“Actually, I have really bad news,” Caitlin blurted. She had already stripped off her dress, thrown on jeans and a tee, and was heading to the front door. “Soccer initiations are tonight—I totally spaced. But I promise I’ll make it up to you, okay? Tell you what—I’ll cook dinner for you tomorrow night. Anything you want. Even chicken tikka masala.” Caitlin made a mean chicken tikka masala—her moms had taught her—and Jeremy had been complaining that he hadn’t gotten to try it yet.
But there was silence on the line. Caitlin swung into her car and looked at her phone, wondering if they’d been cut off. The timer was still going. “Jeremy?” she asked tentatively. “You there?”
“You’re kidding, right?” His voice was small and kind of cold.
She jammed the key in the ignition. “I’m really, really sorry. It’s this thing we do every year with the new players. A welcome tradition. I forgot, and since I’m captain, it’s my responsibility to run it. I really have to be there.”
“And you’re telling me now?”
Caitlin paused, her hands on the wheel. Where was Mr. Understanding? “I said I was sorry,” she repeated, feeling a pull in her stomach. “And I promise to make it up to you. We can reschedule our dinner, can’t we?”
Jeremy let out an astonished laugh. “I wasn’t just taking you to dinner. I was taking you to see One Direction.”
“Oh my god!” Caitlin cried, her hand flying to her mouth. One Direction was her dirty little secret. She was a Niall girl—she kept a little picture of the Irishman taped inside her iPad cover, just for fun. Josh used to roll his eyes every time he saw it. He would rather have died—or never played soccer again—than see One Direction with her. This was just further proof that Jeremy was the best boyfriend ever.
Which officially made her the worst girlfriend ever.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Jeremy. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. I had gotten us front-row seats. But it’s . . . whatever.”
He sounded so crushed. And suddenly, Caitlin was, too. She racked her brain for a way to make this work. “Wait—hang on. Let me see if I can—”
“Forget it.” Jeremy cut her off. “Enjoy your night of hazing.”
Before Caitlin could respond, Jeremy was gone. He had hung up on her.
Her mouth hung open. She quickly hit REDIAL, but he didn’t answer. “Jeremy, call me back!” she bleated at his voice mail, then she immediately called again. Still no answer. She couldn’t believe it. Was he angry at her?
Her phone buzzed, and she pounced on it, eager to take Jeremy’s call. But it was Ursula again. Caitlin waited a beat, considering her options. If Jeremy had picked up, she would have told him she’d go. The initiation mattered—but not as much as front-row seats. But it annoyed her, too, that he hadn’t even listened to reason. He’d just hung up on her.
So she picked up the call. “Can you pick up some Silly String on your way over?” Ursula whined. “Since you’ve clearly done nothing else to help?”
“Sure,” Caitlin said, wilting. “I’ll be there soon.”
Caitlin couldn’t think of anything she was less in the mood for than initiations, but she made the short drive to Beacon High’s multimillion-dollar, brand-new athletic facility anyway. She pulled into one of the team captain parking spots—for the first time ever—and checked herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
She tried Jeremy again. Still nothing. “I can probably be out of here by nine,” she said in her sixth voice mail of the hour. “Just say the word, and I’ll be there. Thank you so much for those tickets. It’s just . . . well, it’s amazing.”
Then she dashed into the gym with Silly String in hand. At the sight of her, the whole team, newbies included, jumped up and began tossing rolls of toilet paper to one another. Ursula was emptying out the last Costco-size package, throwing rolls over heads to the players in the back. “Roll out!” Ursula instructed, drill-sergeant style. “And . . . decorate!”
“Follow me!” Caitlin said, remembering how initiation went. The first order of business was to toilet-paper a bunch of trees by the soccer field. The captain—or co-captains, in this case—always sprinted as fast as she could to get there, the other girls following behind. The slowest girls had to climb the highest trees and throw the most toilet paper.
She grabbed two rolls and headed for the double doors that led outside. She was at the front of the pack, racing across the field at top speed. She could hear the other girls huffing behind her as they unspooled their toilet paper and began to drape it across the sheds and fences. It felt weird to run, strange to do something so active and silly when Jeremy was so angry at her. But it wasn’t like she had a choice. She was captain. That meant something.
She steered the group off the field, down the hill, and onto the main walk on campus. When everyone else caught up, she singled out some of the slowest runners and pointed to their trees. The new players hurled the small white spools up into the branches, caught them when they fell, then threw them again. Then Ursula, who’d caught up, too, started a call and response chant: “Hey newbies!”
“Hey what?” they responded.
“Hey newbies!”