Chapter Text
“Okay... what is the lacrosse team doing on our field?” Lauren, their captain, asked as the girls’ soccer team approached their usual field for the first scheduled practice. From the back of the group, Trini heard Gia - their striker - call out as she raced to catch up.
“Guys!” She had a piece of paper clutched in her hand as she rushed towards the group, making a beeline for Lauren. “The school cut our team!”
“What?” Trini balked, echoed by several of her teammates.
Gia handed the paper to Lauren, “Not enough girls signed up.”
“They can’t just do that!” Lauren protested. Gia just shrugged - for all they knew, the school could do whatever the hell it wanted.
Trini’s heart sunk as she registered what Gia just told them. Soccer was the one thing that she actually enjoyed about school, and now it was going to be taken away. And it was her Junior year, meaning it was more important than ever to be seen by recruiters if she had any hope of playing in college. It couldn’t just end like this. Not if she had anything to say about it.
“This isn’t over,” Trini said just loud enough for her teammates to hear before turning on her heel and storming towards the other field. The field where the boys’ team was scheduled to be practicing.
As she made her way there, Trini could tell that most, if not all of the rest of her team had followed. It was a bit unusual for Trini since she didn’t really consider herself much of a leader. And though she got on well enough with her teammates, she wasn’t particularly close with any of them - having only started at Reefside last year. In this situation though, Trini figured she wasn’t so much being a leader as she was a catalyst.
The team quickly approached the boys’ coach on the sideline, gathering around him in a demand for something - answers, some kind of remedy, anything really. He barely even acknowledged them when they walked up, not looking away from the field as he gave them an apathetic greeting.
“Hey girls. Heard the bad news.”
“Bad?” Trini was all but fuming at the coach’s indifferent tone, “It’s a disaster.” She didn’t usually push back this much against authority figures who weren’t her mother, but this guy was already pissing her off.
“Now college scouts don’t even get to see us play!” Gia added, never one to quietly accept bullshit.
“I know,” the coach responded still not even bothering to look at them, “And if there’s anything I can do, just say the word.” Trini knew he didn’t mean it, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take him up on it.
“As a matter of fact, there is. You could let us try out for the boys’ team.” She hadn’t told her teammates this plan ahead of time, but they all quickly echoed their agreement.
The coach just laughed. “Anything besides that.”
“Come on Coach, you know we’re good enough,” Lauren protested.
“Just give us a shot,” Trini added before he could respond.
“Girls, we have less than two weeks before school starts. Then the week after, we open against Angel Grove. A rivalry game. We have to win .” He retorted as if that was a completely legitimate reason not to even entertain the idea.
“And we can help you win.” There was a bite to Trini’s response as she started to lose patience.
The boys’ team, having noticed the minor commotion on the sidelines, came up to the group.
“What’s going on Coach?” One of the players asked. Trini wanted to say his name was Chad, or Justin, or something equally dudebro-y.
“Well the girls here want to try out for the team,” the coach responded as if it was nothing more than a ridiculous joke. And the boys took it as such, laughing uproariously - only dying down slightly when they noticed the serious - and pissed-off - looks on the girls’ faces.
“Alright, alright,” the coach gestured for them to quiet down before turning back to the girls. “Look, you’re all excellent players,” he conceded before quickly adding with a chuckle, “but girls aren’t as fast as boys, or as strong, or as athletic. I mean look at you,” he gestured at Trini, “What are you, a hundred pounds soaking wet?”
Trini clenched her fists, blood boiling and itching to punch this asshole in his stupid face. Which she absolutely would have if she could somehow do it without getting in horrible trouble.
“Look girls, I’m sorry, but that’s just not something I can do. And it’s actually against the rules.” He holds up a pocket league manual to prove his point. “But let me know if there’s anything else I can do… You know, within reason.”
*****
Luckily when Trini got home her mom was too busy with her little brothers, so she was able to avoid the usual barrage of questioning. Which gave her plenty of time to lie in her bed, staring at the ceiling and seething as she reviewed the events of the day in her head.
She was dragged out of her thoughts however when she heard a loud thump from outside her window. She glanced out to see a duffle bag on the ground, apparently thrown from the window of the room next door - her twin brother Sebastian’s room. Curiosity getting the better of her, she quickly darted over to her brother’s door and, upon seeing it cracked open, pushed it the rest of the way - just in time to see Sebastian tossing another bag out the window.
“You know you can use the front door?” Trini asked sarcastically. Sebastian startled slightly, clearly not having expected to be caught.
“Yeah, but Mami can’t see me,” he reasoned. As he packed up his guitar, he continued, “She thinks I’m staying at Papi’s, he thinks I’m staying at Mami’s, and in two days they both think that I’m going away to school. That is the beauty of divorce.”
