Chapter 1
prologue !
Top tip: Don't let your dumb brother drag you to his girlfriend's soccer practice on a random Wednesday. Julianna Sadecki didn't even like soccer. She would've much rather been at home-watching movies, listening to music, baking, or playing guitar. Literally anything else.
But here she was, sitting on cold metal bleachers, chin propped up on her hand, counting down the minutes until she could leave.
She hadn't even planned to be here. Her mom had kicked her and Jeff out of the house, which usually meant two things: one, that she was having another one of her "work meetings" (translation: dates), and two, that Julianna was expected to be productive. Normally, this meant dragging the family's overflowing laundry baskets to the laundrette, loading, folding, and doing most of the work herself while Jeff mysteriously disappeared to go 'Help Jackie.'
But today, Jeff convinced her to tag along to Jackie Taylor's soccer practice instead.
"C'mon, Jules," he'd said, already grabbing the car keys. "You can sit on the bleachers and, I don't know, think or whatever it is you do. It's better than smelling like dryer sheets for two hours."
Better than laundry? Maybe. But not by much, she thought now.
She glanced out at the field. Jackie was laughing with her teammates, effortlessly kicking the ball back and forth as if she weren't trying at all. Girls like Jackie always made Julianna feel small. Not intentionally, Jackie wasn't cruel in any way, but she had this magnetic confidence that pulled people in. Julianna could tell that even when she wasn't on the field, Jackie was the type of girl who turned heads when she walked into a room.
Julianna, on the other hand, had mastered the art of being invisible. She wasn't sure when it had started, but blending in had become second nature. She was nice enough, pretty enough, smart enough-but that was all she ever was. Just enough.
Her gaze wandered to the girls on the bench. Shauna Shipman was there, tying her cleats. Julianna had tried to be friends with her once, back in sixth grade. She'd sat with her at lunch for a week straight, sharing her Oreos and laughing at all the jokes Shauna told about their history teacher's weirdly shiny forehead. But Shauna was always with Jackie, and no matter how hard Julianna tried to keep up, she'd felt like the third wheel. Eventually, she stopped trying altogether.
Then there was Lottie Matthews, who was sitting a little off to the side, braiding her hair. Julianna had thought Lottie was nice, too—soft-spoken and kind in a way that made you think she might actually be a good friend if you got to know her. But that was the problem: Julianna never got to know her. She didn't ask Lottie to hang out, didn't push herself into conversations. She just let the thought drift away, like so many other things in her life.
And now? Now she was 17 years old, and all she had to show for it was a handful of acquaintances and a lot of lonely afternoons.
Julianna Sadecki was pretty much always lonely by circumstance.
Julianna sighed, running her fingers over the spine of her journal. She'd brought it with her, hoping to pass the time, but her hands felt too jittery to write. It wasn't just the awkwardness of being here; it was the gnawing ache in her chest, the one that always showed up when she watched people like Jackie, Shauna, and Lottie. They had their own little worlds, their own webs of connections. She wondered if they ever noticed how untouchable they seemed to someone like her.
Her brother's voice jolted her out of her thoughts.
"Jackie! Over here!"
Jeff was standing up now, waving his arms like an idiot. Julianna sank lower in her seat, pretending not to know him. She loved her brother, sort of, but he was loud, immature, and completely oblivious to how embarrassing he could be. The way he leaned so hard into everything made her feel like she was fading even more by comparison.
Maybe people didn't notice her because she was nothing like her own brother. An awkward girl with sweaty palms and a shaky voice.
She tried to shake off the thought, focusing instead on the sound of cleats scuffing against the dead field and the distant chatter of the players. But no matter how hard she tried, the ache in her chest stayed.
If Julianna had known what was coming next, she might have left right then and there. She might have grabbed her bag, mumbled some excuse to Jeff, and gone to fold laundry after all.
But she didn't know. She didn't know that before the night was over, she'd be crammed into a storage room, heart pounding as her back pressed against strangers she only vaguely recognized. Ones she'd heard of, or seen in the hallways of Wiskayok High School.
She didn't know that the meaningless life she'd been running from would suddenly be the one thing she'd fight to keep.
But for now, all she could do was sit on the bleachers, watching the girls dominate the field, wondering, just for a moment, what it might feel like to be part of a team like that.