I’m sure my trajectory, my social standing, my whole damn life would be different if I’d have been allowed to play soccer. I spent the summer before seventh grade practicing on my own because I’d never been permitted to join a peewee league and I was tired of feeling left out. Plus, my sixth grade gym teacher had noticed my potential as a foreword and he’d encouraged me to try, even though starting in junior high is pretty late when you consider that a lot of kids had been playing AYSO since pre-K.
I memorized the rules and then I spent endless hours drilling, doing ball work like toe taps and inside-to-outside touches. Plus I worked on my sprinting skills.
I was respectable.
Maybe I wasn’t great, but I was skillful and quick and determined. I understood angles and trajectory and velocity so I could always get the ball to exactly where it needed to go. More than anything, I was motivated. Kent was always right there, helping me. I don’t know which of us was more jazzed when I was chosen for the team.
I made it through two practices before my mom found out and yanked me—literally yanked me—off the pitch. I was so humiliated. Such is my shame remembering that day, I still turn my head when we drive past the middle school soccer fields. Every single kid out there was laughing at me, except for Macey Lund. She was the only one who had any compassion. I’ll never forget her mouthing I’m so sorry as my mother frog-marched me to her waiting SUV.
Figures that now I’ll never have the opportunity to thank the one person who was cool to me back then.
Anyway, my mom said if I was so desperate to play sports, she’d pick one for me.
Now I bowl. I’m a frigging bowler.
Turns out, I’m a great bowler because the geometric portion of this game also comes easy to me. Aces. Owen was a star on the lacrosse team until he quit because he didn’t feel like playing anymore. He just threw away an opportunity I would die for. Such bullshit.
As for me, I participate in a sport where you can be fat, where you can drink, smoke, and eat pizza in the middle of a game. I excel at a sport where the median player age is, what, fifty?
How do I even have to wonder why Simone isn’t into me?
How could she like me?
I don’t like me.
I mean, I try to give myself positive self-talk, try to display a confidence I don’t feel. Like, if I say I’ll be successful, then I’ll manifest it into being, all Tony Robbins–like. I work to psych myself up by doing stuff like boasting about all my wins, calling my shot like Babe Ruth used to when he’d come up to bat and point at where his homerun was headed. I visualize. I storyboard out the exact outcome I want.
But every time I do, I feel like I’m destining myself to fail.
Then when I inevitably screw up, it feels worse than the time before and it’s harder to bounce back. The cloud of failure and desperation just gets bigger and blacker, thicker and more all-encompassing.
Am I ever going to get anything right? Then, if by some miracle I were to succeed, would what I accomplished be good enough for my family?
Probably not.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying.
Simone
3:31 PM
My father is driving a lawnmower with a ginormous American flag strapped to the back. So we’re those people now.
Cordy
3:32 PM
your father is a national treasure
10
SIMONE
“Mum, I’m here.”
My satchel lands with a thud on the granite island in the center of the kitchen. I rub my right shoulder, which bears the brunt of my bag’s weight. Owen says everyone orders a second set of books so that they don’t have to lug theirs back and forth.
I’m going to be a hunchback if I don’t take care of that soon.
Even with an extra set of books, I still don’t know how I’m supposed to complete the five to six hours of nightly homework. Who has that kind of time? When does everyone else hang out with their families or play fetch with their dogs or just take a nap? I simply can’t focus that much. My strategy is to prioritize whatever assignments seem most urgent, and whatever doesn’t get done? Oh, well.
Has worked so far.
My courses feel like I’m at uni already, except there’s no beer or casual sex for distraction. Haven’t tried the latter, but my best friend, Cordelia, enthusiastically recommends both, and in large quantities. Cordy’s at University of Leeds, in the Institute for Medieval Studies. No idea what she might do with that professionally, but for now, she likes the idea of banging around old castles. (Tremendous fan of banging in all respects, then.)
Anyway, when I’m not prepared for class, no one notices. My teachers don’t seek me out, what with all the hands thrust in the air. Most students are begging to be called upon, desperate to show off every nuance they memorized about Julius Caesar’s fatal flaws in my Ancient Roman History class. Personally, I don’t need a textbook to tell me who Caesar was. Standing in the ruins of the Roman Forum, imagining every surface covered in shining white marble, I could easily envision the conflict between his genius and hubris.
My mother enters from her darkroom off the kitchen, converted from a walk-in pantry. As always, Warhol’s at her heels. Even though her hair’s held in place by about six pencils haphazardly stuck in her bun and her skin’s bare, she’s as gorgeous now as she was when she prowled the catwalks with Cindy, Linda, Naomi, and all the other first-name-only supermodels two decades ago.
Everyone used to know who Fi was, no surname required. The few who couldn’t place her name recognized that curtain of black hair from her Indian father and her unique eyes, inherited from my Norwegian grandmother. They’re liquid gold, reminiscent of a wolf, or a sexy vampire from a terrible young adult novel. With her every feature ideally placed and perfectly symmetrical, we’re told that lots of ladies still take her photo to plastic surgeons, saying, “This. Make me this.”
Figures I’d inherit most of my dad’s features, so even though I have mum’s hair, I’m short with pasty English skin and constellations of freckles. On the bright side, at least I have a chance of growing some boobs. Not a secret—he’s always bitching “My tits are bigger than Mum’s.”
“Hello, Simba.” No one in the family uses my proper name. Threw me off here for the first couple of days to hear “Simone”—I kept tensing up, assuming I was being scolded.
“Did you see what Dad’s doing out there?” I ask.
She claps her palms over her eyes and shakes her head. “Yes, the stubborn arsehole,” she says, but without contempt. “He won’t listen to me so I called Mr. Hochberg and I’m waiting to hear back. He’s going to invalidate the insurance rider! Did you see him touching the blade with his bare hands? Claims he didn’t but he’s a bloody liar.”
I nod. “Yes, and I have witnesses, too.”