This happened a lot, moving cattle from one point to another point, sometimes straight through the middle of town.
Right now, however, it could not have been worse timing.
I shoved my keys into my pocket, phone into the other pocket, and started to run.
Creed fell into step beside me, having parked his truck beside my own.
“Yo!”
Creed’s voice had me looking sideways to see Denver’s youngest daughter, Dee Dee, shooing a cow back into line.
The dog at her feet followed him to the rest of the herd.
Dee Dee looked up and frowned. “What are y’all doing?”
“Can I borrow that horse?” I begged.
She must’ve seen the sheer terror in my eyes because she got off immediately. “Of course.”
She handed me the reins, and even though I’d been on a horse only a handful of times out at Denver’s place, I got onto the brown mare like I’d been born to do it.
“Take the first right,” Creed suggested. “Cut through all the outdoor flea market parking lots until you get to the backside of the high school. There, there will be a cut fence right at the corner of the mall parking lot closest to Dillon’s. That’ll take you to the back side of the fieldhouse.”
I was off before he could say anything more, taking his exact directions through the rest of town, passing a confused looking Denver as I went.
Cows scattered. Dogs barked.
But the only thing I could focus on was getting to that soccer game.
Twenty-Eight
What kind of birth control are you using? Or is it just your personality?
—Eddy to Nettie
Eddy
“All right, ladies,” I said as I looked at each face individually. “We’re going to do just fine. Calm down. Focus on our style of play. You’re stooping down to their level. You’re better than this. Passes are faster than dribbling.”
Heads nodded.
“Look up. I want to see a bunch of one twos. They’re ready for you to dribble it.”
I said this to my team captain.
She nodded in understanding.
“We’re only down by one,” I said. “And we have a whole forty-minute half left.”
“Yes, Coach,” one of my quietest seniors said, her shoulders straightening. “We got this.”
They did.
I knew they did.
It happened like that sometimes, losing against teams that were clearly worse than us.
But sometimes, it was hard to hold onto your foundation of soccer when you were playing against girls that literally had no clue what a foundation was.
