Rock Bottom Girl(6)

“Look at her looking at us with those pathetic puppy dog eyes. ‘Please like me.’”

They erupted in laughter as part of my soul disintegrated.

“I can see the summer didn’t bring you bitches new personalities.” Vicky snapped her gum and tied her right shoe with some violence.

My desire to be liked and accepted was equal to Vicky’s desire to call assholes assholes. I admired her tremendously for it.

“JV loser says what?” Steffi Lynn asked, batting her mascaraed lashes. Steffi Lyn was a tall, skinny senior and the proud owner of C cups. She was also a terrible person. Her younger sister, Amie Jo, was in my class. As for personality? Let’s just say the apple didn’t fall far from the other apple. They were both mean as rattlesnakes, taking great pleasure in causing other people pain. Even the teachers were afraid of them. Rumor had it Steffi Lynn had gotten a long-term substitute fired because she didn’t like the perfume she wore.

In a few years, she would probably make several husbands very miserable.

It was downhill from there. I tripped over an orange cone halfway through a footwork drill, and they laughed like I’d fallen into a giant cream pie.

When I leaned over to pull up my sock, the senior goalie, a brick wall in braids, sneered at me. “God, you look like a leprechaun. Did your grandpa pick those out for you?”

It was extra mean because my grandfather had died last soccer season. I’d missed a game for the funeral. When Steffi Lynn’s estranged great-uncle from Virginia died, the team collected money and got her flowers that they presented in a ceremony during practice. When my gramps died, they made fun of me for crying when my mom picked me up at practice and told me.

Then came the end of practice scrimmage. The coaches, in their obliviousness, let Steffi Lynn and half-back Shaylynn choose teams.

I waited patiently in the dwindling line as the two seniors picked girl after girl. Until it was down to me and the JV second-string fullback. Denise was in a neck brace.

“We’ll take Denise,” Shaylynn chirped.

And then there was one.

Steffi Lynn made a show of being disgusted. “Ugh. I guess we’ll take her.” She pointed at me.

I nodded briskly as if this were business as usual instead of the literal end of my hopes and dreams for my sophomore year and took my place at the end of the line.

I kept to myself on the field and tried hard to fight the burning sensation in my throat. These cut-throat, freckled dictators would not make me cry. Not on the first day of practice, dammit.

Finally, Coach Norman, in need of another cigarette break, blew his whistle, signaling the end of practice.

“Don’t get sad. Don’t give these dumb fucks the ability to hurt you,” Vicky said, dragging me and my gym bag down the hill toward the parking lot. “Get mad. Get even. Call a skank a skank.”

I gave her a weak, watery smile.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I lied.

Vicky hissed out a breath. “Come on. Let’s walk to Turkey Hill. I’ll buy you a French vanilla cappuccino.”





4





Marley





You only get one opportunity for a first impression. Which was why I arrived at the high school at the butt crack of 7 a.m. on a sweltering August morning. Yesterday, I’d had the briefest of meetings with the harried high school vice principal in my parents’ kitchen on his way to a yoga class. His only instructions to me on coaching were, “Just try to keep them alive.”

When I’d asked about the last coach, he’d let out a nervous little giggle and then ran out the door telling my dad he’d see him in calligraphy class on Wednesday.

The high school was a little bigger than when I’d walked its halls thanks to a ten-years-too-late addition to manage the overcrowding. But the student parking lot was the same. It sat at the bottom of the hill the fall sports teams ran in an S formation, an exercise that would now almost definitely cost me at least one of my ACLs.

At the top of the hill was the school’s expansive practice fields. Two baseball and one soccer with a little extra green space between. I remembered running around the outskirts of the fields during preseason. It had been horrible then, and I didn’t see a reason for it to have improved with time.

My team, and I mentally used air quotes around the word, would be arriving for an 8 a.m. practice. And I wanted to be as ready for them as possible.

I had zero money for a new athletic wardrobe, so I settled for old yoga shorts and a t-shirt. I’d tried a tank top since it was seventy-five million degrees already. But I was paranoid about the roll around my middle. I wasn’t about to stroll onto my old turf with a visible belly roll. I’d given Culpepper enough to talk about over the years.

“I can’t freaking believe I’m doing this.”

Talking it over with my parents hadn’t helped. Neither had sleeping on it. The only thing that made any difference at all was the fact that I literally had no other options. I could take this job—and the adequate money it offered—and stay in town until the holidays. Or I could wallow in depression in my childhood bedroom, most likely ruining my parents’ Airbnb ratings.

So here I was at 7:10 a.m., I noted, checking my phone. I had my freshly printed team roster and the dozen orange safety cones my parents had surprised me with. Wondering how the hell I’d ended up back in the place that I’d felt the most self-loathing and disappointment.