by Sarah Nego
“Keep going, Luci,” Sam shouted as she sprinted past.
It wasn’t a taunt the way Vanessa’s words were. Sam was cheering for me, and I wouldn’t let her down. I barely paused long enough to touch the goal line before turning around and running back behind my teammates. This was the final lap, but also the hardest. A full sprint from one goal line to the other and then back again. One hundred yards each way. No stopping. Moving as fast as I could.
I raised my eyes to the far goal line so I could focus on my next destination. A few girls were already touching the white line. I didn’t know their names, but I’d be willing to bet they were midfielders. Midfielders always had the best sprinting endurance since they had to be able to sprint down the field to shoot and then sprint back to work with the defense.
Sam’s blond curls bounced in front of me, with Avery running right next to Sam. They were a good distance in front of me, but not anything embarrassing. My defenders. The girls who I would work with the most. The two who had been the nicest to me so far. I needed to catch up with them.
I ducked my head down again and sucked in as big a breath as I could. Pulling energy from the very tip of my toes, I urged my legs to move faster. I watched the line of the box pass under me, indicating I was close to the goal line.
Sam and Avery flew by going in the other direction.
“That’s it, Luci!” Avery shouted, her face splitting into a rough, grimacing smile.
I flew to the goal line and turned. Every part of my body was on fire, but I couldn’t stop. This was what it took to be a part of the Pearson University Lady Pumas, and I wasn’t going to flop out on day one. I needed this team, this scholarship. I could do it.
When I lifted my head again, the gap between me and the last of the sprinters was a little shorter. Maybe I didn’t have to be last. Ignoring the searing pain that lanced up my side, I pushed on, pumping my arms faster as if that could somehow speed up my legs. I lasered in on the back of the head of the girl in front of me and ran like my life depended on it. I didn’t stop staring at her until we were side by side and crossing the final goal line.
I stumbled to a stop and sucked in a deep lungful of air. Every muscle in my body begged for me to drop to the ground, but I knew how bad that was. I needed to keep moving, even if it was at a snail’s pace.
“Catch your breath and then pair up for some sit-ups.” Vanessa walked through the group of ambling girls. Her eyes locked with mine, and she tilted her head in a tiny nod.
No shouts or insults at my pathetic pace. I was going to call that a win.
Katee hit the bottom of the hill, and her legs slid out from underneath her, her butt dropping on the hard ground.
“Get up, Katee.”
Katee rolled to her side and attempted to push up with her hands, but her legs refused to cooperate. Before she could even try another move, her body seized up and she hurled chunks into the grass. One of the girls I hadn’t met yet rushed over, a water bottle in her hand.
“Callaway!” Vanessa shouted across the field. “Katee’s fine. Get over here and get started on these sit-ups.”
Callaway stopped, the water bottle held out in front of her at an awkward angle as if she wasn’t sure what to do. “But she’s—”
“Yes, she’s sick, not dying.”
Katee waved Callaway back to the group and managed to get up to a standing position. Katee wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and followed her would-be helper toward the rest of the team.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Vanessa punched her hands to her hips and stepped to the side to block Katee’s way.
“To get a sit-up partner,” Katee said, her face beet red.
“No, you’re not. Back to the hill for some more squat jumps.”
Katee froze, her eyes wide with shock. She opened her mouth and then closed it. I watched as her face transformed. Her eyes went from surprise, to anger, to a steady acceptance. I held my breath and waited for her to turn back to the hill. Instead she walked past Vanessa toward the benches.
“Where are you going?” Vanessa spun around and followed on Katee’s heels.
Katee grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulders. “Screw you and the pedestal you think you sit on. I don’t need this shit.” She turned to the rest of us and offered a weary smile. “Good luck.”
We all stood in silence as Katee walked across the pitch toward the field house.
“Good riddance,” Vanessa said, mostly to herself. “Everyone who isn’t a big cry baby and actually wants to win a championship, get down and show me some sit-ups.”
A chill ran up my spine as I sat down with the rest of the team. If I wanted to keep my scholarship, priority one this year would be staying off Vanessa’s shit list.
Six
Ryan
Wednesday
Pearson University was known for many things. Some outstanding division-two sports teams, a stellar graphic design program, and a kick-ass a cappella group, if you’re into that sort of thing. It was not known for its beauty.
The campus was mostly concrete with only a few green spaces outside of the sports fields. Landlocked in the middle of Santa Rita City, expansion tended to mean taller buildings, and the bigger they got, the more utilitarian they looked. Not exactly an ideal place for photography, even for architecture lovers.
I checked my battery again and focused my camera on a copse of trees outside the field house. Over the summer, I’d been able to take all the pictures I wanted. Except for those days I spent in Dallas. According to Vanessa, a photography hobby wouldn’t impress anyone there who mattered. She’d insisted I leave my camera at home, which was a shame. That little bubble of rich-people paradise would’ve been perfect for my favorite kind of pictures: candids of people just living their lives.
