Gracie

by Suzanne Weyn

  Seven

  “Pull over,” I told Kyle when we were in the S-curve overpass outside town. Without even looking at me, he pulled right off the road. It wasn’t the most private make-out spot on earth, what with cars zooming by, but I guess he figured it was the one I’d picked, so he’d happily go along with it.

  He was wrong, though. Even though I thought Kyle was incredibly attractive, making out with him wasn’t what I had in mind right then. I still hadn’t made up my mind about how I wanted to handle that. But I didn’t quite know how to tell him what I did have in mind.

  I knew we’d drive through here—you sort of had to in order to get out of town—and there was something I’d wanted to do for a long time, but I needed someone with a car in order to carry it out. Jena didn’t have one and neither did I, and it wasn’t the kind of thing my parents, or even Peter, would have approved of. So when Kyle came along, it was the perfect opportunity.

  Kyle had moved in close and was running his fingers along the line of my necklace. “Your skin is so soft,” he said in kind of a dreamy way. As he moved in for a kiss, I slid back and out the passenger-side door. “Where are you goin’?” he cried.

  He’d see for himself in a minute. There were no cars coming, so I darted across the road to the cement divider that separated the outgoing and incoming traffic. Once I was safely there, I pulled a can of red spray paint from my bag. I’d had it in there for weeks, determined to be ready if I had the chance to do this.

  Kyle got out of the car and stood by the hood. “Gracie?!” he called. He was completely confused, and I couldn’t blame him. He started to cross to me, but I was already heading to the other side. I wanted everyone coming into town to see what I was going to write: J. B. Johnny Bowen.

  “Whoeee!” Kyle cheered from the divider as I began to spray the initial on the inside of the wall, just near the entrance. “Your G is backward,” he added.

  “It’s a J, for Johnny,” I called back, still working.

  “Hey, yeah. That’s really, really sweet,” he said, sounding disappointed. I realized then that he thought I was spraying our initials, his and mine, onto the wall. What kind of a lovesick wimp did he think I was? I knew he thought a lot of himself, but that was a bit much. This was only our first date, after all.

  Kyle was impatiently waiting for his make-out session. When I got back to the car, his arms were instantly around me and he kissed me hard. I wasn’t feeling it and I tried to put him off, but it only made him mad. So I got out of the car and started walking. He drove alongside and told me to get in. When I didn’t, he sped away.

  It would be cool to have been Kyle’s girlfriend. My social status would instantly rise to the level of a cheerleader. Girlfriend of a team captain is pretty high ranking. But I didn’t care, just like I didn’t care about anything else.

  When I got home, I hoped I could sneak in the back door and get to my room without anyone knowing I had ever been out of the house. But when I arrived in the yard, I didn’t want to go in.

  I wanted to play soccer.

  The one thing I did care about, nobody would let me do.

  Well, I was going to practice, right then and there. I turned on the night spotlights, not caring who knew I was outside. I grabbed a ball and began dribbling it up and down the yard. Then I shot and landed it right in the broken-down goal. I dribbled it back out, shot, and scored again.

  After a while, Dad came to the window, probably wondering why the lights were on. In their glare, he didn’t see me. Nothing new there. He never saw me—not really.

  I shot the ball into the goal. “I am tough enough!” I said to him, even though he couldn’t hear me.

  This time something inside me was different. I knew he couldn’t hear me, as always, only I no longer cared.

  At six the next morning, my clock radio went off and Springsteen, my favorite, began singing “Growin’ Up” in my ear. I’d set the clock early so I could get up and do crunches before school. If Dad wouldn’t train me to play soccer, I’d train myself. Next, I pulled on sweats and went out for a jog.

  After only three weeks of doing this, I started seeing a change in my body. My abs had always been flat; now they were rock-hard. My calves began to bulge from the daily jog or bike ride.

