Pretty Tough

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  “It was a tough decision,” Martie began. “Each and every one of you brings so much to this team. But one student has been a leader on and off the field. In the classroom, at practice, she exemplifies what it means to be a B-dub student. And that student is…”

  Charlie watched Krista lift her head, ready to celebrate and relish her teammates’ applause.

  “Jamie Bonter,” Martie announced.

  Charlie was completely stunned.

  Krista let out an audible gasp.

  Jamie looked the most shocked of everyone as her teammates cheered and applauded.

  Everyone loves Jamie, Charlie realized. She’d make a great captain—to everyone but Krista, who was now sulking in the corner.

  Charlie walked over to Jamie and said, loud enough for Krista to hear, “Congratulations. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.” When Charlie looked around for her sister, she was already gone.

  Chapter Seven

  The week of their first game, which would be against Curtis High, Charlie sat at the desk in her room, cramming for her test on To Kill a Mockingbird. Martie, whom she had to call “Miss Reese” during class, had assigned it weeks ago, and Charlie still had only read the first three chapters.

  Carla had finished the book in three days and actually read it a second time because she loved it so much.

  Charlie tried to focus. The test was tomorrow, so she would have to resort to online Cliffs Notes if she didn’t finish it. But every time she tried to concentrate on Scout and Jem and all the other characters with bizarre names, her mind wandered… to every possible shooting drill she’d done and every possible way she could nudge the ball into the goal.

  Through their one shared wall, Charlie could hear Krista on her cell phone with Brooks, bitching, of course. For someone who had a pretty perfect life, Krista found a lot to complain about. It sounded like she was stressed about Cam—something he had asked her to do—but Charlie couldn’t figure out what. She pressed her ear against the wall, listening for a scoop… or at least something to blackmail Krista with later.

  “I know everyone has”—Krista’s voice came through muffled—“but why is he suddenly talking about this now? It doesn’t make sense, Missy. Cam’s always been happy with the way things were.”

  Charlie pressed closer, attempting to soak up every word.

  RING! Charlie jumped at the sudden noise, then realized it was the house phone ringing in the hallway.

  Moving away from the wall and back to her pretend studying, she figured it was probably Cam calling for Krista. When she tied up her cell phone, he sometimes resorted to calling the house.

  Suddenly, there was a knock at her door.

  “Charlie,” her dad said, pushing open the door and handing her the cordless. “It’s for you.”

  Charlie blinked. Before joining the soccer team, she never talked to anyone on the phone. She didn’t even bother answering it because it was never for her. Now, between Carla and Pickle, the home phone was ringing for Charlie at least two or three times a night. She still wasn’t used to it.

  “Hello?” she asked into the receiver.

  “Oh my God. I’m so nervous for the game,” Carla said. “Are you?”

  Charlie felt a wave of relief. She wasn’t alone. “I’m trying to read for tomorrow’s test and all I can think about is how many different ways I can score off the goalpost this Friday.”

  For the next hour, Carla and Charlie talked about everything from the team’s starting lineup to which boys in their class were cute (Charlie said nobody because they all were covered in zits. Carla said Nate, a tall sophomore with short, almost-shaved dark hair and great eyes who played goalie on the boys’ soccer team).

  Finally, Charlie admitted that she was in trouble. She hadn’t read half the book, and she was going to fail tomorrow’s test. She had to go.

  Carla offered to help.

  “Why do you think I called in the first place?” she teased.

  Over the next hour, they went over the themes, characters, and plot from To Kill a Mockingbird. By ten o’clock, Charlie had taken copious notes. Then there was a knock at her door.

  “Hold on,” Charlie said into the phone. “Come in.”

  Her mom pushed the door open slightly. “Sweetheart, it’s time to say good night.” Charlie smiled mischievously. “Good night, Mom,” she said.

  Her mom raised an eyebrow. “Very funny, but you know full well what I meant, young lady. Tell Carla you have to go.”

  “Wait,” Carla’s voice came through the receiver. “Are you and Pickle still spending the night after the game?”

