Free How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? by Yvonne Cassidy Page B

the changing room, gets dressed and out of there as soon as she can. I don’t care. I’m only doing it to get Aunt Ruth off my back. I think my shite play will be enough to keep me off the team, but I didn’t count on the whole team being shite.
    The heat is a killer and I think my lungs are going to explode every time I chase the ball, but I keep chasing, keep tackling. At home, the boys on the road called anyone who couldn’t tackle a chicken—just like you were a chicken if you couldn’t do a wheelie or climb up the O’Neills’ wall and jump from the end of it onto the roof of the McEvoys’ shed. So what if you fell? Bruises, stitches, even the time I fractured my collarbone, all of that was better than being chicken.
    So I tackle everyone that day, even the tall, fast ones with bouncing ponytails—especially them. I can’t keep up with them, but I stand in their way. I kick for the ball and I don’t care if I kick their legs, if we get tangled up together and we both fall. After Jane Friedman goes off with her knee bleeding, the coach calls me aside and says I need to tone it down, that sliding tackles aren’t allowed. I tell her I don’t know what a sliding tackle is, that I’m only playing the way I used to play back home. She hides her smile. She likes me, I can tell, and I know I’m going to make the team.
    Afterwards, me and Laurie are the last ones waiting in the car park because Cooper’s late.
    â€œDad, where are you?” she says for the billionth time. “God, I can’t wait to get my driver’s licence.”
    â€œWe could walk,” I say. “It’s not that far.”
    â€œWalk?” She makes a face. “You’re kidding, right?”
    She sits down on the kerb, stretches her legs out in front of her. After a minute, I sit down next to her.
    â€œWho are this team we’re playing on Saturday?” I go. “Do we have a good chance?”
    She pulls a strand of her hair into her mouth, sucks it. “You’re not seriously going to play on the team, are you?”
    At first I think she’s joking, but there is no laugh, no smile. Before, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play. Now I am.
    â€œWhy wouldn’t I play?”
    She turns away to face the gate, rests her chin on her arms.
    â€œUm, maybe because you can’t run three feet without almost having a heart attack.”
    It makes it worse somehow, that all I can see is the back of her head when she says that, and it takes me a second to reply.
    â€œIt’s fucking hot, Laurie! It takes a while to get used to the heat—”
    She whips her head back around. She looks angry, she is angry.
    â€œDoes it take a while to get used to the altitude too? Is that why you kept falling over?”
    â€œJust because I wasn’t afraid to make tackles—”
    â€œYou call those tackles? You spent more time on the ground than on your feet! You’ve no technique, you—”
    I pull my legs in to my chest, wrap my arm around my knees. “Technique? Like you’d know technique if it hit you in the face! I saw you out there—you’re not exactly Ray Houghton yourself.”
    I know she doesn’t know who Ray Houghton is and that she won’t ask. She taps one runner off the other.
    â€œYou know Coach only put you on the team because she feels sorry for you?”
    She’s looking right at me to see my reaction. My insides react before my outsides. I feel something boiling, gushing up. I want to grab a fist of her hair, I want to smash her head against the concrete, over and over until there is blood. I shouldn’t say that, I know I shouldn’t think it, never mind write it down, but that’s how I’m feeling when I see Cooper’s car nosing through the gate.
    She stands up, smiles at me.
    I grab my bag. I can’t pretend I didn’t hear her, I can’t say nothing. My heart is