The Football Girl

by Thatcher Heldring

  “Just do it nicely,” he said with a shrug.

  I walked away from them. I had to think for myself. I blocked out all the other voices. I went straight to Aaron Parker. He and some of the other older players were there as assistant coaches. Aaron was twirling a whistle on a string.

  “Parker,” I said, coming up from behind.

  “That’s me,” he said, turning around. He started to smile. Then he saw Tessa. “Why is she here?”

  “She’s not leaving, dude. You got it? She has a right to be here.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Aaron answered quietly. “I’ve been cool to you because your brother was cool to me, but I am telling you now, this is my team. I do not want her here. She’s poison.”

  “She’s a football player.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “She’s a football player,” I repeated.

  “You know I’m a captain, right?” Aaron asked. “That means Coach cares what I think about who makes the team. He’ll ask me after camp who I liked. I’ll name a few guys. And they’re in. And the rest,” he said, pointing to the parking lot, “can go join the chess team.”

  I knew that was not exactly how it worked. There was no way the coaches would let a player—even a captain—decide who made the team. So, the threat didn’t really scare me, although I knew Aaron could easily make my life miserable as long as we were in the same school, and maybe afterward too. But I couldn’t back down now. That would be even worse.

  “You said it yourself,” I replied. “Someday this team is going to need me. And when I’m picking my nose in drama club instead of helping us win, everyone’s going to know it’s because of you, because you couldn’t handle one girl in football camp. So get over it.”

  “Wow, that’s big talk for a freshman,” Aaron said. “Even a McCleary. You better be ready to prove it. Or I am going to make this the longest year of your life.”

  After he walked away, Dobie and Nick came up to me.

  “What did you do?” Dobie asked.

  “I think I just painted a bull’s-eye on my butt.”

  I had never worn a football helmet. I had worn bike helmets, ski helmets, and a hockey mask for Halloween. But this was different. The first thing I wondered, after my first few breaths, was how many people had stunk up this helmet before me. As I ran wind sprints in the baking sun, I could feel my skull absorbing the stench of a thousand sweaty freshmen.

  All I could see was the world straight ahead of me. Caleb could have been right at my side, and I wouldn’t have known. So I focused on the white line at the other end of the field, and when I got there, I turned around and did it again.

  That was the first day of football camp.

  One down. Nine to go.

  —

  “So you didn’t even play football?” Marina asked me later that day as we sat by the public pool.

  “We just ran,” I groaned. I wasn’t even going to pretend I had enjoyed it. My friends would have seen through the act anyway. “My head still hurts from the helmet. I think it was too tight.”

  “We ran too,” Lexie said, rubbing it in. “Of course all I felt was the cool breeze on my cheeks as we sprinted through the forest.”

  “Are you going back?” Marina asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I have to do something great.”

  “Here we go again,” Marina said.

  “Nah, it’s not like that anymore,” I replied. “I don’t mean catching a game-winning pass. I already know that’s probably not going to happen.”

  “Well, what, then?” Lexie asked.

  “I haven’t figured it out.”

  “You could not die,” Marina suggested. “That would be great.”

  “I would settle for that,” I answered.

  “Well, if you do survive, you can always come running back to us,” Lexie said. “We’ll only make you feel bad for the rest of your life.”

  “Promise?”

  Lexie spit into her palm and held out her hand. “Promise,” she said.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, before cracking up. “You’re worse than the boys.”

  After jumping into the pool to bathe in chlorine, I said goodbye to Marina and Lexie and walked stiffly home in the late afternoon heat. Knowing we would be friends, no matter what, took a lot of the sting out of the first day of football camp. It would take more than one rough day to get me off the football field.

  I had gone a few blocks when Caleb texted me.

  Frozen yogurt?

  Can’t walk that far.

  K. BTW, Charlie says second day’s the hardest.

  Hate u.;)

  TUESDAY, JULY 19

  The second day of football camp had barely started when Aaron found me.

  “You come with me,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “We’re about to run lines.”

  “Not you,” he said. “I have a special activity for you.” He pointed to the stairs that ran up the side of the stands.

  Aaron owned me, and we both knew it. I had jumped off a bridge for him. There was no question that I would run stairs. So, whenever the whistle blew, the rest of the guys—and Tessa—sprinted across the field, while I dashed up the stairs. It was my punishment, and I had to take it. I realized something else: Aaron had become so obsessed with teaching me a lesson that he’d forgotten about Tessa. Maybe that was also because when the helmets went on, nobody seemed to care that there was a girl on the field. It was starting to look like whatever Aaron had been afraid of was mostly inside his own head.

  During a water break, Aaron pulled me to the side. “I want to show you something,” he said. “You see those helmets?”

  On the equipment bench, there were six helmets lined up.

  “Yeah,” I panted.

  “Yesterday there were people wearing those helmets. Do you know what happened to those people?”

  “They quit.”

  Aaron nodded. “They couldn’t handle it. And I’m going to make sure the next helmet up there is yours.”

