Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,33

capitalism, but I love the idea of someone wearing my band’s name on a T-shirt.”

“What are you called?” I asked.

“The Lady Soccer Players,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he waited for me to react.

“Screw you,” I said, but I laughed.

“I’m kidding. We’re the Watergate Tapes,” Joe said, coming closer. He put a finger under the lid of my shoebox. “But really, soccer, your own cleats . . . It’s very punk rock of you.”

“Punk rock?”

“You know, The Clash, the Stooges, the Buzzcocks. I love the stuff.” With his finger still beneath the box lid, he looked right into my eyes.

“Yeah, I know what punk rock is,” I said. “I was questioning your use of it as an adjective.”

He grabbed his heart like he was wounded. “Ouch, grammar police,” he said. “Punk rock is an adjective, because it’s a way of being.”

“Whatever you say,” I told him and, satisfied that the shoes I’d tried would be good enough, put them back in the box and stood up to go pay.

“Don’t get those,” Joe said. He pointed at the box I was carrying. “Never skimp when it comes to shoes. Your feet will thank you.” He pulled the more expensive ones off the shelf.

“What do you know about cleats?”

“Enough. I used to be a goalie for St. Mark’s. I can play forward, too, if called upon.”

“You? Played soccer?” I took in his black jeans and ratty black T-shirt.

“So into appearances, aren’t we?” he shot back. “But yeah, I played for two years. Hamstring injury took me out for a while, and seeing myself act like a single-minded jock who didn’t know what to do with himself when he couldn’t play soccer took me out permanently.”

“Oh,” I said, wishing I knew how to reply to that. I picked up the pricier cleats. “These are only five bucks more, I guess.” Two extra hours of babysitting Randy the Terrible down the block, but I could swing it.

“Good luck,” Joe said.

“Thanks,” I said, turning to go. I wanted him to say “See you around” again but he was examining the shirts.

“Joey, they didn’t have my gum at Walgreens,” came a female voice behind me. I turned to see a slim girl with dark blond hair slouching against the end of the aisle. Her bored expression looked like a permanent condition, but it almost made her glamorous, like Jerry Hall. “Hi,” she said to me, clearly not bothered I was talking to Joe. Maybe it was his sister.

“We’ll try somewhere else, babe,” Joe said. Babe. So she was not his sister but his . . . babe. And he clearly wasn’t worried about being found talking to me.

“Did they have the shirts?” the babe asked. She didn’t have to put any effort into not looking at me. It was like I wasn’t even there.

“Got ’em.” Joe slung his arm loosely around the babe’s neck and steered her down the aisle.

“We need to get to Jeff’s,” she said, a little whiny, as she leaned her head on his shoulder. “And I’m hungry.”

But he turned back and looked at me. “Enjoy the cleats, punk rocker.”

As he rounded the corner, I waited in the aisle a minute. I didn’t want to be standing in line at the register next to Joe and his girlfriend.

I finally picked up the shoes and left the aisle to go pay, but almost crashed into Joe. “I just thought of something,” he said, grinning at me. “If you wanted, we could, you know, train together. At soccer. I don’t do the team thing anymore, but I wouldn’t mind kicking a ball around. Here . . .” He fished a Wendy’s receipt and a pen out of his pocket and scrawled his name and a phone number on it. As he thrust the paper into my hand, I opened my mouth to say something. But he spoke first. “I’m pretty good, so if you’re serious about getting better, think about it.” He closed my hand around his number. “Ball’s on your pitch, killer.”

He spun around and jogged to the front of the store as I looked down at his scribbled number, wondering what the hell a pitch was.

Nine

The following week, Coach McMann started off by running the same drills we’d done before. I wasn’t sure any of us had improved, but halfway through practice that Wednesday, he said we were ready to try a scrimmage, where we’d face off five on five with one sub in a kind of mock game on a short