Gimme Everything You Got

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  All I wanted was to not be there anymore. I could see how soccer would be good for that.

  “I’m going to go study,” I said to Mom, who was back to reading her textbook, and Jacqueline, who was topping off her glass of wine.

  I went upstairs, locked my door, and lay on my bed. I closed my eyes and thought of Bobby saying my name like he had, then took the thought a step further.

  September fifth, a field somewhere. Bobby McMann sits on a bench, rolling a soccer ball between his strong fingers, looking across the empty expanse of grass. No one’s showing up for soccer tryouts, he knows, and it feels like no one cares. Frustration sets his beautiful face into a frown. He shoves the ball into his duffel bag and stands up to leave. Then there’s a tap on his shoulder. He turns, and it’s her. The girl he told about cleats. He’d hoped she’d show up.

  “Are you here for . . .” He trails off, staring into her determined eyes.

  “You,” she says.

  He touches my hair and pulls my face to his, a little roughly, like he might explode if he can’t get closer to me.

  (My fantasy thoughts always started in the third person and switched to the first person once I got going. It wasn’t like I was being graded.)

  On my bed, my body tensed up and I inhaled a sharp, urgent breath as my right hand trailed down my body, the side of my palm pressing softly over the top of my shorts. I used my left hand to trace my mouth, imagining my fingertips were Bobby’s lips, and tugging my lower lip as if Bobby’s mouth was doing it. The nerve endings beneath my lips must have aligned with my pelvis, because bolts of what I called the Almost There shot straight to my crotch, where my hand was working faster, brushing up and down, still over my clothes. When I got to this point, like always, my breath grew ragged as my whole body quaked, my hips now pushing up against my hand.

  I yelped and covered my mouth more tightly, and my body spasmed—my head lifting from my pillow—as I came.

  If the way I did it wasn’t pretty, it didn’t matter, because it always felt pretty after.

  I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed and my light brown hair was messy and I thought I might look . . . sexy. Was I sexy? Could you be sexy if you’d never had sex?

  If I wanted Bobby to notice me, I had to look as sexy and maybe experienced as possible at tryouts the next day. I had attributes I could play up. My dad had given me a curling iron last Christmas and I’d mastered getting the longer sections of my hair to flare out around my face, sort of like Jaclyn Smith on Charlie’s Angels, but only sort of. Jeff Sipowitz had endorsed my butt, and I liked my legs. They were still a little tan from the summer, and there was a cute freckle next to my left knee.

  Bobby was definitely sexy. Sexy like someone who could have sex with anyone, in real life, not in his head. He wouldn’t have to masturbate. He could go up to a crowd of women and ask, “Who’s next?” and someone would volunteer.

  I turned on my radio and a Donna Summer song came on—“Love to Love You Baby.” I adored the breathy way she sang it, and now it felt like a sign: I hadn’t been writing off the boys at my school for no reason. I’d been waiting for someone I was excited about, in the same specific way Donna was for the guy she was singing to. I’d picked him, instead of hoping to be picked.

  Okay, so picking our new adult teacher–slash–soccer coach wasn’t ideal. But I thought Bobby was worth choosing.

  I’d find out, starting with tryouts.

  Three

  What I’d told Bobby was right. There were so many girls at tryouts the next day, I wasn’t even sure I went to school with them all. There had to be more than sixty girls there. Either everyone had discovered latent athletic ability overnight or, more likely, they also were fueled by their hots for Coach McMann, because way more girls had shown up for soccer tryouts than for The Sound of Music auditions.

  It was an even bigger deal because the tryouts were inconvenient. We were supposed to get to use the north half of the practice football field across the street from school, and the freshman boys who normally played there would get the other half. But in seventh period, Assistant Principal Lawler came over the staticky intercom to announce that soccer tryouts had been moved to Oak Meadows Park, a mile and a half from school. The rumor was that one of the football coaches didn’t want a bunch of girls distracting his players.