  I was getting there but not fast enough, so I stepped up my routine. After school I dribbled a soccer ball up a steep hill in the park. I installed a chin-up bar in my closet and began working on that. I was terrible at it, dropping to the floor after only three pull-ups.

  I had to make my arms much stronger, and I thought I knew how to achieve that. The next morning, I got up even earlier so I could ride my bike to school. The super was just unlocking the side door when I got there, and I slipped in behind him.

  By the time Coach Colasanti got to his office outside the weight room that morning, I had been working on lifting weights for a half hour. “The weight room doesn’t open until eight,” he told me gruffly. “And it’s for boys only.”

  I didn’t stop lifting. “Are those written policies or just common practice?” I asked. I had prepared this remark ahead of time, knowing the coach would object to my being there.

  The coach glanced at me and started picking things up around the room, putting weights in order, throwing old towels in a bin. He wasn’t kicking me out, so I figured I’d try to get his permission. “The girls’ gym has no weights,” I pointed out. “I could be here early. No one would know.”

  “I’d know,” he replied.

  “Is that such a burden?” I asked. Deep down, I knew Coach Colasanti liked me. He loved Johnny and knew my family. Besides, he liked anybody who liked soccer as much as the members of my family did.

  He didn’t reply, but I knew I could use the weight room as long as no one else found out about it.

  It took some more weeks of pumping iron, but soon I could do five, then ten chin-ups on my bar. The work was paying off.

  One night I stood in front of my mirror in my sleeveless nightgown and looked at my body. I flexed my arm and a very definite bicep appeared. Pounding my midsection, I could feel that it was rock-solid. I was looking good!

  Eight

  One afternoon after I trained hard, I came home to find Peter out in the yard training with Mike and Daniel. I was drinking a glass of water and watching them through the kitchen window when Mom came in, loaded down with groceries. “Why is Peter here?” I asked her.

  “The boys wanted someone to practice with,” she said as she started putting away the food.

  I turned my back to the window, angry. They couldn’t practice with me? They were just as bad as Dad. It was no surprise. He trained them to be that way.

  “Want to go with me Saturday?” Mom offered. She touched the ends of my hair. “A trim would get that hair off your face.”

  I jerked away from her. What was this—Remind Grace She’s a Girl Day? “I like my hair,” I snapped at her.

  “All right, then, we can stop at the mall for some new tops,” she offered. Something was going on with her and I didn’t know what. Money was tight at our house. Why did she suddenly want to spend money on me? “I don’t like the clothes there,” I grumbled.

  “Okay,” she said, sounding a little frustrated. “You choose something we can do together. Anything you want.”

  What I wanted was to get away from her. She was acting too weird. I tried to escape into the dining room, but she trailed behind me. “Why are you so angry?” she demanded.

  I whirled around to face her. “I’m busy,” I said, practically spitting out the words. It would have been too much to have expected her to notice what I was doing. She could have asked me how the training was going, or why I was training. No, instead she criticized my hair and tried to divert me to a mall crawl, something more acceptable for a girl to be doing. I was so sick of nobody in my family knowing who I was!

  “What are you busy with?” she demanded angrily. “A boy?”

  I threw my hands in the air, giving up. She w
as unbelievable. In her mind if I wasn’t interested in my hair or shopping, the only other thing that could be occupying my mind had to be a boy! “Just things,” I said sarcastically as I walked away from her. “You know!”

  “I don’t know,” she shouted at my back. “That’s why I’m asking. We saw Mr. Clark and Mr. Enright today.”

  Mr. Enright?

  That stopped me cold just as I was about to head up the stairs.

  Mr. Enright was the principal of the school. And she’d said “we.” Had Dad gone, too?

  I turned toward her just as Dad walked into the dining room. “Grace, you’re flunking history,” he said. “Mr. Clark knows you cheated from Jena on the last test. Your answers were identical, even the wrong ones. Your grade right now is zero!”

