Playing With the Boys (23 page)

Following the instructions, she dropped her book bag and headed under the bleachers, although she didn’t go too far. She wanted him to be able to see clearly that she was there. She glanced at her watch again. It was five-fifty. She had ten more minutes to kill.

She grabbed her phone and texted Annie.

“Under bleachers waiting for R as in cute QB. ttyl.” she typed. “Loooong story. Will tell you later. So excited! Xoxo.” She hit send and checked the time again. It was five fifty-five. Only five more minutes to go. She paced back and forth nervously, taking deep breaths, the kind she took in yoga the two times she’d tried it with Annie.

Her phone beeped. She grabbed it.There was one new text. She clicked and opened it. It was from Annie.

“No way,” it read. “You are a rock star.” Lucy smiled. She loved Annie’s enthusiasm, even about people she didn’t even know.That was why Annie was her best friend. It was as if she was experiencing everything right there with her. Lucy was about to type a reply when she heard . . .

“Lucy?” a girl’s voice asked. Lucy spun around, coming face-to-face with Pickle.

fifteen

Lucy gasped, surprised.

“Pickle . . . um . . . hi,” she stammered. “What’re you doing here?”

Pickle shrugged shyly and held up a folded piece of paper. “I’m supposed to meet Ryan. Under the bleachers.”

Lucy’s face turned white. How was that possible, she thought?
She
was supposed to meet Ryan under the bleachers.

“You are?” Lucy asked, shocked.

“Wait—what’re
you
doing here?” Pickle asked, equally as surprised and caught off guard. Lucy couldn’t even think quick enough to lie. Not that she would have wanted to lie to Pickle anyway. There was no poker face or search engine good enough to help her get out of this one.

“I . . . um . . .” Not knowing what to say, she held up the similar note. “I got the same thing. From Ryan.”

Pickle gasped. “What? Let me see that.”

Lucy handed over the note, not knowing what else to do or say. “It said to meet him here. And to not tell anyone.”

“I don’t get it,” Pickle said, squinting as she read the note again, as if she thought the words would somehow change. “It doesn’t make any sense. He couldn’t have given this note to both of us—”

“No,” Lucy supposed. Why would anyone do that? “Unless . . .” she wondered. “Do you think it’s possible he didn’t write it?”

“Then what?” Pickle said quickly. “Someone else did? Why would anyone write a note pretending to be Ryan?”

Lucy thought hard. She had no idea.

Suddenly, a look of even greater concern crossed Pickle’s face. “Wait a minute,” she realized, folding her arms across her chest. “Why would you be meeting Ryan here either way?”

“What do you mean?” Lucy said, worried. The tone in Pickle’s voice was different than she’d ever heard before. Of course, she’d only known her a few months, but still . . .

“Well, think about it,” Pickle reasoned. “Let’s just say you got that note in your locker, and let’s just say that Ryan likes you. You know I like him, and you said you’d help me get together with him . . . so why would you be here unless . . .” Suddenly, she stopped short, realizing she already knew the answer. Lucy felt her entire body cringe, knowing what Pickle was about to say.

“Unless,” she added slowly, “you like Ryan too. And just didn’t tell me.”

Lucy pursed her lips together. Pickle stared at her, waiting. Lucy shifted uncomfortably, gazing down at her Converse. This was beyond awkward.

“I’m sorry, Pickle,” Lucy said softly. “I like Ryan too. And I didn’t tell you because . . . I don’t know . . . I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Pickle threw her hands in the air.“So going behind my back isn’t hurting me?”

Tears welled up in Lucy’s eyes. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done that. I just—you asked for my help, and I tried to give it to you.”

Suddenly, Charlie showed up, with Carla and Max.

“Hey. I thought I heard yelling.What’s going on here?” Charlie asked.

Lucy spun around.
Charlie was here? And Carla? And Max?
A crowd of soccer girls started to form. “Nothing,” Lucy said quickly. “Nothing’s going on.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Max retorted. She rushed over to Pickle’s side. “You okay?” Pickle just stared at Lucy as if no one else was even there.

“I was your friend,” Pickle said slowly. “I thought you were mine.”

“I am,” Lucy said quickly trying to reassure her. “I am, Pickle. Seriously, you have to believe that.”

Charlie stepped in. “Pickle, what’s going on?”

Pickle finally looked at her. “You know that note I got from Ryan?” Pickle reminded Charlie. “Well, he’s not here. But she is.”

“I don’t get it,” Carla said. “Why would Lucy be here?”

“Because it was a trick!” Lucy tried to explain. “Someone was playing a trick on us!”

“Who would do that?” Carla asked, confused.

Suddenly, there was a chorus of giggles and laughs.The soccer girls looked over their shoulders and saw a group huddled by the wall, cracking up.

There was Kendall, covering her mouth, giggling. Next to her was Regan. And behind them, a few football players were gathered. Cope, Adam, Nick, Caleb . . . and—When Lucy saw him, her heart dropped. Ryan. Ryan was standing there. Right next to Benji, of all people. Clearly, they’d all heard the entire fight.

Suddenly, it made perfect sense. This had been a huge setup.

Lucy’s face turned a deep shade of red. She stood there, completely speechless, as Kendall smirked in delight.

“You did this?” Lucy asked.

Kendall chuckled. “Everyone knows Pickle had a thing for Ryan. She’s liked him since last year. And you came along all moony-eyed—” she broke into laughter—“It was just too easy!” Lucy turned to Regan. “And you helped her?” Regan looked down at her shoes, guiltily.

Charlie shook her head. “I guess Pickle was telling the truth, Lucy.” Charlie stared her down. “Regan Holder’s clearly not your friend at all.”

