I’m a wreck all day. All day.

Want to make sure I’m absolutely awful on the field? Make me have less than my requisite eight hours of sleep, that’s how. I don’t know how other people do it, honestly. My teammate, Abby, can totally function at five hours of sleep, and she looks great, too, totally awake, not like a half-dead creature, seconds away from giving up the ghost. If I were to be like Abby and get only five hours of sleep, you’d want to stay out of my way because I’m liable to tear your head off.

I just couldn’t get to sleep because someone-who-must-not-be-named like he’s Lord freaking Voldemort himself decided to keep texting me and completely ignored the social etiquette of me ignoring him and leaving him on read. Maybe he’s also one of those freaks who can be totally fine with only five hours of sleep. If I could do it, I would, I’d get so much more done in the day.

“You look awful,” Abby says, looking like a ray of sunshine on this shitty, cloudy day, but what else is new? Her red hair’s pulled back, and her freckles are finally starting to fade now that we’re properly into the fall season.

“Thanks, that’s the look I was going for.” I ignore the knots in my hair and try to get it on the top of my head in a weird sort of top knot that keeps it off my neck and face. After securing the whole mess with a sweat band around my head, I’m ready to rumble. Well, as ready as I can be, I guess.

Trainer Bee is stalking my every move, yelling at me more often than not when I keep pushing myself to my limits, ignoring the increasing pain in my leg until I can’t make myself move anymore. She’s completely irate, of course, because I’m the horse that not only was led to water and decided to drink its fill, but drank the whole damn stream and now can’t move for fear of tossing my cookies.

Can a horse die from drinking too much water? Shit, we’re gonna see, we’re gonna see.

I’m panting, walking around in small circles, hands on my hips, and cracking my neck from side to side, trying to get the kinks out, my body bathed in sweat from head to toe, my muscles just under the screaming-in-pain threshold. I’m tired, dead weight on my feet, and it’s a wonder to me how I’m moving around at all. God, look at me, I’m awesome.

Trainer Bee isn’t having any of my cooldown bullshit, and she gets right up in my face, but I still tower over her by a good six inches. Life is pretty good when you’re this tall—most of the time.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growls, teeth clenched. Her accent gets thicker when she’s angry, and sometimes I have a hard time parsing words and syllables together so that they make sense to me.

I shrug her off, continue to pace around, while she follows my every move, making sure she’s always in my line of sight, a shark circling a wounded fish, waiting to attack. “C’mon, I’m fine, I just need to take a breather,” I pant, looking up at the gray sky, sucking in air and more air.

Trainer Bee looks like she wants to take that clipboard she’s been carrying around and smash my face in with it, or shove it up my ass, I just don’t know. I wouldn’t really blame her, come to think of it, and I’ll apologize after I catch my breath and that stitch in my side disappears.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard. I’m going to call the medical staff and get another scan done as soon as possible here, and then see if we have to go out of the country to meet the surgeon who did your first operation.” Her eyes are glittering with violence and if I was smart I would take a few steps back, try to make myself look smaller, but I’m tired of waiting for the OK for me to get back on the field.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” If I keep saying it, maybe it’ll come true. My leg throbs, my knee especially, and I’m sure it’s starting to swell up. It’s fine, I’ll take care of it later.

“Then why are you limping?” she snarls.

Shit.

I hadn’t really realized I was doing it, I was concentrating too hard on the fact that I needed to breathe in and out to slow my heart rate down instead of having the stupid thing pop right out of my chest and make a run for it. “Like I said, I’ll be fine. Everything’s good.”

“Why are you like this?” she practically screeches at me, and I have an inkling that in another life, another time, Trainer Bee would have been the most amazing, badass harpy. Her teeth are bared and she totally does want to bite my head off.

I look past her, over her shoulder, to see Coach Hansen move towards us, head bowed against the icy wind that’s more than promising sleet and rain as it gets colder and colder the longer we’re out here training, breath pluming in the air.

I glance past him too, looking at my team drilling together, scrimmaging, and trying to practice all the plays they’ve learned since all of pre-season fixtures, in preparation for our game against Reading FC. I won’t be able to play, so I’m not expected to know every single play, but I still go to the prep meetings and participate as much as I can, still crack the right jokes at the right time and make up the overall entertainment section of the team.

