Waiting on the Sidelines
Read Waiting on the Sidelines Online
Authors: Ginger Scott
Tags: #Young Adult, #Romance, #Contemporary
WAITING ON THE SIDELINES
By Ginger Scott
Text copyright © 2013 Ginger Scott (Ginger Eiden)
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
Ginger Scott
To my family and friends (the members of Team Ginger) who have always known I could do this. And a special shout out to my husband who convinced me I should finally just ‘write the damn thing.’ I love you.
I live in a trailer. A double-wide manufactured home, to be more accurate. But those are just semantics. No matter how pitched the roof, how long the living room or how fancy the lattice-covered deck is that surrounds your manufactured home, because it is positioned atop giant cinder blocks with a river-rocked driveway, it is, unarguably, a trailer in the eyes of every person fortunate enough to live in a home with a foundation poured directly on the ground.
My trailer is the last one on a long dirt road just on the outskirts of town. We live in Coolidge. It’s a small town in Arizona about an hour outside the greater Phoenix area. That means it’s about an hour away from anything truly relevant.
Our biggest store is the K-Mart, one of the classic ones with giant orange and yellow toy airplanes by the front door with quarter slots and runny-nosed children begging their parents to let them have “just one ride.” The chalky white floor tiles are scuffed with dirt and blue Icee so badly that the daily mopping only moves the filth around, thinning it out with the water rather than actually making things clean.
From the time I started kindergarten my family planned an annual trip to the K-Mart for back-to-school shopping. My family isn’t poor. We’re comfortable. Lower middle class, sure, but we can afford to buy new clothes at the mall in town, which my parents do from time to time. We usually settled for the K-Mart because of the hour-long drive that a trip to the mall entailed. Our family car is a hand-me-down Oldsmobile from some great aunt I’m pretty sure I never met. It has black vinyl seats and a very sketchy air-conditioning system. Coolidge is separated from town by a lengthy stretch of desert, and one busted radiator hose or a faulty click of the air conditioning control meant we were rolling the windows down. Not a disaster in the winter, but in August, a situation like this almost guaranteed that the striped pattern of the vinyl seats would create a bright pink series of indentations on the fatty parts of the back of our legs, like singe marks on a barbecued hotdog. It is for this reason mostly that all back-to-school shopping is done at the K-Mart in Coolidge.
Up until this year, I had always looked forward to this outing. When I was 5 or 6, I would delight at the latest cartoon-character T-shirts that hung on the walls of the children’s department. Those, and the brightly colored soccer shorts in the boys section. A bit of a Tomboy, my wardrobe now consists almost entirely of cut-off jean shorts, tracksuit sweat pants, soccer shorts and sports logo T-shirts. My brother’s Nike jacket, made of maroon nylon with sporty white racing stripes down each sleeve, gets me through the winter. Fitting for a girl named Nolan. My dad was a huge baseball fan, and when I was born, his favorite pitcher was Nolan Ryan. Nolan’s real first name was Lynn, which of course I got for a middle name. Nolan Lynn Lennox. Not very girly, but I can throw a perfect spiral with the football and my curveball ain’t so bad either.
Things like clothing, makeup and hair were always an afterthought. Even during my last year of middle school. I chose my outfit each morning based on whether or not I had P.E. that day or if I had planned on playing kickball or soccer with the boys on the field before the morning bell. I rarely wore a dress, and when I did, I most certainly remembered to put shorts on underneath so I could run without fear of flashing my underwear.
“Dress up,” as it were, was reserved for 8
th
grade graduation and the few school dances we had. And even then my long brown hair was almost always in a ponytail. I found that was the easiest thing to do given the 100-degree temperatures outside and my insistence on playing every sport available. I had a permanent wave in my hair from the spot where the rubber band pulled my hair together.
My life’s purpose was to be part of the background. Lightly dusted freckles on my face, brown eyes and a bit of a lanky build, I was too tall for my gawky legs and size 9 feet that were always getting tangled up beneath me. I always wore tie shoes, like Vans or Converse, unless I had my running shoes on. I even convinced my mom to let me wear Converse to my 8
th
grade graduation – they were pink, which I think is what helped me win my argument.
