Page 2 of Rumor Has It

After the water was finally warm enough for her to rush through her morning routine, she dug through their shared closet and pulled out her favorite clean sports bra and her favorite clean sliders that matched. She was superstitious like that. A lot of athletes were brand loyal, but Wren didn’t care all that much about logos. So long as whatever she was wearing matched in color, she was happy. Today’s theme was red. She could make a solid assumption that there would be scrimmages since there weren’t the day before and she wanted to wear a bright color to attract as much attention to herself as possible. Once, when she was about ten, she had read an article about how that was always a good idea in a tryout scenario, and she had never forgotten it. So, for Day Two, she paired a red and black shirt with black and red shorts and packed her favorite red and black socks into her lucky duffel bag. She triple checked her cleats, shin guards, and socks before she left, chugging a protein shake on her way out the door.

CHAPTER

TWO

WREN

Her assumption had been correct. The second day of camp consisted of a lot of two-on-two and three-on-three scrimmages, and as practice pushed on, they worked up to five-on-five. To start, Wren was teamed up with other forwards and they went head-to-head against teams of defenders. It was a little harder for her to avoid Rebecca Rothschild when Wren’s squad, consisting of her, Courtney Sinclair, and Brittany Holcomb kept having to play against Rebecca, Allison Martins, and Danielle Rodriguez. But despite spending most of the day battling it out with her longtime rival, Wren couldn’t contain her excitement about who she had been teamed up with. That had to be a good sign. Putting her with two of the best forwards of all time had to be some sort of clue that the coaches wanted to know how that combination would work. She begrudgingly acknowledged the same could be said for Rebecca’s lineup with the defenders. Thankfully, Rebecca seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation, and for the first time since their freshman year of college, she didn’t tug on Wren’s jersey a single time. Nor did she call Wren anything incredibly rude under her breath. She just played clean defense.

Wren showed her the same amount of respect. It was amazing how well they still played even when their ulterior motive wasn’t secretly to maim the other. As the second day wore on, two superstar midfielders were added to Wren’s team and Rebecca’s team was given a fourth defender and one of the National Team’s current starting center midfielders, Erin Rice. Keepers rotated in and out on either side. And while the coaches kept making substitutions, Rebecca and Wren stayed on the pitch for the duration of the day. Wren didn’t know how to read that. It could either indicate that they wanted to see her matched up with any number of offensive combinations—she could be right on the cusp of making the team and they wanted to see if she had the stamina to go a full forty-minutes at this high level of play—or the worst possible option, they were checking to make sure she and Rebecca could play with or against each other without resorting to shoving and cards being thrown.

When the final whistle blew, the two squads shed their sweat soaked, smelly practice jerseys and high-fived each other. Wren made a conscious effort to not avoid Rebecca after a match for the first time in four years. She awkwardly walked up to her, hand already extended, just reaching for a simple fist bump. Rebecca stared at it, her hazel eyes scanning the situation, looking more ready for Wren to throw a punch than touch congratulatory fists.

“Good work today,” Wren said, offering a nervous smile.

Rebecca’s returned smile was forced. It also wasn’t a smile of Rebecca’s that Wren had seen before—and Wren felt like she knew most of Rebecca’s smiles at this point. She certainly knew her “I hope you die” smile, her “I just kicked your ass” smile, her “how’d that grass taste” smile, the smile she got when her team had won, and now she knew her “I’m only smiling at you because the coaches are watching” smile.

Rebecca gently tapped her knuckles against Wren’s, and even though she was wearing a fake, beautiful, megawatt, charm-filled smile, she said so low that only Wren could hear, “Go fuck yourself, Eames.” Her voice was as raspy and southern as it always had been.

Wren just winked at her. “Oh, I’m sure I can find a sexy woman to fuck me instead.” It was petty and pointed, barbed in a way that would only bother Rebecca Rothschild. She laughed with a warped sense of satisfaction as she watched Rebecca stiffen at her comeback.

Wren high-fived all of her squad mates from the day and made small talk with some of the returning players. She was trying to keep herself from getting overly confident, but she knew she had killed it today, and the way that returning players were chatting with her as she did some cooldown stretches gave her more than a little hope that they thought she’d be invited back for the final day as well.

