The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain

Cath Crowley grew up in rural Victoria. She comes from a family of seven: her parents, three brothers and a dog called Elvis. All of them encouraged her to give up full-time teaching to write. Cath studied professional writing and editing at RMIT and works as both a freelance writer in Melbourne and a part-time teacher. She has lived and taught overseas but now lives in Elwood, in a sunny spot close to the beach. Cath has only played soccer once. But she is very clumsy. This is her first novel.

C A T H   C R O W L E Y

Pan Macmillan Australia

First published 2004 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Cath Crowley 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Crowley, Cath.
The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain.

ISBN 0 330 36456 1.

1. Teenage girls – Juvenile fiction I. Title.

A823.4

Cover model: Maddy Gerard
Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
Designed by Melanie Feddersen, i2i design

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

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The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain
Cath Crowley

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To Mum, who gave me novenas,
and to Dad, who gave me books.

Thank you Pan Macmillan, especially Anna McFarlane, Brianne Tunnicliffe and Jo Jarrah, for believing so strongly in Gracie. Thanks also to Dimitri, Diana and John, the lunchtime and after-school soccer coaches, and to Ali, Emma, Miriam and Annette, for listening to Gracie's story and having faith in her. Lastly, thank you to my family, for having faith in me.

Kick-off

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Time out due to injury

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

The game from the bench

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Back in play

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Extra time

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

star
noun
: any large body like the sun,
intensely hot and producing its own
energy by nuclear reactions;

soccer star
noun
: Gracie Faltrain

There are only three minutes until the end of the game. The score is level. Corelli takes the throw-in. The ball hovers like a moon for a moment and then crashes through the atmosphere, a piece of sky that we chase like dogs. The crowd is calling out for us to go forward. Run faster. Harder. I listen only to the sound of blood pounding in my ears. I see only that white circle. It connects with the corner of my boot and I launch it: long and even. It hits the back of the goal a second before the whistle. Game over. I've won it. Welcome to the life of Gracie Faltrain. Goal-kicking, supergirl, soccer star.

Holidays might be over, but out on the soccer field today there's excitement. Like something's about to happen. Something good. There's no better feeling. I can still remember the first match I ever played. It was in Year 7.

‘Coach, please, let me on the team.'

He looked at me like I'd just asked him to hand over all the cash in his wallet.

‘We've had the tryouts. You'll have to wait until next year, Faltrain.'

I hated the look on his face. Smug. Smiling. What he really meant was, ‘This is a boy's team. And you're a girl.'

It wasn't my fault that the only soccer team in the school was all boys. I had to play. Waiting until Year 8 would have been torture, so I started turning up to training. Without an invite.

‘Faltrain, I told you last week. We've
had
the tryouts.' Coach was stubborn. So was I. Everyone stared at me at that first practice. With their eyes on me my boots felt too new. My t-shirt was too clean. Mum had actually
ironed
my shorts. I looked at the creases along the front, and then down at my legs. They hadn't seemed so skinny when I left home. I hadn't felt so short. The guys were starting to laugh at me.

‘I can play soccer as good as the rest of you,' I said, and felt hands reach into my stomach and twist it like a wet towel. They were wringing so hard I nearly wet myself. I had
no
idea if I was any good. I just knew I wanted to play.

Dad had taken me to a game a few weeks earlier. I couldn't take my eyes off those players as they flew across the field. They kicked the ball so quickly it seemed like an echo at their heels. I wanted to be a part of that. I'd played a lot of sport, but somehow I knew that soccer would be different. I wanted it to be something that really belonged to me. Something I could belong
to
.

Martin was the only one who made eye contact with me that afternoon.

‘You laughing at me?' I asked him.

‘Wouldn't dare,' he said, and held up his hands like I was holding a gun. He turned to Coach. ‘I reckon we should give
her a go. See what she can do. We need an extra player on reserve.'

Everyone waited for his answer. Part of me hoped he'd tell me to get off the field. Go home.

‘Let's get started,' he said. ‘We've wasted enough time.'

And that was it. Gracie Faltrain's lucky break. Sort of.

‘Stick with me, Faltrain,' Martin told me. I spent the next hour trying to keep up with him.

So was that the beginning of my world-class soccer career? Not quite. Was I so good that all the guys carried me off the field on their shoulders that night? In my dreams. For the next few weeks I
saw
a lot of the ball. I just didn't get to touch it much. It didn't stop me. I went to every game and every practice even though I knew I wouldn't get a chance at a real match. I was beginning to think that the bench was my position when two things happened to change my soccer destiny. Charles Layton moved to the country. And Johnny Marantino broke his leg. I was it. The last reserve.

‘All right, Faltrain,' Coach yelled as he walked across the ground that day. ‘Marantino's broken his leg. You're on. Left midfield.'

I'm on, I thought as I ran after him. I'm on. I was about to play my first real soccer match. The problem was, I didn't have a clue what to do. It was one thing to run laps every week and play a few practice matches. It was a completely different thing to be out there for real.

I'd been watching the team play for weeks. I'd seen the boys dancing the ball on their boots before sending it sailing towards the goal. But if I was brutally honest with myself, and that was a moment that called for brutal honesty, I'd been thinking about the final seconds of the match when I kicked
the winning goal. I still hadn't quite worked out the technicalities of HOW I was going to kick that goal. Shit, Gracie Faltrain: think fast.

Imagine yourself in the game with me. You're the only girl in a field full of boys. And these were not your average Year 8 boys. These kids were mutants. Their mothers fed them on cows. Whole cows. What do you do? Little hint: do something.