  “Definitely,” Charlie said. “We’ll give Pickle the play-by-play of all the ways we kick Curtis’s butt in the game.”

  “Great!” Carla cheered. “But first, you have to kick the butt of that test.”

  Krista was changing into her uniform when Charlie burst into the locker room, looking for Carla.

  “Carla!” Charlie called out, knocking into Krista as she brushed past her.

  “Watch it,” Krista snapped, almost losing her balance.

  Oblivious, Charlie held up a sheet of paper with one giant red letter on it.

  “I got a B-plus!” she said, elated.

  Krista moved to the mirror as Carla rushed over, wearing only one sock and shin guard. She enveloped Charlie in an enormous bear hug and squealed with delight. “I knew you could do it!”

  In the mirror, Krista gave Charlie an odd look. Hugging? Squealing? Since when did her sister do either of those things?

  Krista ignored Carla’s excited chatter as she pulled her hair up into a bun. Staring at her reflection in her locker mirror wasn’t vanity; it was routine. And she always had the exact same routine on game day.

  First, she would lie in bed for five minutes staring at her soccer wall. This was the wall directly across from her bed. There was a shelf on the wall that held her various soccer trophies and awards. Above the shelf hung a giant black-and-white poster of Mia Hamm. Under the shelf, she’d taped inspiring magazine covers and quotes, including the Newsweek cover of Brandi Chastain at the 1999 World Cup finals in Pasadena, where she had won the game for the team in a shoot-out.

  Next to her World Cup shrine was a picture of Bethany Hamilton, the surfer from Hawaii whose arm had been partially bitten off by a shark. Most people didn’t realize that Bethany wasn’t only an amazing surfer, but also a skilled soccer player. Krista had found the article in one of Charlie’s surf magazines and had ripped out the picture of Bethany, mid–slide tackle on the soccer field. Underneath, Krista had neatly printed a quote from Bethany, “In soccer you can score or succeed in the last minute.” It reminded Krista to never give up.

  Krista let her eyes wander around that wall, soaking up strength and inspiration. When she walked onto the field, she wanted to be the best. On the field she had permission to shine. It was the one place she felt free and uninhibited, not plagued by how she looked or what people thought of her. It was the one place she felt truly herself, and she was determined that everyone would see her best self possible.

  When she was finally ready to leave her bedroom and get ready, there was usually a card from her dad, propped up outside her bedroom door. The card wished her good luck or reminded her of something she needed to focus on or repeated a quote that her father found inspirational. Sometimes the cards were funny and made her laugh. And today was no different. Except that when Krista grabbed the envelope, something caught her eye: a second card, outside Charlie’s bedroom door. Krista felt a pang of jealousy in her stomach. When it came to Charlie, even getting a card from their dad was competition.

  On game day, classes were always excruciating to sit through. Krista doodled in the margins of her spiral notebooks, writing key phrases to herself. Play hard. No fear. Krista knew she had the habit of backing down sometimes. And if she hadn’t known, she could always count on Charlie to point it out.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Charlie would y
ell. “Are you actually trying to avoid the ball? Do you want to actually play soccer? Or just talk to us while we’re trying to play?”

  Krista wished Dr. Payne would wire Charlie’s jaw closed.

  Besides, Charlie didn’t get it. Krista had been in awful pain after her torn ligament. Pain like she had never known before.

  So fine, maybe she wasn’t always first to the ball, and yes, maybe she would slow down a little rather than plowing into someone like a crazy person—but so what? She played smart, with precision and accuracy, and she had a great sense of what was happening on the field. Charlie was too busy acting like she was the only person on the grass to see that.

  As she doodled, she had to resist writing the other thoughts swimming around in her head. I ate a Twix bar when Brooks wasn’t looking. I’m not sure I’m ready to have sex with Cam. My thong is cutting off my circulation.

  Once school was over, Krista rushed to the locker room, avoiding any hallway where Cam might lurk. She couldn’t be distracted by a tryst in the janitor’s closet today. She had to be on the field early, with enough time to complete her warm-up routine.

  As soon as she got to the locker room, she changed clothes.