  This was about as bad as it could get. In my house, cheating on a test was an even bigger offense than failing. In fact, it was huge. But I’d done it and not very well, apparently. What I didn’t want to do was have a big endless conversation about how they were so disappointed in me. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore. “So I’m grounded? What?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that. Not yet, anyway,” Dad replied.

  What could they really do to me? There was nothing they could take away that I would care about. I knew it and so did they. I didn’t want to stand around and hear them blab about it. “Let me know when you decide something,” I said, heading up the stairs.

  In my room, I took out Johnny’s old hand weights, sat on my bed, and began to lift. There was a knock on the door and I knew it was Dad from the sound of it. Quickly, I slid the weights under my bed. Without waiting for an answer, he stepped inside. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  Nothing was going on. I didn’t want to be in school. It was just a lot of useless facts to learn, more meaningless junk. I couldn’t tell him that, though, so I just sat there in silence.

  “Do I have to check your homework every night?” he asked. “If you’re going to act like a kid, that’s how I’m going to treat you.”

  I just turned away from him. I knew this would really get him mad, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  “Okay, show me your homework,” he insisted, his voice rising.

  “Haven’t done it,” I muttered.

  “Do it now!”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I didn’t bring my books home.” I cringed just a little as I spoke because I knew I was pushing him over the edge of his patience, and I was right.

  “You’re grounded!” he exploded. “Come home straight from school.”

  No big deal. Most of my workouts were in the morning, and afterward I could still exercise in my room.

  “If those grades don’t go up—summer school!” he added, then slammed the door on the way out.

  Summer school! Ow! I had to give him credit. I hadn’t thought of that.

  So even though the days were getting warmer and longer and nicer, I came home dutifully after school and went inside. I did my crunches and chin-ups and lifted weights in my room, still determined that some way, somehow, I would find my chance to prove that I could play soccer as well as any boy.

  In my spare time, I opened a textbook or two. It wasn’t that I had developed a sudden love of learning. It was just that summer school would seriously interrupt the months that I was counting on for maximum training time.

  One afternoon I came home on my bike and found Dad out in the yard kicking a soccer ball around with Peter, Mike, and Daniel. I guessed he’d gotten off from work early for some reason. What struck me was the unfairness of it. I should have been playing with them. Why wasn’t I?

  I was walking past them toward the back door when something happened I couldn’t resist. Daniel lost the ball and it rolled right in front of me. Without even thinking, I stole it away.

  “Gracie!” Dad cried, annoyed.

  Peter was instantly beside me, trying to steal it back. He might not have been playing as hard as he could, but I was. There was no way he was getting the ball back.

  In a second, Dad was beside Peter. They were double-teaming! Dad knocked me off the ball with a shoulder charge. That was so like him. He would play just as rough as he could to get rid of me!

  Furious, I charged at him and got the ball back. Yes! I pushed it right, then left, cutting back, and then turning fast, heading for the goal! “Peter, cover her!” Dad shouted.

  It was too late. BAM! I shot it right into the goal!

  What would Dad say to that?

  I waited to hear. I could see how impressed Peter was. Even my monstrous little brothers were staring at me with their mouths agape.

  But Dad said nothing as he picked up the ball. Well, he did say something: “Okay, back to work.”

  I had promised myself I wouldn’t care what he said, or did, or thought—not anymore. At that moment, I nearly broke that promise to myself. If one of the boys had done what I just did, he would at least have said, “Good job.” But he wouldn’t say it to me.

  Well, it was fine. It was just fine. I didn’t need him or anybody.

  In the kitchen, I saw that my leg was bleeding. Peter had probably gotten me with his cleat. At the time I hadn’t even noticed. I tore off a corner of a paper towel and stuck it on to dab up the blood. Mom handed me a box of Band-Aids, but I pushed them away.

  “Take them,” she insisted. “You need shin guards.”

  “You never cared when I played with Johnny,” I reminded her.

  “Johnny protected you,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Had he? I never realized it. That would have been just like Johnny to take care of me and make me think I was doing it myself. Was that why none of them thought I could take care of myself now?