There were dozens of times when my fingers had itched to press the shutter button on a perfect image. The suburban mom at the garden party who didn’t think anyone noticed her adding gin to her lemonade. The cheating husband sliding out of his neighbor’s pool house during a backyard barbeque. The wide-eyed innocence of little kids who hadn’t yet realized they’d been born into a 24-karat world.
But I’d been the ever-obedient boyfriend and left my camera at home. A few days wasted without taking pictures was nothing compared to the years I’d wasted with Vanessa. This school year was my chance to make up for both of those loses. Starting with my camera.
With the campus still mostly empty for another few weeks until school started, people-watching was a little hard to accomplish. My camera and I stood out, making candids hard to come by. Until the campus was flooded with students, I had to make do with some nature shots, and the athletic fields was the best place to make that happen.
I passed the field house and let my feet lead me away from the tall buildings and concrete walkways that would fill with rushing people in a few weeks. This was my time. The quiet days before the official start of practice, followed shortly by the start of school with all the business classes I was dreading, and then the start of games when free time became non-existent until the season ended.
Last year these precious days were eaten up with Vanessa. I cringed at the hours I spent following her from store to store, holding bags while she spent her daddy’s money. Or worse, the times I had to sit and pretend to listen to her while she planned out our life together. My only breaks had come when she was at practice. Of course, I had my own practices to attend.
After six months together, I had stopped trying to talk to her about my photography. To her, my time in the darkroom amounted to nothing more than wasted minutes that should have been spent showering her with attention or studying to become the businessman she was grooming me to be.
As I passed the football stadium, I asked myself for the millionth time why I’d stayed with her for so long. Once upon a time, I’d thought I loved her. But I hadn’t truly believed that for ages. But I stayed. Not for Vanessa, but because of what she’d convinced me I
could have. But only with her by my side.
The fancy job where I would wear a suit to work every day instead of the grease-stained overalls my dad wore. A life where there was always money to pay the bills with plenty left over for anything I could want or need. The kind of life I told myself I wanted when I left the struggling ranches of Brownwood behind for the concrete pastures of Pearson University.
But the more I saw behind the curtain of what that fancy life included, the less I wanted it. I stayed longer than I should have because if that wasn’t the life I wanted then where did that leave me? Following my dad’s dreams and moving back home to help him run the shop?
I loved my dad, and I respected the hell out of him. It couldn’t have been easy raising me on his own after Mom left without more than a wave goodbye. He worked long hours turning his auto repair shop into something that could support us. But I saw what those long hours did to him. All those soccer games he couldn’t attend because some big wig with an extra grand to throw around had him working late to get an overpriced yuppie-mobile fixed in half the time it should have taken. The nights he came home too tired to eat whatever sorry excuse for a dinner I’d thrown together. It was an honest life, but not the one I wanted.
Excited shouts interrupted my quandary of my future. I’d have to figure out the meaning of life some other time. I glanced up to orient myself, only to realize I’d walked out to the soccer field. Pearson University only had one field for both teams to share, but she was a beauty. Mostly because generous alums were impressed with the success of the Lady Pumas. They’d made it to the division playoffs for the last ten years, though they hadn’t made it to a title game yet. It was still far better than our squad, who hadn’t seen a playoff game in the last five years.
But we still enjoyed the rewards. The field was in immaculate condition with fresh white lines painted every week or so. The stands were new, with elevated seating for a better view of the whole field. The computerized scoreboard had been added last year. It was dark at that moment, but when the games started, it could display player stats and photos with the click of a button.
I rounded the fence boxing in the field and slid around the side of the snack booth. The girls were having an early morning practice, and from the looks of it, they’d set up a scrimmage. I scanned the field, and my eyes focused in on Vanessa. There was no missing her with her sleek ponytail and trademark stretchy pink headband.
Careful to stay out of the direct line of sight of the field, I knelt down and opened my camera bag. With all our schedules about to pick up, this could be my only chance to get some shots of the girls in action. I hadn’t brought my digital camera with me, so the newspaper couldn’t use these. If I managed to get any good ones, they’d get added to the shoebox under my bed where I kept my best work. Not that I had any idea what to do with them.
But that didn’t stop the way my fingers itched to hit a shutter button. I pulled out my old second-hand Nikon and carefully removed the lens cover. This would call for a long-range lens, and I had a new one waiting for the perfect shot. When Vanessa asked me for birthday hints last year, I’d shown her dozens of options for long-range lenses. She got me silver cufflinks instead. So I used some of the money I’d saved from working in dad’s shop all summer and got myself the Sigma C. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the one I really wanted: a Nikon AF-S with built-in vibration reduction in the sport mode. That lens was a thing of beauty and about five hundred dollars out of my price range. The Sigma was less water resistant, and I’d have to watch my focusing at the farther distances, but it still took amazing pictures.
I assembled the camera, draped the strap over my neck, and peered into my happy place toward the action. Of course, Vanessa had the ball. I followed her through the camera, waiting for her to pass it off so I could take some shots of literally anyone else on the team. The last person I wanted under my bed was the wretched dream-killer dribbling toward the goal.
