Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,56
“You’re on music duty.”
“Then I get to watch Laverne and Shirley tonight,” she said, with her chin stuck out.
“But WKRP in Cincinnati is . . .”
Rachel glared at him.
“Fine,” Joe said, and she bounced away. “Sorry, she’s a pain in the ass.”
“I like her,” I said, tying my cleat. “How was the movie?”
“It was the same as the last five times I’ve seen it,” he said. “Lizzy hated it. She’s more into horror movies. How was the rest of the car wash?”
“We made enough for Wisconsin,” I said. I tried to think of something else to ask about Lizzy, but in my head, every question sounded like I was asking about his dating life in a way that could be taken wrong.
Before I landed on the right question, Joe chucked me lightly on the shoulder. “Nice! I promise you’ll learn something useful today.”
He gestured for me to follow him through the house, which I did, surveying the trigonometry textbook open on the kitchen table and the notebook next to it filled with Joe’s scrawl. His work looked neat and orderly, but a page he’d ripped out was covered in doodles of his band’s name.
We went out a screen door to his backyard, where the grass was more trampled than in front. I saw why right away, as Joe bounded in front of a practice goal set up in front of the fence that separated his yard from the alley behind it.
“So, what’s this lesson plan you have?” I asked. I hadn’t expected him to start practice at his house with the same efficiency as at the park. But what did I want, a tea party first?
“You’re gonna learn headers,” he said. Then he looked up at the second-story window where Rachel was sitting, flipping through a magazine. “Ramones!”
“Again?” Rachel said.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked. I kicked the ball to him.
“Both my folks work, so work,” Joe said, kicking the ball back to me. Besides Tina, whose mom owned a salon, I didn’t have many friends with two working parents, especially if they were still married. “They both do sourcing at the Merchandise Mart downtown. They commute together and everything.”
I heard faint music from upstairs, bouncy and energetic. “Volume,” Joe hollered, and Rachel turned it up. I liked whatever it was.
“So you’re . . . babysitting?”
“Nah, Rachel can take care of herself. I just thought if you really want to learn the good stuff, you need music, and she knows how to flip a record.”
“I’m doing it for Laverne and Shirley,” she called.
Joe toed the soccer ball and flicked it to me, and I stopped it with my foot, then kicked it back toward the goal. He stretched an arm out to stop it and smirked. “Nice try.”
I laughed. “What did you say I’m learning? Headers? What’s that?”
Joe widened his mouth in an exaggerated shocked face. “What? Coach Hot Pants hasn’t even mentioned headers?”
“Coach McMann,” I corrected him, toeing the grass. “Maybe he doesn’t think they’re that important.”
“Maybe not. They might even be idiotic, but they’re fun.” He tossed the ball high in the air and then, as it came down, jumped in the air and hit it using his forehead. He sent it straight at me.
I jumped out of the way.
Joe chuckled. “A natural reaction.” He jogged over to the ball and picked it up, holding it under one arm. He explained that if I wanted to do a header, I needed to use the exact right part of my head. Then he came over and, like before, said “May I?” and gestured toward my forehead.
I nodded.
“I never touch anyone’s hair without permission. I know how it feels,” Joe explained, massaging his spikes with his free hand as he looked right into my eyes. Then he gently traced an oval that encompassed the middle of my forehead to not quite the very top of my head. I drew in a breath. My scalp tingled under his fingertips, and I remembered how much I used to love when the school nurses came around to do lice tests, flipping up sections of hair with a pencil, the featherlight touch so relaxing and thrilling at the same time. I never told anyone about that.
“This is header territory,” he continued. “Face the direction you want, keep your shoulders straight, and bash the ball with this part of your skull.”
He stepped away, but I could still feel where he’d drawn the oval. “Okay, how do we practice them, though?”