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The first day I ever gave a shit about soccer was September 4, 1979—the day that Mr. McMann showed up at Powell Park High.
You know those Coke commercials where you see the bubbles pouring mesmerizingly over ice and the liquid ripples like it’s dancing and your mouth gets dry and all you want is a Coke? Even if you’ve never had a Coke, or you’ve just had one? In a way, I’d just had one. Sort of.
Boys would call it being horny. Girls would call it the same thing, I think, but not out loud.
With every other step he took, you could see the whole shape of it, even if you were nearsighted and your glasses were broken.
Every girl at the lunch table looked up at him like he was Jesus at the Last Supper, complete with the fact that we were going to be eating him.
He was Powell Park’s own resident hunk, like a gift specially for the girls at our school, maybe to make up for all the things we didn’t have, like attractive guys, flattering restroom lighting, and gym uniforms that didn’t give you a rash.
“If you really love the people you’re feeding, you don’t buy store-bought crust,” Miss Cuddle had said. Candace had nodded the same way she did when a priest said, “And Christ died for your sins.”
Maybe the only way to be happy with how you looked was to never look at anyone else.
“Oh my God, are you guys going to camp out by his car or something?” Tina shook her head. “The poor guy. He only wanted to shape minds.” “He is shaping minds,” I told her. “Dirty ones.”
He peered at the sheet. “Do you think Jimmy Carter’s Balding Ballsack knows this is a girls’ team?”
If the way I did it wasn’t pretty, it didn’t matter, because it always felt pretty after.
Candace put a palm over each of her boobs and shifted them. “I didn’t ask for these,” she said. “But they’re my responsibility.”
For all I or anyone knew, Coach McMann could have been some kind of hyperattractive psychopath. But even though he’d made me think some really unwholesome thoughts, the more I thought about him, the more I believed he was wholesome, like a sexy Mister Rogers.
She flipped past pages of pictures, cut from magazines, of crystal and cakes and couples kissing on beaches and the whole thing seemed so lonely. Not marriage itself so much as spending all your time dreaming up a wedding with a cake that probably wasn’t even chocolate on the inside and the kind of fancy wineglasses that never looked as sparkly after you’d used them one time.
“Don’t get those,” Joe said. He pointed at the box I was carrying. “Never skimp when it comes to shoes. Your feet will thank you.”
Joe is wise.
“A guy doesn’t have to be your boyfriend to be important,” Tina said.
I stared back at him. It was odd, how exciting it felt to give yourself a minute to really look at someone’s face and notice all the pieces of it separately and in ways you can’t when you look at the whole thing at once.
“But we need a punishment that fits the crime. We need to hit them where it hurts—” “Their dicks?” Marie said.
I hated Cinderella even more now. She didn’t have real problems. Who cared if the prince knew her carriage was a pumpkin and her dress was rags? He hadn’t given her an orgasm as she called him by some other prince’s name while her freakin’ dad watched.
I’d never really known him, not like I knew Candace, or Tina, or even Joe. Knowing someone meant understanding their flaws as well as their strengths. Bobby, who I’d only known parts of—whose blank spots I’d filled in myself—was not one of those people.
