“Wow, what a field,” Bobby said, sounding like the Country Mouse visiting the City Mouse’s opulent home for the first time. “Let’s go warm up.”
We had no idea if there would be a place for us to change, so we’d all worn our uniforms to the field and didn’t bring much extra stuff with us. My dress bag was in Tina’s car for later.
A brisk wind whipped by, activating a patch of goose bumps on my legs as I stretched. We took a lap around the field and kicked some practice passes with the bag of balls Bobby had brought. It was quarter after nine.
“Do you think they got the time wrong?” Dana asked me. “Didn’t we say nine?”
“Yeah,” I said, peering across the field toward the school.
“They’re gonna show, right?” Dawn said. “They wanted to play us.”
“Maybe their coach wouldn’t let them come?” Franchesa suggested.
“I guess we have more time to warm up,” I said.
We ran up and down the field, working on our passes. We lined up to take practice kicks at the goal.
But we grew more listless as it dawned on us that we’d been stood up.
“They’re not coming,” I said. Dawn kicked a ball, hard and off-kilter, so it landed in the empty bleachers. No one else moved for a minute, almost like we couldn’t. The air had gone out of us. It was worse than heartbreak. It was insulting.
“What do you want to do, Susan?” Bobby asked me.
I took in the disappointed faces of my teammates, hating that the only option I could think of was to leave. Then a clatter rose from the equipment shed at the far end of the home bleachers.
“It’s them,” I said, feeling a thrill for a second. Maybe there had been a small miscommunication, but now the game would go as planned. I smiled at my team. “They’re here.” A happy medley of relief filled the air.
That is, until two dozen soccer players, naked except for their cleats, burst from the shed and ran toward us, whooping and hollering. They all waved something white—underwear, it looked like—over their heads.
“What the—” I started to say, as the herd barreled right through the center of the circle we’d formed. We jumped back and stumbled over one another to get away from the nude mass of boys. One of the guys—not Ken—tossed his underwear onto my shoulder, and as I tried to swat it off me, another boy squirted me with something. Liquid splattered my face and entered my stunned and open mouth. It was floral and vinegary. The acidic taste made my lips pucker. I spat at the ground.
They’d doused us all with it. By the time everyone had wiped the liquid from their skin, hair, and, in a few cases, eyes, the boys’ pale naked butts were far away, headed toward the school.
“Assholes,” Dawn yelled, kicking away the graying briefs that had landed on her cleats.
“Cowards!” That was Tina.
If the boys heard us, it didn’t matter, because they were disappearing inside the building. The last nude boy, who I recognized as Ken, took a few steps back toward us and yelled, “Go home!”
I opened my mouth to hurl an insult at him, but I felt like I had when the wind was knocked out of me. The words were there in my throat but stuck under my rib cage. My insides felt scraped and dry, as massive tears came to my eyes. I used the back of my hand to wipe them away, hoping no one would see.
The awareness that I was utterly useless to stand up for us against a team of naked boys made me want to sit in the middle of the field and curl into a ball. Had they been watching us as we practiced and waited? Of course they had, and they’d been laughing at us. That was the worst part.
I started to run toward the door where they’d gone. “Susan, no,” Bobby said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“But those assholes,” I started, and I couldn’t keep the tears from falling. Bobby took one of the towels out of the equipment bag and handed it to me. I held it to my face, pressing it tight against my skin. “They can’t do this,” I sputtered.
I wasn’t being captain-like, I knew, but fury had started to spiral inside me, twisting around hurt. I blinked away more tears that were pushing at my eyes and spat more of the vinegary taste from my mouth. It smelled like soap and salad dressing.
Joanie, whose jersey was wet in places, smelled it. “Did they . . . douche us?”
Wendy sniffed the damp ends of her hair. “This is definitely Summer’s Eve.”
“And the underwear . . .” Marie started to say, gingerly plucking a pair that had caught in Franchesa’s ponytail. “They’re dirty.” She wrinkled her nose and whipped the tighty-whities away.
