Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool by Elisha Cooper Page A

you can do it lying down?

    Emily has new green contacts. Why? Why not. Given Emily’s coloring, the green is somewhat incongruous. They relax her appearance, though, making it less severe as she strides from class to class. Not that she’s gone soft or anything.
    Emily’s soccer team lost in the championship game of their practice indoor season. The game went into overtime and Emily didn’t know that overtime was sudden death and she passed to a teammate who lost the ball and then the other team scored.
    Emily blames herself. She blames herself for passing. She says she could have dribbled around the other team and shot and scored, no problem. That’s what she says.
    Later she wonders, why didn’t she take that shot? In an unguarded moment, Emily says she hates shooting.
    â€œI don’t want to miss. I’d be embarrassed,” she admits. She hasn’t figured out why this is so, but deep down inside her is this hang-up.
    Her fear of shooting started with her club team, the Windy City Pride. When Emily began playing with the Pride she saw that her skill lay in passing. Her coach saw this too, and encouraged it. She became the player who led the team to the goal, not the one who scored it.
    Goal scorers are free spirits, impulsive and ballsy. Emily is not that. She’s routinely the best player on the field, with technical skill far above anyone else’s. But she’s a perfectionist. If she’s not going to do something well, she’s not going to do it, and over time that has prevented her from taking chances. It’s the flaw in her game.
    Emily says she wants to improve her shot. She knows she needs to work on it for her team to do well in the upcoming season. But how do you improve your shot if it’s not in your foot, but in your head?
    Final exams. The pock-pock-pock of the Ping-Pong tables has been replaced by the scratch of pencils and the clicking of laptops. Teachers stand at the front of classrooms, arms folded, legs crossed, staring out, thinking about, what?
    The silence magnifies the sounds that do occur: the footsteps of a student walking to the water fountain, the rumble of the "L,” the smack of a blue booklet dropped on its way to the front of class.
    Once students finish, there’s a lot of free time. Especially for seniors. In the library, Maya is sitting at a table with Ben&Andy. Ben&Andy are making noise and chewing gum and entertaining Maya with stories until the librarian waddles over and tells them to shhh .
    They keep telling stories. The first is about how Ben almost got busted by a cop for climbing a chain-link fence into a deserted lot. The second is about a party that Andy went to where a house got destroyed, books ripped in half and laundry detergent poured everywhere. Ben begins a third story as he opens a bag of carrots. The story’s most engaging aspect, given that Ben talks with his mouth open, is whether or not a carrot will jump out of his mouth and onto the table.
    None do. Maya looks at Ben, her right eyebrow raised, her tongue turning her cheek into a tent. The talk turns to every-one’s plans for their last semester here at Payton.
    â€œDo as much as we can,” says Andy. “But, no schoolwork.”
    â€œYeah, make a mockery of our school,” says Ben. “My dream is to suspend two bungee cords in the atrium and have people up there tumbling.”
    â€œI’d let loose chickens,” says Andy. “Numbered chickens. All over the school. But the chickens would be numbered one, three, four, so that, yeah, when they got rounded up, everyone would be going around trying to find number two. Get it?”
    Everyone does.
    â€œSee, if I were to let chickens loose,” says Ben, “I’d just let them loose.”
    Shhh . The librarian waddles over again. The talk turns to a whisper, and to dating. Classmates who make out in the hallway, seniors who hook up with underclassmen, girls who have