lunchroom. I dove back into the can and retrieved the bag. If I’m going to throw these letters away, I thought, I should really shred them first.
I returned to my room, put the bag of letters as far under my bed as I could reach, and sat down at my desk. I opened my mostly empty UNC application, and this time I didn’t let all that blank space—or my as-yet-unrecruited status—overwhelm me. I could be a walk-on. I could even still get the call. So I didn’t get up until I hit submit and my future was safe in someone else’s hands.
* * *
—
Friday’s game was against FC Flash, currently the leading club team and our sworn archenemies. Where Albion girls were gracious, FC Flash ones were vicious. Legend had it their coach made them run five miles uphill every practice, and if someone failed to finish within thirty-five minutes, they had to do it again. I would have felt bad for them if they weren’t also the biggest crybabies in history, faking fouls left and right like a professional men’s team at the World Cup.
My mood going into the game was gloomy, and the only thing that seemed to help was spreading that gloom to others. As Janelle and I sat waiting in the stands I sighed deeply and said I had a bad feeling about this. When she got up to get a hair tie from her bag, I moved over to sit by Kate, and sighed again.
“I feel like we’re going to lose,” I half whispered.
She smiled sympathetically. “I always think that,” she said. “But then we usually don’t.”
“But when we do, it’s usually to them.”
Concern dragged at the corners of Kate’s mouth. “That’s true.”
“Ryan!” I looked up at Ronni, who I thought had just been deep in conversation with Coach. How could she possibly have heard me? I pretended not to know she was calling me over, and began retying my cleats as slowly as possible.
“QUINN!”
I sighed and got up, meeting Ronni on the field. I hung back while Ronni set the rest of the team off on a warm-up jog, yelling “let’s go!” and patting everyone else’s ass encouragingly.
When the other girls were out of earshot, Ronni turned to me, and I braced myself.
“What’s your problem?” she said, more gently than I expected, which only made me crabbier. I deserved to be yelled at. I wanted to be yelled at. Coming from Coach or whoever was captain, I found being yelled at motivating. Someone needed to tell me I was the piece of shit I felt I was so I could convince myself to be better. Ronni knew that.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
Ronni gave me a chance to go on, but I clenched my jaw.
“Okay, well, save it for after,” she said finally. “But right now, you need to pull it together. Act like we’re going to win, because we are.”
But we didn’t win. We lost, humiliatingly, 0–3. I tried, I really did, but after I missed the goal for the seven millionth time, Coach benched me for nearly the entire second half. I spent that whole time just trying not to cry because Coach found crying morally repellent.
After it was over we slumped our way back to the parking lot, spread out instead of huddled close together, the way we were when we won. No one said much of anything, and I was sure they were all cursing me in their heads. It was clear we wouldn’t be going out to dinner as a team like we usually did when we played there. Everyone just wanted to go home. I noticed Ronni hovering behind me, and considered making a break for my truck, but then she’d just be madder. Reluctantly I turned to face her.
“Let’s get something to eat,” she said.
All the tears I’d been pushing back for two hours rushed to the surface.
Ronni leapt forward to grab me by the shoulders. “Don’t cry,” she said, half empathy, half warning. Like I could just change my mind.
“I don’t