Boomerang by Noelle August Read Free Book Online Page A

want that girl to get them,” she says. “She comes in here and touches everything.”
    “She’s probably just trying to clean or help you put things away.” I make a mental note to ask my mom about this new person.
    For now, though, I turn the camera back to my grandmother, try—but fail—to see her through the lens’s more objective eye. I watch her, the wry half-smile on her lips telling me she’s dreaming some secret dream—maybe about my grandfather or about being a young girl whose ambition brought her to the law and to fight for civil rights in the South.
    I look around at her jewelry, at her books and dresses and mementos. Next to the photo of her standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Martin Luther King is one I love even more. She sits behind the wheel of an old car—a Studebaker, she told me—with one of my grandpa’s cigars clamped, unlit, between her teeth. Her smile is absolutely dazzling, and she gives the camera a wink like the moment will last forever.
    Something snaps to life inside me, and I realize I’ve found my way into my film. These objects—the photographs, the jewelry, the antique perfume bottles lining her ivory-inlaid dresser, all of these things she’s kept through her adulthood, through the loss of my grandfather and her two older sisters, through her journey from an extravagant apartment in Forest Hills to this modest room clear across the country, they can tell her story for her. They can help me tell the world who she is.
    “Tell me more about the necklace, Nana,” I say and lift the camera once again.

 Chapter 10 
     
    Ethan
     
    Q: On a scale of one to ten, how would you rank your physical fitness?
     
    H ow the HR manager from hell wound up leading my team through warm-up drills is a mystery I will never solve.
    One minute I was in Century City bumming a ride from Rhett Orland after work. The next, I’m on the Beverly Hills High soccer field watching him run my squad of under-nine boys through a third set of push-ups.
    I’ve been standing here for ten minutes, and I still can’t believe this.
    “Come on, boys!” Rhett yells. He links his hands behind his back and paces down the line of groaning kids like a drill sergeant. “Put some want to in it! Backs straight, tails down! Feel that, boys? Can you feel the goodness?”
    Unbelievable. Feel the goodness? The guy says some epically weird shit.
    Tyler, my starting left wing, looks up from the push-up position, his nose scrunched up and his face red. “Coach Ethan, why do we have to do push-ups?”
    It’s a fair question. Nine-year-olds’ arms are basically twigs, and I’m getting worried that Milo’s are going to snap right before my eyes. Not to mention that upper-body strength isn’t what I need from them. I need endurance. Core strength. Hell, I just need them to focus for more than two seconds at a time. But today things are different: my boys are helping me out with a little skill called ass-kissery.
    “Because if you don’t do push-ups,” I say to Tyler, “ Coach Rhett here is going to terminate me from my new employment.”
    Rhett stops his verbal assault and grins. “You’re an intern, Vance, so legally I can’t fire you. I can only dismiss you.” His head whips back to the line of grunting kids. “Cameron, I saw you! You can get lower than that! Push ’em out, boys! Two more sets!”
    This used to be the best part of my day.
    I let Rhett finish warm-ups and then I get the boys running some drills. Juggling. Dribbling. Passing. These boys know what to do once they get moving. They’re young, but it’s a premier league team, with tryouts, tournaments, rankings. The whole deal. I made sure when I picked this group that they’d want to be here. I can deal with screwing around and nose-picking if they show some heart when we get down to actual soccer—and they do. My team has big-time heart.
    When it’s time to scrimmage, I join in, partly because it fires the boys up and makes them try harder,