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on that. I happen to agree. Those girls need our help more than any of the girls anywhere in the game. The Fahrenheits' strength is that we are cooperative -- it's another way that we're better than the boys. We care. I'm proud that you took a stand when you did -- glad I found out about this business."
"You're not going to expel me?"
"No, chicken, I'm not going to expel you. I think you did the right thing --"
That meant that Lucy would be expelled. Fahrenheit had killed Fahrenheit -- something had to be done. The rules had to be enforced. Anda swallowed hard.
"If you expel Lucy, I'll quit," she said, quickly, before she lost her nerve.
Liza laughed. "Oh, chicken, you're a brave thing, aren't you? No one's being expelled, fear not. But I wanta talk to this Raymond of yours."
#
Anda came home from remedial hockey sweaty and exhausted, but not as exhausted as the last time, nor the time before that. She could run the whole length of the pitch twice now without collapsing -- when she'd started out, she could barely make it halfway without having to stop and hold her side, kneading her loathsome podge to make it stop aching. Now there was noticeably less podge, and she found that with the ability to run the pitch came the freedom to actually pay attention to the game, to aim her shots, to build up a degree of accuracy that was nearly as satisfying as being really good in-game.
Her dad knocked at the door of her bedroom after she'd showered and changed. "How's my girl?"
"Revising," she said, and hefted her maths book at him.
"Did you have a fun afternoon on the pitch?"
"You mean 'did my head get trod on'?"
"Did it?"
"Yes," she said. "But I did more treading than getting trodden on." The other girls were *really* fat, and they didn't have a lot of team skills. Anda had been to war: she knew how to depend on someone and how to be depended upon.
"That's my girl." He pretended to inspect the paint-work around the light switc