Chapter 2
Angela’s getting the hang of this. At first, she was resistant to the sessions. After all, she’s a five star recruit, and she’s an adult. Who does Coach Hecox think he is, telling her how she can and can’t spend her nights? But then something, or perhaps someone manages to change her tune. She begins to see the one on one sessions with Amanda as less of a punishment and more of an opportunity to become the best player she can. And so she starts putting in the work. She listens not just to Amanda’s drills, but to her advice and stories and jokes. She’s horrified to find that she’s actually enjoying her time with the captain.
Unsurprisingly, as her disposition improves as the sessions go on, so does her quality of play during practices. She’s friendlier with her teammates, cracking jokes, making plays, setting up players for highlight reel goals. Her complete 180 is noticeable. At the end of the first week, Coach Hecox takes her aside.
“Hey Angela, I just wanted to compliment you on your progress. I can tell you’ve been working really hard and it shows.”
“Thanks, Coach,” Angela says, standing a little bit taller.
“You’re already a valuable member of this team, and it’s really great to see you putting in the effort that I saw in you from the beginning. You’ve proved to me that you no longer need individual sessions with Amanda. I trust you to spend your nights responsibly. Congratulations, Angela.”
Angela tries not to let her reaction show on her face.
“What’d Coach wanna say to you?” Amanda asks, jogging to catch up with her on their way to the locker rooms. She’s smiling, one hand on Angela’s shoulder, the other holding both of her goalie gloves and her water bottle.
“Oh, just that he’s thinking of demoting you and promoting me to captain,” Angela responds, not turning to look at her teammate.
“Ha ha,” Amanda says, then, “so see you tonight?”
Angela thinks over her options. “Yeah,” she answers guiltily.
The truth is, no matter how indifferent or even petulant Angela acts on the outside, she’s actually found herself appreciating their late night sessions. It’s been a long time since she’s truly enjoyed something in soccer besides winning games and scoring goals, and she’s forgotten what it felt like. When she was little and her parents signed her up for a spring season in preschool, she had been able to use the time to hang out with her friends and run around. That era of her life always makes her smile, although it’s a short lived and hazy memory. She had quickly risen through the ranks once her knack for scoring goals showed itself and she was recruited by prestigious clubs that were less about friendship and more about glory.
Honestly, who could blame her for telling a little white lie because she was enjoying the company of a teammate?
Certainly not Chanse, who sits across from her at the corner booth of the little diner he had chosen for lunch.
“Sure girl, whatever floats your boat,” he raises his eyebrows as she sputters.
“Oh, don’t do that. It’s not like that,” she defends, seeing the look on his face.
“I didn’t say anything, you just assumed,” Chanse says, feigning innocence, “and that speaks volumes.”
“Whatever,” Angela says, but she’s laughing.
They’re silent for a moment.
“Look, Ange,” Chanse starts, “I know it’s only been a week, but I really like you.”
“Chanse, are you about to ask me out?”
“Oh honey,” Chanse blurts, pity seeping from his voice, “you wish. I’m saying that I’m really proud of you for actually making an effort this week. Additionally, I think you’re really cool and I’m glad that we’ve become friends.”
“Me too,” Angela says. Then she leans across the table, puckering her lips.
“Ew!” Chanse says, wrenching his body as far away as possible, kneeing the table in his haste.
Angela just laughs and tries not to think about what will happen when Amanda finds out about her lie, and then tries not to think about why that would matter to her.
***
“I know you can run faster than that,” Amanda says, watching as Angela tiredly jogs through the cones. She’s doing her best with what little energy she has left, but she’s running on empty and it’s beginning to show. A week ago, she would’ve quit by now, cursed Amanda out, and gone on a bender. But instead, all it takes is a little bit of humorous rivalry from Amanda. Angela huffs and turns on the jets, running through the final obstacles and sending a decent shot towards the net.
Amanda easily catches it, letting the ball fall to the ground at her feet, challenging Angela to take it from her.
Angela bites, surging forward. Amanda lunges for the ball, protecting it in her grasp. She pops back up, towering over the shorter girl.