My daily school outfit was thrown together in seconds every morning; often mismatched, but always clean. That was all I cared about.
Then
Monday
happened.
I’m a freshman. And on Monday I went to the Coolidge High School gym to try out for the school’s volleyball team. The concept of tryouts is really arbitrary at the freshman level. Everyone makes the freshman teams; they take as many people as they have jerseys. In fact, the year before they had 26 girls try out with only 25 uniforms. The parent booster club rushed to the rescue with a white, long-sleeved T-shirt (from the K-Mart, of course) and an iron-on number 26 from the craft department.
When I showed up to the gym, most of the other girls had already ran their laps and stretched. I could see them through the doorway window. They were sitting in a circle listening to three older women with clipboards talk, no doubt about the importance of teamwork and the winning record the school was coming off of from the season before. I intended on sneaking in behind them, but the humidity outside was so high that the paint on all of the doors was sticky. As I pulled on the gym door, it made a loud popping sound and an equally awful snarl from the hinges. As it slammed to a sticky close, my cheeks began to burn. The women I intended on sneaking in behind were resting their clipboards against their chests and staring at me with that look that I knew read “we’re going to make an example out of you.” A group of about 35 girls, many who were there trying out for the varsity squad, stared, too. The two closest to me were definitely juniors or seniors. Their fluffed, curly ponytails and perfectly manicured eyebrows were trademark of high school cheerleaders. And I would have quickly assumed them to be so, except that before I could excuse myself for being tardy, the tallest of the two yelled out ‘Ten laps on the stairs, freshman!’ before I could utter a word.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said.
“Tardy people get ten laps on the stairs,” she said.
“We had trouble with the car, so…” I tried to eek out an excuse only to be cut off by the tall lanky blonde in shorts so short they really seemed unnecessary.
“You can just start on the north side, run up to the weight room, cross over and come down on the south end.”
I was a bit puzzled, but I really didn’t mind running. And after all, I had missed warm ups. I nodded yes to the girls in the circle and set my gym bag down in the corner. I don’t know why I brought a bag really; it’s not like I had a towel or shampoo to take a shower. I wasn’t quite ready to experience a group shower yet and thought I’d put it off as long as I could. My bag contained an extra pair of socks, just in case I got a blister, and flip flops so I could pull my shoes off in the car and rest my feet on the ride home.
I heard the other girls start to pull things from the gym’s storage closet, and as I made my way up the north stairs, the expanse of the gym came into view. Each girl was getting paired off and pulling balls from a large bin to warm up with. I scanned the lines of girls for anyone I knew, but there were only a few girls who I recognized from junior high. In my circle of friends, I was really the only one into sports. Sienna, who I’ve known since first grade, was good at things like hair and make-up. She even had her own jewelry business. Her mom ran the local beauty shop and Sienna would make feather earrings and beaded bracelets that her mom would let her sell after school to the ladies in the shop. She actually had a pretty steady stream of customers and could count on a good $15 a week. And I could usually count on her to buy my ticket for the movies because of it. Sports usually resulted in an injury for Sienna, so I didn’t even ask her to come with me. Sarah, who I’ve known equally as long, was more into boys. Her focus was on joining the cheerleading squad. That was “a direct line to dating a football player,” she said. Sarah actually has some coordination, so I tried to get her to change her mind and join me, but my efforts were fruitless.
My stomach was starting to sink. I was going to have work into a group of two. I’m not what you would call a natural at breaking the ice. The thought of just running down the south steps and out the back door, hopping the fence and making the 7-mile trek home was starting to sound more and more reasonable. I was reaching for the door to give it a test yank to see if it made the same loud creaking sound as the main door that set my entire punishment run in motion when the door flung open and the sounds of cleats scratching linoleum echoed in the hall leading up to it.
Football tryouts. I recognized most of the boys from junior high, but there were a few new ones. There was really only one feeder school for Coolidge, so it was rare for new names to move into the halls of our school system. But there was one name that the entire town was buzzing about.