But Vanessa had her own wants in mind as she charged down the field. Her head wasn’t up, looking for a pass. Her eyes were laser-focused on the goal. I knew she was going to shoot seconds before it happened.
Desperate to get a good photo, I trailed my camera down the field to the goal. A girl I didn’t recognize stood ready in front of the net. She bounced her weight from one foot to the other like a boxer seconds before the ref yelled, “Fight!” Her brown ponytail waved behind her as if it too needed to release extra energy. I focused in on her face and took a few quick shots. Her expression didn’t look nervous at all. Her steady eyes watched the ball, and I knew from the way her body jerked the slightest bit that Vanessa was winding up for the shot.
Faster than I thought possible, the new girl lunged to her right, her feet leaving the ground as her body torpedoed into the air, her arms stretched out over her head. I clicked away at my camera, not sure how fast my old beast would be able to keep up.
I was still staring from behind the lens when the ball made contact with her hands. She pulled her arms into her torso and tucked her head down as her body made contact with the ground. Within seconds she was back up, looking for one of her cheering teammates to throw the ball to. She whipped one arm back, palming the ball in her leather glove, and then flung the ball down field toward a girl in a red practice pinnie.
For only a second, I shifted the camera back to Vanessa and chuckled at the conflicted expression on her face. It looked like she couldn’t decide if she should be pissed that she didn’t score or ecstatic that the new keeper could make a save like that. I trained the camera back to the goalie. She relaxed a little easier into the goal box and yelled something to one of her defensive players, clapping her white leather gloves together.
She had to be a freshman, unless Coach Taylor managed to snag a transfer. It made sense since Leanne was a senior and their back-up goalie graduated last year. Using my new lens, I zoomed in for a closer look at the new player.
Her build screamed goalie with long, toned legs and broad shoulders. She could probably save a goal from the corner of the net with no problem. Her face was pretty enough, but I found myself zooming in on her eyes. She was one-hundred-percent focused on the ball. I could tell exactly where it was on the field from watching her. Her expression was so intense and full of determination. If she was that intense in a captain-led practice, I could only imagine what she’d be like in a game.
I snapped a few more pictures, zooming in on her face and eyes before kneeling down again to disassemble my baby. I couldn’t wait to get to the darkroom and develop these shots.
Seven
Luci
Friday
Scrimmage
Laundry
Read first chapter for Spanish
Calculus problem sets
My body danced with excitement. Our team had spent the last week working through our first regulation practices with Coach Taylor and the staff. We’d had a few intra-squad scrimmages, but nothing serious since we were still working through the team dynamics. But things were starting to heat up. With classes starting on Tuesday and games starting in two weeks, it was time to get serious. And for Coach that meant a real scrimmage … against the guys.
Sam told me this was a bit of a tradition at Pearson, and the girls had been talking about it all week. Avery was kind of pissed that we wouldn’t be able to have the post-scrimmage party that normally happened. Once I got my first good look at the guys’ team, I finally understood the anger over Vanessa’s new rule.
A guy playing soccer was always a fair sight, but the men of Pearson University were hot. There simply wasn’t any other way to break it down. Soccer didn’t have the tight pants of football or baseball. What we did have were strong thighs sticking out of shorts and guys who often felt the need to wipe their brows with the edge of their shirts, showing off toned six-packs.
I watched with the rest of my team as one of the guys whipped his shirt off and wiped down his neck from the mid-morning heat. Sam caught my eye from her spot on the field an
d waggled her eyebrows at me.
Glancing away, I forced myself to turn my attention back to the game. These guys were off limits, even without Vanessa’s rules. I didn’t need some sweaty guy. I had soccer.
I wasn’t even in the game, but the energy of a ball soaring down a green field always got my blood singing. The hard facts were I had to play soccer in order to keep my scholarship and stay in the honors graphic design program. But the reality was that I’d want to be out there even if the school didn’t give me a cent to play. I didn’t want to go pro, which was a good thing since I didn’t have the skills needed. And that meant these next four years would be my last shot at real competitive play. I was determined to make the most of them.
I stood with the rest of my teammates along the sideline, in front of the benches. Far enough back that Coach could run the field screaming out instructions, but close enough that we could yell out encouragement, too. My eyes trailed after the ball as one of the guys dribbled around Lauren, our midfielder. He’d caught her flat-footed, and the defense would have to pick it up. He crossed the ball beautifully to the other side of the field where another guy chest trapped it and then sent a one-touch to their center forward. Sam crossed to pick him up, and Avery dropped to cover his right wing.
But they were both so focused on the ball that neither of them seemed to notice the left wing. He kept his eye on Avery, monitoring her position so he didn’t fall behind her and risk getting called offsides. The other players played pass around our defenders while he crept closer to the center.
“Watch for the poacher,” I shouted to Leanne in goal, but it was too late. He caught a perfect pass and drilled it into the top corner, a nearly impossible goal to stop.