The waiting series, p.1
The Waiting Series,
p.1
For you…
I think, perhaps, this family, these friends and their journey, and this world will always be my favorite thing. This big-ole book is for the ones who feel this story in their bones. It’s for the girls who were awkward and unsure teens just like me, for the ones I watched persevere, for the ones who will, and for the ones who even now, decades later, will never forget the bumps in the road that made them who they are. I write this often in the signed copies I give to teens, but let me say it here, boldly:
Wait for the ones who deserve you. Always.
They will come.
Contents
Waiting on the Sidelines: Book 1 in the Waiting Series
1. Trying Out
2. First Day
3. Project
4. Words
5. Friday Night
6. Without
7. Understudy
8. Two of Me
9. Not Really
10. Action, Reaction
11. Untruths
12. Exposed
13. Lucky
14. Time
15. A Proper Date
16. Getting By
17. Up and Down
18. Shake Some Sense
19. The Mend
20. Doing the Dance
21. Us
22. Moments
23. And So
24. And After
25. My New Normal
26. Lost and Found
Acknowledgments
Going Long: Book 2 in The Waiting Series
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
The Hail Mary: Book 3 in the Waiting Series
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
If you liked The Waiting Series, you might like:
Also by Ginger Scott
About the Author
Waiting on the Sidelines: Book 1 in the Waiting Series
Synopsis
Nolan Lennox had things figured out. Named after a baseball legend, she enjoyed being the Tomboy, her closet filled with her brother’s hand-me-downs, cut-off jeans and soccer shorts. But when her first trip to high school results in a broken heart and a popular enemy, Nolan starts to question the very person she thought she was.
Throughout the next four years, Nolan struggles to maintain herself throughout her path of discovery, learning just how cruel teenagers can be. And despite how life seems to continue to work against her, she still manages to listen to her heart, while falling deeper and deeper for the guy the entire town adores, even if he only sees her as a friend. Can Nolan strike a compromise between her own integrity and the boy she loves? And can she make him notice her before it’s too late?
Reed Johnson came to Coolidge High School with a lot of fanfare. The son of a hometown football legend and brother of a local football hero, Reed wore all the pressures of carrying a town without hope into the spotlight. Thankfully, he had the talent to back it up. But when he meets a girl who makes him think twice about exactly what being a hero means, he starts to wonder if following in his brother’s footsteps might be all wrong.
Nolan Lennox was everything that was opposite of expected. She didn’t flirt, she didn’t drink, and she didn’t sleep around. Nothing about her was easy, but something about her made Reed want to try harder. But could he handle letting her down? And would breaking her heart break him beyond repair?
Text copyright © 2013 Ginger Scott
(Little Miss Write, LLC)
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
Ginger Scott
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover design by Ginger Scott, Little Miss Write LLC.
Jeep photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash.
Field photo by Ginger Scott.
To my family and friends
(the members of Team Ginger)
who have always known I could do this.
And a special shout out to my husband who convinced me
I should finally just “write the damn thing.”
I love you.
1. Trying Out
I live in a trailer. A double-wide manufactured home, to be more accurate. But those are just semantics. No matter how pitched the roof, how long the living room or how fancy the lattice-covered deck is that surrounds your manufactured home, because it is positioned atop giant cinder blocks with a river-rocked driveway, it is, unarguably, a trailer in the eyes of every person fortunate enough to live in a home with a foundation poured directly on the ground.
My trailer is the last one on a long dirt road just on the outskirts of town. We live in Coolidge. It’s a small town in Arizona about an hour outside the greater Phoenix area. That means it’s about an hour away from anything truly relevant.
Our biggest store is the K-Mart, one of the classic ones with giant orange and yellow toy airplanes by the front door with quarter slots and runny-nosed children begging their parents to let them have “just one ride.” The chalky white floor tiles are scuffed with dirt and blue Icee so badly that the daily mopping only moves the filth around, thinning it out with the water rather than actually making things clean.
