Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,73
we made terrible passes that meandered to the goal. But those two goals were both on her right side, and I thought of what Joe had said about finding a goalie’s weakness. I still had hope we could pull out a win, even if it was fading fast.
At the half, Bobby told us to take advantage of our opponents’ newness. “You’ve played harder scrimmages against each other,” he said. “I don’t have anything else to say.” His normally energetic tone was flattened. Disappointment radiated from him.
Back on the field, nothing improved, but at least the Wisconsin girls seemed to be getting tired. Not hungover tired like us, but tired. No one scored for some time. If anything, we were competing to see who could keep the ball for the longest without mistakenly kicking it to the other team.
But then, with a few minutes to go, I had possession. The ball had come to me when a Wisconsin defender stole from Arlene but kicked it too hard, bypassing their midfielder. I’d been covering the whole field and my sides ached from running, but I took two seconds to map a path to the goal, by dribbling down the far right side of the field.
I knew my moves were clumsy and it took every ounce of focus for me to keep the ball from getting away from me. But we could still win, if I could just get near the goal.
I was closing in on the goal and uselessly sucking in air. My muscles were ragged and limp. I planted my left foot and craned my right leg back for the kick, but the same defender who’d been hounding me appeared at my side. I pulled the ball away just as she swiped at it.
Across the field, on the goalie’s right, Tina lifted her hand, signaling for a pass. I had a clear enough path to her, but I wanted to fix things with Bobby. He’d put faith in me and I’d let him down. I’d full-on lied to him, right after he’d shared a piece of himself with me. A goal wouldn’t get me forgiveness, but it had to be worth something.
The defender swiped at me again. I had to shoot now. Feeling like I couldn’t waste any more time, I didn’t bother setting my place foot and went for the shot.
As I made contact with the ball, I felt the hollowness of my kick. It was weak, and the goalie saw it coming. She easily batted it from the goal.
The game was over, and we’d lost.
We lined up to slap hands and say “Good game” to our opponents. After we finished, Dana jogged to a trash can under the bleachers, where she puked.
“God, we sucked,” Marie muttered as we trudged toward our bench.
“I wanna go home,” Arlene whined. She leaned on Sarah, who wasn’t up to holding her. They tottered clumsily toward the bus.
“I feel like I drank a bottle of hot pee,” Dawn said, kicking a clod of mud from her shoe.
“Hot pee sounds better than schnapps,” Franchesa said.
“I’m gonna be sick again.” Dana gagged and ran back to the trash can.
At the bench, the smile Bobby had worn exchanging post-game pleasantries with the other coach was gone. We stood in a cluster near him. We all were waiting for him to tell us how we’d wasted our one chance. But a cascade of angry words would have been better than his silent disgust as he packed up the team’s gear, hefted the bag onto his shoulder, and stalked toward the bus without even telling us to follow.
We waited until he’d put some distance between us to march behind him. None of us spoke. The only sound was our cleats crunching against the ground.
Bobby didn’t look at us as we climbed the bus stairs. And he didn’t ask for a navigator on the way back to Powell Park.
Twenty
When I’d finally gone to bed the night before the game, I’d been buzzed, but still with a vision, inspired by the talk with Bobby: I’d kick the perfect winning goal and my team would surround me and be cheering so loudly I wouldn’t be able to hear anything beyond their voices. Then, as they parted, Bobby would be regarding me with admiration. He wouldn’t pull me to him and kiss me on the mouth, but I’d know he’d thought about it. Afterward, I would come home to tell my mom that we’d won and that we should order pizza. (Drinking had