I wish I was there, right there with them, figuring out the best way to dismantle the Reading FC team’s defense and getting past their notorious goalie who comes out of her box more often than not, boots first, hands ready to catch the ball later. Sometimes, much later. Cleats-to-your-face kinda later.

Everything feels so far away, so out of my reach, and I’ve stopped listening to Trainer Bee yelling at me, until Coach comes to see me and asks me how I’m doing, Bee stewing beside me. I lie through my teeth of course, and then Trainer Bee puts him straight and they both look at me like I’m insane.

“It seems you don’t wish to be with us much longer,” he comments, his words soft enough that I have to struggle to catch them over the wind. When they register, it feels like they break my heart. It’s a reminder that to a professional football league, I’m a drain on resources if I’m not willing to get better, to allow my body to heal so I can earn my paycheck.

“Excuse me?”

Coach Hansen is forty-five years old, the same age as my dad, and he doesn’t look down at us as a women’s team, and he’s never made me feel like just because I was born with different equipment that there’s no reason why I couldn’t become one of the greats. He’s the one person I don’t like disappointing, especially right now when the disappointment is stamped all over his face, his eyes hard, demanding for me to grow up.

Way to go, Maddie. Way to go.

“Why are you trying to hurt yourself?” His accent is Austrian, and I love hearing him speak English. It’s soft and sharp at times, and calming.

“I’m not trying to hurt myself. I’m trying to get ready to play.”

He glances over at Trainer Bee and gives her a nod. There must have been some sort of telepathic communication, because she leaves with a slight nod of her head and makes her way off the field, leaving me alone with Coach. “Come, walk with me.”

And I turn on my heel and walk with him, my limp getting worse with each step, but I just bite down on my back teeth and keep moving, keep struggling to keep up as that muscle-deep, bone-deep pain that throbs in time with my heartbeat escalates. I’ve hurt myself, I’ve made things worse, but hell if I’m going to admit it.

What would Jesse think of you now?

My new motto: WWJWD - what would Jesse Windmeier do?

Answer: Fall in line.

Coach has gone and walked ahead of me. It’s not fair that he’s an actual giant among men, almost seven feet tall with some sort of Viking heritage that probably means he’s directly descended from Odin. Or I’m screwing that up and will have to look it up later.

He turns back now, watching me struggle to catch up, trying to put my full weight on my right leg like I haven’t done anything to it while trying to keep whatever I’m feeling off my face. I try, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work.

“See, Madelyn? You can’t even keep up with me.”

I nod, because I’m sweating harder now, and all I want to do is get into the cryo chamber and make them freeze my leg so I don’t feel this pain anymore, heat burning through me inside and out where the surgery incision was.

Coach sighs like I’m a little kid who won’t stop asking all the whys to the world. “If you’re going to disrespect your body like that, I will not have you disrespecting the team. Do you want me to not play you for the rest of the season?”

Rest of the season? There are twenty-five games left (outside of the season) and he’s going to leave me out of all of them? What?

“I also know about you and the Windmeier boy, doing extra training sessions.”

I scroll through my mental version of my contract and don’t find anything worrisome there, so I don’t think I broke any rules. I nod, sheepish-like, and wait for him to scold me. “I’ve been trying to get better, trying to be faster, trying to be the best.”

“The best become the best, Madelyn,” Coach says in that soft way of his, “when they know when it’s time to rest and resume the fight once they’ve done so.” Coach Hansen is the calmest guy I know. He even says everything softly, as if he already knows you’re following every single one of his words. That’s true power, and I want to be him when I grow up.

“I’m keeping you off any sort of training for the next two weeks.”

I stifle the screech, banshee-style, that I want to use, but I stiffen up like I’m about to get decked.

I bet Jesse will be glad we’re out of his hair, huh?

I nod, because not nodding would mean me warming the bench for the rest of my natural life and making my team debut wait all the way until next August, and there’s no way I’m going to do that.

“I can do that, Coach.” I nod for emphasis. My leg gives a sickening throb, causing my stomach to lurch.

“Do you promise me?”

I nod, knowing that if I mess this up, then I’m going to destroy my career. This could be the crossroads that leads to me derailing everything I’ve worked so very hard for my entire life.

“I promise, Coach.”