Kate Christie Read Free Page A

meant returning to Oregon, going back to my 1 Kate Christie
    job as a maintenance worker for Portland’s Parks Department, spending ten hours a day in my spiffy green uniform mowing lawns and trimming hedges. I didn’t mind the job really, and by living at home I could save enough money to support myself the coming school year. But sometimes I wished I didn’t have to work quite so hard, especially when my friends didn’t have to worry about their tuition payments.
    My parents didn’t have a lot of extra money for school. My mom had stayed home when my brother and I were little and gone back to work the year I entered third grade. Her current position in development at the local university, along with my dad’s public school teaching career, didn’t exactly bring in big bucks. My older brother Nate, who was up in Alaska putting his obsession with the great outdoors to good use working for a Fairbanks outfitter, had gone to college for free at the school where our mom worked. Unlike him, I’d wanted to get out of Portland after high school. My soccer scholarship covered partial tuition but not room and board. That meant I could either hang in San Diego for the summers and take out extra loans, or go home to work. Kind of a no-brainer, I always thought.
    Fortunately, I didn’t have to head back to Portland just yet.
    The second week of April, I attended a home tennis match with Holly and Laura Grant, another soccer player. The three of us were always doing anything remotely athletic together. Laura, unlike Holly and myself, was totally straight and slightly clueless, even borderline homophobic at times. But the three of us had bonded over soccer as freshmen, a connection that seemed to transcend difference. Holly and I loved Laura, even if we wanted to strangle her sometimes. Whenever we all hung out together, there was an unspoken agreement that Laura wouldn’t talk about boys—much—and Holly and I wouldn’t talk about girls. Our conversations centered around our team, other sports teams, our coach, other coaches and soccer. Especially the inaugural Women’s World Cup we’d heard was slated to take place in China that summer.
    The day of the tennis match, the three of us climbed into the stands during warm-up, picking seats near the court where Jess, the number one seed, would be playing. It was a Saturday Beautiful Game 1
    morning, warm and sunny, only a slight breeze coming in through the hills. I could smell coconut suntan lotion in the air, a familiar scent at outdoor sporting events at SDU. I ran a hand through my still-damp hair. I’d gotten up around eleven. It was only a little before noon now.
    “There’s Jess,” Laura said, adjusting her light brown hair beneath her baseball cap.
    While Holly and I both sported soccer shorts and Sambas, Laura was wearing a tight white tank top and faded cut-off jeans shorts, bordering on the Daisy Duke variety. I’d noticed a couple of guys checking her out as we picked our seats, and thought again that if I didn’t know Laura, I’d probably have the hots for her myself. She was the consummate athlete, all muscle and energy. On the soccer field, whatever individual skills she lacked she made up for with determination. Laura liked to win.
    “Didn’t you say you talked to Jess a couple of weeks ago?”
    Holly asked me, raising a suggestive eyebrow that Laura missed.
    I ignored the look. “Yeah. She’s pretty cool. Seems kind of shy, though.”
    “Shy?” Laura echoed. Reserve was a foreign concept to her, as was tact, most of her friends agreed. “What does she have to be shy about? That girl can play tennis like no one I’ve ever seen.
    I don’t know why she didn’t go D-one.”
    I had wondered that myself. In college sports, playing at a good Division II school wasn’t nearly as notable as playing for even a mediocre Division I program. I was at SDU because they were the only school that had offered me a decent chunk of money. I couldn’t imagine the