Chapter 49

August 19, 2017

Dear Ms. Diary,

[Written August 21]

The entire Go5 is here until high-school soccer practice on Monday morning. Since Sunday is Liya’s night, and since she had just volunteered to be an assistant for Coach, we broached the subject with Dad and the Moms about her getting the same deal that Heather had, starting with Dad at 5 pm on Sunday night rather than 6 pm. They agreed. Of course, until school starts, soccer practice starts at 8:30, so both Liya and Heather are still going to lose a little time with Dad, but they thought that it was not enough to justify complaining.

When Liya suggested that we get more soccer practice in, we all looked at her with astonished looks.

“I could do that,” Gracey said. “I’d like to work on my rocket some more, as we start practice in two days. I want to be more consistent with it ... like Ann. You know, I’m going to miss learning from her.”

We all took a few seconds to think of Ann, who will be in the next level next premier season. I mentally wished her well, though we would see her when we played West this fall. Twenty minutes later we found ourselves at the pitch very near where we had given Heather three orgasms.

“We should enshrine this spot,” suggested Liya. I’ll bet there’s nowhere else on the pitch that someone’s gotten multiple orgasms in the middle of the day.”

“Hah! I won’t take that bet,” Rhee replied, “although I don’t doubt some Lothario has gotten his rocks off in some poor girl somewhere out here.”

“Oh! ‘Some poor girl,’ though it isn’t relevant in that context, it reminded me of Civia. It’s too bad that we couldn’t have planned this ahead of time, as I’m sure that Civia would have loved to have joined us today.”

I looked around at everyone; each had a bit of a hangdog look.

“I’m calling her. Oh, wait. It’s not my phone that we brought today.”

“It’s mine,” Heather said, “and I’ve got her number. I’ll call her.”

Heather put her phone on speaker, and we all heard the excitement in Civia’s voice when she answered.

“Hi, Heather!”

“Hey, Civia. We’re putting together an impromptu soccer practice at our practice pitch. Would you be able to join us?”

“Oh, I’d love to, though I don’t know if my parents will want to drive over there twice today.”

“I’m sure that we can get you home. We’re going to the mall tonight, anyway, and that’s more than halfway.”

Heather grinned at all of us, because this was the first we had heard of a shopping trip tonight.

“Yeah, it’s for me, mostly. Go ahead, I’ll bet they’ll be willing to bring you. By the way, you ... and your parents should get used to this. We do lots of stuff on the spur of the moment.”

“Well, my parents like planning. A lot.”

“We’ll try to remember at least to ask you if you want to join in on whatever spur-of-the-moment craziness we dream up.”

Civia’s voice got more serious, with a bit of a catch in it.

“I’d really appreciate that. I ... I would like to see you guys more often.”

“Hey, we’ll see you every day next week, and you’re spending Thursday night with us! Now, go ask!”

Civia obviously put her phone on mute, as we heard nothing for a couple minutes. I thought that that long of an interval was not promising.

Sound came back.

“My dad wants to talk to you, if that’s okay?”

“Hi, Mr. Palecek.”

“Good morning, Heather. I understand that you five ... it is all five, right?”

“Yup, we’re all here.”

Heather pointed at us, so we all said, “Good morning, Mr. Palecek,” like we were in third grade.

He laughed, then said, “I don’t know about this. You girls are trouble with a capital ‘t!’”

He followed that with another laugh.

“Why, thank you, Mr. Palecek. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to us all day.”

“Do you girls take it in turn to be the ringleader, Heather? I thought Beth was bad enough, but...”

“Yes, we do, sort of.”

“Heather, I understand that you five want to kidnap our daughter, again, and she seems anxious to be kidnapped. If you can get me a firm commitment from Beth’s parents that you can get Civia back here this afternoon or evening, we’ll bring her this morning.”

“May I ask Charlie or Sandy to call you directly?”

“Yes. That would be best, in fact. Thank you, Heather. I’ll give you back to our wall-climbing daughter.”

Civia was amped, actually squealing over the phone, but quietly.

“Thanks, so much, for inviting me. I hope that Charlie and Sandy will be okay with bringing me back here.”

“I’m sure they will. Let me call them and get this all arranged. We’re already at the pitch, so have your Mom or Dad bring you here. Bring a change of clothes, because we’re probably going to work hard.”

Heather called my mom who said that she’d be happy to call Civia’s parents. Heather quickly explained about the manufactured shopping trip as an excuse for taking Civia home.

“Oh, we can have a real shopping trip and take Civia home after we’re finished. How’s that?”