“Nice try, kiddo,” Amanda taunts, messing up Angela’s hair with one hand, ball tucked under her other arm.
Courtney calls on the drive home.
“Hey Mandy, we miss you tonight,” they say. Or at least, that’s what Amanda thinks. It’s hard to tell through the ambient noise and the house music blasting through her phone’s tiny speakers.
“Thanks Court, miss you too,” Amanda says. There’s a cheer from the other end of the phone call, a shout that Amanda assumes is someone bringing shots to the group.
“Remind me again why you couldn’t come out with us?” Courtney drawls.
“‘Cause she’s a loser,” Amanda hears Peter, their friend, shout over the music.
“Thanks, Peter.”
“Oh he didn’t mean that, he’s crunk,” Courtney half-shouts-half-whispers.
“I couldn’t come because I had a session with Angela,” Amanda explains.
“Ugh. You should’ve invited her out, too! You know she can party.”
Amanda sighs, pulling into the parking lot of her dorm. “Yeah, that’s what I was worried about.”
“Next week,” Courtney proposes.
“No promises,” Amanda says, getting out of the car and throwing her bag over her shoulder.
“Okay!” Courtney says happily.
She hangs up and unlocks her door, tossing her bag on the couch and making a beeline for the kitchen.
As she sits on the couch with her bowl of Quaker oatmeal squares, she considers how far the freshman has come in just a single week. Amanda flashes back to the first day, where Angela was tetchy and tactless, outright refusing to pass the ball or make conversation. She’s proud of her progress and her commitment, and she’s glad that the plan to have her kicked off the team was short lived.
Courtney finds Amanda asleep on the couch with her half eaten bowl of cereal still on her stomach, dreaming about the season to come.
***
Angela can’t sleep. She’s been trying for at least an hour now, and no luck. Across the room, Arasha lets out a snore. Angela tosses and turns once more in her uncomfortable dorm mattress. Maybe it’s the adrenaline from scoring the winning goal during the last scrimmage of preseason, or maybe it’s the excitement and nervousness of being less than twenty-four hours away from stepping over the threshold of her first ever college course, or maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, it has her tossing and turning when she should be drifting off to dream of whatever the future holds for her.
Amanda picks up on the second ring.
“Shouldn’t you be out partying somewhere?” She asks immediately after the call connects.
Angela chuckles. “I would, but I’ve been spending all my time with you and I haven’t actually had the chance to go out and meet anyone yet.”
“Is that so?” Amanda asks through a yawn.
Angela stops. “Did I wake you up?”
“No, no, don’t worry. I’m just a little sleepy, that’s all.”
“You did look a little bit sluggish out on the field today,” Angela teases, “after all, I did score that one on you. Maybe if you weren’t so tired, you could’ve saved it. Maybe not though.”
Amanda makes a noise of shock, but she doesn’t say anything.
“So…,” Angela says, drawing out the vowel, “what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one that called.”
There’s a silence, but surprisingly, Angela doesn’t feel the need to fill it with something zany or surprising. They just sit there, listening to each other breathe over the phone. She’s laying on her back, staring up at her homemade sign on the wall. The carefully traced B R E A T H stares back at her.
“Why did you choose UCLA?” Amanda asks.
The question surprises Angela, and she takes a moment to think before responding. “Why not? They gave me a full ride, it’s a good program, it has good majors and stuff, nice campus, what’s not to love?”
“Yeah, but you said you basically got offers from every D1 soccer program in the country, why choose UCLA over, say, UNC or Notre Dame?”
“I dunno, it’s kind of close to home. I can go back on the weekends and stuff if I want. Family is accessible, but not on top of me. I felt like UCLA was the school that would set me in the right direction for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, you know?”
Angela assumes that Amanda is nodding. “But what about you?”
“What about me what?”
Angela smiles. “Why did you choose UCLA, silly?”
“Oh, right. Duh. I mean, kind of like you said, good majors, good program, and the best offer.”
“Okay, you can’t steal my answer.”
“It’s true!” Amanda pleads, and Angela shakes her head despite knowing there’s no way the recipient can see.
“Sorry, that’s the rules. You have to come up with something different.”