  Just then one of the coaches yelled over to Aaron. I exhaled in relief. Someone was coming to my rescue. “Parker!” I heard the coach yell. “Why isn’t that camper doing push-ups?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Aaron answered. “I’ll make him do double for slacking.”

  “Double?”

  “Eat dirt,” Aaron said, pointing to the ground.

  The only good thing that happened on the second day was that Tessa stopped being the football girl. I didn’t hear one person say a word about a girl being on the field. It was the opposite of everything I’d expected. Aaron had made me believe the whole team would go berserk if a girl showed up for football camp. But he was wrong. I think it helped that we were suffering, and that Tessa was feeling the pain right beside us.

  “Gotta hand it to you,” Dobie said to Tessa as she sat on the bleachers at the end of the day. “You’re tougher than I thought.”

  “So are you,” Tessa said to Dobie.

  “Shut up, Tessa,” Dobie said, wiping his forehead off with a dirty towel.

  I smiled at Tessa, who managed to laugh. I hoped she realized that shut up was Dobie’s way of saying You’re pretty cool.

  —

  After dinner that night I called Charlie and told him how Aaron had made me run stairs.

  “Classic,” Charlie said. “I wonder where he learned that.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, sensing that Charlie was being sarcastic.

  “I’m saying I did the same thing to him three years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “When you’re a senior and you get attitude from a freshman, you have to put him in his place. That was my job. It gave me no pleasure.”

  “Liar.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said with a laugh. “I loved it. And so will you.”

  “Running stairs?”

  “No, making some other punk run stairs.”

  “Never,” I said.

  “That�
��s what I thought,” Charlie replied. “But it happened.”

  “You’re saying I’m going to turn into Aaron Parker? Kill me now.”

  “Hey, Aaron is Aaron. But he’s a captain. And he’s earned it. You have to respect that.”

  “Doesn’t mean I want to be him.”

  “Doesn’t mean you have to. You be the man you want to be. But my money says you’ll be in his shoes someday.”

  “Because I’m a McCleary?”

  “Because you’re Caleb.”

  THURSDAY, JULY 21

  On the fourth day of camp, the coaches broke us into groups. First we were divided into offense and defense. Then they split the offense into receivers and backs.

  That was how I ended up in a small group standing around a tall, thin coach who clapped at some point during every sentence and walked with a slight limp. He told us his name was Coach St. James.

  “You guys ready?” he asked.

  CLAP.

  “Yeah,” a couple of us responded.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  CLAP.

  “Yes, sir!” we all shouted.

  “That’s better. Now…” CLAP. “Who’s played receiver before?”

  Four people raised a hand. Three didn’t.

  Coach St. James looked at the three of us who had not raised our hands. “Never?” he asked, like we might be lying. He walked up to me. “You’ve never caught a football?”

  “Just in pickup games and flag football,” I said.

  “Well, that counts. Raise your hand, football girl!”

  I raised my hand.

  “What about you two?” Coach St. James asked with a clap as he faced the boys who had not raised their hands. “Are you telling me that in your entire lives nobody has ever thrown a football in your general direction?”

  Both boys raised their hands.

  CLAP.

  “Well then,” Coach St. James said. “You are all wide receivers. I’m not saying you’re good wide receivers. I’m not saying you’ll ever play wide receiver for Pilchuck High School or any other high school. For all I know you might have bricks for hands and the acceleration of one-legged dogs. But for now, you are wide receivers.” CLAP. “Can we agree on that?”

  We all nodded. Deep inside my dark and stinky helmet, I was smiling because someone who didn’t know me was saying I had the same chance as anyone else on the field. He didn’t care who I was, just that I had two hands and two legs and knew which way to run. At last I wasn’t the football girl. I was a wide receiver. Maybe not a good one. But that was what I was.

  “Marvelous!” Coach St. James said. “Let’s talk about footwork!”

  CLAP.

  —

  Beth found me after camp while I was waiting for Caleb. She approached me slowly. “Your mom said it was okay if we talked. If you’re up for it.”

  “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Well, for starters, are you having fun?”

  “I’m not sure I’d say that.”

  “What would you say?”

  “I’d say I’m learning a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like nobody really cares that I’m a girl.”

  “The last time we spoke, you said the boys should be afraid. Do you think they’re afraid of you?”

  “I think that was a dumb thing to say.”

  “I loved it,” Beth said. “How did the boys take it?”

  “I think they kind of forgot about me,” I said.

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Yes. It’s a good thing. I mean, part of me liked the attention. But this was never about trying to make some big statement about how girls can play football too. Lots of girls have played football already, so who am I to act like this is some huge courageous thing I’m doing?”

  “What is it about?”

  “It seems stupid now,” I said.

  “If it feels stupid after you tell me, I promise I’ll forget you ever said it.”

  I told Beth about the end of the championship game.

  “You need a win,” she said.

  “Well, we’re not even playing games, so…”

  Beth shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t mean a win like winning a game. I mean a win like something happening that you’d feel good about. It’s an expression.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “When you put it that way, I need a win.”