“Thanks, Mom,” Heather said, “I love you, so much.”

“Oh, Heather dear, I love you, too. We all do. I’ll call Jeff and get things arranged, then we’ll see you back here for lunch, I suppose.”

Rhee turned to me and said, “Coach, how do we want to work this, with one of our players arriving late?”

The first part surprised me, but I understood what she was doing.

“That’s a good question. Since I was going to suggest some laps, we’ll hold off on that until Civia gets here. Why don’t...”

I stopped to cogitate on how I should deal with this. Rhee obviously thinks that this should be on the formal side and she wants my coach persona taking charge.

“Heather, please get us working on Zidane roulettes. Liya, please watch Gracey and let her know if you have suggestions for her on how to improve.”

“B-but...”

“I know. I know that you cannot do a roulette, but I would not be all that surprised if you could if you worked on it. But you’ve watched all of us working on it, so I know that you know how it’s supposed to look. This will be good practice for you as one of Coach’s assistants. The rest of us will work on clockwise roulettes. We’ll go until Civia gets here. We’ll stretch, warm up, and run after she’s here.”

About 15 minutes into roulettes, I was feeling comfortable with my clockwise roulette, so hatched an idea that I explained to the others. They laughed and agreed. Not quite 15 minutes later, Civia arrived. We waved at her parents as they departed, then Rhee, Heather, and I each dribbled a ball right at Civia, one at a time, Rhee leading. As each of us girls reached Civia, she did a clockwise Zidane roulette past her.

“You’ve got clockwise,” Civia exclaimed loudly. “Wow!” After the five of us got our hugs in with her, she asked, “When did you get those clockwise roulettes down?”

“Yesterday and today. We came here ... Oh, we have lots of news for you,” Rhee said. “It might be best if Liya tells you.”

“What? Tell me what, Liya?”

Liya inhaled, exhaled, then said, “Gracey and others of us were going a bit stir crazy, so we decided to come here yesterday to practice.”

“But wait. You don’t play. Or do you, now?”

“No, I don’t. I came because my friends came. Besides, soccer has been growing on me, particularly after getting to help out before and at the state tournament. I’m no athlete, but I can chase balls down and help my friends in other ways. We came here and they practiced roulettes. Beth made me help Gracey work on it. She’s not got it, yet, but she’s made some solid progress. Counterclockwise. We also did some shooting practice. So, when we were a bit bored at the house this morning, we decided to come out here. Once we were here, I mentioned that you would probably have liked to join us. So, Heather called, and ... here you are.”

“Would you please get to the big news, girl,” Rhee asked.

“You’ve got ‘big news?’”

“Uhh, yeah. I had so much fun at the tournament and I really like hanging with my soccer-crazy friends and I even enjoyed being here yesterday, so...”

“Get on with it, Liya,” Gracey commanded.

“Jeez, impatient much? Anyway, Civia, I called Coach yesterday and she’s agreed to take me on as an assistant for the high-school team!”

Civia’s eyebrows flew up her forehead and then she threw her arms around Liya and hugged her.

She stepped back and said, “That’s GREAT! We’ll get to be assistants together! We can all be together every weekday!”

Heather chimed in.

“Civia, you should have heard Liya yesterday when we were here. Gracey called me ‘Coach’ here, which surprised me. She said that it was only right as I was helping her learn the roulette and that I had helped most of the team do outside-foot shooting better.”

“You did. You helped me a lot with that.”

“Well, Liya then said that Coach would probably have me teach outside foot to some of the upper-class team members. She finished by saying that it would not only get stronger skills for some players but would also ... how did you put it, Liya ... get some respect from the juniors and seniors for us new girls.”

Civia looked at Liya for at least ten seconds, then said, “I would not have thought of that. That’s really good thinking, Liya. This fall is going to be so fun with the gang. I’m glad that you’ve gotten an angle on being on the team and that you’ll be using that brain of yours for us.”

Civia stepped in and hugged Liya again.

“So, what are we practicing?”

“Oh,” Liya said, “that’s something else. We’re running this a little on the formal side, with Beth as Coach, so you’ll have to ask her.”

“Oh. Good. I’m all in favor of practice being serious and I have no problem with Beth as coach. What are we doing, Coach?”

“We’re going to do some shooting practice, since the nets are still up. I wonder if the Parks Department knows that. Liya will be shagging the misses, but, in that vein, we’ve got something else to show you. However, first we’re going to do stretches and warmups, then some laps. I’ll lead on calisthenics.”