The One Thing by Marci Lyn Curtis Read Free Book Online

reaching into his concertos
and mazurkas and mixing them up, scattering the notes like leaves in the wind. My creativity didn’t fly with Mr. Hawthorne, however, and so after nearly a decade of arguing with him over
starchy piano theory, I lost interest and quit. I don’t know which one of us had been more relieved.
    At exactly seven thirty, my mother stepped into the house. I knew this not because I actually knew the time, but because I knew my mother. She was nothing if not regimented. Giving me a cursory
greeting—just a hand running across the top of my head—she unloaded on the arm of the couch, all sighs.
    I swung my feet around to the floor. My cat hit the carpet with a wide-pawed flump. “Hey, Mom. How was your day?”
    “Exhausting,” she said. Her customary reply these days. Particularly while ducking conversation about her job—head coach of the women’s soccer team at the University of
Connecticut. Clearing her throat, she changed the subject. “Hilda called me today to set up an appointment with you. Said she’s left you several voice mails and you haven’t gotten
back to her?” When I failed to reply, she went on. “Anyway, she said she’ll be here at eleven o’clock tomorrow.”
    “In the
morning
? I have plans.” Which, in fact, I did not. But I could have some plans if I really wanted to.
    While I might be lacking in marketable skills, I happened to do a bang-up job when it came to lying. Unfortunately, my mother was aware of my talent. I could practically hear her eyebrows hike
up. “What plans?”
    “Stuff.”
    “Well, change your stuff,” she said tiredly. And then her phone rang: her assistant coach. With a grunt, she stood up and paced away, talking backpasses and kick-and-runs and
shoot-outs.
    Back in the day, my mother had played soccer for the women’s national team. She’d been a middie, the fastest on the field, and we had a box of old DVDs to prove it. When I was real
young, I used to sneak into the basement late at night, put the TV on mute, and curl up under an afghan to watch them. Back then she was my hero. My biggest and grandest memory of her came from
when I was five. It was fall, and the sky was a crisp, cloudless blue, almost too blue to be real. My mother’s team was playing against Norway in the quarterfinals of the Women’s World
Cup, and the United States was hosting. The critics considered Norway the favorite that year, but my mother proved them wrong. She scored the only goal in the game. When the last buzzer sounded,
she ran to the sidelines at full force—just a blur of sweat and smile and ponytail—threw me on her shoulders, and paraded me across the field. I’ll never forget how I felt on her
shoulders: strong, pretty, smart.
    In the stadium’s parking lot that same evening, some punk slammed into her, snatched her purse, and bolted off at a dead sprint. Yes, Dad was right beside her. And yes, he stood there like
a complete dumbass while the guy took off. Mom, however, tore after the guy, screaming at the top of her lungs. It didn’t take long for her to catch up to him. She seized him by the arm,
yanked her purse free, and said through her teeth, all up in his face, “Your mother must be so
proud
.” Then she clobbered him on the side of the head with the purse and stomped
off.
    She was huge to me that night, larger than life. Magical, even. Her confidence and energy on the field leaked out into everything she touched. It was as though she could do anything, be
anything, conquer anything she wanted to, and I wanted nothing more than to become just like her. But then a couple days later, just before the semifinals, she tore her Achilles tendon. I remember
all too clearly the thin set of her lips when she was told she would never again play competitive soccer. She’d always been so strong and so centered that I didn’t expect the injury to
change who she was. Which was exactly why the following weeks were so strange. She just