Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,34

field. He explained what all the different positions did—there was a jumble of terms, fullback and striker and sweeper and forward—and though we all tried to follow along, I’d bet no one would have aced a pop quiz right after. In the first scrimmages that week, Bobby had me play as a forward—his position—a few times, but later he switched me to a midfielder, which was sort of a combination defensive-and-offensive position that Bobby said required a strong runner.

Even if that was true, I wanted to be a strong scorer. But any chance I got to shoot at the goal—in drills or scrimmages—I flubbed. The transition from running with the ball to kicking it into the goal felt like when Candace and Tina had learned the Bus Stop dance and I couldn’t get it. Bobby kept emphasizing that every position on the field had a purpose, but by now I knew that was just how Bobby talked. I sensed forward was his secret favorite position.

At first, it wasn’t a big deal. No one was a super scrimmage standout. But as we racked up more practice, some of the team started to improve. Dana scored a goal on Monday and Tuesday, and Tina had three for the week. Joanie had even gotten one, and she’d been playing defense. By Friday, I was frustrated. I sweated buckets running up and down the field, and was half relieved and half jealous when Tina scored a goal on Dawn Murphy to end the scrimmage. While I was congratulating her—I was glad it was her and not Dana—Coach McMann said the worst thing he could possibly say.

“Great job out there today, ladies,” Bobby told us as we walked off the field. “I’m seeing so much amazing potential from you!”

“Amazing potential” . . . the exact words he’d said to me the day I’d almost quit. I wondered if he still saw more potential in me, or just someone who couldn’t be a forward.

So there was that, plus Candace. Our friendship felt strange. It wasn’t like we never did anything without one another, but I think doing something with just Tina—something that wasn’t us waiting for Candace at parties—made Candace anxious. Since she’d quit, she hadn’t once asked us how soccer was going, and showed next to no interest in what she was missing. And in Kitchen Arts, Candace had mentioned that Reggie Stanton was going out with Karen Baker, but like it was funny and didn’t bother her at all. When Tina had teased her, asking who’d replaced Reggie, Candace had said “no one” and gone back to slicing peppers for our Denver omelet, but I could tell she was lying and I wondered what was up.

So I was in bad mood, or at least a blah one.

My mom noticed as soon as I walked into the kitchen after practice on Friday. She was scrubbing the sink in her big yellow gloves. They were the same ones Polly had at her and Dad’s condo. Yellow dishwashing gloves seemed like something you didn’t put in a bridal wish book but got anyway.

“You look like you had a rough practice,” she said.

“Not really,” I replied. Unless you counted the rude awakening that Bobby thought amazing potential was everywhere.

“Your shirt is filthy,” she said. “And you stink.”

I looked down at the grass-stained blue scrimmage jersey I’d forgotten to give back to Bobby as I skulked off the field. It was a castoff from the football team. Great—all I needed was to make the whole house smell like some freshman football player of seasons past.

“It’s not mine,” I said. “It’s, like, communal.”

“The community has not been kind,” she said, smirking. “I’m glad you changed your mind about quitting.”

“Me too,” I said, not sure I meant it. The confident, walking-on-air feeling I’d had when Bobby told me I had amazing potential had been replaced by the sense that I was missing something that everyone else had. But if I told my mom that, she’d probably have advice for me from one of her self-help books, or tell me it didn’t matter what everyone else did as long as I was doing my best. Ugh.

I opened the fridge to find that she must have gone shopping before coming home and putting on the yellow gloves, because there were two new packs of lunch meat, lettuce, mustard, and cheese from the deli. I pulled everything out to make myself a sandwich.

“Don’t you have class?” It was only five thirty, and she usually