by Score, Lucy
He was wearing cycling shorts, leftovers from his three-month spin class obsession. He’d had trouble settling on a new hobby since retirement.
“What?” he asked as he pumped.
“I can’t get used to your mustache.”
He patted the furry caterpillar under his lip with pride. It was another post-retirement hobby: facial hair growing. “Think I’m going to try a goatee next.”
“Can’t wait.”
He gave the ball a poke. “Nice and firm.”
I tried not to watch him handle the ball while he said that. Dad had an uncanny knack for saying inappropriate things without ever trying.
“I seem to recall you were quite adept at juggling balls in high school, snack cake,” he said cheekily. “Let’s see if you still remember how.”
“Jesus, Dad. Listen to yourself.” But he was already scampering to the back of the yard.
We kicked the ball and the idea of me being a temporary teacher and coach around.
“What if my team loses every game?” I asked.
“They won one game last season, and that was because the other team’s bus got stuck in the traffic when the cattle escaped the auction. It was a forfeit. I don’t think the district is looking for a winning season.”
“But where do I even begin? Practice starts in two days.”
Dad shrugged and kicked at the ball like he was a puppet with wooden joints. His athletic experience had been deferred in favor of the AV Club during his high school career. “What did your coaches have you do during preseason?”
“I don’t know. Run until I hated running?”
“There you go. We can start there,” he said, winding up for a kick and missing the ball completely.
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t have an athletic bone in his body, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to support me. I didn’t deserve him, but I wasn’t willing to let that get in my way of appreciating him.
“We can look on the internet after dinner,” he suggested. “You can learn anything online.”
“Mmm. What about teaching? I don’t even know what a gym teacher does besides stand around creepily while students change and then make everyone play volleyball from November to May.”
I was by no means in the best shape of my life. Adulthood had taken its toll in the form of happy hours and sodium-laden convenience foods and no time for the gym. I was dehydrated and low on sleep. My shape was soft, round. And I lost my air with a flight of stairs.
“Dad, I don’t think I can do this. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been working in health care and data mining. Not sports and fitness.” I kicked the ball back to him.
He tripped over it and face-planted on the grass. I jogged to his side and pulled him up. “Maybe we should continue this discussion over beers. While sitting,” I suggested, picking his glasses off the ground.
“Sounds like a safer plan,” he agreed.
There was a loud, strangled honk from the neighbor’s fence. I yelped. “What the hell was that?” I was already out of breath just from kicking the ball around. Surprises could explode my already over-taxed heart.
“Dang swan,” Dad said without any heat.
“Swan? Did you say ‘swan’?”
The honk sounded again.
“Amie Jo thought their yard needed an exotic touch,” he said, limping toward the back porch.
Oh, no. No no no no no. Not her. Not the monster from my past.
“Amie Jo Armburger?” I asked as nonchalantly as the lump of dread in my throat would allow.
“Hostetter now,” Dad corrected me. “She and her husband, Travis, bought the house next door a few years ago. Tore it down and rebuilt it from the ground up.”
My entire senior year came rushing back to me so quickly I got vertigo. Travis Hostetter. Amie Jo Armburger. And I couldn’t think of either one of them without remembering Jake Freaking Weston.
This was why I moved away. Why I rarely came home. And when I did, I didn’t make it a big thing. I wore a baseball cap out in public. I refused to go to any local bars or Walmart. I pretended to be a stranger.
“Amie Jo and Travis live next door?” I clarified weakly.
Dad, oblivious to my instantaneous panic, jogged up the back steps. “Yep! I’ll grab us a couple of brewskis and check on dinner.”
The back door closed, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to peer over the fence and see what kind of castle the Prom King and Queen had built. It was stupidity and curiosity that had me running at the seven-foot-tall, peeling-paint barrier. My sneakers scrambled for grip as my biceps screamed. I was able to haul my eyeballs above the fence just long enough to catch a glimpse of a huge kidney-shaped in-ground pool surrounded by what looked like white marble. There was a raised hot tub spewing a waterfall of color-changing water back into the pool. The porch had Roman columns holding up the two-story roof.
