Gracie (2 page)

At first, Dad pretended he hadn't noticed our arrival, but I knew he was aware of us. Dad didn't miss much. Ignoring us—Johnny, really—was his way of letting
Johnny know that if he couldn't be bothered to be on time, Dad couldn't be bothered with him. Dad wasn't real strict, except when it came to soccer. In his mind, either the boys were completely devoted to soccer and gave it everything they had, or they shouldn't even bother playing at all.

Who knew how long Dad would have kept up this fake ignoring business if Peter hadn't fumbled the ball when he noticed me? He did that a lot lately when I was around. Even though I thought of him as a sort of fourth brother, I'd begun to wonder if he had developed some sort of weird crush on me. I hoped not.

Dad finally spoke: “I turned down overtime. Peter and your brothers got here.” Before Johnny could make an excuse, Dad kicked the ball to him. That was his way of saying that even though he was annoyed, nothing was more important than getting on with the practice. And besides, Dad never could stay mad at Johnny for long. Nobody could.

Johnny kicked the ball to Peter, and the two of them passed it back and forth expertly. I tried to jump in, but it was as though I weren't there.

“I'll be goalie,” I volunteered, but Dad didn't seem to hear me.

“Mike! Daniel! Take goal,” he told them. Instantly, they placed themselves in front of the goal.

“I could shag balls,” I offered. But he was too engrossed in watching Johnny and Peter to pay attention to me.

I was still feeling so terrific about my amazing kick in the park that I was excited to show him what I could do. I wanted him to see how good I was.

While I stood on the side, watching, the guys began to play. Johnny scored and Dad's face lit up like a Christmas tree.

Peter retrieved the ball from inside the goal and threw it to Dad. When Dad stepped back to catch it, he finally noticed that I was there. “Your mom was calling you,” he said.

I had been bursting to tell him about the great kick I'd made. I had decided to say that I wanted to play soccer, too—to be included in the serious practices, not just the for-fun games. But the dismissive tone in his voice made me so angry that the words choked up inside.

Go to your mother inside in the kitchen, little girl
.
That's where you belong.
That's what he might as well have said. All the pride I felt over my victory at the park just curdled like spoiled milk. I picked up a ball lying off to the side and slammed it into the goal, making Mike and Daniel leap out of the way. The boys just stared at me as if I had gone crazy. They didn't get it at all!

So, while the
men
were outside running around, shouting and having fun training to become kings of soccer, I set the table.

Mom made spaghetti and meatballs, still dressed in the white uniform she wore each day to work as the school nurse at Columbia High. At first she tried to make conversation, speaking at top volume into the dining room from the kitchen. She soon realized what a foul
mood I was in and gave up. What tipped her off? Could it have been the sound of plates slamming onto the table with a force just shy of shattering?

By suppertime I had pretty much cooled off. Dad wheeled Granddad in from his room on the first floor. He's lived with us ever since a stroke left him unable to talk or walk about a year ago.

Peter was eating with us, as he did about three times a week. Dad said he planned to send Peter's parents a food bill each month, but neither he nor Mom really minded.

And, like an eighth person at the table, there was a small wounded hawk in a cage. Johnny had brought him home the week before. He'd found him hopping around out on the soccer field at school and was caring for him until his wing mended.

“The paper says you're going to beat Kingston High,” Mike said to Johnny and Peter as he scooped a huge ball of spaghetti into his bowl.

Mom brought in some soup for Granddad, and Dad began feeding it to him. “They're going to win States,” Dad declared confidently, meaning the State Championships. “It's a done deal.”

“Yeah,” Mike scoffed sarcastically, “just like last year.”

Dad, Johnny, and I scowled at Mike. Last year the Kingston High Gladiators and the Columbia High Cougars, our team, had been neck and neck for the championship, but the Gladiators clobbered the Cougars in the final game.

“They're animals!” Peter said, defending his team. “They're bigger, stronger, and—”

“It's the drive to win that matters,” Dad said, cutting him off.

“But they've got The Giant,” Mike reminded him. The Giant is what they called a kid named Albert McCann, Kingston's biggest, toughest player. He was well over 6 feet and must have weighed at least 200 pounds.

“He doesn't play soccer—he just knocks people down,” Dad insisted.

“This is
our
year,” Johnny assured everyone.

Mom had gone out to the kitchen to get more bread. “Let's talk about something else, please,” she said as she came back in.

Dad leaned in and whispered loudly. “There
is
nothing else,” he said, pretending it was a joke. Of course, it wasn't. To him, there really wasn't anything else. He went to pour Granddad some milk but the carton had only a drop left, so he went into the kitchen to get more. “What could be more interesting than soccer?” he said over his shoulder as he disappeared into the kitchen.

My family went to every one of Johnny's soccer games. We were all super into them, even Mom, who knew the game pretty well after all her years cheering for Dad and then Johnny. I'd watched closely at the final fiasco with Kingston last year, and I had some thoughts on how they could win this year. “We should play four-four-two and double-team that guy McCann,” I offered.

“You read that on
what
cereal box?” Daniel asked. Lately sarcasm had become his favorite style of communication. It was incredibly annoying.

“Daniel!” Johnny scolded him for being such a little brat.

At that exact moment, the spaghetti bowl reached me, completely empty. Johnny snapped it up and shoved it at Daniel. “Fill this up for her, now!”

Daniel shook his head. “We played. She didn't.”

Peter tried to be helpful by stabbing two of his meatballs and dropping them on my plate. I appreciated the thought but it was a little awkward, as though the meatballs were some kind of pathetic love offering.