From the time I started kindergarten my family planned an annual trip to the K-Mart for back-to-school shopping. My family isn’t poor. We’re comfortable. Lower middle class, sure, but we can afford to buy new clothes at the mall in town, which my parents do from time to time. We usually settled for the K-Mart because of the hour-long drive that a trip to the mall entailed. Our family car is a hand-me-down Oldsmobile from some great aunt I’m pretty sure I never met. It has black vinyl seats and a very sketchy air-conditioning system. Coolidge is separated from town by a lengthy stretch of desert, and one busted radiator hose or a faulty click of the air conditioning control meant we were rolling the windows down. Not a disaster in the winter, but in August, a situation like this almost guaranteed that the striped pattern of the vinyl seats would create a bright pink series of indentations on the fatty parts of the back of our legs, like singe marks on a barbecued hotdog. It is for this reason mostly that all back-to-school shopping is done at the K-Mart in Coolidge.
Up until this year, I had always looked forward to this outing. When I was 5 or 6, I would delight at the latest cartoon-character T-shirts that hung on the walls of the children’s department. Those, and the brightly colored soccer shorts in the boys section. A bit of a Tomboy, my wardrobe now consists almost entirely of cut-off jean shorts, tracksuit sweat pants, soccer shorts and sports logo T-shirts. My brother’s Nike jacket, made of maroon nylon with sporty white racing stripes down each sleeve, gets me through the winter. Fitting for a girl named Nolan. My dad was a huge baseball fan, and when I was born, his favorite pitcher was Nolan Ryan. Nolan’s real first name was Lynn, which of course I got for a middle name. Nolan Lynn Lennox. Not very girly, but I can throw a perfect spiral with the football and my curveball ain’t so bad either.
Things like clothing, makeup and hair were always an afterthought. Even during my last year of middle school. I chose my outfit each morning based on whether or not I had P.E. that day or if I had planned on playing kickball or soccer with the boys on the field before the morning bell. I rarely wore a dress, and when I did, I most
“Dress up,” as it were, was reserved for 8th grade graduation and the few school dances we had. And even then my long brown hair was almost always in a ponytail. I found that was the easiest thing to do given the 100-degree temperatures outside and my insistence on playing every sport available. I had a permanent wave in my hair from the spot where the rubber band pulled my hair together.
My life’s purpose was to be part of the background. Lightly dusted freckles on my face, brown eyes and a bit of a lanky build, I was too tall for my gawky legs and size 9 feet that were always getting tangled up beneath me. I always wore tie shoes, like Vans or Converse, unless I had my running shoes on. I even convinced my mom to let me wear Converse to my 8th grade graduation – they were pink, which I think is what helped me win my argument.
My daily school outfit was thrown together in seconds every morning; often mismatched, but always clean. That was all I cared about.
Then Monday happened.
I’m a freshman. And on Monday I went to the Coolidge High School gym to try out for the school’s volleyball team. The concept of tryouts is really arbitrary at the freshman level. Everyone makes the freshman teams; they take as many people as they have jerseys. In fact, the year before they had 26 girls try out with only 25 uniforms. The parent booster club rushed to the rescue with a white, long-sleeved T-shirt (from the K-Mart, of course) and an iron-on number 26 from the craft department.
When I showed up to the gym, most of the other girls had already ran their laps and stretched. I could see them through the doorway window. They were sitting in a circle listening to three older women with clipboards talk, no doubt about the importance of teamwork and the winning record the school was coming off of from the season before. I intended on sneaking in behind them, but the humidity outside was so high that the paint on all of the doors was sticky. As I pulled on the gym door, it made a loud popping sound and an equally awful snarl from the hinges. As it slammed to a sticky close, my cheeks began to burn. The women I intended on sneaking in behind were resting their clipboards against their chests and staring at me with that look that I knew read “we’re going to make an example out of you.” A group of about 35 girls, many who were there trying out for the varsity squad, stared, too. The two closest to me were definitely juniors or seniors. Their fluffed, curly ponytails and perfectly manicured eyebrows were trademark of high school cheerleaders. And I would have quickly assumed them to be so, except that before I could excuse myself for being tardy, the tallest of the two yelled out ‘Ten laps on the stairs, freshman!’ before I could utter a word.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said.
