The Football Girl by Thatcher Heldring

Author:Thatcher Heldring
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

Caleb handed me a Gatorade and took one for himself. “Green okay?”

“As long as it’s cold,” I said, hoping he would say right away that he’d been wrong and that I should definitely go to football camp.

We brought our drinks to the backyard and sat on the edge of the empty hot tub, dangling our bare feet in the warm air. I took a sip of Gatorade and exhaled the last of the anger. It had been a week since Lexie and Marina had called me a liar, but it still hurt. Something about the punching bag had brought the anger out. I knew in my heart what they’d said wasn’t true. I had changed my mind and had neglected to tell them. About football. About my mom. That was different from lying, and it was my right. If one of them had told me they wanted to try something besides running, I would have been cool with it. My life. My choice. Not theirs.

“I saw your mom on the news,” Caleb said. “She was talking about you.”

“That’s because the more she talks about me, the more she gets on TV.”

“I thought you liked being famous.”

“She’s using me,” I said. “And she’s a hypocrite. She’s telling everyone she’s proud of me for doing something that she never really knew about or paid attention to before. She hasn’t ever noticed anything I’ve done. As long as I don’t mess up, I don’t exist. It’s just her and her job. Even my dad is wrapped up in her career. That’s why I said what I did on TV. Because I wanted her to hear me say that what I do is up to me, not her anymore.”

“Because you want to play football?”

“Because in our house, she’s the only story.”

“Maybe football isn’t dramatic enough,” Caleb said. “What if you took up bobsledding? Imagine how big a story that would be if you made the Olympics.”

“Bobsledding?” I asked. “Are you serious?” I looked at Caleb. I liked being around him and didn’t want to risk losing him now. But he was really starting to let me down.

“It was just an idea,” he said awkwardly.

I twisted the cap back onto the Gatorade bottle. “Do you know she wants me to work for her this summer? It’s bad enough she’s my mom. Now she’s my boss too. Absolute misery.”

—

Mom was at the dining room table when I got home.

“That’s amazing,” she was saying to Dad. “Well, let’s keep pushing it.”

“Keeping pushing what?” I asked.

“Oh hi, sweetie,” Mom said. “Your dad figured out that when a story on the Internet mentions both you and me, the click rate doubles and the bounce rate goes down—what was it?”

“Thirty-seven percent,” Dad said. “And searches for Jane Dooley daughter football are higher than Jane Dooley mayor, Jane Dooley taxes, or Jane Dooley parks.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“Well, traffic to our website has tripled since the interview.”

“Wow. Imagine if I make the team. You could run for president.”

“What’s wrong, Tessa?” Mom asked.

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