“Fine,” Amanda huffs, “then I guess it has to be the fact that it’s so far away from home. Kind of the opposite of your reason, which is funny. I mean, when I got here, I literally knew no one and no one knew me. I got to kind of reinvent myself. I couldn’t do that if I was still stuck in Boston.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. I don’t know how it was for you, you know, growing up in California and all, but in my town, or at least my little part of it, everyone knew each other, everyone’s family came from the same place in Portugal, I’d worked in about every single business by the time I left, and I needed a change. Honestly, I don’t think I would’ve lasted another day. Don’t get me wrong, I love Boston and Massachusetts with all of my heart, but I needed to be where things were happening.”
“So you came to LA.”
“So I came to LA,” Amanda confirms.
“That’s good. I’m glad you found something here.”
“Yeah, me too.”
They’re silent again.
“Okay,” Amanda starts, “your turn to ask a question.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you,” Amanda says with a laugh.
“I don’t have any more questions, though.”
“Then you’d better think of one.”
Angela furrows her brow. “Okay. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”
“Ugh. So cliché. Alright, let me think,” Amanda starts, and Angela waits patiently.
“Okay. When I was on vacation with my whole family, this was when I was like, ten, maybe, we were riding horses and my horse kicked me.”
“While you were on it?”
“While I was on it.”
Angela laughs. “How does that even happen to someone?”
“I don’t know, but I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to ruin the family trip. And I had this huge bruise all over my leg because it was a gigantic horse and I was ten, and it hurt so bad, but I never told anyone because I didn’t want them to get mad at me.”
“Wow,” Angela says, trying to collect her bearings, “that’s insane.”
“I know. I guess in my family, vacations were like a big thing and we all had to be there and have fun, and getting hurt or sick, or in this case, getting kicked by a horse, would kind of be ruining the fun, so I just kept it a secret.”
“You’re a hero,” Angela says.
“I know,” then, “okay, now you go.”
“Right. Um…,” Angela struggles to think of something she’s never told anyone.
“You seem like you have a lot of secrets to choose from,” Amanda says.
Angela’s taken aback by her comment. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Amanda laughs, “you seem like, I dunno, mysterious.”
“Okay. Thanks, I guess?”
“It’s a good thing. I always dated the mysterious guy in high school.”
Angela coughs. She wasn’t expecting that.
“You good?”
“Yeah,” she rasps back, “spit went down the wrong pipe or something.”
“Happens to the best of us.”
“So you liked the mysterious guys?” Angela asks, inviting Amanda to say more.
“Oh yeah,” she says with a laugh, “I was never into the football player or anything, I wanted the bad boy at the woods party. My mom absolutely despised them, but the greasier the better. They would always smoke those terrible cigarettes and drive me around on the back of their motorcycles.”
They stay up for longer than both of them expect. Angela’s not exactly sure when the call ends, because one moment she’s laughing about some stupid childhood story, and the next moment she’s being shaken awake by Arasha.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Arasha greets.
Angela squints up at her roommate, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“You look like the sun baby from Teletubbies,” she says.
Arasha’s face barely changes as she absorbs the comment. “Shut the hell up and go to class.”
As Arasha packs up her belongings and leaves the room, Angela looks at her phone, which is at three percent charge.
“Shoot.”
She lets it sit on the charger for about fifteen minutes before she, too, has to pack up for her first class. It’s some random gen ed requirement that she dozes off in the second the TA hands out the printed syllabus.
She stops by the dining hall for lunch, and then she’s off to her next class, the one she’d been looking forward to, and that she had miraculously gotten into.
She’s just about to walk in when a familiar voice addresses her from deeper in the hallway behind her.
“Okay, what the hell? Are you stalking me?” Amanda sounds playful, but Angela knows her question is serious.
She whips her head around. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Very funny,” Amanda responds, “but seriously. You’re blocking the doorway.”
Angela walks into the large lecture hall, taking a seat in the middle of the third row. Amanda sets her things down next to her.
“I didn’t peg you as a theatre kid,” she says, sipping her coffee.
“You didn’t peg me at all,” Angela returns.
