Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,25

He staked three sets of short colored flags in circles into the ground and broke us into three groups. Then he called out a color for us to kick our balls to.

“This again?” Wendy asked.

“When do we get uniforms?” Dana inquired.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I needed to at least crack a light sweat so I could douse myself with the water, but we were just standing there.

“Can we be done early today? I’m helping the pep club bring cookies to the football team.” That was Candace.

“You’re not in the pep club,” Tina chided her.

“I know. But I made cookies and I’m getting mine to the field before they do,” Candace replied. “If they think they get to decide how I show school spirit, they thought wrong.”

“Maybe we need to start a new club for people with vendettas against the pep club,” I said. Candace and Tina laughed.

“The sooner you focus, the sooner you’ll get out of here,” Bobby said, looking right at the three of us.

“This flag thing is so boring, though,” said Lisa Orlawski, as Lisa Kowolski and Lisa Jaworski nodded behind her.

“I get it, but this is a very basic drill and you need to master it before we move on to anything harder,” Bobby said. He smiled tightly.

“What about the uniforms?” Dana asked again.

“Yeah, are they cute?” asked Sharon Henderson.

“Let’s stay focused,” Bobby said, blowing his whistle. “To red!”

“Someone’s cranky,” Candace said to me as we plodded toward the red flag in our circle. “What’s the water for, anyway?”

“Just wait,” I told her. I wondered if Bobby being cranky would make him more or less receptive to being seduced.

“More practicing, less chatting, ladies,” Bobby said to us. “To red, Sharon, not orange!”

But we weren’t the only ones talking. Everyone was. Besides Coach McMann’s lousy mood, there was other gossip, like how Peggy Darnell had gotten caught backstage with a guy from St. Ignatius after rehearsals the other day.

“Okay, you’re a mess out there,” Coach McMann said, blowing his whistle so loud it startled me. He had his hands on his hips now. “You all need to shake out whatever’s keeping you from having your head in the game. Five laps around the park. Go!” He blew the whistle again.

Everyone groaned—everyone except me. If I finished first, I’d have time alone with Bobby. I could splash my face and enticingly glance up at him with glistening beads of water dappled across my cheekbones. One long look from Bobby would make all this crap worth it.

So I took off, the cadence of my footfalls a drumbeat in my ears. Halfway through the first lap, Tina caught up with me, breathless. “Wait up,” she said.

“Can’t,” I huffed, and charged forward.

By lap three, everything hurt, but I was way ahead of everyone, and as I passed him, I saw Bobby give me a thumbs-up. “Keep it up,” he said.

I finished at the bench, well ahead of the team but completely out of breath. “You okay?” Bobby asked as I grabbed the bench and reached for my water.

“Yeah,” I said, struggling to untwist the cap. “Just . . . hot.” I didn’t know if my voice sounded breathy and intriguing, or medically unsafe.

Bobby was smiling at me. “You’re fast,” he said. “Great stride.”

I took this to mean he’d been looking at my legs and I smiled at him, still unable to speak properly. As I tried to tilt the jug to pour some water into my free hand, my grip slipped, sending a stream of water down the front of my shorts. My crotch was soaked. “Oh my God,” I said.

Bobby had turned back to watch the other girls and barely looked as he threw me a towel from inside the equipment bag. “Dry off—there’s more to do,” he said. Then he turned and pointed at my milk jug. “Smart idea, though. I’ll bring water for everyone tomorrow.” He clapped for the girls headed into their last laps. “Looking good, ladies.”

So he just complimented everyone like that.

I was dabbing at the water as the other girls started to come back. Wendy yelled, “Oh my God, Susan, did you wet yourself?”

Since Bobby had turned away from me, I mouthed Fuck you, but she was too busy laughing to care.

Thursday Susan didn’t even get a chance to employ Cosmo’s fourth tip, because I made him mad. Well, we all did.

It started when Bobby showed up to practice that day. Most of the girls were looking at their cuticles or checking