Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith. Chapter 1.

Mailbox: Chapter 8, Christmas Tree Whizzer

MAILBOX: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith by Nancy Freund, Gobreau Press, 2015, Chapter 8: Christmas Tree Whizzer

Twice a week my brother has soccer practice at the high school's football field that is all patchy with weeds. It's next to a big road with yellow lines, and when he's there, I wait on the side with my mom or sometimes in the car. There aren't any bleachers so we sit on the ground, against a chain-link fence when we sit outside. Usually, I like to go and watch. Usually no one notices me there, or sometimes one or two boys will say hi.

Chris has fifteen boys on his team, and you need at least eleven. I know all those boys, except sometimes if I'm cheering for them, I can't tell Kirk Kirby and Bill Gustave apart, because they both have blond hair and they both play fullback and they both are pretty fast, although I think Bill might be faster.

You can be fast even if you're short. My mom says those guys are scrappy. They both go for the ball and get it when other guys would give up. My dad says another good word for the way they play is "tenacious." You can remember that because if you really try hard for something, and you don't give up, you probably are at least ten years old. Ten for tenacious. Also, in French, they say tenir for "hold," and I picture a hand taking hold, like a tenacious fist that won't let go. It's probably the same word back in ancient Latin or Greek that made tenir in France and tenacious in England. People think having all different languages in the world makes it hard for people to communicate, but if you think about it, it also gives us something pretty amazing to discover when we realize no matter how different we seem at first, our roots are all growing from the same place. I love words! Palabras. The Spanish word for words is my favorite. The Spanish word for questions is pretty great too. Preguntas.

But between scrappy and tenacious, I'd rather be called scrappy. I mean in life. I'm not a soccer player. Girls don't play soccer. They should though, because I can head the ball, and I'm pretty fast, and I can dribble, and I know how to kick. Never kick from the tip of your toe or you'll have no control. If I could play, people might say "she plays like a girl," but hopefully, they'd actually think I play like a player. But that's not how things are. If I want to play a sport in high school, it will have to be field hockey in a plaid skirt. If I ever get to play hockey, put me in a rink in pads and skates and all the equipment, and ice-swipe sounds, and the flat stick, and puck, and thwacks in the cold.

"Thwack!" Six letters on a piece of paper, and you say it out loud and actually hear what it sounds like. That's called "onomatopoeia," which is another neat word to know if you want to be a writer. In My Antonia the grass goes "swish, swish," and that was my first onomatopoeia I learned. My Antonia is a prairie book by Willa Cather, and the locusts come and everybody dies and people freeze to death. It doesn't have anything to do with society today, so I didn't like it. Teachers are always making people read books that have nothing to do with real life today, but we all have to pretend they do.

Kirk Kirby and Bill Gustave look alike on the soccer field, but their personalities are really different. Kirk is mean. He punched Chris at the picnic last year. Sometimes if it's one of those two guys with the ball, I just yell "go!" even though if I knew for sure it was Bill, I would yell his name because he's nice to Chris, and sometimes we play at his house. When someone gets close to the goal, my mom always yells "shoot it!" She was a cheerleader in high school. She cheered in Madison Square Garden.

My dad says those boys are playing magnet ball and they need to keep to their positions. My brother is the goalie, so he doesn't get to shoot unless it's penalties, and then he's really good. But they don't usually do penalty shoot-outs under ten. But he makes good saves in goal, and that's important. My mom and dad always yell "good save!"