Rock Bottom Girl

by Score, Lucy

  He gave a shrug of his massive shoulders. “To be honest, there’s not a lot to do around here. And this feels healthier than watching reality TV. So yeah, if you need the dirt on anyone, you just let me know.”

  I wet my lips and tried to talk myself out of it. What would stop Floyd from telling the entire town if I asked about him? Nothing. But did it really matter? I was only going to be here for a few months, and then I’d be back out in the world forgetting all about Culpepper.

  “Jake Weston,” I said finally.

  Floyd’s brown eyes lit up like I’d just handed him a winning lottery ticket.

  “What do you want to know?”

  6

  Jake

  The foam roller dug into the hot spot on my quad with a satisfying zing of pain. The first preseason practice was behind me for the day, and I could enjoy a few more hours of summer malaise.

  August was bittersweet for me as a teacher.

  I loved my summers off. Made great use of them. Taking the bike or the dog on road trips. But there was something exciting about heading back to school. New beginnings. Not that I’d felt that way when I’d been a student. I’d been more “rebel without a clue” back in the day.

  “I’m rolling here, Homer. You’re not helping.”

  Homer’s wet nose met my bare back. Damn dog did it on purpose. He was practically laughing at me with his shaggy face and lolling tongue.

  “You keep doin’ that, and I’ll dig out the cone of shame.”

  Homer rolled over on his back next to me, fluffy feet in the air. We’d been enjoying each other’s company for five years now, ever since I spotted him in the shame section of the local paper. There was a whole page dedicated to causes we should all be supporting, funds that needed donations, animals that needed homes.

  Every once in a while, I picked one at random. It was atonement for my rabble-rousing days. Or prepayment on any new bad karma I’d attract during my hell-raising summers—which were admittedly more mellow now.

  My phone rang from somewhere in the room. In the summers, I had the tendency to ignore it, lose it, forget it existed. I didn’t have to be responsible Mr. Weston. I could be Jake the irresponsible badass. Or at least Jake the sleeps-’til-11-and-wakes-up-a-little-hungover badass.

  But with preseason starting today it was probably better to dip a toe back into the responsibility pool.

  I found the phone under a stack of books and newspapers. Yeah, I still read ’em. I blamed Uncle Lewis for that. Every Sunday brunch, he’d whip out the Arts and Leisure section and read it front to back. And while I didn’t have his snazzy wardrobe or his love of the artsy-fartsy, I more than embraced staying up on current events.

  “What’s up, Floyd? Still on for poker?” I asked. Floyd was the high school gym teacher and self-appointed school gossip. If it happened within the walls of Culpepper Junior/Senior High, Floyd knew who, what, when, where, and why.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn’t miss it. I’m feelin’ lucky.”

  “You always say that. Gurgevich is still gonna fleece you,” I predicted. Mrs. Gurgevich had been my English teacher in high school, and she’d been ancient then. She’d spent decades terrifying students over diagramed sentences and dangling modifiers. But get to know her outside of class, and the lady had stories that started with “When Hunter S. Thompson and I were road-tripping to Tijuana…”

  “You want me to bring the crab dip this week?” Floyd asked.

  “Yeah. The theme’s Under the Sea.” It was an every other weekly game with a bunch of teachers. A while back, we got up the brilliant idea to start serving meals with stupid prom themes.

  “Cool. Cool. So guess who was asking about you yesterday?” he said.

  I couldn’t quite work my way up to caring. Gossip didn’t interest me.

  “I couldn’t even begin to imagine,” I said dryly, giving Homer’s belly a scratch. He grumbled and gave his back leg a lazy shake.

  “Marley Cicero.”

  “Marley ‘Graduated With Me’ Cicero?” I asked. Now my interest was piqued. I remembered her. At least, teenage her. I’d found her…interesting. Interesting enough to plant one on her, if I recalled correctly. I’d kissed a lot of girls in my time. Still enjoyed a good lip lock now and then. But yeah, Marley stood out.

  “The one and the same.”