“Tardy people get ten laps on the stairs,” she said.
“We had trouble with the car, so…” I tried to eek out an excuse only to be cut off by the tall lanky blonde in shorts so short they really seemed unnecessary.
“You can just start on the north side, run up to the weight room, cross over and come down on the south end.”
I was a bit puzzled, but I really didn’t mind running. And after all, I had missed warm ups. I nodded yes to the girls in the circle and set my gym bag down in the corner. I don’t know why I brought a bag really; it’s not like I had a towel or shampoo to take a shower. I wasn’t quite ready to experience a group shower yet and thought I’d put it off as long as I could. My bag contained an extra pair of socks, just in case I got a blister, and flip flops so I could pull my shoes off in the car and rest my feet on the ride home.
I heard the other girls start to pull things from the gym’s storage closet, and as I made my way up the north stairs, the expanse of the gym came into view. Each girl was getting paired off and pulling balls from a large bin to warm up with. I scanned the lines of girls for anyone I knew, but there were only a few girls who I recognized from junior high. In my circle of friends, I was really the only one into sports. Sienna, who I’ve known since first grade, was good at things like hair and make-up. She even had her own jewelry business. Her mom ran the local beauty shop and Sienna would make feather earrings and beaded bracelets that her mom would let her sell after school to the ladies in the shop. She actually had a pretty steady stream of customers and could count on a good $15 a week. And I could usually count on her to buy my ticket for the movies because of it. Sports usually resulted in an injury for Sienna, so I didn’t even ask her to come with me. Sarah, who I’ve known equally as long, was more into boys. Her focus was on joining the cheerleading squad. That was “a direct line to dating a football player,” she said. Sarah actually has some coordination, so I tried to get her to change her mind and join me, but my efforts were fruitless.
My stomach was starting to sink. I was going to have work into a group of two. I’m not what you would call a natural at breaking the ice. The thought of just running down the south steps and out the back door, hopping the fence and making the 7-mile trek home was starting to sound more and more reasonable. I was reaching for the door to give it a test yank to see if it made the same loud creaking sound as the main door that set my entire punishment run in motion when the door flung open and the sounds of cleats scratching linoleum echoed in the hall leading up to it.
Football tryouts. I recognized most of the boys from junior high, but there were a few new ones. There was really only one feeder school for Coolidge, so it was rare for new names to move into the halls of our school system. But there was one name that the entire town was buzzing about.
The anticipation of the arrival of Reed Johnson was enormous. He went to a private school in the city before he moved to Coolidge to live with his dad over the summer. He may be new to our school, but everyone knew him. His father, Buck Johnson, owned three Buick dealerships in Tucson. He owned several acres of land on the east end of town with a giant two-story home with a four-car garage. The front door was flanked by tall white pillars that made the entire place look like the White House. We always called it the Johnson Ranch, mostly because he had grand iron gates over the bricked roadway leading up to his main house. The entire roadway stretched about the length of a football field and was lined with towering trees that would swallow my trailer up whole, but planted near the Johnson home the trees looked almost like scrub brush.
In a rare moment of clarity, I stopped my run and camped out by the drinking fountain pretending to hydrate and re-tie my shoelaces while the line of sweaty boys rushed up the steps to the weight room. The last thing I wanted was attention right now.
For some reason, I couldn’t quit staring at Reed, though. I pulled my hair out of my face and tilted my head sideways while I drank, just keeping him in my periphery. He had perfect boy hair; it was brown and somewhere between long and short with a little curl that stuck out of the sides and back of his hat. A dimple punctuated each cheek at the corner of his lips when he smiled and laughed. He was wearing a purple jersey that read Johnson on the back in big golden letters. Probably his brother’s old jersey, I thought. His brother, Jason Johnson, was the school’s all-star quarterback a few years back, leading Coolidge to their first state title in 34 years. He was recruited by the University of Arizona when he graduated, but spent most of his time as back-up quarterback. He lives in Tucson and runs one of the dealerships with his father now.