  Brooks always said with acting that it was important to look the part, and Krista agreed. With every deliberate action—pulling on her shorts, squeezing into her white sports bra, securing her shin guards, carefully tying her cleats—she felt stronger and more invincible. Slipping on her blue-and-yellow jersey (she was lucky number seven), it was as if she were putting on armor, preparing for battle. She always made sure to bring her lucky socks—the socks she was wearing when she had scored four goals in her club’s league semifinals. Since then, she’d only had to play one time without her lucky socks. During that game, she’d played so badly her coach had actually benched her.

  Once she was dressed, she would pull her hair up into a loose messy bun. She didn’t like the bun to be too tight. She still wanted it to look pretty. Running around and sweating like a boy was no excuse to look like a boy. She finished off her look with a coat of strawberry lip gloss and a squirt of Miracle perfume (she didn’t want to smell like a boy, either).

  Next, she grabbed her Nano. Pre-iPod Krista used a CD Walkman, but since last Christmas, it had been the Nano exclusively. She scrolled to her “game day mix,” which started with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” The song always got her going. And although the mix had mostly rap and hip-hop, she did include “Hero” (by the Foo Fighters, not Enrique or Mariah) for that final bit of inspiration.

  Now she sat in a corner of the locker room, her head down. As she cranked up the volume, it was as if the music was pulsating through her body. She mouthed the lyrics to herself, managing to get through the entire first song before Martie entered the locker room.

  “All right, everyone,” she called out excitedly. “We ready?”

  Krista took out her headphones and heard cheers go up around the room. The entire team seemed as fired up as she was.

  They’d spent the entire month of September working hard, training hard, and playing hard. Everything in their lives revolved around soccer. “Salt and pepper” weren’t spices: it was a passing drill. And “World Cup” wasn’t a soccer tournament: it was an elimination game they played at the end of particularly good practices. Now it was time for their season to begin, time to see if all their hard work had paid off.

  “Let’s meet in the foyer,” instructed Martie. Krista knew it was because Noah was waiting for them right outside the door. All the girls gathered around him.

  Martie smiled at the team. “I want you to go out there and do what we’ve practiced. Curtis’s team might have the reputation, but this team has the heart, right? You find a person to mark and stay with them.” The girls nodded. “Carla, you stay on number eleven,” she instructed. “That’s their best forward. Let’s win the fifty-fifties. Forwards, be relentless. Keep taking shots. If you take a shot and miss, don’t let down. Garbage goals are still goals.”

  Krista knew “garbage goals” were Charlie’s specialty. Rather than requiring a lot of skill, those goals demanded quick thinking and tenacity. It was the same as the rebound in basketball—if someone took a shot on goal and it bounced off the post, Charlie was right there to knock it in and get the point.

  Krista had watched Charlie work with Noah in practice on finishing every play. It grated on Krista that Charlie was clearly Noah’s favorite. Charlie was never anybody’s favorite.

  Now Noah turned to Jamie. “Jamie—as captain, you’ll lead the team in a warm-up, just like in practice.” Krista looked on, wishing it were her.

  “Okay, everyone,” he said. “Hands in.”

  Everyone put their hands into the middle. As Krista put hers in, she noticed Charlie waiting until Carla put hers down, making for a barrier between them.

  Krista frowned. Even on game day, Charlie couldn’t get past whatever her stupid problem was.

  Martie slapped her hand on top of the pile.

  In unison, they all chanted, “Let’s go, B-dub! Let’s go, BANANAS!” in honor of the team’s “favorite” healthy snack.

  Krista pressed her lips together. It was time to play.

  Charlie couldn’t deny it. She was a nervous wreck. It was as if a butterfly colony had taken up residence in her internal organs. Her B-plus high was long gone, that thrill replaced with a stomach-twisting fear that she couldn’t shake even as she ran with her teammates around the perimeter of the field.