“Please let me go . . . do . . . something,” I said to Bobby, trying to think of what, if anything, I could possibly do. My mind was blank except for seeing the naked guys running at us over and over.
As angry as I was, the tears kept reappearing. It was my fault this had happened, and as captain, I had to fix it. My stomach churned, imagining what all those boys together would say to me if I confronted them. But if I let them get away with it, I wasn’t a good captain.
“Look,” Bobby said to me and the rest of us. “You have every right to be angry. But sometimes we bring our best selves and it’s not enough—”
Tina scowled at him. “So we’re supposed to be the bigger people? After that?”
I leaned my head on her shoulder in gratitude. It was like she had read my mind. I had no interest in hearing one of Bobby’s big speeches right now. He might be our coach, and under other circumstances, I would probably love hearing whatever calm, high-minded suggestion he was about to make, but today I didn’t want that Bobby.
I wanted St. Mark’s to pay.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. Or what I’m going to do,” he said. “We have all the area coaches’ numbers in the athletics office. Home numbers, too. I’m going to drive over right now and track their coach down.”
“But we weren’t even supposed to be playing this game. You’ll get in trouble,” I said.
“I promise, I won’t.” He patted my shoulder very gently. He looked from me to the team. “I still think it’s great that you came ready to play. It’s a shame your opponents couldn’t do the same.” He picked up his equipment bag and started for the gates. When we didn’t follow him right away, he turned and said, “Come on, let’s go. I’ll handle all this, and you all can go . . .” He seemed stumped for the right word for what we might do after getting sprayed with Summer’s Eve and pelted with dirty underwear. “. . . recuperate.”
We looked at one another like we had no choice but to trudge behind him toward the street. When he reached his car, he said, “I’ll let you know what their coach says at practice on Monday.”
After he’d driven off, my teammates and I stood there, and I knew no one wanted to go home. “Should we get something to eat?” Dana suggested.
Most of us shook our heads or mumbled, “Not hungry.”
“Me neither,” Dana said.
“We don’t have to let these guys get away with this,” Tina said, directing the comment at me, as if together, we’d find the right solution.
“Are you thinking . . . revenge?” I said.
“Not Carrie-at-the-prom revenge, but yeah. Light revenge?” She tossed the idea out but seemed nervous, like she thought the team might call her crazy.
“Yes, that’s exactly what we need to do,” Marie said.
“Why should they get away with this?” Dawn extended a hand to Tina to slap five. “Even if Bobby gets ahold of their coach, he’ll probably just laugh when he finds out what his players did.”
“What do you have in mind?” Wendy said, slinging an arm over Tina’s shoulder. “Because I’m in.”
Ideas started to fly. “We TP their houses!” “We fuck up their cars!” “We’ll break into their cafeteria and pee in their soda machine!”
“Those are all good suggestions,” I said. Finally, with the team rallying around our revenge plot, my energy had started to return. “But we need a punishment that fits the crime. We need to
hit them where it hurts—”
“Their dicks?” Marie said.
“For sure,” Dana said. “They can put them back where they came from.”
“Their moms?” Joanie said.
“No, I mean . . . never mind,” Dana muttered. Tina and I traded an amused look.
“I think she’s trying to say she wants them to put their dicks away forever,” Dawn said.
“Screw that,” Marie said. “I’d like to see them run through here when we’re prepared for their dicks.”
“They’re more than their dicks, guys,” Arlene said, like this was something she’d learned in kindergarten. “They’re bad people no matter what they have between their legs.”
“I think we need to settle on a plan so we can stop saying ‘dick,’” Franchesa said.
“Please,” Tina said.
“And we don’t give their dicks any more attention,” I said. “They think the world revolves around them as it is. But . . .” I pointed at the ground, where one of the pairs of underwear lay. It had a telltale butt-crack-length brown stain up the back of it. So did several of the others lying in view. “I think that even though they’re assholes, they don’t know how to wipe theirs.”