“How cute,” Daniel jeered at him. “Why is it you eat here every night? Is it because the food is so good? I don't think so.”

Peter began to blush. Had he started eating here
every
night? I guess he had. Was it because of me?

“Do you even have your own house?” Mike taunted him.

“He just likes ours better,” Daniel kept going, looking at me. He was getting to be a real little snot lately. I was about to smack him, but Dad came back from the kitchen with the milk and we always got into trouble if we hit one another at the table.

Peter took the opportunity to bolt before my brothers could embarrass him any further. “Thank you, Mrs. Bowen, for another great dinner,” he said as he hurried past her.

“Oh, I washed that sweatshirt you left here,” Mom remembered, and trailed Peter into the kitchen.

Dad noticed that the spaghetti bowl was empty. He and I were the only ones who hadn't gotten any yet. “Is there more spaghetti?” he called to Mom in the kitchen.

“Just what's out there,” Mom called back.

Dad sighed and headed back into the kitchen to look for something else to eat. “She gets to pick from your meatballs,” Johnny told Mike and Daniel.

They wouldn't disobey Johnny. Now it was my turn to make them squirm. “I'll take this,” I said as I stabbed a meatball from Daniel's plate, “and a little more. I do so enjoy meatballs, don't you?”

I had intended to leave them each one meatball but Daniel gave me such an angry stare that I had to prove he couldn't intimidate me, so I took his last meatball. “I'll need that, too,” I said with a smirk.

I thanked Johnny as he was feeding some of the Italian bread to his hawk. “That bird's never going to fly,” Daniel said sulkily, angry about his lost meatballs.

Johnny turned on him sharply. “Tell him that and he never will,” he said.

After-supper cleanup was never a good time for me. I thought it was completely unfair that Mom and I cleared the table and washed the dishes simply because we were female. When I argued about it, Dad just said that he and the boys did other things, like raking and taking out the garbage. This argument didn't hold up with me because meal cleanup was a nightly event, and garbage was only twice weekly. Besides that, I helped with the raking, even though I didn't have to, mostly because it was fun to jump in the leaf piles afterward, though that was beside the point.

The thing, though, that bugged me the most about after-supper cleanup was that when the weather was decent, the guys went back outside and worked on their soccer some more. Dad had even rigged up big stadium-style lights so they could play after dark!

That's what they were doing while Mom and I washed and put away dishes. While I worked, I kept checking out the kitchen window to see what was happening. Dad was pacing back and forth as he talked to Johnny about what he should be doing on the field.

Johnny sat polishing the cleats of his soccer shoes, nodding. Mike and Daniel were there listening, gazing
up adoringly at Dad as though he was giving them the secrets of the universe.

At supper, Dad talked as though he was completely confident about this year's big game between Kingston and Columbia, but I knew he was nervous about it. They had come so close last year, and they were close once again. He was determined that the Cougars were going to be State Champs this year.

“Johnny still polishing his cleats?” Mom asked as she handed me a plate to dry. I checked quickly outside and nodded. I hadn't even seen her glance out the window once. How did she know? “It's got to be almost an hour already,” she added, handing me another plate.

“He does it for luck,” I told her. That's what he had said to me.

Mom sighed and shook her head. “He does it because he's nervous; he can't lose.” I thought she looked worried. “It's too much for one kid.”

She was wrong. Johnny lived for soccer—like Dad said, he was a natural. He couldn't lose because it wasn't in him to lose.

Mom knew soccer and she liked it, but she didn't
get
it the way the rest of us did. It wasn't in her blood. Dad didn't think it was in my blood, either, but it was. It didn't matter that I was a girl. I'd learned along with the boys, watched all the practices, and even if I wasn't as good at it as they were—because I hadn't been allowed to train the way they had—I loved the game just as much.

The big Kingston/Columbia match finally came. That night our whole family crammed into the stands that were completely packed with spectators. Even Granddad was there, carried into the bleachers by Dad.

My friend Jena came, too, since we did everything together. Plus, though she wasn't particularly big on soccer, everyone in school was psyched up for this game. Kingston was our biggest rival. Like everyone else, she wasn't going to miss the chance to see the Cougars beat them.

Down on the field, in the glare of the night lights, Kate Dorset was leading the cheerleading squad. Coach Colasanti, who had been the soccer coach at Columbia for as long as anyone could remember, was excitedly talking to the players, who were listening intently from the bench. Beside him Mr. Clark, the history teacher, who was also assistant Varsity coach and Junior Varsity coach, was writing things down.

I guessed Coach Colasanti was giving instructions for the second half. Johnny had played really well for the whole first half of the game, but some of the others hadn't done as well. Kyle missed a few passes. I knew because, as always, I had my eye on him, and there had been some other bad plays, as well. There was no score, but Kingston was threatening.

Peter looked up and saw me watching. He hadn't played at all; he was second-string and spent almost all
his time warming the bench. I waved to him and he waved back, then turned away quickly.

The game began again. Almost instantly, a Kingston player stole the ball and began running toward our goal. “No! No! No! No!” I shouted.

Dad was on his feet, screaming!

Then the ball was flying through the air!

The Kingston crowd roared. “Kingston scores!” the announcer shouted.

I slumped in defeat. Jena seemed happy, though, as she breathed in something I didn't notice. “Smell that, Gracie,” she said. “It's raw testosterone. You need high concentrations of the stuff to smell it, but there's more than enough here tonight. I may not love soccer, but I love to watch the players.”