That night, Wren sat on her couch and drank a Gatorade and ate a sandwich roughly the size of her head while reading a sci-fi book she’d picked up in the dollar bin at the used book store down the street. Andy had left her a note on their kitchen counter that she was going to go out to eat with some friends. She told Wren to call her when she got home if she wanted to meet up with them, but Wren and Andy had been dating long enough for Wren to know several things. The first was that Andy and her friends were going to be out until probably three in the morning. They’d shut the bars down and then go hole up in whatever restaurant they could find that was still open. The second thing Wren knew was that after Andy had gotten signed with her current modeling agency, there was a very good chance that the “friends” Andy was going out with tonight were all for show. It would be some random cast of up-and-comers paired with a big name model from the same agency. They’d take a thousand photos and pretend to be best friends for life for the evening and then not speak again until their manager sent them all back out to highly visible areas swarming with paparazzi. Wren didn’t begrudge Andy for going—it was her job after all—but she knew that wouldn’t be her scene.

The anticipated chime of her email told her to get ready for tomorrow. She had officially been invited to the final round of camp. It would be another harder day of skills drills and scrimmages; and by tomorrow evening, Wren would know if she was part of the Women’s National Team. She pushed her phone back into her pocket and did her best to finish her sandwich. Her nerves had been so wrecked for the past couple of days she hadn’t eaten enough and the last thing she needed was to pass out in the middle of a sprint.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She frowned, her dark eyebrows pulling together, causing a crease in between her eyes. She fished her phone out, nervous it would be Andy calling her needing to be picked up from some bar. She smiled happily when she saw it was, instead, her father.

She answered happily. “Hey, Pops.”

“Hey, Little Bird. How’d Day Two go?” Her dad’s deep voice rumbled through the phone.

“It went really well, Dad. I’m trying not to get my hopes up.” Wren could hear her own excitement in her voice. “I made it through to tomorrow.”

“I’m so proud of you, Wren. No matter what. You know that, right?”

Wren huffed out a laugh. Her dad had always been her biggest fan. He had sent her to training camps all over the country, put himself in debt, got a second job, and still had never missed a game that he could physically get to. Making the Women’s National Team wasn’t just her dream, it was his, too. And sure, she did know he was proud of her no matter what. And yes, he was already a season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Riptide, but making the team would reward a lot of his hard work, too. “I know that, Dad. I feel good about today though.”

Wren could hear the excitement in his voice. “Is your favorite player still there?”

“Courtney Sinclair? Yeah. She was on my practice squad all day today. Unreal right?”

Her dad let out a wheezy laugh. “That is unreal, but you know that’s not who I meant.”

Wren rolled her eyes, realizing that her dad was talking about Rebecca. “Yeah, Dad. She was there. She didn’t try to cheat to beat me today though, so that was a first.”

“Hmmm… Do we think she matured?”

“No, I think she knows she’s a bitch and a dirty player and that the team’s not looking for that.”

“Language, Wren.”

Wren mumbled an apology. Her dad didn’t really care if she swore, but he pretended to care when Barbara was around. Barbara was Wren’s younger step-sister and she was Wren’s absolute favorite person in the whole world. Wren loved to tease her by calling her an adorable precious baby who must be protected at all costs. In reality, Barbara was now seventeen and less a precious baby and more a pseudo-rebellious teenager, but Wren still treated her like a precious baby because to Wren, she was.

Wren’s dad, Willie, and her step-mom, Linda, had started dating when Wren was the same age that Barbara was now. Linda had been really respectful of Wren and her dad’s relationship. It had just been the two of them since Wren could remember. Her mom called her from time-to-time and always sent her birthday cards, but she had walked out of their lives when Wren was just two years old and had never looked back. Linda didn’t come into the picture trying to act like her new mom, ready to step in and save the day. She was just a woman who had fallen in love with her dad. Linda also made Wren’s dad really happy, and she couldn’t have entered his life at a better time.

When Wren was getting ready to move off to college, Linda and Barbara were ready to move in. Wren was a little salty to lose her bedroom the day after she moved out, but Barbara was cute and sweet and only twelve at the time. So, when Wren drove off to LAU in her beat-up old Toyota Tacoma, she waved goodbye to Henderson, Nevada, her dad, and her childhood home, knowing that every time she went back it would always feel a little less like her home and a little more like theirs.