Amanda purses her lips. “You’re a freak.”
Angela just gives her a toothy smile and pulls her laptop from her backpack.
***
Their first game of the season is scheduled for a Saturday. It’s been two weeks since the Fall term started and Amanda is practically bursting at the seams with excitement for the chance to finally go out and play some real soccer. It feels like they’ve been running plays and doing shooting drills for years. She feels an ache in her bones that yearns for the soft breeze in her hair and the brutal sun on her skin and the pouring rain soaking her keeper’s jersey.
Early Friday morning, Amanda sends a text in the team group chat letting them know that they’ve all been invited to her and Court’s place for a pregame celebration of sorts starting at 9:30. It’s a less than secret way of saying they’re supposed to be there instead of partying at the downtown college bars. Many of the girls react to the message with a heart or thumbs up, and Courtney responds with a GIF of a blue mouse wearing sunglasses.
At 9:23 pm, there’s a knock on the door.
Courtney is still at the snacks table pouring out a bag of hint of lime tortilla chips, so Amanda gets the door.
Miraculously, Angela is the one who has arrived to the gathering seven minutes early. She’s wearing a nice outfit; a long white button up with a cropped shirt underneath and small silver hoops hang from her earlobes. Additionally, she’s holding a wrapped gift and a bouquet of flowers in her hands.
“Hey Angela,” Courtney says from behind Amanda.
“Hey Court,” she says, handing the flowers and gift to the blonde, who takes them with a smile.
“These are beautiful, I’ll put these in some water now,” Courtney says, turning towards the kitchen.
Amanda zones back in and remembers her manners. “Sorry, come in,” she says, and shuts the door behind Angela.
“Sorry I’m early,” Angela says, looking down at her shoes.
“Don’t worry about it. Want a tour?”
Angela’s eyes light up and she nods.
“Well, here’s the living room,” Amanda says, motioning towards the small area with a couch and a television set. “This is me and Courtney’s suite. We were pretty lucky that we got this, but we stayed up all night when the housing forms opened so we could be the first ones to sign up.”
“I think my cousin has that couch,” Angela says, somewhat to herself.
“Here’s the kitchen. We both like to cook a lot, so it gets a lot of use,” Amanda says, leading Angela a few feet away and into a small kitchenette area. It’s a decent size for the small suite that they live in, but nothing to write home about. Still, Angela looks over the countertops in wide eyed amazement.
“That’s Court’s room,” Amanda points towards a door that’s slightly ajar.
“It’s a mess right now,” Court calls from their spot on the couch.
“I’ll show you my room,” Amanda says, leading Angela through the doorway next to Courtney’s room. She watches Angela take in the space: it’s a little bit of everything. There’s tons of family photos, sports trophies, her closet is open and full of everything she could fit in her suitcases, there’s a small stuffed animal sitting on the pillows of her bed.
“It’s really nice,” Angela says, and her voice is soft and genuine.
Amanda sits down on the bed, trying to look at her room through Angela’s eyes.
The girl looks like she doesn’t know what to do. She fidgets with her hands behind her back, gaze shifting between a photo of Amanda and her sisters and the closet. Finally, she goes over to the shelf and picks up the picture frame. Amanda pats the space on the bed next to her, and Angela sits trepidatiously, still holding the photo.
“Are these your sisters?” Angela asks, her voice barely over a whisper.
Amanda smiles. This side of Angela is one she hasn’t seen before. She’s seen her red-faced and panting, punching the ground after missing an open shot, screaming in excitement over a set play executed to a T, and everything in between. But she’s never seen her at rest. She begins to notice things; the set of freckles on either side of her throat, the way one of her eyebrows arches higher than the other, the small dimple lines on either side of her mouth.
Angela looks at her expectantly, blinking her big brown eyes. Amanda realises she still hasn’t answered the question.
“Oh… yeah. I’m one of four. All girls,” she responds, unsure if she’s even answering the question.
“You guys are cute.”
They fall silent, Angela looking at the photo, Amanda looking at Angela.
The knock on the wall startles both of them.
“Hey lovebirds,” Court says, sticking their head through the doorframe, “Emily and Bailey are here.”