  “She back in town, or are you two Facebook pals?” I tried to keep the interest out of my tone. Floyd could pick up on a shred of something and turn it into a story that would entertain the whole damn town for a month.

  “Back in town. She’ll be teaching gym with me and coaching the girls soccer team.” Floyd filled me in on Otterbach’s lesbian elopement. I scratched out a note to myself to send Otterbach and Jada a wedding present.

  “Ouch. Does she know what she’s getting into with the team? The old coach?” I said. I wondered what kind of questions she’d asked about me, but showing Floyd any kind of interest now would only lead to the dramas. And I didn’t do drama.

  “We didn’t get into it. Yet. She seemed shocked that you were a teacher.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” I claimed, hinging forward to reach for my toes.

  “She was even less happy finding out Amie Jo is teaching.”

  Amie Jo. Marley. Vague memories of senior year started to click into place.

  I believed they’d hated each other in high school. But I couldn’t remember if there was a specific reason.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said casually. “Doesn’t Amie Jo live right next door to the Ciceros?” I asked the question that I already knew the answer to.

  “Yep. Marley seemed surprised by that. I got the feeling she hasn’t kept up on much news from here,” he said.

  “Some people move on,” I said vaguely.

  Homer jolted at the knock on my front door and went into barking terror mode.

  “Hey, I gotta go rescue whoever it is at the door from my ferocious dog,” I told Floyd. “I’ll see you Friday.”

  I dropped the phone back onto the coffee table where I’d probably forget about it again and jogged to the front door.

  I lived in the house my grandmother had left me in her will two years ago. Feisty, fun lady. Terrible taste in home decor. But there was a hell of a lot more room for me and Homer to spread out than the townhouse I’d lived in. I kept it, renting it out, and moved my shit and my dog to Grams’s.

  Judging by the silhouette on the other side of the front door’s cut glass, I was about to get yet another lecture on home furnishings and linens.

  “Attack, Homer,” I said, opening the front door. He launched his curly-furred self at the man on my doorstep. Uncle Lewis made quite the statement with just his existence in Central Pennsylvania. He was black, gay, and, worst of all, painfully trendy. Lewis wore shiny shoes and he specially ordered fancy cheeses from the grocery store. But even the most conservative in our community couldn’t help but love him. He was the VP of community outreach for a local bank. And outreach he did.

  He’d married my mom’s brother, Max, in a before-it-was-legal ceremony when I was a teenager. After my dad died and my mom decided she couldn’t handle the mess I was, she carted me off to Uncle Max and Lewis’s house in Lancaster County. And my life had changed for the better.

  Lewis leaned down to give the enthusiastic Homer a big kiss on the cheek, and then he did the same to me.

  “Jake, when are you going to turn this flea market find into a home?” he asked, marching inside and eyeing the mess of the living room with hands on hips.

  I was a little messy in general and a lot lazy during the summers.

  “I’m gonna clean up before poker,” I promised.

  “You better because I don’t want Max to come home complaining about you needing a wife or a husband to keep you in line again,” he reminded me.

  Uncle Max joined my poker game most weeks. And Lewis used the husband-free time to host Book and Wine Club, a unisex social event, at their place. My uncles’ house, it should be noted
, was always immaculate. Even when my cousin, their adopted daughter, Adeline, and I lived under their roof.

  “Want a drink?” I offered, guiltily stacking some of the papers into a neater pile.

  “White wine?”

  “I’ve got that grig you like.” I may have been a disaster at housekeeping, but I kept my guests’ favorites on hand. He followed me back to the kitchen, which was in worse shape than the living room. I’d gotten takeout four nights in a row. Even I knew a rut when I saw it.

  “Jake,” he groaned.

  “I know. I know. Do better. I will. I promise.”

  I dug out a clean glass and poured.

  “It’s just this kind of living doesn’t look…happy,” he said, eyeing the mess of Chinese cartons on the counter. I kicked an empty case of beer in the direction of the recycling bin.

  “I’m happy,” I argued.

