Tag: High School

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption

July 30, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

First off, I wanted to mention I have a very rare but special Sunday post coming up on August 2nd, so keep a look out for that. In the meantime, it seems you all enjoyed last month’s spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads, the short story blog I post for once a month, so I thought I’d spotlight this month’s story as well.

In June my story was “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail”. When I first conceived the idea for the Tales From the Field series, I had planned to have each story be told from a different girl’s point of view, but Olivia’s tale demanded more. Here’s an excerpt from July’s story “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption”.

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption by Katie L. Carroll

To free yourself from guilt you must forgive yourself.

The game is about to start. The strategizing, the pep talks, the warm-ups are done. My stomach is a pit of tingling nerves, the good kind, the ones that keep my reflexes sharp. I let out a long exhale, my breath smoking in the cool evening air. Our undefeated season is on the line tonight.

My ten teammates line up in front of me, their white home uniforms bright under the lights. I clap my goalie gloves together and stare down our gold-clad rivals, the Valley High women’s soccer team.

Time to get in the zone.

For some inexplicable reason, I glance into the stands, the side where the Valley fans sit. It takes me right out of the game. Marco. He’s here. I knew he would be, but seeing him is worse than I imagined. The tingling, game-ready nerves turn to anxious, stomach-twisting ones.

Marco, of course surrounded by his entourage of teammates from the Valley High boys’ team, stands down by the fence separating the field from the stands. He faces the crowd, his back to me, thank God. I don’t think I could handle seeing his chipped-tooth smile right now. He’s wearing the blues of the Italian National Team, not the Valley High black and gold. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe our kiss at camp this summer actually meant something to him.

Then I remember him cheering on his schoolmate as she sprinted to the ball, my hesitation, the ball bouncing off her foot and over the goal line. The shame of losing the camp championship for my team, all because of some stupid boy, creeps up my face in a blush…

You can check out the rest of the story at the Lightning Quick Reads blog! Enjoy!

Spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads

June 11, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I wanted to take today to highlight Lightning Quick Reads (#LQR), a flash fiction blog I contribute to, along with ten other authors. There is a theme every month and we each write a short story and post it on our designated day (mine is the 11th). There are also author spotlights, event announcements, a reader flash where readers can share their shorts, and the occasional giveaway. There are a ton of great stories coming out of the blog!

Most of my stories are a part of series I’m calling Tales From the Field about a women’s high school soccer team. Each piece is from a different players perspective, and I’m really pleased with how the stories are coming out. I was a pretty competitive soccer player growing up and find it really easy to think of material. And it’s not just about soccer because in high school all of life’s issues seems to get tangled up into one big messy ball. It’s about soccer, competition, pressure, love, and life.

With the World Cup (I refuse to use the qualifier “women’s”…of course I’m not talking about the men’s World Cup, that was last year!) going on, I thought it would be fun to give you a sneak peek of my June story (check out the full story on LQR).

Tale From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail by Katie L. Carroll

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

The table sags under heaping containers of salad, pasta, and rolls at our pregame party the night before the big match against our cross-town rivals Valley High. But all it takes for me to lose my appetite is one comment from team captain Megan.

“We don’t want a repeat of camp finals.”

The low rumble of conversation and the smack of full mouths immediately ceases as nearly every player on the Central High women’s soccer team looks at me. I lock my gaze on the fat meatball atop a pile of spaghetti covered with tomato sauce, which I’m sure matches the color of my face right now.

“What happened at camp?” asks Brooke. An innocent enough question, if you don’t know what happened this summer—which she doesn’t because freshmen don’t attend camp—but a terribly taboo one if you do know what happened.

Females in YA: Part 1 Growing Up Female

July 17, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Lately I’ve been coming across a lot of articles (here’s one in The Atlantic about women and love in novels and another about women in fantasy novels) about how women are portrayed in books. My field of writing is books for teens and kids, so this got me thinking about how girls are portrayed in YA.

The best place to start, for me, was to think about my own experience growing up a female. Sure, I spent plenty of thought and energy on boys during high school. I had several serious boyfriends throughout the four years. And even when I didn’t have a steady boyfriend, I went on dates with boys, held hands with them, kissed them. So, yeah, boys were important.

