Read Online Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally) by Cath Crowley - Free Book Online Page A

I’m the one who told you to kick the ball.’
    â€˜I should have stayed home today. Actually, Jane should have stayed home today.’
    â€˜Was it as bad at school as it was on the email?’
    â€˜The tuckshop lady patted my hand.’
    â€˜You’re not the only one having bad days. Kally’s still copping the loser chant as she walks down the corridor. She didn’t say much about Sunday.’
    There are a couple of reasons I can’t tell Dan the truth about trials. One, Kally was nice to me today when she didn’t have to be and two, he already thinks I’m brutal, a fact that’shard to deny since I just slammed my English teacher in the face with a ball. ‘She did okay.’
    â€˜She was trying too hard, though?’
    â€˜A little.’
    â€˜She’s doing that when we train together. I’ve known her since I was a kid. In the country she plays like you. When I was six or seven I remember getting goose bumps watching her.’
    Yoosta comes around the corner before I can answer. ‘Okay, repeat after me,’ Dan says. ‘It was an accident.’
    â€˜It was an accident,’ I say to Yoosta when we’re sitting in his office. ‘It had nothing to do with the essay she’s giving us tomorrow.’ Dan kicks me. I get it. I should shut up now on the grounds that I’m an idiot.
    â€˜I know it was an accident,’ he says. ‘But I can’t ignore that you were playing soccer near the Performing Arts Centre windows, an area you know full well should be ball free. It’s written in your school diary, which I know you use on a regular basis.’
    â€˜Yes, Mr Yoosta.’
    â€˜However, Mrs Young has asked me to treat this as a minor infringement of the rules. That would normally mean a detention on Wednesday, but I’m assuming you’d rather yours on Friday so it doesn’t interfere with soccer.’
    â€˜Thanks, Mr Yoosta.’
    â€˜Thank Mrs Young.’ He looks at Dan. ‘Young man, you’re free to come on Wednesday. I know your principal quite well. I believe he will be behind me on this.’
    â€˜I’ll take my detention on Friday,’ Dan says. ‘With Gracie. If that’s okay.’
    â€˜That will be fine.’
    We leave the office and walk to the front of the school. ‘So, if Annabelle and Kally are still here I’m giving them a lift home. Annie’s car is at the mechanics. You want one too?’ Dan asks.
    Today has been weird, I think, as Dan starts the car. Who could have predicted at the end of the last season that at the start of this one I’d be sitting in a car with Dan Woodbury, actually looking forward to detention with him on Friday? Who could have predicted that Jane would tell the whole school about Martin and Kally would make me feel better about it? Who could have predicted that Annabelle and me would be in the same car, unbound and ungagged, travelling together of our own free will?
    I can’t think of anything to say and the quiet’s getting to me. Jane would tell me to go for something relaxed and funny. ‘So if we all died on the way home, people would wonder why we were in the car together, wouldn’t they?’ Okay. I didn’t quite hit the relaxed and funny note. But it’s been a long day.
    Corelli and Jane are waiting for me when I step out of the car. ‘Where have you two been?’ I ask.
    â€˜Trapped in a car with Britney Spears,’ Jane says.
    â€˜You loved my new CD.’
    â€˜Yeah, Corelli, in the same way I love having my toenails ripped out, one by one.’
    â€˜You want to drive around again sometime?’
    â€˜Absolutely. See you tomorrow,’ she says, and he waves goodbye.
    â€˜So, Dan and I have detention on Friday night,’ I tell her after he’s gone.
    â€˜You say that with a very big smile. Are you sure you’re not interested?’
    â€˜I’m still