Amanda stands up swiftly. “We should go say hi.”
“Yeah,” Angela agrees, but she’s still looking at the photo. It takes a second for her to get up and return the picture frame to the shelf before she follows Amanda back into the living room.
Eventually, the rest of the team arrives and they spend the evening telling stories and eating snacks. Olivia makes Amanda tell the team her story about breaking her toe with a jar of sauce and keeping it a secret from her parents, and Courtney has everyone in stitches when they recount taking Shayne out to breakfast to let him know that they weren’t interested in him romantically.
Overall, their little get together goes well.
“Go to sleep, Ange. We’ve got a game tomorrow,” Amanda says, trying to gently tug the garbage bag out of Angela’s hands.
“It’s okay, let me help,” Angela counters.
Amanda looks to Courtney for backup, but they just shrug and push a stack of plastic cups off of the living room table and into an open bag.
After Angela leaves with the trash bags, promising the two that she’ll just take them down to the trash room and not to the dumpster behind the building, Courtney and Amanda flop on the couch.
“So, looks like you got Ange whipped into shape,” Courtney says, fiddling with the wrapped box Angela had arrived with.
“Yeah,” Amanda agrees, reaching for it, “she’s good.”
***
Angela finds herself wide awake at eight a.m. After trying a couple times to force herself back to sleep by throwing her head into her pillow, she gives up and turns over in bed.
“Can’t sleep?” Arasha asks, looking up from her phone.
Angela shakes her head.
“Wanna see if Amanda and Court want to get breakfast with us?” Arasha suggests.
“Sure,” Angela says, pulling out her phone.
‘R u awake,’ she texts Amanda.
She gets about three scrolls into her Instagram feed before Amanda’s response pops up at the top of her screen.
‘Yes, why?’
‘Do u and cort want 2 get breakfast with me and arasha ???’
This time, the reply is immediate. ‘Where?’
Angela looks up from her phone. “She wants to know where.”
Arasha thinks for a second. “Wherever they want,” she says, “you’re driving, right?”
“Sure.”
‘Ur choice,’ she texts.
Amanda sends back a Google Maps location for a small breakfast place about ten minutes away from the freshman dorms.
‘There in 20 !!!’
“Are you okay?” Arasha asks as Angela pulls up to the stoplight. They’ve been sitting in the car in silence for about six minutes and have hit about five red lights in that time.
“What do you mean?” Angela asks, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.
“I mean, like, are you okay? At the beginning we thought you were heading for a complete crashout, like full on curse out the coach and then I just come back and all your stuff is cleared out and you’ve unfollowed us on Instagram and you just disappear. But you’re good, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Angela says, giving Arasha a smile. She really means it, too. It’s true that a month ago she had been tempted to call it quits and crawl back to her parents, begging for forgiveness, but she had persevered and come out stronger. Sure, there’s good days and bad days, but overall, it’s not the worst thing in the world.
“Okay, well, let me know if you ever need anything. I’m always here for you. And I mean that literally. We sleep about three feet apart from each other.”
“Thanks Arasha,” Angela says, hitting the turn signal with her pointer finger.
They pull up to the breakfast place. It’s a cute little restaurant in between a hair salon and a smoothie bar and the welcome bell chimes as Arasha holds the door open.
Amanda is already sitting in a booth near the corner. She waves them over and hands them each a menu when they slide into the booth across from her.
“Court couldn’t make it, but they told me to say hi.”
Angela orders a heap of pancakes despite claiming to not really be that hungry, and Amanda watches disapprovingly as she tries to fit the entire stack in her mouth.
“So,” she says, once Angela’s taken a more manageable bite, “you guys couldn’t sleep?”
“Not really,” Arasha says.
Amanda smiles. “I couldn’t before my first game, either. Even though I wasn’t slated to start, I was still a nervous wreck. To make things worse, it was a road game so I was tossing and turning in the hotel room. I thought I was going to throw up. I was so anxious.”
“What happened?” Angela asks, wide eyed.
