Words in Deep Blue Read online

Page 22


  SOCCER STAR (noun): Gracie Faltrain

  Goal-kicking, super-girl, soccer star. Gracie Faltrain is on her way. To the National Championships. To Nick. To everything she’s ever wanted. Or so she thinks. Gracie’s about to find out that life is messy. And hard. And beautiful.

  There’s a shadow falling across her mum and dad. Her best friend is about to leave town. She’s trying desperately to be with the right boy, on the edge of falling in love with the wrong boy. She’s rushing headlong into screwing up, making up, trying to keep it all together. Welcome to the life and times of Gracie Faltrain.

  From first-time novelist Cath Crowley comes this sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant look at what good can happen when your world is falling apart.

  Cath Crowley

  Gracie Faltrain Takes Control

  Gracie Faltrain is back and she couldn’t be happier. Her team won the Championships, she scored a few goals and a boyfriend!

  Just as she’s settling down to a new season of soccer, the stakes are raised. Coach has entered the team in the Firsts – a boys’ only league. To prove herself, Gracie has to fight harder than ever before. The other teams will do anything to keep her out of the game, and if she makes it, they’ll do anything to see her lose.

  But Gracie is sick of losing. She’s sick of seeing friends, like Martin and Alyce, unhappy. Gracie Faltrain has decided it’s time to take control and even the score for everyone, on and off the field.

  Cath Crowley

  Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally)

  As Gracie begins Year 12, she has only one thing on her mind, and it’s not school work. It’s not even Martin, now that he’s dumped her for the third time. It’s soccer: a new season, a new team, a new league. This is the big time, the state trials, and Gracie can’t wait. Except there’s one small problem. She’s no longer the biggest fish in the pond, and one of the other players is the cousin of her arch enemy, Annabelle Orion.

  Gracie wants to get it right this year, but everything seems to be going wrong – she hardly has time to see her friends, Martin won’t talk to her, and she’s falling even further behind at school.

  Gracie needs help both on and off the field, but when it shows up, it is not from the person she expected …

  ‘Touching and hilarious, you’ll love it’ Girlfriend Magazine

  First published 2016 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

  Copyright © Cath Crowley 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  EPUB format: 9781743289570

  The quote from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King on page 2 appears in various literary works. To the publisher’s best knowledge it was originally published by Christina Stead and is used here by permission of the Christina Stead estate.

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Text design and illustration by i2i Design.

  The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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