“Disgusting!”
“Do you guys think there’s sideline chalk in that shed?” I said. “Because I have an idea.”
Just as I suspected, the boys had been too stupid to lock up the shed. Inside, there was white chalk and line stripers, for marking off lines on the pitch and the football field. We took everything and returned to the soccer pitch.
“We have to work fast,” I said. “Who knows how long we have!”
It took us about an hour to mark the pitch. We went over every letter with a second coat of chalk, and then a third, ensuring that it wouldn’t be washed away if it rained before next week. Heck, it would take hours to erase it even with firehoses.
“Is this kind of mean?” Joanie said when we were done. “Like, is it beneath us?”
“I think it’s perfect,” Marie said, hoisting her paintbrush in the air. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but nobody whines louder than a man whose ego has been bruised.”
Once we’d put everything away, we all walked to the top of the bleachers to stare down at our work. It reminded me of what I’d told Joe about listening to “Gimme Shelter,” that feeling of going up high to look at my life. In this case, though, I was looking at the St. Mark’s soccer field, where we’d painted, in bright white letters:
EAT SHIT, ST. SKID-MARKS!
We’d then used a pair of pliers we found to pick up the pairs of shit-stained underwear and draped them over orange cones down the length of the field.
I laughed, imagining Ken’s anger mounting in him until his skin was redder than his hair. Joe was going to declare this very punk rock.
“I wish I had a camera,” Marie said.
“I know,” Franchesa said. “We’ll just have to remember it.”
“I might block some of it out,” Tina said. “But this part’s good. I can’t wait until those assholes and all their friends come to school on Monday and see it.”
“I still wish we’d gotten to play the game,” Dawn said.
“What game?”
A male voice yelled up from below and behind us. I spun around and looked down at the ground beneath the bleachers.
Two police officers were standing there, and from the looks on their faces, they didn’t think our work was as good as we did.
Twenty-Eight
After all the blood felt like it had been drained from and then returned to my body at a colder temperature, I shared a moment of “oh shit” panic with my teammates. I had to catch Dana by the arm so she didn’t fall over at the top of the bleachers. The cops summoned us to join them on the ground, where we stood in front of them, not knowing what we were supposed to do next.
“That’s Officer Nadler,” the taller officer said, pointing at the stockier cop. “I’m Officer Dickerson.”
“Nads and Dick? Haven’t we dealt with enough of that?” Marie whispered to Lisa, who giggled.
“Not a very ladylike thing to say,” Dickerson said, stepping up to her so his face was inches from hers.
“Who’s responsible for you girls?” Nadler asked, with his hands on his hips.
No one spoke at first. Since I was the captain, I decided I should answer. “Um, we’re responsible for ourselves. We’re a soccer team.”
Why had I said that like it was a Get Out of Jail Free card? Dickerson stared at me like I was a talking bear, then took a step closer. He loomed over me.
“Mind telling me what a girls’ soccer team is doing on a boys’ field? And what this vandalism has to do with playing soccer? If that’s even what you really do?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to think of what to say. Everyone else had gone silent, but it was probably for the best if only one of us was doing the talking. In movies, there was always one guy who did the talking. “We do play soccer,” I said, pointing at our uniforms. “And we were supposed to have a game with the boys’ team here.”
Officer Nadler gave one of those laughs that was more like the noise of someone clearing a booger from one nostril. “You expect us to believe that?”
“It’s true,” Tina said, backing me up. “They forfeited.”
Dickerson shot Tina a dismissive look. “And then they left?”
Did he not know what forfeiting was? I nodded, as my knees trembled. “Yeah, and we’ve been working hard for this game, so I guess we were mad, Officer.”
“So you wrote this trash?” Dickerson asked. He stared at the “St. Skid-Marks” message on the field as if it caused him physical pain.
