Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,46

for him to unlock the trunk. “I mean, if it’s okay with you?”

“Of course.” He chucked his gear into the car and took the cones I handed him. Light passed over his face, and his mouth pulled into the grin that meant he was about to say something flirtatious. “You didn’t really think you were done after one score, did you?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t made you cry yet.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. He pointed at my T-shirt, Tonia’s old Styx one. “I just want to be alone when I cry over your tragic celebration of Styx.”

I would have flipped him off if I hadn’t been laughing.

My lessons with Joe began to pay off during the next couple of scrimmages. At one point on Tuesday, Marie confronted me as I dribbled toward the goal and I knocked the ball left with the outside of my foot—a chop—then took possession again. I drove toward the goal and took a kick, getting my shot by Dawn.

Bobby clapped from the sideline, and said, “Whatever you’re doing in your own time, keep doing it.”

Tina shot me a look. “What does he mean, what you’ve been doing in your own time?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I’d mentioned my ride home with Bobby, but I hadn’t told her about the lessons with Joe yet. I felt bad for lying, but I’d been hesitant to tell her because talking about a boy with your friends—even if you said the guy was just a friend—meant they’d start pointing out signs he liked you.

But when Tina called Wednesday morning to offer me a ride to school (it was raining), I thought I’d use the ride to tell her about practicing with Joe. Then, Tonia called.

“Hey, Suze,” she said. “Mom around?”

“No, work. What are you doing up? Isn’t it, like, five a.m. there?”

“I just got home from a crazy party, but I needed to talk to Mom about the wedding thing.”

“You mean Dad’s wedding?”

“Yeah, how fucking weird, right?” Tonia said, impatient. She hadn’t talked to me in months; could she at least try to see what was going on in my life? “Can you tell them I can’t make it? There’s a maybe thing going on in Joshua Tree, and it’s too expensive to fly out there anyway.”

“I think Mom said she and Dad would pay for your ticket,” I told her. Dad would definitely want Tonia there, but I was more angry she was bailing on me. “Won’t there be other maybe things in Joshua Tree? Dad probably won’t get married again, again.”

“Ha, there are guys out here on their third wives; you never know.” Someone in the background called Tonia’s name. “Look, I have to go.”

“But—”

“You’re a big girl, Suze. You’ll be fine.” She hung up.

I was so worked up by the whole thing, I spent the rainy car ride bitching about my sister to Tina, who agreed that she was being selfish. After that, she reminded me how we’d caught Ms. Lopez hunched over a Harlequin romance the day before, when we’d had a test on Faulkner, and I knew she was trying to cheer me up. It was working, until we saw Candace getting out of George’s car wearing his letter jacket.

My face must have registered my disgust, because Tina said, “I know he’s a doofus, but she seems happy.”

“We should get out of the rain,” I said, and we ran through the doors of the school with our backpacks over our heads. As we shook ourselves off and turned down the hall to my locker, we saw some of the team gathered in the hallway.

“Coach wants us to meet in his classroom,” Dana said before either of us could even say good morning.

“What for?” I asked.

“Probably to tell us practice is canceled,” Dawn said. “Sucks.”

She was right. I was genuinely disappointed, and not just because it meant no Bobby. After talking to Tonia and seeing Candace with Garbage Breath George, I really would have liked to be on the field kicking something rather than going home to sulk after school.

“He said he has a special announcement, too,” Dana said, loading her voice with extra officiousness.

I looked at Tina. I’d let the jerseys secret drop to her after describing all the details of my ride home with Bobby, wanting her to be impressed with his generosity.

“Well, let’s find out what he wants,” Tina said.

When we got to room 133, Bobby was standing behind his desk in a button-down shirt and tan slacks. I must have