  “Is proving the boys wrong a win?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “But what’s so great about proving someone else wrong when they don’t really care that much anyway?”

  “That’s a good question,” Beth sighed. “To be honest, I’m trying to figure out if this story is even a story. Or maybe the story is that it’s not a story.” She paused and looked at me. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not important. You’re doing something you wanted to do—something you’re good at—even when you were told not to. You’ll have that forever, no matter what else happens.”

  “Thank you,” I said, loving the praise. “Are you going to write about this?” I asked.

  Beth nodded. “It’ll be in the paper next week.”

  “Do you know what the headline will be?”

  “What do you think it should be?”

  “How about FOOTBALL HELMETS, SOURCE OF ALL HUMAN DISEASES?”

  Beth laughed. “Maybe that’s the story here.”

  Neither of us had to say that one of the people who’d told me not to play football was my mom, Councilwoman Dooley. In my heart, I believed that Beth knew that what happened between the football girl and her mother was nobody’s business, and we needed to figure out our own issues outside of the media.

  FRIDAY, JULY 22

  “Can I ask you something?” Tessa said as we walked slowly home from football camp.

  “Not if it’s about running stairs,” I replied, feeling the ache in my legs.

  “It’s not that,” Tessa said, letting go of my hand long enough to slap at a mosquito on her arm. “If I told you ‘I need a win,’ what would you think I meant?”

  “You need to win what?” Caleb asked.

  Tessa smiled at me like I had done her a favor. “See, that’s what I would have said too. Beth—you know, the reporter—said I need a win. Not like a game, though. Just something good that happens.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. What would it be for you?”

  “Something good that happens at football camp?”

  “Yeah, and it has to be something you do, not just something that happens.”

  Secretly I thought standing up to Aaron might have been my win, even though I was paying a price for it. That felt bigger than any play or throw I could make in a scrimmage. I thought that was what Charlie would have said too. I just wasn’t sure how to explain it all to Tessa. “How about not puking all over my shoes on the first day?” I said.

  “I really like my coach,” Tessa said, almost to herself.

  “St. James? Yeah, I know him. He’s cool. He was a wide receiver in college. He played in the Rose Bowl.”

  “I wonder what he thinks of me.”

  “We’re pretty much all numbers to them,” I said.

  “Then I hope when he thinks of number eighty-three, he doesn’t remember that I’m a girl.”

  We walked another block without talking. There were so many things I could have told Tessa about football camp. I wanted her to know that I was killing it in the quarterback drills. I wanted to tell her that I thought having a girlfriend in football camp was weirdly awesome. And I wanted to give her the bad news, that it was easy to forget she was a girl during wind sprints and no-contact drills. It would be a lot harder next week when we actually started hitting each other.

  “I hope my coach doesn’t forget I’m not a girl,” I said.

  Tessa squeezed my hand. “You’re twisted.”

  TUESDAY, JULY 26

  I learned one thing during the second week. Getting tackled hurts badly. Almost as badly as h
aving to admit that everyone who warned me was right.

  The first hit happened late on Tuesday. The play was a slant route. Ten steps, then break left. Five steps, then turn and catch. I got a great break off the line of scrimmage, just like Coach St. James had taught me, ran my pattern perfectly, and raised my hands at the moment the ball was in the air. It was a clean catch and I tucked the ball away.

  Then.

  Lights out.

  I don’t know who hit me. He was big and moving fast. I think it’s what falling off a bridge onto concrete and getting run over by a fully loaded dump truck would feel like. The impact was somewhere between my lower back and my side.

  I lay in the dirt, staring up at the clouds, clenching my eye muscles to hold in the tears. I remembered how Caleb had warned me that no guy would ever tackle a girl because the guy wouldn’t want to hurt her. So far, that was not my experience. Whoever had just hit me did not seem very concerned with my health. I got to my feet and faked a steady walk back to the huddle.

  Coach St. James blew his whistle. “Let’s take five,” he said.

  Someone reminded him that we had just taken a break.

  “I don’t care,” Coach replied.

  During the break, he looked at me and raised a thumb. I could tell it was a question. I raised my thumb back.

  It was a lie.

  I was still hurting that night. The pain was soul crushing in the biggest way. Not because I couldn’t take it, but because I knew I didn’t want to. I had to admit to myself that any sport that did this to my body was not for me. In fact, I wasn’t sure anybody should play a sport that did this to them. I wasn’t going to quit camp. I was going to take a hundred more hits before the week was done. But I knew 100 percent in that moment that my idea of playing football in high school was over.

  Some win.

  THURSDAY, JULY 28

  By the end of the second week, the coaches had sorted us into an A team and a B team. They didn’t say it, but I knew what it meant. The players on the A team had a chance to be on the varsity team in the fall. Everyone else would be JV. Nick and I were on the A team. Dobie and Tessa were on the B team. On the last day of camp, the two teams were going to play each other in a scrimmage—pads, helmets, tackling, everything. It might get fierce because there was a chance any of us could move up if we played well, or move down if we choked.