practice, he’d also been deferring to me to talk to the team at the end of each one. Most days I didn’t know what to say, but after practice the next night, when he said, “Anything to add, Susan?” I was prepared.

“We should all wear our jerseys tomorrow for the pep rally,” I said. “We deserve some school support, and we’ve all been working hard, so let’s remind the student body that we’re here and we’re not going away.”

“Like, and go out in front of the whole school?” Franchesa said.

“Our game’s not even official,” Wendy said.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Marie said.

“Me too,” Tina seconded.

“Then it’s settled,” I said. “Let’s get ourselves some pep.”

The day of the pep rally, as seventh-period classes filed into the main gym, the girls met up near my locker so we could walk in as a team and take seats near the floor together. When we