Free Live Love Lacrosse by Barbara Clanton Page A

vindicated, Addie dug into her
hamburger, deciding not to eat the bleached-out-nutrition white bun. The
hamburger had protein, which Kimi said was the building block of muscles and
would help Addie get stronger faster. Addie was all for that, but wasn’t sure
how to get at least forty-five grams that Kimi’s mother said girls needed every
day. She had been amazed to learn that almonds and walnuts and even sesame
seeds had protein. Maybe she could get her mother to buy some the next time she
went food shopping.
    The hamburger roll she decided not to eat was full of carbs;
that’s what Kimi called carbohydrates, but apparently white bread didn’t have
good carbs. Kimi said it had simple carbs, but apparently complex carbs were
better for you. You could get complex carbs from whole grains in bread and
rice. At lunch Kimi’s mother said that everyone had a carb budget and those
carbs should be spent on food that did the most good. Like the carbs in veggies
and fruit. Salad, like the one she had eaten for lunch she said, was an
excellent way to spend your carb budget. More bang for your buck, Kimi had added.
And whole grains, too. Those were good-money complex carbs. Whole grains
included the grainy bread she’d seen on the counter at Kimi’s house and brown
rice, both of which Addie had never eaten before. Hers was a white rice, white
bread family. Energy from whole grains, Kimi’s mother had explained, took all
day to burn, giving you a slow and even release of energy throughout the entire
day. She’d said that people who ate whole grains usually didn’t have that
afternoon starvation crash right before dinner. Addie knew all about that. She
usually ate potato chips in the afternoon because she’d get so hungry.
    Oddly, that afternoon, she wasn’t really hungry when dinner rolled
around. Addie put a few French fries on her plate, but wasn’t sure what
nutrition the fries had. She knew better than to get up and read the nutrition
label on the box while they were eating. Her grandmother would pitch a fit. It
was better to eat a few and look it up later. Maybe fries had some of those
good carbs. She frowned. Probably not. So far the food she’d eaten at Kimi’s
was weird and foreign to her. She couldn’t imagine Kimi and her family eating
French fries or her own family eating the stuff Kimi’s family ate.
    Too bad Grandma didn’t have a computer, because Addie wanted to
look some of the confusing stuff up online. Maybe one day she’d get her own
computer or tablet or even a cell phone. But those things were expensive, and
they didn’t have the money for “extras” like that. She instantly felt bad that
her mother was going to use her emergency fund to buy her a lacrosse stick. She
was about to tell her mother to forget the trip to the sporting goods store,
but then she pictured Brooke looking at her with disgust. She changed her mind
again. She would get that lacrosse stick and find another way to make it up to
her mom.

 
    Chapter 11
    It’s Okay to Feel Hungry – Part 1
     
    ADDIE WOKE UP earlier than usual. Probably because she was excited
to show off her new lacrosse stick to Brooke and Kimi later that afternoon. A
quick trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods the night before yielded an awesome STX
stick. Of course, Troy was jealous and kept trying to get their mother to buy
him something. Addie felt smug when she said they’d be spending enough once his
karate lessons started on Saturday. She hated to admit it, but Troy was kind of
helpful, too. He helped Addie convince their mother to buy goggles and a mouth
guard, too. The stick, goggles, and mouth guard were all the same baby blue
color. Even though Troy made fun of that, Addie didn’t care. She had her own
gear like Kimi and Brooke and like real lacrosse players. Everything cost
almost a hundred and fifty dollars, and Addie promised her mother a thousand
times that she wouldn’t quit lacrosse after they’d spent so much money on equipment.
    After