I was standing there and everyone was rushing past me but I didn't move. Fear had frozen my limbs. I could hear Mum yelling at me over the wind, ‘Gracie, run to the ball.' My best friend Jane was shouting, ‘C'mon, Faltrain! You can do it!' I knew I could but it felt like I was wading through miles of mud that wouldn't let my arms or legs move. I was nervous. I was scared. I was in trouble. Then I heard my dad calling, ‘Gracie honey, get the ball.' His voice kick-started me into action.

I took one step forward and the opposition introduced themselves. At close range. ‘Get up, Gracie baby!' Dad called from the edge. Right, get up, I told myself. I got up. I fell down. I tasted dirt. The whistle blew.

‘Faltrain, what are you doing out there?' Coach ran towards me.

‘I . . .'

‘Don't answer. Nothing. You're doing nothing!' he roared. His breath, hot and stale, moved into my nostrils. I felt sick. Dad was listening. The boys on my team were watching. I'd stuffed up. I'd be the reason we lost the match.

‘Told you we shouldn't of let a girl play.' Andrew Flemming kicked at the dirt. ‘She's got no idea what to do in a real match.'

‘Faltrain, listen up,' Martin Knight, the captain, whispered to me. ‘Remember what I told you at practice. You're smaller
than everyone else. Get in there. Get under them. Get around them. GET THE BALL!'

‘What do you think I'm trying to do?'

‘Relax, Faltrain. When you get the ball, kick it to Flemming at centre, quick as you can.'

I ran back onto the field. I dodged; I weaved. I twisted my legs around ankles and stole the ball from the tops of toes. It was like the first time I realised I really could swim, or ride my bike. I'm not great at school, but I can play sport. I switched off my mind that day and relaxed into the game. I found myself knowing what to do without planning it. I ran in towards the goal, dodging defenders, and kicked to Flemming. I watched him force the ball home to the sound of cheering. Everyone leapt on top of him; an eleven-car pile-up on the field, with bodies instead of metal.

Did we win? No. Was it my fault? Possibly, yes. But on that day I grew wings. I became part of the team.

That was over three years ago. Ever since then, I've loved everything about soccer. I've started to hang around on the field after the game too, when the crowd has dissolved. The ground is covered in boot marks sunk into mud, a map reminding me of the match.

Martin runs across the field today, his yells kick into the quiet. His words fall ragged on the grass. ‘Faltrain. Coach. Says. We go. Championships. New South Wales.' The National Championships are like the Olympic Games of the school soccer world. We'd never been allowed to go before. Coach always said, ‘We'll go when we're ready, team. Not before.'

‘We're ready, Martin, we're going to New South Wales!' My shouts rise like flags.

‘Imagine if we came home with the trophy. Maybe then Dad would . . .' Martin stops. He looks like he wants to stuff
what he's just said back in his mouth and swallow. I catch a tiny glimpse of his home life, scattered around us like little crumbs of sadness.

‘Faltrain, race me to the bus stop,' he says, and moves quickly before I can answer. I'm relieved. I don't want to talk to Martin about this. I don't know what to say. I let him run ahead; grass stuck to his back, his boots sounding hollow on the path.

 

I was ten when Mum left. She was there one day and then gone. My sister Karen was six. We came home from school and the door was locked. I think I knew even then that she wasn't at the shops. I took Karen to Mrs Wallace's place and she gave us some biscuits. They were my favourite but I couldn't taste them.

The letter was on the table when we got in. Dad's hands were like fists, he was holding on to it so tight. Shaking fists. He just kept reading it over and over. It was 7 o'clock and we should have been eating dinner. Me and Karen were still in our school uniforms. I kept thinking about a book our grade had read in school that morning. This kid's dog got caught under the wheels of a car. We all sat in a circle and told stories about things we'd lost.

I lay on top of the covers that night, sleeping in my school uniform. I wanted Mum to find me there when she got home. She would've said, ‘Brush your teeth, Marty,' or, ‘Put on some pyjamas and get into bed. It's cold.'

I didn't cry that night she left. Days later, I woke up feeling sick though. Someone next door was hammering one of the bits of the fence back in place. It'd been broken for ages. My face was wet and I was glad he was making such a racket. I didn't want Dad to hear me. I don't reckon he would have liked it.

Everyone knows about Mum. It took people a while but they worked it out. One month she was on tuckshop duty with the other mothers and then the next month she wasn't. She didn't come to any more parent–teacher interviews. She wasn't at soccer.

A few weeks after she left my teacher asked me how I was feeling. What was there to say? It seemed kind of obvious.
Faltrain's the first person I've felt like talking to about it. I almost did today, but then she got this look on her face, like she felt sorry for me, so I kept my mouth shut. You don't talk about stuff like that, I guess, even with your mates. There's nothing she could do about it anyway.

Dad never told us why Mum left. He just said she'd be gone for a while. She must have had a reason. Her letter might have made sense of everything but I never read it. Dad never unclenched his fists. He sat down at that table and it seemed like he didn't get up again.

She's out there living, but we're stuck. We went on a bit further after she left, speeding like my bike after I've stopped pedalling. A few days after she closed the door everything stopped.

The newspapers were in the yard, ready for recycling. Plastic containers were stinking out the fridge but nobody ate anything. It took weeks before I chucked them out. It was ages before I cleaned out the leaves piling up around the edges of the garden. The chairs in the kitchen lost their screws. I sat down and the seat slid off. I landed on my bum on the floor. Karen and me used to laugh at stuff like that. Not much is funny anymore. The house seems kind of tired. Dad sleeps all the time, even when he's awake.

I asked him about her once. He said, ‘You have to get on with things, Marty.' Then he changed the channel on the TV and that was it. She's getting on with it somewhere, I reckon, so maybe Dad's right.