Free The Season by Jonah Lisa Dyer

I’m gonna have”—I squeezed my boobs together and bent over—“cleavage!”
    This brought on huge laughter, with some whistles thrown in.
    â€œI’ll let you borrow them if you want,” I offered to Cat.
    â€œEwww, hand-me-down boobs—no thank you,” Cat said.
    â€œJust rinse them off!”
    â€œOkay, let’s stop talking about this now,” she said.
    I smiled and realized that right now the other debs would already be deep into some serious primping—blowouts, massages, manicures. Mom and Julia were enjoying a spa day. I felt pretty certain I was the only deb strapping on shin guards right then.
    Two hours later I bent over and adjusted those shin guards. We were now in the eighty-eighth minute, tied 3–3, and I had just earned a corner when, after a long run down the right side, a defender blocked my cross beyond the endline.
    Strangely, though I’d run nonstop for an hour and a half, I wasn’t particularly tired. My legs felt strong and my mind clear. Jogging toward the edge of the goal area, I glanced back, saw Mariah would take the corner kick, and was suddenly overcome by a slurring of time and a powerful out-of-body sensation. This had happened before and I knew then, with absolute certainty, that I was just seconds from scoring.
    Giving myself over to the flow, I stopped above the penalty area with my back to Mariah. I felt the tug on my jersey as the CSU girl marked me—she was now between me and the ball. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and started to follow a low, imperceptible-except-to-me homing signal that I knew, just
knew
, would end with the ball in the net.
    First, I threw the defender’s hand off my jersey and took two quick steps toward midfield. I felt rather than saw her confusion as she wondered why I was moving away from the goal. Then I whirled and started a hard run on theoutside, toward the far post. She went with me, satisfied that she was still between me and the ball.
    Stride for long stride we ran, then I planted hard and pivoted directly back toward Mariah. My defender tried to reverse course with me, but I picked her off with another girl and now I was free, running parallel to the goal mouth.
    Mariah always hits the ball with a lot of pace, and I heard the
thunk
as she launched it, saw it rise into the air, curling over a defender’s head. I kept running as it continued to curve gently toward the goal.
    The goaltender, to my left, sensed danger and angled forward. The ball was just too high for another inside defender, who jumped but missed, and I took one more step and now the goalie bolted forward, alarm bells ringing. Too late, I knew, but she was determined to try and clear it.
    I leapt as high as I could and cranked my shoulder and hips, storing kinetic energy like a twisted rubber band. The ball soared toward me, and I hovered, waiting for it to arrive. When it did I gave it a clean, crisp flick with my head, turning my face directly toward the goal. I caught the blur of gold from the goalie’s jersey, saw the ball blast past her outstretched fist and into the white mesh, captured like an amberjack in a trawler’s net. Then, with more than a little shock, I saw the goalie’s fist. Having missed the ball entirely, her brick-sized clenched hand was now aimed at my very fragile and exposed face.
    In that split second I remembered the day my high schoolphysics teacher took us outside to demonstrate Newton’s second law: force equals mass times acceleration. We all put trash bags over our clothes and adjusted our goggles while he put a cantaloupe on a metal table beside two hammers. He first tapped the melon with a ball-peen hammer—nothing happened. Then he hit it harder and faster—more acceleration but still low mass—with the same hammer. It barely dented the surface. Then he took the sledgehammer—more mass—and he tapped the melon. It bulged but remained intact.