  She had been nervous since the moment she woke up this morning, which was at precisely 4:32 a.m. She tried to go back to sleep, but when she couldn’t, she slipped out of bed and into her bathing suit, ripped sweatpants, and a hoodie, grabbed her neglected surfboard, and made the familiar trek down the beach. Martie would kill Charlie if she knew she was surfing the day of a game, but Charlie couldn’t resist the waves.

  It felt good to be back in the water and on her board, navigating the waves instead of around her sister. Her heart began pumping when she looked at the horizon and saw a killer set coming in. She caught wave after wave, cutting back and forth as she rode all the way to the beach. Paddling out again, the familiar burn started to penetrate her arms, but she noticed that she also cut through the water faster. A month of training had made her stronger than she’d even realized.

  When she finally grabbed her surfboard and headed up onto the beach, she couldn’t help noticing her old lifeguard station. She hadn’t been there in ages. It almost looked lonely all by itself, so she took a few extra minutes to sit on the railing, stare at the water, and prepare for her first game in a long time.

  Now, as the girls jogged around the perimeter of the field, Charlie tried to keep her gaze forward and her mind on what she was doing, but she couldn’t help noticing the girls from Curtis. Something must be different in the water fountains down there because these girls were huge. Not fat, but scary, plow-you-down-and-not-even-feel-it huge. Charlie gulped as she watched them run the perimeter in two militaristic lines. While Erica and Buffi and some of the other girls were laughing and joking around, the Curtis girls were expressionless, focused… and gigantic!

  Charlie took a spot next to Carla and Darcy for stretches. Darcy, as keeper, was eyeing the forwards nervously.

  “Are your parents here?” Carla asked Charlie. Charlie glanced toward the bleachers. Both her parents were sitting there, and her father looked nervous. At least one of them always tried to make Krista’s games. Now they were both here for Krista.

  And, Charlie supposed, for her.

  “There they are.” Charlie pointed them out to Carla. Her mom waved over enthusiastically. Ugh! Embarrassing.

  “Are yours here?” Carla asked Darcy.

  Darcy looked around. “Not yet, but they will be. My parents have never missed a game in my whole life.”

  Charlie got the impression that wasn’t a good thing. She looked up in the stands again and saw Pickle cheering wildly.

  “Go, Charlie!” she yel
led. “Go, Carla! Let’s go, Darcy!”

  Charlie smiled. Pickle: the ultimate good sport.

  Darcy took her spot in the goal box as the girls rotated through shooting, passing, and heading drills. Charlie could hear Darcy’s dad shouting instructions to Darcy from the stands. Each time he yelled, Darcy looked like she wanted to throw up. Charlie wished Darcy’s dad would just zip it.

  Krista interrupted Charlie’s thoughts, calling the team into a huddle. Carla jogged over, and Krista put a hand on Carla’s shoulder.

  Charlie stared. Such a simple gesture, full of kindness and encouragement, so why couldn’t she and Krista manage it with each other?

  “Isn’t Jamie the team captain?” Charlie asked, feigning ignorance as she joined the circle. “Shouldn’t she be calling the huddle?”

  Krista glared. Meanwhile, Charlie took stock of her teammates.

  Ruthie shook out her hands and legs nervously.

  Carla jumped around, barely able to stand still.

  Heather took deep breaths as she grabbed onto her mass of curls and tightened her ponytail, securing it in place.

  “Those defenders look really big,” Ruthie worried.

  “Yeah, well, their forwards aren’t exactly munchkins either,” Carla added. “Especially number eleven.” They all simultaneously and non-subtly glanced over their shoulders, scanning the field for number eleven.

  “Oooooh,” Darcy groaned, scrunching up her face. Number eleven looked to be five feet, eight inches of pure muscle. The sleeves of her jersey had been tucked in like a tank top, revealing her bulging arms.

  “I bet she could bench-press Ruthie,” Julie thought out loud. Ruthie looked terrified.

  Krista tried to refocus the team. “It doesn’t matter if they’re bigger, okay? We know what we can do.”

  “Run?” Heather joked.

  “Exactly,” Krista said. “We run fast and we run hard. We get to the ball first. Everybody focus on what we’ve practiced. We’re probably not going to win the ball from these girls—”