“A fucking outdoor kitchen and a tiki bar? Are you kidding me?” I groaned.
“Mom! Some lady is spying on us!” The shout came from the direction of the pool, and I realized there were people in the water. Two of them. Towheaded teens with surfer dude haircuts lounging on rafts the size of small islands.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
I dropped to the ground, ducked—for unknown reasons as I was currently blocked from view by the fence—and ran to the gate. I slipped through into my parents’ front yard and stared up at the modern monstrosity McMansion that I’d missed when I’d pulled in the driveway on the other side of the house.
Stately red brick, more white columns, and what looked like a cobblestone driveway. All behind a wrought iron fence that clearly stated that only a certain kind of visitor was welcome. There was a freaking fountain in the front yard. Not just one of those understated cement jobs you could get at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
No. This had statues in it. Naked ones spitting water at each other.
Honk!
“Oh my fucking God!” I clutched my hands to my heart and jumped a foot off the ground.
A swan waddled past on the other side of the fence, casting a derisive look in my direction. Was it an attack swan? Had it been trained in the art of home defense? Would it swoop over the fence and start pecking at me? Could swans fly?
I had many questions.
The front door of the mega mansion opened, and a man stepped out onto the porch. Even twenty years later and from one hundred feet away, I still recognized him. Travis Hostetter. His blond hair was cut shorter than it had been in high school, but the easy gait, the set of those shoulders was the same. His head swiveled in my direction, and I did the only thing that made sense.
I bolted.
I turned and ran for my parents’ front door, diving over the hedgerow of azaleas. Catching my foot on one, I landed hard on mulch and concrete. The wind left my lungs, and all I could do was stare up at the sky and listen to the rumble of the Cadillac Escalade next door as it backed down the driveway.
I’d made a huge mistake coming back here.
3
Marley
Approximately 1,000 years ago
I wiped my damp palms on my thrift-store-find Umbros. My mom insisted that if I was just going to sweat and roll around in the grass, I didn’t need to do it in full-price name brands. So I’d saved up birthday and Christmas money, squirreling it away until our annual end-of-summer outlet trip.
Yep, I was rocking the black-and-white-striped Adidas flip-flops that the varsity first string all had last year, Umbro shorts, and the same exact Nike t-shirt Mia Hamm, my soccer idol, had worn during the Summer Olympic Games. There wasn’t anything about my outfit that they could make fun of, I assured myself.
This year would be different.
I’d gotten rid of the headband they’d cracked jokes about. I’d even shaved the baby fine blonde hairs on my big toe that made Steffi Lynn Jerkface gag for ten minutes after she saw me getting taped up before a game last season. I grew out my bangs. And I’d spent the last
two weeks practicing a new smile. Close-lipped, eyes wide. Friendly, mature.
“Ugh! Your eyes disappear when you smile. Never smile again. It’s creepy.” My memories of soccer were not fond ones.
The deep breath didn’t help settle my nerves. In fact, I felt a little bit like puking. This was the first day of preseason, and it was make or break. I wanted so badly to be one of the sophomores to make the varsity team. I’d practiced over the summer but wasn’t sure if it was enough.
The walk from home to the high school was five blocks. Close enough that my parents didn’t need to drive me. And in a few short months, I’d have my driver’s license. When I had that laminated gold key, I’d back down the driveway just to pick up the mail, I decided. Well, if Mom or Dad would let me use their cars.
The high school parking lot loomed in front of me. Pretty, loud juniors and seniors in their very own cars unloaded thermoses of water and tied high ponytails. They were so confident. So sure of their place in this world. Meanwhile, I was lurking near the entrance to the parking lot and waiting for an engraved invitation to orbit around them.