  After washing the cut and putting on the Band-Aid, I settled into a seat by an open window that overlooked the backyard to watch them finish playing. If I couldn’t join in, I could at least get the benefit of Dad’s coaching.

  When they were done, Dad, Daniel, and Mike went inside. Peter was about to leave when he noticed me and came over. “Hey,” he said, “Friday we meet up at the old stadium for pickup games.”

  At first I didn’t understand; then I realized. He was inviting me to go. The flicker of excitement I felt quickly died out as I remembered that I was grounded. “I can’t go—anywhere,” I told him glumly.

  “Can’t—or won’t?” he asked.

  I turned away from him and when I turned back, he was gone.

  Gracie Bowen (Carly Schroeder) [All photos by K. C. Bailey/A Picturehouse Release]

  The Columbia High soccer team, with Johnny Bowen (Jesse Lee Soffer) second from the left, wearing the Number 7 jersey.

  Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney) at the podium during the soccer awards dinner, holding Johnny’s jersey, with Coach Colasanti (John Doman) listening on the left.

  Mike Bowen (Hunter Schroeder), Daniel Bowen (Trevor Heins), and Peter (Joshua Caras) doing soccer drills in the Bowen back-yard as Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney) coaches them.

  Peter (Joshua Caras, left) and Gracie (Carly Schroeder, right) chase a ball as Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney, center)watches from the goal area.

  Mike (Hunter Schroeder) and his mom, Lindsay Bowen (Elisabeth Shue)

  Gracie (Carly Schroeder) and her father (Dermot Mulroney) get in some serious training.

  Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney) and Lindsay Bowen (Elisabeth Shue) discuss Gracie with Coach Clark (Andrew Shue).

  Chairwoman Bowsher (Leslie Lyles), Lindsay Bowen (Elisabeth Shue), Gracie (Carly Schroeder), and Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney) at the School Board hearing.

  The Bowens (left to right: Elisabeth Shue, Carly Schroeder, and Dermot Mulroney) receive the good news that Gracie will be given a chance to try out for the soccer team.

  Gracie (Carly Schroeder) has a grueling tryout as her best friend, Jena (Julia Garro), and the rest of her family (Hunter Schroeder, Elisabeth Shue, Trevor Heins, and Dermot Mulroney) watch the action.

  Gracie (Carly S
chroeder, front) walks by the cheerleaders(left to right: Emma Bell, Bernadette York, Jessica Asch, Amy Dannenmueller, Jennifer Garagano, and Karen Summerton) as they warm up.

  Gracie (Carly Schroeder) on the bench at the big game.

  Gracie (Carly Schroeder) takes a shot.

  The cheerleaders at the game, screaming for Gracie (left to right: Bernadette York, Jennifer Garagano, Amanda Knox, Amy Dannenmueller, and Manting Chan).

  Andrew Shue with the director (and brother-in-law) Davis Guggenheim

  Davis Guggenheim setting up a shot.

  Nine

  Even though I was grounded, I knew Mom was taking the boys to the dentist that Friday and Dad wouldn’t be home from work for a while. I took a chance and instead of going straight home after school, like I was supposed to, I took Peter up on his invitation to join the pickup game at the old stadium.

  Jena came with me, always wanting to be anyplace where guys would be. “What did you tell your parents?” she asked as we walked to the field.

  “About this? Nothing,” I admitted.

  I could see guys milling around, getting ready to play. I knew most of them from the team: Joe, Ben, Craig, Curt, and some others whose names I wasn’t sure of.

  Kyle approached from the opposite side of the field. The moment I saw him, I stopped and tensed up inside. Since our date-gone-wrong, I had discovered that he’d made bets with guys that he would score with me that night. When I found out about that, I was so glad I’d walked out of his car. I wondered if he’d told them the truth about it. Now he just glared at me whenever we passed in the hall in school.