Page 8 of Ready to Score

“Yes!” Jade threw her hands in the air. “You know the poker game I told y’all about?”

The girls nodded, pausing in their decorating.

“She wound up being there the other night. I’ve been coaching at that school for five years, practically running myself ragged to get to where I am. She didn’t even know Greenbelt existed two years ago, and she thinks she can just…” Jade trailed off, grinding her teeth.

“Well… how did she do?” Olivia asked.

“Not much better than me,” Jade admitted. “But it’s the principle of the thing. I just feel like I’m already over here working against so much to get what I want, and now somebody just threw a spiral straight at my chest. She’s so… Everybody likes her. Like, everyone. Even the cafeteria staff, and they hate everybody. Y’all know how political this stuff is. People love to pretend they’re impartial and only promote people because of merit, but that’s bullshit. That’swhy they have that poker game every week. That’s why Landry has to schmooze the mayor to get new helmets for the team every year. If Landry ends up liking her… No, you know what, it’s more than that. If Landry thinks other people will like her more than they like me, she’s got a real shot at beating me here.”

She fell silent, the girls trading quiet glances as she watched. Finally, Aja spoke. “You know what? I don’t think this actually changes anything. She may have likability on her side, but you’ve got experience. And you’ve already cultivated a relationship with the team; those are your boys. You weren’t going to fight any less without her being there. You weren’t ever going to pull any punches, and you’re not going to now.”

“Exactly.” Miri pointed at Aja. “If anything, you might be at an advantage. You’ve told me about the other coaches, and even if Landry won’t admit it, you’re leagues above them, and you know it. If this girl is your only real competition, it won’t be so hard to get her out of there.”

“I don’t know… Something feels different with her. It’s like… when I talk to her, when I look in her eyes, I see the same thing I see in mine when I look in the mirror. She’s not going to give up.”

“And neither are you,” Miri said. “You just need to do what you do best and go on the offense.”

Jade sat back in her chair, cookies and frosting completely forgotten as she crossed her arms over her chest. Her mind started reeling. The head coaching job was right there, so close it was practically hers already. Jade had the ball tight in her grip, and Lim, in all her annoying, infuriating glory, was trying to take it from her.

Every bit of her wanted to sulk and grumble about it, but the reality was that she needed to scheme. She needed to figure out a way to cut Lim off at her pretty little knees.

Many people thought football was all about strength and brute force. They saw the running and hitting and assumed that everything happening on the field was pure coincidence. But Jade knew that it didn’t matter how fast your quarterback was or how hard your linebackers ran through—without a comprehensive strategy, a real win was next to impossible.

This was part of the reason she liked the sport so much. It wasn’t like math, where an equation had a set, specific answer. A team could employ the exact same strategy against the exact same team three times in a row and end up with three different outcomes. But each time, you’d learn something different about the players, about the game. You could search the gaps in the plan and spackle over them every time a new one appeared. It was problem-solving on a large scale. That was one of her greatest strengths as a coach.

“You’re right,” she told Miri, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her hands. “I need to find a way to destroy her before she even knows I’m coming for her.”

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Could you sound any more like a villain right now?”

Jade gave the question a real ponder. “I mean, I could draw a hole on the side of a mountain and get her to try to run through it.”

“You could also create an evil version of her in a lab and make the two versions fight each other,” Miri suggested.

“Why don’t you just convince the big boss that she doesn’t know what she’s doing? That she’s totally incompetent?” Aja’s words were gentle compared to their content and spoken quietly, her eyes still intent on her cookie decorating.

“That’s so messed up,” Jade said. “But perfect… I just need to make her embarrass herself in front of the old man so bad that she never even considers showing her face on my field ever again.”

“Evil,” Olivia whispered.

“Genius,” Jade replied, taking an almost violent bite of cookie.

Jade’s parents had been divorced for thirty years of the thirty-two she’d been alive. They’d also lived together for just as long. The family resided in a large, beautiful house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Greenbelt. Built in 1898, the place was three stories, not including the attic. The upper stories both had balconies and pristine white shutters on every window. The house looked like something out of historical Charleston was plopped in a random neighborhood. None of the other homes looked anything like it.

It was her parents’ pride and joy. Gene and Joyce Dunn had been married eleven years before they’d had their first and only child. They’d spent every bit of that time saving up for their dream home, and every red cent they had had gone into it. It was only natural for the baby to come after that. Two years into the life of their other most precious pride and joy, the two had realized that they did not enjoy being a couple as much as they’d previously thought.

Neither of them had been willing to give up the house, though. So a compromise was made.

Gene Dunn would make his life in the finished basement. His domain had started with uncomfortable carpet and a pool table and had since turned into a very lovely, if oddly decorated, apartment. Two bedrooms, a master suite, a living room and a kitchen. He even managed to keep the old pool table.

Joyce—who’d returned to her maiden name of Griggs—reigned over most of the rest of the house, under the agreement that she pay a greater sum of the mortgage.

For Jade, this had been life. She’d grown up knowing no different. Honestly, she’d grown up loving it. It was having to explain tofriends and teachers and guests that yes, her parents were divorced, and yes, they did still live together that got old.

The annoyance never seemed to outweigh the easy access to her folks, though.

On Sundays, Joyce had a standing date with her “little friend” of fifteen years in Beaufort. Jade didn’t know how her mother found it satisfying enough to see her boyfriend only once a week, but she didn’t like to think too much about that situation anyway. This meant family dinners were on Saturdays.

At 5:00P.M.sharp, Gene ventured up from the basement and joined his ex-wife and daughter at their grand oak dinner table. Not a single one of them was a good cook, so normally they got takeout.

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