  “You’re comfortable. That’s different.”

  “Potato poh-tah-toh.”

  “It’s like you’re living in some kind of limbo,” he observed. “Like you’re waiting for something.”

  “What am I waiting for?”

  Lewis shrugged his slim shoulders under his grape purple button down. His tie had flecks of yellow and green in it. “That’s what I want to know.” He sipped, eyeing me over the glass.

  “Okay. Okay. You didn’t come here to tell me to get my act together again.”

  “Your mother’s coming to town for her birthday,” he announced. “Good thing she’s staying with us since you live like a fraternity. You’ll be available for dinner.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I will be available,” I promised, grabbing the back of an envelope and scratching out a note to get Mom a birthday present.

  “Excellent. Max and I will cook. You will dress like not a mess. Bring the wine. A few bottles of red and white,” he rattled off instructions.

  “Got it. Wine. Yep.” I added it to the list. “Anything else, oh captain, my captain?”

  Lewis cupped my cheek and patted it gently. “Next time I come by, I want to see counter top and curtains.”

  7

  Marley

  “We did that yesterday,” the cocky girl attached to the raised hand announced as if I had some kind of mental deficiency.

  “I am aware of that. And now we’re going to improve upon that,” I told her. Alice? Alex? Alecia? How the hell did teachers learn names? Would it be okay if I just referred to everyone as “sport” or “hey you”?

  “Is this, like, going to be the same thing every single day?” Korean Pinterest Natalee With Great Hair asked.

  “Why do we always end up with the worst coaches?” one of the girls whined under her breath.

  “At least this one is still alive,” someone else added.

  I wondered briefly what that meant, then decided it didn’t matter.

  “We’re going to run the mile and try to beat our times,” I announced, feigning my mother’s enthusiasm. I’d painstakingly written everyone’s times down from yesterday’s run to make it easy for them to compare. But there were no “thank you; that was so nice of yous.” Just complaints. Loud ones.

  “Wow, I thought whining stopped in elementary school,” I quipped. “Line up, ladies! Nobody cares how fast your mouths are.”

  Day Two was off to a stellar start as the girls plodded off the line, shooting me evil glares.

  We’d fumbled our way through a few drills, and I’d asked every girl what position she played.

  I had three Morgans, two Sophies, and eighteen girls who wanted to play front line. My high school coach would never have put up with that. He was a pack-a-day smoker who snuck whiskey into his travel mug. He’d never coached girls before, so his tactic was to yell until someone cried. It sort of worked. We had a winning season but missed out on districts. If I could replicate his success, I could leave Culpepper with my head held high.

  Thirteen days until school started. Coaching was going to be the hard part, I decided. Teaching would be a breeze. I’d have Floyd—er, Mr. Wilson—to divide and conquer. Really the only scary part would be the locker room. And that was scary for everyone.

  I’d yet to venture into the school, deciding instead to fill the water cooler at home and drag it onto the field from the back of my hatchback with the unbreakable lease—believe me, I tried. The locker rooms were open for athletes as field hockey, soccer, and cross-country started their seasons. But I just wasn’t mentally prepared for that particular trip down memory lane.

  Dammit. Ruby’s long legs carried her across the finish line. “Time!” she called.

  I read it off the watch. She’d shaved another few seconds off yesterday’s time, I noted with annoyance. It was probably the wrong reaction. Here was an athlete who was performing well, yet she was so cocky about it, I kind of wanted her to fail. I wondered how often my teachers or coaches felt that way.

  Ancient Mrs. Gurgevich probably had. She’d hated me. She had the uncanny ability to always be standing right next to me every time I did or said something incredibly stupid.

  A wisp of a girl whose name I didn’t know flew across the finish line. She looked at me with doe eyes instead of demanding to know her time. I read it off to her and handed her the clipboard so she could write in her time.

  Rachel. I observed as she wrote in tiny, precise numbers.

  More players returned. I noticed one. A big blonde senior who looked vaguely like Miss Piggy. She crossed the finish line and body checked Rachel out of the way.

