Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,57

Joe hurled the ball toward my head. I jumped out of the way again.

“Good reflexes, bad header,” he said.

“I don’t get why anyone wouldn’t dodge,” I said.

“Because some of the best stuff in sports is doing something kind of stupid and pointless and feeling really cool that you know how,” Joe said. “I mean, baseball’s great, but who thought, ‘Someone should throw this ball at one chick really fast and that chick can whack it with a stick as hard as she can’?”

He’d chosen women for his example, even if he called them “chicks.” I buried a little smile as I thought about what a good teacher he was. He was different than Bobby, who gave motivating speeches to make us see the best in ourselves. But Joe’s way of teaching—with all its rough edges—was no less inspirational. It would be both ridiculous and cool to learn a header.

But every time Joe tossed the ball toward my face, I lost my nerve and ducked or jumped or evaded it somehow. “The music’s not helping.”

“You need to let it infect you,” he said as the record ended. We stood there, looking at the window, waiting for Rachel to turn it over.

“New album, Ramones, Road to Ruin, B side,” Joe shouted at the window. No response. “Rachelllllll!”

“I was reading!” Rachel leaned out the window, holding the page in her book with a finger.

“I’ll take you to McDonald’s if you shut up.”

“Oh, is McDonald’s punk rock now?” I asked.

“I like her,” Rachel shouted. I warmed as a blush crossed over my face. Did Rachel think I was Joe’s girlfriend? Hadn’t she met Lizzy? Or the girl before Lizzy?

Rachel put on the new record, and soon the words “I wanna be sedated . . .” leaked through the window. I’d heard the song before.

As Joe lobbed another ball toward my head, I bit my lip and went for it, but only managed to swipe the ball with a piece of my hair. “Is this song meant to be about me after I have a concussion?”

“You’re close, I can feel it,” he said.

“Why do I even need to know this?” I said. “Am I ever going to use it?”

“It’s not calculus. It’s knocking a ball as hard as you can with your head. Much more useful.”

Rachel leaned out the window. “You’re only saying that because you can’t do calculus.” She grinned at me. “He did too many headers.”

I liked his sister. I liked his music. I liked all of it. How easy it was, to just exist there. It felt homey, like Candace’s.

But I didn’t think I was going to get a header to work for me.

After a while Joe suggested a break and took three bottles of pop from the fridge, which we drank on his back steps with Rachel. The record had stopped, and we sipped in comfortable silence.

“Can I pick some music?” I asked him. “When we start again?”

“It depends on what it is. Is it a punk song?”

“Whatever. You were listening to ‘All My Love’ in your room two nights ago.” Rachel said, and turned to me. “He learned about punk music last year from our cousin in New York and now he thinks he’s better than everyone.”

Joe blushed and nudged her with his elbow. “That’s not true. I knew some stuff before Artie told me about it,” he said. “I had to escape ‘Hotel California’ somehow.”

“This again?” Rachel peered around him at me. “Do you want to hear my brother’s thoughts on ‘Hotel California’? Because he’s going to share them whether you want him to or not.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Does anyone think that much about ‘Hotel California’ anymore?”

“Joe does,” Rachel said.

“Look,” Joe said. “That song was supposed to be about how gross the music industry is and, like, okay, that message is kind of punk. But then they paid off like every radio station in the world to play it a million times a day.”

“Change the station,” I said.

“Ha!” Rachel snorted.

“I get the feeling whatever song I ask for you’re just going to shoot down,” I said.

“No, I’ll replace it with a better song. You need enlightenment,” Joe said. “Punk enlightenment.”

“You’re acting like some lame authority figure on music who claims to hate authority figures?” I teased.

Joe’s lips smiled around the top of his soda bottle. “You’ve been listening,” he said out the side of his mouth. “I’m getting you riled up. Perfect for headers.” He put down the bottle and turned so we were facing each other. “Fine,”