Rock Bottom Girl(20)

I slapped a damp paper towel over my throbbing cheekbone and cursed my life.





Me: OK, Ms. Psychology Major. I’ve got two girls on the team battling it out over the same boy. How do I fix it?





Zinnia: I do not miss those teen years. We were so dumb.





Me: Come on. You never stooped to the normalcy of obsessing over a boy. You were too busy being brilliant.





Zinnia: Don’t be a jerk.





Me: Sorry. Rough day. I vomited in front of my team, was carried off the field by a very attractive cross-country coach who ruined my life in high school, and earned a black eye from breaking up a girl fight.





Zinnia: Apology accepted. And I’m definitely going to need the full story. Call me Tuesday? In the meantime, I’ll send you some resources on team-building and the scarcity mentality.





Me: Thanks. I need to find out if this Milton is worth the There Can Be Only One shitshow. Everything good with you? How are the kids?





Zinnia: The usual craziness here. Think we’re going to squeeze in a quick trip to Paris over Christmas break. Edith is really doing well with the violin. First chair in the children’s orchestra! The other two are drowning us in A’s and accolades. And Ralph is being wooed by a shall-not-be-named medical center in NYC for a department head position.





Me: …





Me: …





Me: Wow. Congratulations.





Me: Teen boy named Milton. Go.





Floyd: I can only assume this is regarding Ruby and Sophie S. and their catfight today. How’s the eye?





Me: Cheek. And I don’t even want to know how you know. It’s bruised and they’re benched. Milton?





Floyd: Teenage stud. Starter on the varsity boys soccer team. Floppy Harry Styles hair. Shot up six inches last year. Rumor has it he dumped Sophie S. for Ruby this summer and then dumped Ruby for half the field hockey team.





Me: Great. So they’re fighting over a guy neither of them is dating?





Floyd: It’s the hormones in milk. It makes them all insane.





12





Marley





“You look adorable,” my mother announced.

“Thanks.” I glanced down at my outfit. Khaki shorts and a polo shirt. I’d sent pictures of both to Floyd the night before to make sure it was gym teacher approved.

As long as they weren’t booty shorts, he’d given me the thumbs up. They weren’t booty, but they were shorts. I couldn’t remember the last job I’d had that encouraged shorts.

On the bright side, the last two weeks of sweating my ass off on the soccer field had resulted in the shorts fitting less snugly around my ass and mid-section.

“I made you lunch,” Mom said, holding out a brown paper bag with my name scrawled across it.

“Aw, Mom.” For some reason, it went straight to my heart, and I wanted to cry. Even though the food would be something like soggy leftover fish sticks, my parents’ support was both a security blanket and an oppressive reminder that I’d yet to do anything to really earn their love. I felt like they were just making down payments on being proud of me for a time in the future when I’d actually earned it.

This was my first “first day” of school in sixteen years. Holy shit. I did the math again. Yep. I’d been out of college for a whole person who could drive.

But this was by far the scariest first day of my entire life. I couldn’t handle thirty-two teen girls on a soccer field for two hours at a time. We’d barely survived preseason as a team. What the hell was I going to do with who knows how many of them I’d be juggling over the course of the next six hours? Oh, and then there was afterschool soccer practice. Also known as ninety minutes of pure torture. The divide between Team Ruby and Team Sophie was Grand Canyon deep since their fight. And there was bully Lisabeth lurking around being a straight-up dick.

The girls hated me. I disliked them intensely. They questioned everything I did. I yelled at them until practice was over. It sucked.

My dad trotted into the kitchen, a big grin on his face. He handed me my car keys. “All gassed up and washed for your big day,” he said.

The school was five whole blocks away.

There was that stinging behind my eyes again. “Dad, you didn’t have to—”

“Just want to make your first day as great as it can be,” he beamed.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, hugging him hard.

I really needed to not fuck this up.





My office was…depressing. I hadn’t paid much attention to it when Jake hauled my ass in here. But now that I wasn’t dying of heat exhaustion, I took a good long look around. I didn’t have any office knickknacks or supplies to move in. It was just me and my brown bag lunch.

The bell rang, signaling the start of first period. It was a freebie for me. I didn’t have a class until second period, so I had forty-odd minutes to hyperventilate or peruse the Jane Fonda VHS tape collection neatly arranged on one of the bookshelves.