Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
He rolled his driver’s side window down enough to stare at the enforcer. Matty took another drag from his cigarette and watched Sal from where he stood under a nearby birch tree.
Matty spoke first. “I did tell you it was bad, didn’t I?”
2. — run it out...
Staten Island, New York
Francesca Gallo, Ashbourne Academy
“What was that?”
The shout breezed past an indifferent ear as Francesca jogged beyond the white boundary line of the soccer field. She didn’t even wait to see the red card that had already been shoved at her face get dropped at the runners of her coach. The man’s face turned the color of Sissy’s garden-grown beets.
“What in the hell was that, Frankie?!” Coach Denadei roared louder.
“Eight-minute penalty—Ashbourne Flyers! Penalty shot to the Challengers!”
“Eight minutes! Eight?” Coach continued to rant while Frankie spit out her mouthguard, full of saliva and blood, into the trash bin next to the team’s bench. She refused to meet the gazes of her teammates, knowing she had given the opposing team an opportunity to catch up the couple of point difference in the game that would determine whether they placed in the upcoming finals. “There’ll be thirty seconds left on the clock when I get her back out on the field, goddammit!”
Someone cleared their throat.
The ref repeated the penalty, adding simply, “The girl is still spitting out mud and grass, man. You’re lucky I gave her another thirty seconds to try me one more time.”
“Uh, Coach,” someone said from somewhere behind Frankie’s retreating form. How many noticed her leaving the scene of the crime behind? It didn’t matter to her. When the game hit the three-quarter mark on the clock, and she knew her father wouldn’t show up, Frankie stopped caring about any of it.
How they finished. Tournament qualifiers. Highest goal count of her high school career. A record-breaking year for their district; the promise of plaques and scholarships that she wouldn’t take because she didn’t need them.
It didn’t matter, then, and it hurt to admit why.
Maybe that was why when the tall, blonde bitch on the Raiders side asked which university Frankie’s dad had paid for her to attend the following year, after the girl had already elbowed her in the mouth once and got away with it, she let that shit rip. If the girl’s veneers made it through the weight of Frankie’s cleat shoving her head deeper into the turf, then so be it.
“Frankie! Francesca, where are you going?” Coach yelled behind her. “We need to have a conversation about this!”
She just tossed the white gym bag she had left on a rear bench over her shoulder without a look back. Thirty seconds didn’t matter, either. She was starting to think that none of this did at all.
The swing of an exit gate followed the last shout of her coach slapping at her back like the wind caused by her speed cutting further away from the soccer field.
She reached the parking lot and promptly came up with another problem. Being hopeful that her dad would show up, she didn’t consider how she would get home. The rose-gold Supra, her sweet-sixteen present, sat at home because she grabbed a ride to school in her boyfriend’s Hummer.
He still waited in the parking lot for her. James Perry wasn’t the type of guy who wanted to watch his girlfriend play the best games of her life, he only cared about the benefits that came after the win.
“What the fuck?” he asked her, stepping off his bumper as she closed in.
“I got kicked out the game,” she lied. “Give me a ride home, would you?”
“So, no daddy, then?”
Ew. She couldn’t explain how James managed to pick up on her daddy issues from the start. Like it had a smell, or something.
“Are you gonna give me a ride, or what?”
“Are you gonna be pissed if I go to a party at Cliff’s later?” James asked, cocking a brow in a way that he thought was challenging. To those who shared his shallow personality, it probably seemed that way.
Frankie couldn’t be scared. This boy didn’t touch her fears.
“I don’t care what you do,” she told him. “I just want to go home.”
“Hey! Frankie, get back here, I am not done speaking to you!”
The sudden shouts had Frankie giving James a pointed look. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Shit, what’d you do?” James asked, eyeing the encroaching coach with fury in his every step.
“Nothing. I mean, I just showed someone how their outside can be just as ugly as their inside.”
An awkward laugh answered her back.
“Let’s go,” she muttered.
Coach had caught up fast, and she couldn’t have the kind of conversation needed to explain her earlier actions. She knew her father wouldn’t show and still hoped he would. A very raw nerve found its way between some idiot’s teeth, and she let it get to her.