This would be the year. They would like me. There was nothing not to like, at least according to my annoyingly adoring parents. But they didn’t understand. Somehow I’d been gifted with an invisible bull’s-eye that marked me as a loser, an undesirable. Sure, I had friends on the junior varsity team. But the older girls? Those juniors and seniors with life all figured out? They hated me.
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me, but I’d hoped I’d changed enough that I’d shed that bull’s-eye. I didn’t think my fragile teenage heart could stand another entire season of constant ass kicking.
A car horn beeped. “Hi, Marley!”
My best friend, Vicky—thank God she was on the team—and her mom waved at me. Vicky’s family lived outside of town, and her mom took turns carpooling with some of the other JV team moms. Three other girls piled out of Vicky’s mom’s back seat.
“Ugh, it’s soooo early,” Vicky complained, scraping her frizz of red curls back in a lumpy ponytail with a scrunchie. It had taken me twenty minutes and half a bottle of Aqua Net to smooth the lumps out of my own hair. “When I’m an adult, I’m never getting out of bed before ten,” she announced.
“Aren’t you just a little excited?” I asked. “New year? New start?” Every year, the idea of the first day of school ignited a hard, bright hope in me.
“Please,” Vicky scoffed. “Nothing is new. It’s the same old assholes doing the same old assholey things. Nothing will get better until we get out of here.”
Praying she was wrong, I climbed the hill to the practice field with her. The red brick prison of the high school building was to the left of the field and parking lot. The entire summer was behind me, and this—the patchy green grass of the soccer field and the glossy, industrial, chemical-scented linoleumed halls—were my foreseeable future.
I couldn’t suppress the shudder that rolled up my spine.
“It’s not that bad,” I said, mostly trying to convince myself. “We’re sophomores. This year we get driver’s licenses and hopefully boobs.”
“I’m going to take that license and my future boobs, and when I graduate, I’m going to drive out of this hell hole with both middle fingers flying out the car window.”
I laughed. “How will you steer?”
“With my knee,” Vicky decided.
“And where will you go?”
“Anywhere but here,” she said. “And I’ll have a cool job that gives me lots of money and lets me set my own hours. I’ll have a stable full of men at my beck and call.”
Linking my arm through hers, I thanked my lucky stars for Vicky Kerblanski.
The girls were slowly migrating toward the small set of steel bleachers at the closest end of the field. The coaches, Coach Norman and Coach Clancy, were wearing their standard uniform of seventies-style short shorts and too-tight polo shirts that emphasized their beer bellies. Coach Norman was barrel-shaped and grizzled. He smoked like a four-alarm fire. Clancy was short and mostly skinny with a Hitleresque mustache. Together they coached the varsity and junior varsity girls soccer teams. And by coached, I mean they yelled a lot and took smoke breaks.
But this season would be different. I’d practiced. Hell, I’d even run a couple of miles over the summer. I was also an inch taller than last year, and I hoped it was all leg.
None of the older girls had noticed me yet, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was probably a bit much to expect them to part their circle and welcome the new bangless, hairless-toed me.
Vicky and I dumped our bags on the ground and sat to pull on our cleats.
“Cute socks,” Vicky said, nodding at my green striped knee socks covering my shin guards.
They’d been an impulse buy at an athletic store. I hadn’t seen anyone cool wearing them, but the emerald green had beckoned me.
I kept my gaze down and focused on my fellow JV teammates.
But I heard the whispers start. I hoped, prayed, bargained with a higher power that they were whispering about someone else.
Hazarding a look, I glanced up. A couple of the varsity girls were clumped in a tight circle snickering. And they were looking directly at me.
My dreams, my plans for this season, withered up and died.
“She’s so weird,” one of them said, not bothering to whisper. “Like, stop trying already.”
“Look at her looking at us with those pathetic puppy dog eyes. ‘Please like me.’”
They erupted in laughter as part of my soul disintegrated.
“I can see the summer didn’t bring you bitches new personalities.” Vicky snapped her gum and tied her right shoe with some violence.