The anticipation of the arrival of Reed Johnson was enormous. He went to a private school in the city before he moved to Coolidge to live with his dad over the summer. He may be new to our school, but everyone knew him. His father, Buck Johnson, owned three Buick dealerships in Tucson. He owned several acres of land on the east end of town with a giant two-story home with a four-car garage. The front door was flanked by tall white pillars that made the entire place look like the White House. We always called it the Johnson Ranch, mostly because he had grand iron gates over the bricked roadway leading up to his main house. The entire roadway stretched about the length of a football field and was lined with towering trees that would swallow my trailer up whole, but planted near the Johnson home the trees looked almost like scrub brush.
In a rare moment of clarity, I stopped my run and camped out by the drinking fountain pretending to hydrate and re-tie my shoelaces while the line of sweaty boys rushed up the steps to the weight room. The last thing I wanted was attention right now.
For some reason, I couldn’t quit staring at Reed, though. I pulled my hair out of my face and tilted my head sideways while I drank, just keeping him in my periphery. He had perfect boy hair; it was brown and somewhere between long and short with a little curl that stuck out of the sides and back of his hat. A dimple punctuated each cheek at the corner of his lips when he smiled and laughed. He was wearing a purple jersey that read Johnson on the back in big golden letters.
Probably his brother’s old jersey, I thought
. His brother, Jason Johnson, was the school’s all-star quarterback a few years back, leading Coolidge to their first state title in 34 years. He was recruited by the University of Arizona when he graduated, but spent most of his time as back-up quarterback. He lives in Tucson and runs one of the dealerships with his father now.
Reed was already being touted as the school’s next great hope. Sure, his name played into it for the most part. But everyone also knew Buck Johnson didn’t like to lose, and his sons were always the best. Since both Johnson boys were able to throw, Buck had them in football, basketball and conditioning camps. Their skills were expensive. And both Reed and Jason could have easily played for one of the big Division I schools in the city. But they wouldn’t have stood out as much, and maybe would have only started their senior years. By leading the Coolidge Bears, the Johnsons were sure to be a constant feature of local newspapers. Local heroes, leading a team back from the dead. College scouts love that kind of character. And Buck Johnson knew how to close a deal. And the sizeable donations he was willing to make never hurt.
I must have been in a deep trance, staring at the light freckles on his arms and the shaggy torn sweat pants that showed his muscular calves and Nikes with #13 written on the back, when I was jolted awake by the sound of my last name.
“Lennox! You ‘bout done with those laps, lady? Get a move on!”
Everyone turned to stare at me sitting in the stairwell. Reed’s eyes are green. I know this because I looked right into them. Then I watched them gaze down my body, taking in my worn-out, extra-large Lake Powell T-shirt, knee-length basketball shorts and tube socks pulled well over my calves to show off the red and blue stripes that this morning seemed so very cool.
Not cool. Not cool, I thought.
That’s when I saw the sides of his mouth curl into a half smile. His eyes made it back to mine and he turned around.
I was stunned. Did he approve? Was my style cool? Did I just make an impression on the boy who is clearly our future homecoming king?
I gulped down some water from the fountain and jogged back to the middle of the gym to start passing drills. The next two hours passed in a blur. I remember a lot of running between lines on the basketball court and jumping to reach our hands above the net. I know I aced the passing drills where we had to pass a ball perfectly into a series of large net baskets, and I finished my runs faster than most of the other girls trying out. Just a few hours ago, I would have been soaking up the competitive edge I seemed to be gaining with every challenge. But I couldn’t get Reed’s eyes out of my head. And that half-smile he left me with as he turned around and raced up the stairs. Every water break, I purposely placed myself at the end of the line so I could get a glimpse of the weight room upstairs. I saw him lying on a bench and lifting weights with another boy I knew, Sean. When they were done, they would bang fists and trade spots. I kept waiting for Reed to look down the stairs at me, clearly standing right in view. But he never did.
Practice was over at 5. I was sitting in the corner rolling down my socks and pulling them off to stuff inside my shoes when the head coach came over to me.