I wanted to tell him what the boys had done to us first, but we had no proof, except for the tighty-whities draped around the field, but what could cops do with those? Go door to door to ask people if their sons had lost a pair of stained briefs?
“Are you not going to answer me?” Dickerson said. “Are you ashamed of yourselves? Because I sure hope you are.”
I wasn’t ashamed and I still thought the revenge was worth even the hassle from these cops. But I didn’t want to go to jail or anything, either. “If I say yes, can we leave? It’s just chalk.”
“Look, little lady—though calling you a lady is a stretch, writing stuff like that—I’m not letting you girls go home until you tell me who I can call. You’re lucky I’m not charging you all with vandalism.” Dickerson looked like a guy who immediately settled into his easy chair when he got home and made his wife fetch him beers. He was probably looking forward to that chair too much to deal with writing up eleven girls.
“If you give us a name, we can finish up here,” Nadler said.
“Bobby McMann,” I said at last. “You can try the athletic office at Powell Park High.” I hoped he was still there. It was better him than any of our parents.
Officer Dickerson crossed the field to use the pay phone. We watched as he spoke into the receiver, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying. “He’s on his way,” he hollered as he hung up.
When Bobby arrived fifteen minutes later, he shot me a concerned look over Nadler’s head. Then Dickerson led him around the field to read what we’d written there. It felt like it took hours for them to read four giant words.
“I see, Officer, I understand” was all we heard Bobby saying when they finally returned. They were standing to the side of us, and we all pretended to look at our feet as we eavesdropped. Bobby said, loud enough for us to hear, “Look, it’s my fault. They were supposed to play a game against the boys’ team here, and those boys committed a lewd, aggressive act that, if you ask me, should be punished. My team will be appropriately disciplined by me for what they’ve done here, but you should really talk to the St. Mark’s coaches as well. I reached their athletic director, and he seemed disinclined to even entertain the idea one of his teams would do such a thing. But I saw it with my own eyes.”
Nadler and Dicker
son exchanged a glance, like they’d been partnered on a huge case. Nadler drew himself up and said to me, “Did they violate you girls in some way?”
“I’ll fill you in, Officer.” Bobby gestured for Nadler and Dickerson to come closer, and the trio retreated farther from us and spoke for a few more minutes. Both officers’ faces were grave.
“Bobby’s not making us out to be victims or something, is he?” Tina said.
“He’d better not be,” Marie said.
“Maybe he has to, if he’s cutting a deal,” Joanie said. “Who cares? Better he plays the ‘poor girls’ card than we sit in a cell or something.”
The officers left. “Mercy,” Dana said. “We must not be getting arrested.”
Bobby was headed back toward us. I couldn’t gain anything from his expression as he read the words on the field one more time.
“You know, even if Bobby’s pissed, this was fun,” Wendy said. “Someday, you’ll all be my bridesmaids or some shit and we’ll think about this day.”
“You’re going to have ten bridesmaids?” Tina said. “That’s not a wedding, that’s a circus.”
“You can all wear your uniforms,” Wendy said. She playfully punched Tina in the arm. “Anyway, I’m not going to get married. My parents made that sacred institution look pretty nasty.”
“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be your bridesmaid,” Tina said.
“Bridesmaid . . . ,” I said, the word turning noisily in my brain, the way you cranked a penny you’d put inside a gumball machine. “Oh, fuck! My dad’s wedding!”
“Girls . . . ,” Bobby was saying as he got closer—he must have been about to lecture us or at least tell us what the officers had said—but when he saw my face, he stopped short. “What’s happening?”
“I’m supposed to be at my dad’s wedding, like, already! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! What am I going to do?” It wasn’t only that I should have been at the banquet hall by now, it was that I was covered in weather-resistant chalk, smelled like a mixture of Summer’s Eve, dirt, and sweat, and knew I wouldn’t remember how to cover up my black eye the way the Estée Lauder lady had taught me. “I’m gonna be sick.”
Gimme Everything You Got Page 24
