Rock Bottom Girl

by Score, Lucy

  “Hey.”

  “So you wanna practice?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my tone.

  Libby shrugged. “I guess. But just because I practice doesn’t mean I’m joining the team.”

  “Understood.”

  “Are you okay playing with all that metal in your face?” Vicky asked, peering at Libby’s piercings.

  “We’ll check the rule book later,” I said. “Just try not to get kicked in the face today.”

  The faster runners returned, and after another minute, the rest of the team was sucking wind in front of us.

  “Everyone, this is Libby. She’s thinking about joining the team.”

  They eyed her with teenage hostility and suspicion.

  Libby stared back, seemingly bored and unintimidated.

  “Is she Lisabeth’s replacement? Is this why you kicked her off the team?” Angela demanded.

  “Lisabeth wasn’t kicked off the team. She was asked to leave. Nicely,” Vicky lied.

  “I kicked Lisabeth off the team because she was a toxic presence. She might have had a big foot, but her attitude was holding back the entire team. Libby here is a coincidence. A really good one, so I suggest you not act like a pack of rabid wolverines for once. Anyone have any problems with that?”

  Over a dozen hands raised. “Tough crap,” I said. “I’m the boss. And I need you all to know that the decisions I make are what I think is best for all of you. Not just some of you. We’re a team. Remember that. We’ve got common ground, common goals. And we’re basically awesome human beings. Does anyone have anything they’d like to talk about?”

  I didn’t really want to delve into the whole “sorry your coach died on the sidelines” thing, but it was my job to make these girls a team.

  “Can we talk about why the only makeup you wear is mascara and Chapstick?” Natalee asked.

  “No, but if someone wants to discuss how they were affected by their head coach’s death last year, we can talk.”

  There were blinks and shrugs around our little, sweaty circle.

  “Ugh. Not this again. We already sat through guidance counselor therapy last year,” one of the girls groaned.

  “Nope. We’re good,” Ruby announced.

  I was relieved. “Great. Now, let’s line up for super fun shots on goal drills.”

  On Libby’s first shot, a fast-moving grounder, she sent it sailing into the far upper corner of the net and jogged to the end of the line like it was no big thing.

  “Lucky shot,” one of the Sophies grumbled.

  Libby wiggled her eyebrow ring at the girl.

  They got really quiet on her second shot. Libby trapped the air ball under her foot, executed a neat little 360, and put the ball in the lower right corner.

  “Who the hell is this chick? Carli Lloyd?” one of the girls grumbled.

  By her third turn, everyone was watching with bated breath. I decided to give Libby a little room for the dramatic and floated a ball to her. With a precise snap, she banked it off her forehead, directing it under the crossbar and into the back of the net.

  That earned some applause from the easier-to-please members of the team.

  I shot Vicky a smug look, and she tipped an imaginary top hat at me.

  I’d designed the entire practice to play to Libby’s strengths. Her controlled dribble was the fastest, her footwork the cleanest, and, by my count, she was twelve for twelve in shots on goal. The entire team was taking notice, and the muttered bitchiness was quieting.

  “She’s so fucking good,” Vicky hissed at me. “Do you think she likes us?”

  “God, I hope so. Is it legal to bribe high school athletes?” I wondered. There was just one more test. “Okay, gang. Let’s scrimmage for the last fifteen minutes before we turn you lose to wreak whatever havoc you wreak on a Thursday night.”

  I divvied them up varsity vs. JV and put Libby on the JV team. In less than five seconds, Libby had snagged the ball from forward Natalee and was running toward the goal as if she was being chased by an army of zombies. The fast ones. Not the limping ones.

  “Holy shit,” Vicky whispered next to me.

  Libby juked, jived, and danced her way through the varsity defense until it was just her and the goalie. One graceful little nudge from her foot sent the ball sailing past Ashlynn. The whole run had taken less than fifteen seconds.

  Angela was speechless. Morgan E. offered Libby a high-five as she jogged back to center field.