  Some girls had walked over from the school. Tina had driven me and Candace in her Buick, which her mom had given her when she’d bought herself a new Cadillac. Now all of us were waiting for Coach McMann. There were chemical clouds in the fall air from the rampant spraying of Baby Soft perfume and Aqua Net hairspray and Secret deodorant. Everyone was grooming like we were getting yearbook photos taken.

  I had put on my favorite Lip Smacker (Dr Pepper flavored) but I didn’t want to go overboard. I thought I would stand out more to Bobby if I looked sort of athletic, like I could be his female counterpart. I wore my red shorts, but rolled them up at the top so they went even higher than usual and became what my sister would call asshuggers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that warm out. The goose bumps on my legs stood out beneath the layers of baby oil I’d massaged onto them.

  “Susan, do you want Mr. McMann to feel you up or use your body as a Slip ’N Slide?” asked Wendy Kowalski, who seemed to have bleached her faint mustache for today’s big event.

  “At least Susan only had to shave the hair on her legs,” Tina said snidely, strutting across the field in her gym uniform, which wasn’t flattering on most girls but made her look like a taller Wonder Woman with caramel-colored hair. She linked arms with me as she shot Wendy a dirty look. They’d been clawing at each other ever since they both ran for class secretary last year (in the end, they’d been edged out by Jeremy Rokowski).

  Tina doesn’t like Wendy but says at least Wendy’s a bitch to everyone and doesn’t pretend to like her, the way a lot of girls do. Once I walked into the girls’ bathroom on a day Tina had really dressed up, in a new emerald blouse and dark green bell-bottoms, and two girls who were always fawning over her in public were talking about her. “Who does Tina think she is? It’s school, not a fashion show.” “Well, she’s not happy unless she’s showing off.” When I came out of my stall, they shut up, and I said, “You were saying?” and drew a line between them and me with the edge in my voice, even as I wished I could say something more cutting. Later, they came up to Tina in the cafeteria like a two-headed monster and said, “Love your outfit,” in a really phony way. But Tina handles catty girls better than me. She’ll say something like “Did you pick out that blouse yourself? Oh, interesting . . .” and it will sound like a compliment until you realize she didn’t say anything positive. She’s basically a genius.

  We found Candace standing off to the side, retucking her white T-shirt into her denim cutoffs. She looked pinched and tense, and I realized her boobs looked different.

  “Are you not wearing a bra?” I asked her.

  “I taped them,” she said. “My brothers said it would hurt if I had to run and I was only wearing a bra. I really hope we don’t have to run.”

  “Taped them?” Tina asked. “And that’s less painful?”

  Candace put a palm over each of her boobs and shifted them. “I didn’t ask for these,” she said. “But they’re my responsibility.”

  “For once, I’m happy to be flat,” I said.

  “No you’re not,” Candace said.

  I flipped her off, because it was true.

  “What is Lynn wearing?” Tina used her chin to subtly gesture to Lynn Bandis, who was so built that rumors had gone around school that she’d signed a contract with Hugh Hefner to be a centerfold in Playboy as soon as she turned eighteen. She had on some gold shorts that looked like they had been spray-painted onto her body, and a crop top that exposed most of her torso as she did graceful stretches. Compared to her and Tina, I probably looked like the squat round Kewpie doll my dad had won for me at a carnival once. I’d thrown it away because it gave me ni
ghtmares.

  “More than she has to,” Candace said. “Girl could walk around naked and no one would be upset about it.”

  “It seems unfair,” I said, watching as Lynn touched her toes. Her best friend, Marie Quinn, who was wearing shorts similar to mine with a tight red T-shirt, mirrored her stretch. Marie wasn’t as pretty as Lynn, but boys liked her almost equally. They seemed like a set, Lynn and Marie, but where Lynn could be aloof, even icy, Marie had a quick sense of humor and never seemed tongue-tied around guys. “I don’t think Lynn ever went through an awkward stage. She was just born like that.”

  “That had to be weird for her mom,” Tina joked.

  “You look cute,” Candace said, snapping the waistband of my shorts. “Your butt is as nice as hers, if that’s how Mr. McMann is picking the team.”