Lucy felt a wave of humiliation crashing over her, drowning her. She couldn’t take the eyes staring at her, the kids laughing at her, amused by her crush on Ryan and her argument with Pickle, as if her feelings were some sort of joke. She grabbed her stuff and ran out from under the bleachers, past the kids, past the school—she just had to get out of there.

Sobbing, she walked down the driveway leading back to the main road. She heard a beep from her phone and tried to wipe the tears away to make out what it was. There was another text from Annie.

“You and Ryan making out yet?” it read.

Lucy threw her phone back into her book bag, upset. She wiped another tear away with the back of her hand. Right now, making out with Ryan was just about the farthest thing from her mind.

 
The next day was game day, and Lucy knew she should have been nervous. After all, it was only her second game. But how could she be nervous when there were bigger things on the line than winning? Like
everything
.

First of all, she was a total laughingstock. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing Ryan, Regan, Kendall, or anyone. Charlie hadn’t spoken to her in days, and now Pickle clearly wasn’t going to either. Lucy had sent her a lengthy e-mail trying to explain everything last night, but Pickle hadn’t responded. She had even blocked Lucy from her buddy list and taken her off her MySpace friends. Same went for Max, who was loyal to Pickle. And Benji—he wanted nothing to do with her either. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Martie was pissed. Maybe it would work out in her favor and she wouldn’t get called on in class, because God knew she hadn’t even cracked open her English homework, not with her entire life falling apart.

Martie began passing back their
Madame Bovary
test as Ryan slid into a seat, late. Lucy couldn’t even look at him.

She stared straight ahead, feeling at an all-time low. It was as if she were sitting under a dark cloud of angst. She couldn’t imagine being more humiliated.

What she didn’t know was that she was still about to suffer the biggest humiliation of all—on the football field.

 
Her first heartbreak occurred when she looked up in the stands, just after “The Star Spangled Banner,” and noticed that Pickle, who was a fixture at every football game, was not there. Neither was Max. Or Charlie. Or Carla. Or Heather. Or anyone else from the girls’ soccer team. The very girls who had decorated her locker and waved handmade banners for her last week. Any cheering section she’d had was gone.

And that included the cheerleaders. Clearly, Kendall had obviously had it in for her, and with Regan as her lapdog, doing virtually anything and everything she asked of her, Kendall had succeeded. Lucy didn’t know what the story was or why Kendall would want to humiliate Lucy in front of Ryan and everyone else—and the truth was, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Lucy knew what kind of girls these were. Mean ones. She now understood why Charlie had been so hurt that Lucy had befriended Regan. It was the ultimate slap in the face. Lucy thought of a few people she’d like to slap in the face, but managed to restrain herself. Any aggression she had would be taken out on the football tonight. She’d just picture Kendall’s face on one side and Regan’s face on the other and enjoy kicking it as hard and far as possible.

With Beachwood losing the coin toss, Lucy had to kick off first. She took the field with her ten defenders who were poised to charge down the field. She set the tee down, more toward the left side of the field than right, because that was what Coach Offredi had instructed her to do. She put up her right hand, signifying that she was ready. The referee blew his whistle. She dropped her hand and kicked a respectable, if a bit short, kick to the Carter twenty-two-yard line. The Carter halfback caught Lucy’s kick in full stride and sliced through the leading pack of Beachwood cover men before being brought down by an onrushing safety at Beachwood’s forty-five-yard line, while Lucy hovered safely out of harm’s way back at the thirty-five-yard line on the opposite sideline. After the play, she jogged back to the bench.

“LET’S GO, DE-FENSE,” the cheerleaders sang and clapped in unison.

Lucy couldn’t help but steal a glance at Regan, her right foot balancing precariously on the palm of one of her teammates. Lucy thought that if the girl happened to drop her, it might not be the
worst
thing that had ever happened. What was the worst she’d get? A broken arm? Or worse, a broken ego? A concussion? Maybe it would knock some sense into her. Lucy felt sick looking at her, and as she glanced from the cheerleaders to the field, everything looked blurry. It was as if she could no longer see things clearly. And in fact, that was exactly how she felt.

Suddenly, she was jarred back to reality by the crowd’s excitement. Stepping in front of a Carter wide receiver, Nick intercepted the ball and streaked down the sidelines with no one between him and the Carter goal line sixtyfive yards away! The moment he crossed the line, he raised the ball over his head with both hands, jumped high into the air, and spiked the ball back between his legs. The crowd went wild!

“PAT unit!” Coach Offredi yelled. In a haze, Lucy stood up and jogged onto the field behind Benji and Caleb. She barely remembered kicking the ball between the posts, but the sound of the cheers let her know she’d successfully done it; Beachwood now led, 7-0.

But by two quarters in, Carter had made up some ground. As they left the field for halftime, the scoreboard read BEACHWOOD 7, CARTER 6.

In the locker room at halftime, Coach Offredi yelled out phrases like “Draw blood!” and “Kill!” and “You have twenty-four more minutes to beat the crap out of them!”
Try putting
that
on a T-shirt,
Lucy thought as she tried desperately to focus.

Everyone huddled together. “This is what it’s about,” Coach Offredi told them. “Time to finish the job. This is where it counts!” He’d been talking so ferociously, he was out of breath. “Now let’s go out there and WIN!”

As Beachwood ran onto the field to start the third quarter, Lucy took a seat on the bench. It was Carter’s kickoff to start the second half.

On the field, Ryan called out the coded play. “Red 60, Red 60, hut-hut!” On the second “hut,” Caleb snapped the ball. Ryan took the snap and dropped back, looking around for an open receiver, as two Carter linebackers blitzed through the line toward him.

“Get rid of it,” Coach Offredi screamed from the sidelines. “GET RID OF IT!”