  I restarted them with a kickoff and kept my fingers crossed. There was one last thing I needed to see from Libby. One essential piece of the puzzle. This was my team, and there was one thing I valued more than talent and skill.

  The varsity team kicked off and worked their way down into the JV’s penalty box, but a sloppy move by Ruby gave the defender a chance to clear the ball. She cleared it to center field, not exactly ideal, but Libby plucked it out of the air and turned toward the other end. Again, she systematically beat her way through the midfielders and started picking apart the defense.

  Vicky and I watched, holding our breath, Vicky’s fingernails digging into my arm.

  Just when I thought Libby would dodge her way around the last defender, she passed the ball to little, speedy Rachel, who was hovering just outside the play. Rachel was so shocked she reacted purely on instinct and nailed the ball into the back of the net.

  “Yes!” Vicky and I were jumping up and down hugging each other. We would have made quite the spectacle of favoritism, but the JV team had already tackled Rachel and Libby to the ground in celebration.

  “Oh, shit. Guys, try not to celebrate so hard,” I called. “Did you see that?” I slapped Vicky’s arm.

  “Teamwork makes the dream work,” Vicky said, still jumping up and down.

  * * *

  “Sooooo…” I said, trying desperately to play it cool. I was driving Libby home after her victorious debut as a Culpepper Barn Owl.

  She looked out the window, the picture of teenage boredom. “So?”

  “What did you think of the team? Do you want to play?” I held my breath while she took her sweet time answering.

  We were getting closer and closer to her house, and I didn’t want to let her out of the car without an answer. But that might be considered abduction, and if I had two civil lawsuits pending, I should really keep the felonies down.

  “It was okay,” she said.

  “You’re killing me, Morticia,” I said, losing my façade of cool.

  “Look. You should probably know that I was kicked out of my last foster home for being violent.”

  I blinked. Considered. Culpepper High had been desperate enough to hire someone banned for life from Homecoming. I too was that desperate. “Eh. Doesn’t matter,” I decided. Besides, she didn’t read dangerous or violent. Libby read too smart for her own good. I liked that about her.

  “You’re so weird.”

  I snorted. “Libs, you have no idea.”

  We rode in silence for a minute.

  “I wasn’t actually violent,” she confessed finally. “My seventeen-year-old foster brother kept accidentally walking in on me in the shower until I told him if he did it again I would pin his ears back with a staple gun. The kid had gigantic ears. And overprotective parents.”

  “That sucks.” I knew what it was like to be-bop through life with a dark smudge of judgment against me. Sometimes people only saw the smudge, not the person. “I still want you on the team.”

  “I believe I was promised candy,” Libby reminded me.

  “Glove box.”

  She shot me a look of suspicion and then opened it. A stack of Taco Bell sauces and a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup fell out.

  “Well, since you held up your end of the bargain, I guess we have a deal,” she sighed.

  “Yes!” I pumped my fist into the roof of the car. “Ouch!”

  “You’re so weird.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “So, I wasn’t kidding before. I don’t ha
ve any money.”

  “Leave that to me.” My first direct deposit was burning a hole in my checking account, and I couldn’t think of a better use. “Do you want me to talk to your foster mom about the team and stuff?”

  “Nah. She’s not around much. She’ll just be happy that I’m entertaining myself. She’s nice. Just busy,” Libby added. She pointed to the right. “It’s the second one on the right. The white one.”

  It was a small ranch house with a more-dirt-than-gravel driveway and an entire toy store in the front yard. A little boy was chasing a young teen girl with a hose while a toddler rode a big wheel at max speed around the side of the house.

  “Did their last coach really die?” Libby asked.

  “Yep. And then their substitute coach played mind games with them for the rest of the season. You can be my spy and let me know how deep the damage goes.”

  “Fun,” Libby said dryly.

  “No game or anything this weekend,” I told her. “Practice on Monday and a home game on Tuesday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for showing up today, Libby.”

  “Thanks for the candy, Coach.”