  “Bobby wouldn’t do that,” I scolded her, in the same grave tone I used with Randy, a seven-year-old monster I babysat.

  “So it’s Bobby now?” Tina asked.

  “Yes. And he’s not like that.” As I said it, I realized how much I wanted it to be true. Because if he was like that, what if the butts he picked didn’t include mine?

  For all I or anyone knew, Coach McMann could have been some kind of hyperattractive psychopath. But even though he’d made me think some really unwholesome thoughts, the more I thought about him, the more I believed he was wholesome, like a sexy Mister Rogers.

  “Oh God, Susan, you’re hot for a teacher,” Tina said.

  “Like you’re not here for the same reason,” I said.

  “Sure, it doesn’t hurt that he’s hot, but I really think it’ll be fun,” Tina said. “Especially since I knew you’d end up here, too, the way you were undressing him with your eyes.”

  We were all so busy giving each other shit and sizing one another up that we almost didn’t notice Coach McMann had arrived. Without saying anything to us, he set his equipment bag down on a bench and began walking across the field. His face was set in a puzzled frown; he seemed to be surveying the park as if he might be able to flip it over and find it was better on the other side, like an old mattress.

  “He’s so intense,” a younger girl I didn’t know said.

  “Do you mean your panties are so intense?” her friend said.

  Someone chuckled. But when Bobby broke into a jog down the length of the field, we all shut up and just watched him run. It was more mesmerizing than when the PBS nature show Nova filmed a lion chasing after an antelope in slow motion and you knew it would eventually snare the animal and tear part of its midsection away.

  An involuntary, guttural half sigh, half purr came out of my mouth.

  “Whoa,” someone else muttered.

  “Wow,” a chorus of girls cooed.

  “Holy shit.”

  That was Candace, who slapped a hand over her mouth.

  He ran back around, and absolutely no one was looking at his face. Finally he stopped, stood before us, and clapped his hands together. “Wow, this is quite a turnout!” he said, and I thought he looked at me. “I had no idea so many girls would come.”

  “Happy to come . . . ,” someone behind me murmur-coughed.

  “So, I’m Bobby McMann. Coach McMann to you, if you make the team. How many of you girls have played soccer before?”

  No one raised her hand.

  The day before, if you’d suggested we play soccer, we would have laughed our asses off. At our school, girls mostly participated in sports support: cheerleading, dance team, pep club to buck up the Powell Park Pirates. But sports just for girls had only really started a few years before. At my freshman orientation, the athletic director, Mr. Burke—after talking forever about how “very proud” he was of the tradition of excellence our school’s teams had—had stumbled his way through a paragraph he’d read right from a sheet of paper about how under Title IX, Powell Park was working “to offer females more equal opportunities to join teams.” He had been as enthused as he’d be reading instructions for a topical ointment.

  I remembered the moment because at the time, Candace, sitting between me and Tina, had said, “I think I’d rather be permanently on my period than join a sports team.” Joining teams was something for other girls, like the handful of girls who played tennis or swam in the fall, or were on the softball or badminton teams in spring. Cynthia Weaver, who’d set school records for the 100-meter butterfly, was a real athlete, and we sometimes made mean jokes about her behind her big back. But it was fair to say most of us had ignored sports until now.

  “Hmm.” That glorious frown came over his face again. “Okay, well, how many of you play sports?”

  “Does roller-skating count?” someone said.

  Bobby didn’t answer, just asked, “Anyone like to run?”

  A few more people put up a hand. I did, too. I didn’t run as a sport, but technically I’d run before. I used to be the fastest kid on my block, when I was six or seven and boys and girls just did everything in a pack and our moms all cut our hair the same bowl-shaped way so you couldn’t even tell who was a boy and who was a girl.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Well, I played soccer at Southern Illinois University and it’s one of my passions. But what I really care about is getting the best out of my team. We’re the new guys on the block, though—” He stopped himself. “Girls on the block. I wanted a field for us at the school, but this one will have to do.” He gestured toward the spot where he’d just run and shrugged. “It slopes up a bit. Not great, but we can work with it.”