“Oh, I threw up all over the hotel bathroom, it was awful. But I still made it to the game, and luckily I did, because the starting goalie got absolutely lit up in the first ten minutes. I mean, it was terrible. So Coach pulled her and put me in. We still lost the game, but I made all my saves. I still threw up my guts at half time and dry heaved every time the ball was on the other half of the field, turns out I had a really nasty stomach bug that I gave to a third of the team.”
“That’s insane.”
Amanda shrugs.
They talk for a while, each telling their own fair share of gameday horror stories, until Arasha excuses herself to use the restroom.
“Is that for a special someone?” Amanda asks, noticing as Angela fiddles with the golden letter ‘S’ hanging from her necklace.
“Why do you care?” Angela challenges, fingers dancing over the pendant.
“Just curious. What, did your boyfriend get it for you?”
Angela smirks. “On the contrary. I bought it for myself. The S stands for Spork. He’s my dog, a little chihuahua. I’ll bring him sometime. Or I’ll ask my mom when she comes to a game.”
“Sure,” Amanda says, as Arasha returns from the bathroom.
They talk a bit more, before realising that they’d better get to the locker room. Amanda covers the bill, insisting that Angela or Arasha can cover the next time, and they head to the soccer facilities.
A pristine blue home jersey is laid out on the chair in front of her locker. In gold lettering ‘Giarratana’ is spelled out above her number 1.
Once she’s got the rest of her kit on, Angela pulls the jersey over her head and sits down in her stool. Her hands shake as she ties the laces of her cleats, a new white and gold pair which she had been gifted when she committed. Around her, the rest of the team goes through what Angela assumes to be their normal game day routines. Some are stretching, others are dancing to the pregame music pulsing from the speaker in the corner, some are braiding each other’s hair. Across from her, Amanda is locked in: miming saves and stretching each and every muscle. She’s got her flyaways tucked back by a prewrap headband, and she’s got what looks to be a pair of noise cancelling headphones out.
Angela bounces her leg as she watches, trying her best to focus on Amanda’s stretches and not the fact that in less than an hour, she’ll be in her first collegiate game.
There’s a knock on the door. Immediately, the music turns off and Courtney walks over to allow Coach Hecox to step inside of the locker room. He’s got a whiteboard with a green soccer field printed on it, as well as a handful of magnets and a few thin markers. The team gathers around as he goes through the game plan, as well as the starting lineup. To no one’s surprise, Angela is slated as the starting centre forward.
Her stomach lurches and he places a small blue magnet at the half line, meant to represent herself. The room starts to spin as Coach Hecox packs up his board and magnets and the team follows him through the door and down the hallway. Angela wipes her sweaty palms on her jersey as they walk down the tunnel. She’s seeing double as she steps onto the field for warmups. She’s about to tell Coach Hecox she’s in no state to play a game when the captains are called in for the coin toss and then they’re taking their places on the field.
The second the opposing team kicks the ball, all of the nausea and vertigo that Angela has been feeling for the past half hour disappears into thin air and she’s just playing soccer.
It’s scoreless through the first seventy minutes of the game. Amanda has had to make a couple saves, but overall, the defense has been holding strong and only allowed a couple of weak shots on goal. Most of the action has been on the Bruins’ attacking end, with Angela, Olivia, and Courtney trying valiantly to bump the ball over the goal line. Suddenly, Angela sees a break in the defensive line and calls out for the ball. She receives it with her inside foot and starts at a sprint towards the goal. There’s only one timid defender left, and she easily fools the girl with a skill move she’d learned in third grade. With her gone, it’s just Angela and the goalie. She looks up for a second, focusing in on the space she wants to hit and lets the shot fly.
She hears Courtney’s cheer before she even realises she’s scored. The student section roars, and Angela is immediately enveloped in a hug. Arasha is sprinting from half field and jumps on top of her. Angela’s knees buckle from the force of it and the whole team topples on top of each other. When she stands up, she sees Amanda from the other end of the field giving her a small clap. She nods, and Amanda nods back.
As she runs back to their end of the field, she hears the overhead speakers announcing her goal. There’s a few whoops from the crowd.
“Come on guys,” she shouts, “let’s get another.”