  * * *

  Me: I kicked a jerk off the team and landed a new star player. I’M INVINCIBLE.

  Jake: *wipes a tear* My girlfriend’s a superhero! I bet you can rock a cape.

  Me: I’m going to celebrate with Taco Bell. You in?

  Jake: Nothing but the best for my girl. Homer loves the soft tacos. Pick me up in ten.

  Vicky: Did she say yes? Does she like us? Is she going to carry us to victory?

  Me: SHE SAID YES!! And she called me weird.

  Vicky: Win some. Lose some. Hang on. Rich just walked into the bedroom in his socks…

  34

  Jake

  Poker nights were my favorite nights of the month. I gathered my closest mostly-teacher pals, plied them with beer, and gabbed about shit we didn’t dare say within students’ hearing. All while trying not to go bankrupt to Mrs. Gurgevich, card shark extraordinaire.

  I opened the bag of chips and tossed it on the poker table.

  I wondered what my grandmother would think of me turning her formal dining room, the room that had hosted generations of family for holidays and special events, into a man cave with a green felt table and velvet Dogs Playing Poker reproduction.

  At least I had a cover for the table in case I ever tried to use it to eat food off of.

  Luckily, Grams went for cremation. Otherwise, she might roll over in her grave.

  Uncle Max was the first to arrive. In juxtaposition to his husband, Lewis, Max was lily white with a fluffy beard and absolutely zero fashion sense. He was wearing elastic waist cargo shorts and a Queen t-shirt that had seen so many washings part of the “n” had worn off, making it look more like an “r.”

  He poked his head into the living room as he handed over the covered plate he was carrying. “Kentucky bourbon beef jerky for the Anything Goes theme,” he said without preamble.

  My gay uncles and their refined palates were a very bright highlight of my life. And they were both horrendously disappointed that I’d never developed an interest in creating the food, only eating it.

  “Gimme,” I said, reaching for the plate.

  “You know, you’d really be doing me a favor if you’d clean some of this up before poker nights,” he said, eyeing the mess that had migrated off the coffee table and onto the far end of the couch, floor, and one of the end tables.

  Was that a six-pack in the bay window? I’d looked for that thing for three days before giving up and buying another.

  “I’ll get to it,” I promised. And I meant it. The mess was starting to annoy me. Or Grams’s ghost was haunting me into annoyance.

  The doorbell rang, and the front door opened as Floyd, gym teacher and gossip, let himself in. “What smells like meat and whiskey?” he asked, scenting the air like a bloodhound.

  “Let’s move it along,” Mrs. Gurgevich grumbled behind him. “I got a half ton of sashimi on clearance. If we don’t eat it in the next thirty minutes, the parasites will start growing.” She maxed out at five feet tall with a frizzy nest of salt and pepper hair and severe black-rimmed glasses. Tonight, she was wearing a black caftan with metallic threads. Work Mrs. Gurgevich was wildly different from Out of Work Mrs. Gurgevich. She’d been married three times, knew three presidents well enough to call them by their first name, and a Saudi prince owed her a favor.

  “Where’s my great-nephew?” Max asked.

  “Homer’s watching Animal Planet upstairs,” I told him. My four-legged roommate would make his way downstairs to scam some table scraps from the guests during a commercial break.

  “Gurgevich, I’m coming for your money!” Bill Beerman was timid everywhere but the poker table. The mild-mannered computer science teacher who got tongue-tied around pretty substitutes was a trash-talking riot after a light beer and one hand of Texas Hold ’Em. Since his shocking loss last time to Gurgevich, he was ready for battle in a neatly pressed golf shirt and shorts.

  “All right, gang. You know the drill,” I said, leading the way into the kitchen. I’d at least made an effort to shovel some of the trash and old leftovers into the garbage can before everyone arrived. Bill dug out my ever-present stack of paper plates and doled them out.

  Why use dishes if you just have to wash them? I was basically the Mark Zuckerberg of kitchens.