  “Oops, didn’t see you there, Raquel.”

  Ugh. I hated girls like this. They gave me flashbacks to Steffi Lynn and the entire varsity starting lineup.

  “Hello! Time?” she snapped her fingers in my face.

  I told her, purposely adding ten seconds to her time and shoved the clipboard at her.

  “What? You don’t know my name yet?” she smirked.

  “Should I?” I shot back.

  She tossed the clipboard back to me, and I noticed she’d shaved thirty seconds off the time I’d given her. Asshole.

  Her name was Lisabeth Hooper. But there was something eerily familiar about her horribleness.

  Before I could pick it apart, a hush fell over the finish line as the cross-country team, still sweaty, male members still shirtless, jogged effortlessly up the hill next to the practice field.

  “Are they a good team?” I asked, already knowing the answer. I was feeling weirdly and unrealistically competitive with Mr. Sexy Bod Weston.

  “Won districts last year,” Ruby said. She clapped as another player crossed the finish line panting.

  Jake was at the front of the pack today, pacing them. He had sunglasses on, but his head swiveled toward me. He had that sexy dark hair buzzed short around the sides, longer on top. His chest was glistening like fucking diamond facets. The corner of his mouth lifted.

  “Hi, Mr. Weston,” Ruby yelled through cupped hands.

  I spun around, breaking the hypnotic spell his sweaty pecs put me under and pretended my clipboard was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Hello, ladies,” he called back.

  Damn it. I remembered that voice. That rough, sandpapery edge to his words. Twenty years later, it was only hotter.

  It was the August sun burning down on us that had my cheeks turning fifteen shades of bright red. Heat stroke. Definitely heat stroke.

  * * *

  “All right, people. Let’s talk sprints,” I said, clapping my hands to get their attention. Everyone had had time to rehydrate, wipe the sticky, salty sweat out of their eyes, and start gossiping. Now, it was time to break their spirits.

  “Have you guys heard of ball busters?”

  Ball busters were the worst invention in preseason ever. Players started on the far goal line and ran to the next white line on the field, then back to the goal line, then on to the next white line. Back and forth until they got to the opposite goal line. It was one long, grueling, miser
able pushback. I was going to save these for next week, but their whining was starting to grate my nerves.

  “I find that term offensive,” Sophie S. announced. At least I thought it was Sophie S. I couldn’t tell her and Sophie P. apart. Both fell into the same nondescript brown hair, brown eyes category I was in. One of them had curly hair. But I couldn’t remember which one. “We’re a girls team. I think we should name them after female anatomy,” she insisted.

  “And something more empowering,” Morgan W. weighed in. “Busting doesn’t sound very positive.”

  I closed my eyes. “All right. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

  “Ovary Exploders!” Ruby suggested. Angela snorted derisively, and Ruby flipped her off. I was going to have to watch these two so their feud didn’t bubble over to the rest of the team.

  “Vagina Victory!”

  “Boob Battles!”

  “You guys are idiots,” Miss Piggy Lisabeth snapped.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” That last one came from me and was overheard by half of the team.

  “Ooooh!”

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s think of a name later.” I explained the premise to them and gleefully watched most of them look way too confident in their abilities. Ball busters—or boob battles—were miserable. Even the toughest athletes hated them.

  “I think you should run them with us,” Ruby announced, crossing her arms and cocking her hip.

  Hell.

  “Ooooh,” the rest of the team crooned.

  The gauntlet had been thrown.

  “Motion seconded,” one of the Sophies said.

  “This is about your endurance. Not mine.”

  “We’ve never done them,” Ruby said. “You need to show us.”

  “It’s not that hard. You run line to line. Keep running until you run out of lines. Then we all get to go home.”

  “All in favor of coach running with us?” Ruby called.

  Every fucking hand went up except Angela’s. And I knew it wasn’t that she was trying to protect me. She just wanted to vote against Ruby. I felt something awfully close to fury well up in my belly. Or maybe that was pre-vomit.