My desire to be liked and accepted was equal to Vicky’s desire to call assholes assholes. I admired her tremendously for it.
“JV loser says what?” Steffi Lynn asked, batting her mascaraed lashes. Steffi Lyn was a tall, skinny senior and the proud owner of C cups. She was also a terrible person. Her younger sister, Amie Jo, was in my class. As for personality? Let’s just say the apple didn’t fall far from the other apple. They were both mean as rattlesnakes, taking great pleasure in causing other people pain. Even the teachers were afraid of them. Rumor had it Steffi Lynn had gotten a long-term substitute fired because she didn’t like the perfume she wore.
In a few years, she would probably make several husbands very miserable.
It was downhill from there. I tripped over an orange cone halfway through a footwork drill, and they laughed like I’d fallen into a giant cream pie.
When I leaned over to pull up my sock, the senior goalie, a brick wall in braids, sneered at me. “God, you look like a leprechaun. Did your grandpa pick those out for you?”
It was extra mean because my grandfather had died last soccer season. I’d missed a game for the funeral. When Steffi Lynn’s estranged great-uncle from Virginia died, the team collected money and got her flowers that they presented in a ceremony during practice. When my gramps died, they made fun of me for crying when my mom picked me up at practice and told me.
Then came the end of practice scrimmage. The coaches, in their obliviousness, let Steffi Lynn and half-back Shaylynn choose teams.
I waited patiently in the dwindling line as the two seniors picked girl after girl. Until it was down to me and the JV second-string fullback. Denise was in a neck brace.
“We’ll take Denise,” Shaylynn chirped.
And then there was one.
Steffi Lynn made a show of being disgusted. “Ugh. I guess we’ll take her.” She pointed at me.
I nodded briskly as if this were business as usual instead of the literal end of my hopes and dreams for my sophomore year and took my place at the end of the line.
I kept to myself on the field and tried hard to fight the burning sensation in my throat. These cut-throat, freckled dictators would not make me cry. Not on the first day of practice, dammit.
Finally, Coach Norman, in
need of another cigarette break, blew his whistle, signaling the end of practice.
“Don’t get sad. Don’t give these dumb fucks the ability to hurt you,” Vicky said, dragging me and my gym bag down the hill toward the parking lot. “Get mad. Get even. Call a skank a skank.”
I gave her a weak, watery smile.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I lied.
Vicky hissed out a breath. “Come on. Let’s walk to Turkey Hill. I’ll buy you a French vanilla cappuccino.”
4
Marley
You only get one opportunity for a first impression. Which was why I arrived at the high school at the butt crack of 7 a.m. on a sweltering August morning. Yesterday, I’d had the briefest of meetings with the harried high school vice principal in my parents’ kitchen on his way to a yoga class. His only instructions to me on coaching were, “Just try to keep them alive.”
When I’d asked about the last coach, he’d let out a nervous little giggle and then ran out the door telling my dad he’d see him in calligraphy class on Wednesday.
The high school was a little bigger than when I’d walked its halls thanks to a ten-years-too-late addition to manage the overcrowding. But the student parking lot was the same. It sat at the bottom of the hill the fall sports teams ran in an S formation, an exercise that would now almost definitely cost me at least one of my ACLs.
At the top of the hill was the school’s expansive practice fields. Two baseball and one soccer with a little extra green space between. I remembered running around the outskirts of the fields during preseason. It had been horrible then, and I didn’t see a reason for it to have improved with time.
My team, and I mentally used air quotes around the word, would be arriving for an 8 a.m. practice. And I wanted to be as ready for them as possible.
I had zero money for a new athletic wardrobe, so I settled for old yoga shorts and a t-shirt. I’d tried a tank top since it was seventy-five million degrees already. But I was paranoid about the roll around my middle. I wasn’t about to stroll onto my old turf with a visible belly roll. I’d given Culpepper enough to talk about over the years.