  “I really thought you’d clean up your act now that you have a girlfriend,” Mrs. Gurgevich mused, unwrapping the sashimi and shooting a side-eye at the overflowing trash can in the corner.

  “If you haven’t tamed me yet, how can you expect any other woman to?” I teased.

  “Do you think she’ll survive the Hooper Horror?” Floyd asked, grabbing a spoonful of the pulled pork that I’d picked up from the barbecue joint.

  “I just got a royalty check in the mail. I’m willing to use it to pay her legal fees if it gets that sociopath out of my fifth period,” Mrs. Gurgevich said.

  “Royalty check for what?” Bill asked.

  “Marley can’t really get into trouble, can she? I mean from what I hear, Lisabeth basically assaulted another girl. How’s that going to blow back on Mars?” I asked, stuffing a piece of jerky in my mouth.

  “Never underestimate the power of parents who think their children are perfect and special,” Mrs. Gurgevich snorted.

  Uncle Max was staring at me openmouthed.

  “What?” I asked, dumping the plastic utensils on the counter.

  “You have a girlfriend?” he demanded. “Like an actual human woman who agreed to be in a relationship with you?” Uncle Max was not good at keeping up with gossip. I took after him in that aspect.

  “No, she’s a blow-up doll I met at a porn store,” I said. “Yes, a human woman. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes,” they all answered in unison.

  “Funny. Real funny. We gonna play cards or gossip all night?”

  * * *

  “You should invite her over,” Uncle Max said, reorganizing the cards in his hand.

  “Huh? Who?” I asked, eyeballing my pair of ladies.

  “Marley,” Floyd said. “Does she play?”

  Christ. They weren’t letting this go. Even after Homer came down and did his table and lap surfing for scraps, they were still talking about me having a girl.

  I threw my chips in. “I dunno.”

  “How do you not know if she plays poker?” Bill asked.

  “Because we just started dating. We’re taking things slow. She hasn’t even been inside the house yet,” I said. She’d picked me up last night for celebratory Taco Bell, but I’d been waiting outside. I may have been used to the mess. But that didn’t mean I was comfortable with it.

  “Slow?” Gurgevich sat with an unlit cigarette dangling from her posy pink lips. “You? Ha!”

  “Yes, me. Jesus, you guys make me sound like a manwhore or something,” I grumbled.

  “I think yo
u should invite her over tonight,” Uncle Max insisted.

  “You’re just saying that because then you can tell Uncle Lew that you met her and he didn’t.”

  “I see no problem with that,” he sniffed.

  “She’s a cool gal,” Floyd said. “Seems like the kids are warming up to her a bit. I mean, except for when she got red eyes and a cloud of smoke came out of her nose at Hooper yesterday.”

  “Are you protecting her from us or us from her?” Mrs. Gurgevich asked me.

  “Fine. Geez. I’ll text her. Okay?” I yanked my phone out of my pocket.

  Me: You don’t maybe want to come over so my asshole friends and nosy uncle will get off my back about why my girlfriend isn’t here at poker night, do you?

  “There. I texted. Happy now? Can we please get back to playing?”

  My phone dinged.

  “What did she say?” Bill asked.

  “Did you see me pick up my phone yet, genius?” I muttered. Having a girlfriend was turning out to be a pain in my ass.

  Marley: What the hell kind of an invitation was that?

  “What did she say?” Uncle Max asked.

  “She wants to know what the hell kind of an invitation was that.”

  “How did you say it?” Mrs. Gurgevich asked.

  “I told her you guys wouldn’t get off my back and she could maybe come over so you’d shut the hell up.”

  Uncle Max stroked a hand through his beard. “You’re not very good at this,” he observed.

  “It’s my first relationship! What do you want from me? Jeez!”

  Mrs. Gurgevich was shaking her head sadly. “I really thought you’d be better at this.”

  “And I really thought I’d be playing poker tonight, not sitting through some hen-pecking party.”

  Floyd let out a chicken squawk.

  Me: Please come over and hang out with my stupid friends. I’d love to have you. There’s bourbon-flavored beef jerky.