  He dumped about a dozen soccer balls from his bag onto the ground in front of us. “I don’t have enough for everyone, so we’ll have to go in phases,” he said. “Looks like we have about sixty people. . . . Line up in twelve groups of five. Then let’s see you dribble one of these down the field and back.”

  “Dribble like a basketball?” Marie asked, snapping her gum.

  “Um, no, with your feet,” Bobby said, deftly touching a ball with the tip of his shoe and kicking it in little bursts, passing it from foot to foot as he moved it toward us.

  It looked easy enough. I put myself at the front of a group that included Tina, Candace, and a couple of sophomores.

  “And go!” Bobby blew his whistle, and the first twelve of us approached the balls on the ground with uncertainty, like they were rabbits that might hop away.

  I nudged mine, but I must have done it too hard because it jumped five feet in front of me. I ran toward it and almost tripped over it. When I got my bearings, I started toeing the ball more gingerly, realizing I could make it down the field if I went slowly. I felt like an old woman but at least I was staying upright; a few girls around me had fallen on their asses. But how did people do this and still see where they were going?

  Bobby blew his whistle. “Wait, wait! We’re going to start with something else!”

  He ran toward us and stopped in front of me. He flipped my ball up from the ground with the top of his foot, catching it as he smiled at me. A special smile, I thought. “Starting slow like that’s okay, a good way to get used to finding the ball,” he said, just to me.

  I felt dizzy with his attention. Tina poked me in the ribs when I returned to the line. “Need to catch your breath, Suzie Q?”

  “Shh,” I said, because Bobby was looking at all of us apologetically.

  “I shouldn’t have started you with dribbling. It’s tough if you haven’t played before,” he said, and I could tell that in his world, dribbling wasn’t tough. “We’ll get to ball handling”—someone giggled—“but why don’t we start out with some calisthenics instead? How about fifty jumping jacks?”

  A chorus of incredulous voices answered back, “Fifty?”

  “Did you say fifty or fifteen?” Candace asked.

  “Fifty,” he said, grinning, his whistle balanced at the corner of his mouth. With his bottom lip, he lifted it and blew.

  Jumping jacks were easy for me, and I guess for Tina, who didn’t even break a sweat. And Candace’s tape must have been working b
ecause she kept going, too. But after a few minutes, some girls gave up—they didn’t just stop jumping, they left the field. We were down to about fifty people now.

  “Good!” Bobby said when we were done. “Now push-ups, at least fifteen. Feel free to put your knees on the ground if that makes it a little easier.”

  “It would be easier if you did them and we watched,” I heard Joanie Fox, a sophomore, say under her breath.

  “What was that?” Bobby asked.

  “I said, you got it,” Joanie said.

  Push-ups were harder. Candace, next to me, was panting after doing three. I felt terrible for her. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. You should do extra, though,” she huffed. “You . . . might . . . grow . . . some . . . tits.” Her face was so red, she looked like the devil when she grinned.

  After a few more, Candace sat back on her knees and adjusted her T-shirt, which had ridden up, before getting back into position to finish. Tina and I eked out our last push-ups—my arms felt like chewed gum by the end—then sat up. I was sweating, but I tried to look unfazed as I bent my legs up in front of me and looped my arms around them, like I was posing for Seventeen’s back-to-school issue. I wanted to be worthy of Bobby’s admiration, but not look like I was angling for it.

  Some of the other girls were murmuring complaints to each other, deciding whether to stick around, and others were silent and sullen. None of us had talked about what we expected from tryouts, but that was probably because none of us had tried out for a sport before.

  It was clear Bobby was just getting started, too, as he waited for us finish and consulted a clipboard. He stood in front of us; our eyes were level with his shorts. I forced myself to watch some kids playing on the swings instead of staring at his crotch.

  “Good work,” he said. “We’ve got forty survivors, I see. Impressive. Okay. As your coach, I can teach you plays, but no one can teach you speed and endurance, which is what soccer is all about. Give me ten laps, from that tree to the fence to the bike path to the playground.”