But boys weren’t the only thing. I was a bit of a jock in high school, and damn proud of it. I’m willing to bet just about anything that my high school boyfriends attended more of my sporting events than I did theirs (when you play three varsity sports, there isn’t much time to go watch your boyfriend’s basketball practice). My friends and I wore our own letter jackets to school, not our boyfriends’.

And friends were important too, really important. Many of my high school memories are of cruising around in my best friend’s car with two of our other friends, all girls. Did we think about boys? Of course, but usually we were just hanging out, looking for fun stuff to do and trying not to get caught doing stuff we weren’t supposed to be doing. And I had a couple of really close guy friends too, and the line between friendship and more-than-friends didn’t really get crossed with those guys.

I would say my teen years were spent being pretty darn confident about myself as a young woman (in many ways I was more confident as a teen than I am now). I dated boys and thought about them, but they weren’t my everything. I had goals and dreams and fun without boys being at the center of it.

So is the reality as I knew it (which I have to think reflects at least some of the reality that exists for teens today) reflected in the YA books out today? Well, that’s a good topic for Part 2, don’t you think? What type of experiences do you think are universal and relevant to teen girls today?

Haunted at 17

March 22, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Hauntedat17banner

Nova Ren Suma’s new novel 17 & Gone released yesterday and she’s been running a blog special featuring what other YA authors were haunted by at age 17. I loved, loved, loved her novel Imaginary Girls and am super excited to be attending one of her workshops at the upcoming New England SCBWI writing conference in May. So without further ado, here’s what haunted me at 17:

The Best Years Of My Life?

I’d always heard people say the high-school years were the best of their lives. I never believed it. Not until I was 17 and heading into my senior of high school…and my life was, well, pretty perfect.

If I’d learned anything from books and TV, the teenage years were supposed to be filled with angst and rebellion. Sure, I’d had my moments of getting in trouble for staying out late at parties and the drama of ex-boyfriends hooking up with (soon-to-be-ex) friends. Moments that were all-consuming when they were happening, but in my bliss of seniordom, they were dark blips on the otherwise bright radar of my future.

On the precipice of senior year, I was a standout athlete, poised to graduate with a perfect 12 varsity letters (one each year in soccer, basketball, and track). An honor student, and on track to graduate in the top 5% of my class. A member of the student council, a volunteer at the hospital (right down to the horrible candy-striped outfit and white Keds), and a senior editor on the school newspaper. My resume would make any stereotypical world-hating teenager throw up stolen vodka all over her Doc Martens.

Oh, and I had just starting dating a guy I’d had been crushing on for the last several months. We worked together at the local hardware store. He was a long-lashed, quiet, super-smart college guy. Not my usual jock fare. We engaged in long, intellectual conversations about movies, science documentaries on the Discovery Channel, music, and life. And the only anxiety I had when kissing him was worrying about whether my lips felt too rough on his delectably soft ones. (Seriously, why don’t all guys use Chapstick? Soft lips are in no way reserved for women.) We were still at the tingly new relationship phase, where every touch zinged with energy and excitement.

Yeah. Life was pretty perfect…maybe a little too perfect.

My senior night during basketball season. On the left is my sister Kylene during her freshman year of high school. Lucky #13 is me at 17.

As winter and basketball season approached, I struggled to keep my mini panic attacks from becoming noticeable. What if my one poor grade in pre-calculus junior year tarnished my transcripts? What if I didn’t get into my top college? Or any college? What if my relationship was too good to be true and he dumped me out of the blue?

Looming bigger than all that trepidation, though, the worst fear of all haunted me: What if high school truly was the peak of my life? What if 17 & Perfect turned into 18 & Past My Prime? What if when I was 40 and married (divorced?), I’d spend all my time reminiscing with the other sad, middle-aged women over “the good old days” and vicariously living through my own high-school aged kids? What if the next 60+ years merely consisted of a slow, steady decline into bitterness? Were these really the best years of my life?

Seems even then, when things were going well, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The biggest shoe of all didn’t drop until I was 19 and my sister died, but it’s been a steady uphill (with a few bumps along the way) since then. At least at the ripe age of 30 (what an old lady my 17-year old self is saying), I can say each year brings in new highs and lows, as does each decade. I don’t think I’ll ever be over the fear of the good times running out, but I can definitely say while the high-school years brought me some wonderful memories, they certainly weren’t the best of my life.

What haunted you at 17?