Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,99

had happened or believe the game would actually occur—but I thought maybe someone would show. At the very least, some assholes from St. Mark’s who wanted to heckle us. I wished Joe was there, but I thought it was nice that he didn’t blow off his sister for me.

“There were more people at our Wisconsin game,” Joanie said, squinting toward the bleachers as if she might have missed spotting a crowd.

“Next game, we’ll tell everyone to come. But this is still a big deal, audience or not,” Wendy said.

“Yeah, I feel . . . strong,” Marie said. “Or maybe it’s just that all my anger converted itself to muscles.”

“Like the Hulk?” Sarah said.

“I guess, if he had to put up with more assholes,” Marie said.

“Whoa,” Tina said, as we stepped onto the field. St. Mark’s soccer field—or pitch, as Joe would remind me—was only used for soccer, not football or anything else, and it had benefited from the expensive tuition the school charged. Even though there’d been some cold nights the last few weeks, the grass here was summer green, and the white lines on the field were crisp and new. “Did we die and go to heaven? Because I was hoping for a beach.”

“Wow, what a field,” Bobby said, sounding like the Country Mouse visiting the City Mouse’s opulent home for the first time. “Let’s go warm up.”

We had no idea if there would be a place for us to change, so we’d all worn our uniforms to the field and didn’t bring much extra stuff with us. My dress bag was in Tina’s car for later.

A brisk wind whipped by, activating a patch of goose bumps on my legs as I stretched. We took a lap around the field and kicked some practice passes with the bag of balls Bobby had brought. It was quarter after nine.

“Do you think they got the time wrong?” Dana asked me. “Didn’t we say nine?”

“Yeah,” I said, peering across the field toward the school.

“They’re gonna show, right?” Dawn said. “They wanted to play us.”

“Maybe their coach wouldn’t let them come?” Franchesa suggested.

“I guess we have more time to warm up,” I said.

We ran up and down the field, working on our passes. We lined up to take practice kicks at the goal.

But we grew more listless as it dawned on us that we’d been stood up.

“They’re not coming,” I said. Dawn kicked a ball, hard and off-kilter, so it landed in the empty bleachers. No one else moved for a minute, almost like we couldn’t. The air had gone out of us. It was worse than heartbreak. It was insulting.

“What do you want to do, Susan?” Bobby asked me.

I took in the disappointed faces of my teammates, hating that the only option I could think of was to leave. Then a clatter rose from the equipment shed at the far end of the home bleachers.

“It’s them,” I said, feeling a thrill for a second. Maybe there had been a small miscommunication, but now the game would go as planned. I smiled at my team. “They’re here.” A happy medley of relief filled the air.

That is, until two dozen soccer players, naked except for their cleats, burst from the shed and ran toward us, whooping and hollering. They all waved something white—underwear, it looked like—over their heads.

“What the—” I started to say, as the herd barreled right through the center of the circle we’d formed. We jumped back and stumbled over one another to get away from the nude mass of boys. One of the guys—not Ken—tossed his underwear onto my shoulder, and as I tried to swat it off me, another boy squirted me with something. Liquid splattered my face and entered my stunned and open mouth. It was floral and vinegary. The acidic taste made my lips pucker. I spat at the ground.

They’d doused us all with it. By the time everyone had wiped the liquid from their skin, hair, and, in a few cases, eyes, the boys’ pale naked butts were far away, headed toward the school.

“Assholes,” Dawn yelled, kicking away the graying briefs that had landed on her cleats.

“Cowards!” That was Tina.

If the boys heard us, it didn’t matter, because they were disappearing inside the building. The last nude boy, who I recognized as Ken, took a few steps back toward us and yelled, “Go home!”

I opened my mouth to hurl an insult at him, but I felt like I had when the wind was knocked out of me.