Trini and Sebastian's parents had separated when the two of them were about six years old, and their mom remarried just a few short years later. Because of this, unlike their little brothers - who were born about a year after their mom remarried - Trini and Sebastian split their time between their mom’s and dad’s houses. They’d moved around a couple of times with their mom and step-dad, but they were usually still close enough to their dad that they could stay with him on certain weekends, breaks, and holidays. Their most recent move had brought them to Reefside just over a year ago, which meant their dad was now only a few towns away. This only added legitimacy to Sebastian’s story, especially since they were now sending him to Angel Grove Academy - a boarding school in their dad’s town. So Sebastian’s excuse was solid, but that still left one question.
“Wait, where are you going then?”
“London,” he answered matter-of-factly, “For a few weeks.”
“Wait, as in London, England ?” Trini questioned, hoping she’d misunderstood and he meant some other London that didn’t involve leaving the country.
“Yeah.” Sebastian continued to act as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “My band got a slot in a music festival there.”
“Okay, but what are you gonna do about school ?” Trini had always been a bit more straightlaced compared with her brother. Not that he wasn’t smart, he just didn’t care a whole lot about actually attending school.
“Yeah…” he responded sheepishly as he pulled out a rope out of his backpack and used it to gently lower his guitar down next to his bags. “I was kind of hoping you could help me with that. Could you just, like, pretend to be Mami, call Angel Grove, and tell them I’m sick? Something good that sounds like it would last for a few weeks, like… Mad Cow?”
Trini gave him an unimpressed look as she responded, “Seb, you just got kicked out of Reefside for skipping. This is not exactly the way you want to start out.”
“I wanna be a musician , okay?” Sebastian pushed back, “Last time I heard, they don’t need to know trigonometry.” He started climbing out the window himself. “Besides, if you want to chase your dreams, sometimes you’ve gotta break the rules.”
“You know the percentage of bands that actually make it to the big time?” Trini challenged.
Sebastian was already almost fully out of the window now, hanging on to the ledge and starting to lower himself down. Trini would have been more worried about him jumping from a second-story window if she wasn’t so annoyed at him right now. Luckily there was a small outcropping of roof right under their windows, so it wasn’t just a straight drop down.
“Probably the same as female soccer players,” he quipped back. “I'll see you in a few weeks.” With that, he dropped down onto the roof and then the ground. Trini heard him stumble slightly with a muffled “Oof.”
“Sebastian?” Trini called out, concern overpowering her earlier frustration. When she didn’t get an immediate response, she called out again a little louder, “Sebastian?”
“Were you just talking with your brother?” Her mom asked, approaching her from behind.
“What? I mean, yes.” Trini didn’t know why she was covering for him but did anyway, stealthily pulling her phone out of her back pocket. “On the phone. He’s at Papi’s. I’d let you talk to him, but he just hung up.”
“I didn’t know you kids still actually talk on the phone.” Her mom was clearly only half buying it. “Anyway the rest of us are going to the mall tomorrow to get the boys some back to school clothes and I wanted to invite you to join. We could pick out some nice things for your first week back?”
Ugh, just what Trini wanted, a day of shopping with her mom. Knowing her, Trini was going to end up with armfuls of sundresses and skirts that she would never wear.
“I’m good,” was her only response as she pushed past her mom and headed back towards her room. Her mom rolled her eyes in exasperation and followed.
“You’re seriously telling me that’s the impression you want to make on your first day back?” She gestured to Trini’s ripped jeans and soccer jersey.
“Uh-huh.”
Her mom sighed, “Why is it that my only daughter wants to do nothing more than just kick a muddy ball around a field all day?”
“Well, the world has been set right Mami.” Trini answered, turning around in her open doorway, “They cut my team.”
“You mean no more soccer?” Her mom asked, with a hint of excitement. She’d never been great about Trini wanting to play soccer. She’d encouraged it early on, thinking it would be a good way for Trini to make friends, but somewhere around middle school, she’d started encouraging Trini to pursue other - girlier - activities instead.
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s too bad. But maybe now you’ll actually consider trying something else? Dance maybe? It’s probably not too late to sign up for a beginner ballet class.”
“Gross.”
“What about cheerleading?” Her mom continued to press. “It’s still a sport, and you’d still get to compete.”
“Ugh, no. I’d rather die.” Trini hated the cheerleaders at her school. They were all vapid, self-obsessed assholes.
“For God’s sake Trini.” Her mom pinched the bridge of her nose, clearly just as exasperated by this conversation as Trini. “I don’t know why I even bother. Sometimes I think you might as well just be your brother.” Not even giving Trini a chance to respond, she stormed back downstairs. Her mom may have been making a dig, but she’d given Trini a great, if not absolutely crazy, idea.
Picking up a picture of her and Sebastian from her dresser, Trini looked it over in contemplation. While Sebastian was a good half a foot taller than her, they actually looked strikingly similar. Add to that the fact that no one at Angel Grove had even met Sebastian, and that he was going to be gone for at least two and a half weeks - she might actually be able to pull this off. This could be her chance to not only prove that she’s good enough, but also get back at Reefside’s asshole coach and boys’ soccer team. And what was spite if not the greatest fuel for dumb ideas?
Trini put down the picture and grabbed her laptop. She had a lot of work to do.