Disclaimer: The original Titans, Jack Lalanne and Charles Atlas belong to themselves. Emma Hoyt belongs to Disney and Ronnie's Ping-Pong ball gun to Dave Barry. Only Tamsin and her family are mine.
Author's Notes: This chapter is kind of short, but I had to cut it in the best possible place. More to come soon, I hope! Thanks to acrazychick and Sweet-Romantic for their reviews.
Chapter Six — Training
After accepting the boys' challenge, the girls' football practices became longer and tougher. Besides learning to do the plays that Betsy designed, they also did exercises to make themselves stronger. Practices now included things like pushups, jumping-jacks and running. Dumbbells disappeared from basements and large, heavy cans from pantries for use in weight-lifting. The girls baffled their parents by exercising along with Jack Lalanne on TV and some even went as far as to pillage their brothers' comic books for coupons and send away for Charles Atlas' body-building programs.
Betsy was glad to see that everyone in her club was working hard, and it seemed that their efforts were paying off. "Y'all did great," she praised them after practice in Emma's backyard one afternoon. "We still got work to do if we want to beat the boys next-next Saturday—"
"Why would we want to beat the boys?" Miranda whispered to the girl next to her.
Betsy glared at her and pressed on with her speech. "If we want to beat the boys next Saturday," she repeated more loudly, "but I think we're gettin' a lot better. At least, we're a lot better now than we were when we first started."
Some of the girls laughed.
"So I wanna say thank you to everyone. Let's keep workin' hard, keep practicin', and next-next Saturday, we'll beat those boys!"
Betsy smiled, pleased, when the girls cheered and hollered and clapped their hands before getting ready to go home. It looked like they wanted to beat the boys, too. "Hey, Tamsin?" she called then. "C'mere a second, will you?"
Tamsin looked at her inquiringly as she finished re-tying her ponytail. She wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead before jogging over to where Betsy was standing. "What is it?"
"I just wanted to tell you that you're doin' a great job," Betsy said, speaking in a low voice so that the others wouldn't hear and get jealous (even though she was trying to say something nice to someone after every practice to keep their spirits up). "I know you're workin' hard, and that's great." She paused. "I guess what I'm really tryin' to say is…I'm glad you're in the club."
Tamsin beamed. "Thanks, Betsy. I–I'm glad I joined, too. See you tomorrow."
Tamsin was still smiling on the way home from practice that day. It was really nice of Betsy to say that she was doing a good job. The younger girl was still kind of loudmouthed and hard to get along with when she was in a bad mood, but she was much nicer than Tamsin had once thought.
I'm glad you're in the club, Betsy had said. Tamsin was glad she was in Betsy's club, too. Playing with the other girls was a lot of fun. There was always a lot of shrieking and giggling, and when someone did something right, it made everyone feel good.
Pop!
Suddenly, a white Ping-Pong ball came flying out of nowhere and hit her on the arm. "Ow!" she shouted, grabbing her arm and spinning around to try and find where the ball had come from.
Tamsin scowled when she saw a blond boy come out from behind a tree. He was carrying some kind of gun. "Was that yours?"
He blinked at her. "What?"
"The ball that hit me," she said, pointing to the grass where it had fallen. "Was it yours?"
He peered at the ball and nodded. "Yeah, that's mine. Thanks."
Tamsin put her hands on her hips. "Is that all you're going to say to me?"
"What else am I supposed to say?"
"How about sorry?" She rubbed her arm where the ball had hit her. Actually, it didn't hurt at all, but she had been very surprised.
"Oh. Sorry."
Tamsin frowned. He didn't sound like he meant it. In fact, he wasn't even looking at her; he was more interested in putting the Ping-Pong ball back into his gun.
Just then she remembered that the challenge from the boys' football club had been wrapped around a Ping-Pong ball that had dropped down from the sky. "You're one of them, aren't you?"
"One of who?"
"One of those boys in the football club."
He grinned. "Yeah, I am."
"Humph!" Tamsin stuck her nose in the air. "I wouldn't be so proud of it if I were you. You're not very good."
The grin disappeared from the boy's face. "How do you know that?"
"I just do, that's all." Of course, she didn't know for sure whether the boys' football club was any good, but naturally she wasn't going to say anything nice about the enemy.
He looked at her a bit more closely. "Don't tell me you're one of the girls in that other football club."
"What's it to you if I am?"
"Nothin'…" he answered with a shrug. Then he grinned again. "'xcept that we're gonna beat you next-next Saturday."
She scowled at him. "We'll see about that!" she snapped before turning on her heel and walking away.
The encounter with the weird boy from the boys' football club put a damper on Tamsin's good mood for the rest of the day. "I thought the weather report predicted fair weather for the entire week," Uncle Jon said that evening. "What's this storm cloud doing at our dinner table?"
"Is everything all right, darling?" Tamsin's mother asked.
Tamsin gave them her best disgruntled expression. "Boys can be so dumb."
Her mother laughed and gave Uncle Jon a teasing look. "They can indeed. What happened?"
"One of them shot at me with this toy gun he had, and he didn't say sorry. Well, he did," Tamsin amended, "but only after I told him to — and he didn't sound like he meant it."
"Did he shoot at you for no reason?" Uncle Jon asked.
"I bet he did it just because I'm in the girls' football club."
"I take it there is a boys' football club?"
Tamsin nodded. "Yes, and they challenged us to a game next-next Saturday at Fireman's Field."
"A game?" her mother repeated. "A football game?"
"Yes," Tamsin said again. "We've been practicing all week."
"Do you think you have a chance of beating the boys' club?" Uncle Jon asked her. "Football is a rough sport."
"I know it," Tamsin answered, "but we've been working hard to make sure that we'll be as tough as the boys. Betsy — she's sort of the leader of our club — says we can take 'em."
"Do all the girls feel that way?" her mother asked.
"Oh, yes. Betsy's the coach and she's made up plays for us and we've been practicing them. She's also good at making speeches. I'm sure we'll be ready to beat the boys next-next Saturday."
The grown-ups exchanged looks that said they weren't too hot about the idea. "Girls can do anything boys can do, and beat them at it, too," Tamsin's mother said, "but, honey, I don't know about this."
"Those boys will want to win," Uncle Jon added, "and to do it, they'll play rough. You might get hurt."
"We're ready for that," Tamsin answered. "We're going to play rough, too."
That night, when Tamsin was asleep, her mother placed a call. "Hello, is this the Hoyt residence? …Florence, hello, this is Diana Lee…I'm fine, thank you, and you? …That's good to hear. Now, Florence, I've noticed that our daughters are spending a lot of time together and I think it's wonderful. I was just wondering if you knew anything about them belonging to a girls' football club…"