Playing With the Boys (8 page)

“Keep your head in it, Luce,” she said, trying to psych her up. “You got this.”

Lucy jogged to her position on the right side of Pickle and told herself the same thing.
Come on,
she thought to herself.
You’ve got this.

As the whistle blew, Lucy became more determined than ever to shake off the bad play and show Martie what she was capable of. She just had to. After everything she’d been through, she couldn’t fall apart under pressure now. She told herself to keep her head in it, that it was the last practice before the cut. She ran hard on the next fifty-fifty and won the ball.

 
After tryouts and congratulatory hugs over simply surviving Hell Week, all the girls dispersed. Lucy was about to speed-dial her dad when Benji pulled up to the field. He smiled and waved from the driver’s seat.

“You got plans?” he called out.

Lucy shook her head no. Benji reached across and opened his passenger-side door.“Well, you do now. Get in.”

Within minutes, Benji and Lucy were winding up a canyon road.

“Where’re we going?” Lucy asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Benji said. “Wait—do you hate surprises?”

Lucy considered. “Well, it depends. I don’t like to be, like, caught off guard . . . but I like surprises. Does that make sense?”

“Not at all,” Benji said; then he laughed. “Or totally.” He turned up Green Day on the radio. Lucy relaxed against the headrest.

“So what’s your deal?” he asked. “Actually, wait—don’t tell me. I have a knack for reading people.”

“Reading people what?” she bantered. “Magazine articles? Newspapers?”

He frowned at her playfully. “Let’s see,” he considered thoughtfully. “You’re a straight-A student. You have an older brother and sister. And your first concert ever was Britney Spears.”

“You got one of those things right,” Lucy smiled. “I’m an only child. And I got a B last year . . .” She paused. “In sex ed.”

Benji cracked up. “I don’t know which is more appalling. The B in sex ed or the Britney Spears concert.” He turned down the radio a bit. “Okay, your turn. You try reading me.”

“Oh God.” Lucy blushed.“I don’t know. I can’t tell that much about people from first impressions.”

“First?” Benji gasped. “This is at least our fourth or fifth, I’d say.”

“I’m not that good at fifth impressions either,” Lucy admitted.

“That’s fine,” Benji said, turning the car off the road. “Because we’re here.”

Lucy looked around and realized they were high, high up in the Hollywood Hills. From their parking spot, they could see the entire city.

“What is this?” Lucy asked, as they both got out of his car.

“That is the Valley,” Benji explained. “It’s even more impressive at night. Have you heard of Mulholland Drive?”

“Is that where we are?” Lucy giggled excitedly. “Oh wow. Annie would freak!”

“Who’s Annie?” Benji asked.

Lucy smiled, happy to tell her new friend about her old one. “Annie is my very best friend in the world. . . .”

For the next two hours, Benji and Lucy sat on the hood of his car, telling each other stories about their families and friends and lives, as they looked down at the vast city below. Lucy chatted on, comfortable in a way she hadn’t been in a long while.

She had been nervous, so nervous, about the move to L.A., but at that moment, at least for a little while, she thought that everything just might be okay.

“Where have you been?” Lucy’s dad asked, panicked, as Lucy walked in the front door, a little after four in the afternoon. “Practice ended at noon!”

Lucy was caught off guard. “Didn’t you get my message?” she asked. “I left you a voice mail saying I was with Benji.”

“That’d be all well and good,” her dad responded, “if I had
any
idea who Benji was!”

Whoops.
Lucy realized she hadn’t really mentioned him. “He’s just a friend. From school.”

Her dad folded his arms across his chest. “A boyfriend?”

“No!” Lucy recoiled. “I mean, yes. He’s a boy. And he’s a friend. But he’s not a boyfriend!”

“Because you’re not old enough to date,” he reminded her for the thousandth time. She tried to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Little did he know, she’d already kissed two and a half boys.

“Fine, Dad,” she sighed.

“And you have to be more responsible than this, Lucy,” he scolded her. “This isn’t Toledo.”

Lucy looked at him as though he were crazy. Did he really think he had to remind her of that? “Yeah, Dad,” she said resignedly. “I know.”

He laid down the law. “From now on, I need to know where you are and who you’re with at all times.”

Lucy grabbed her soccer bag. “Fine. Then you better up my cell phone minutes, because when I make this team, I plan on going a lot of places.” Triumphant, she headed to her room to call Annie and tell her all about Benji and Mulholland Drive.

 
Monday, at school, Lucy wondered if it were possible for “butterflies” to escalate from a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach to a chronic condition resulting in her stomach actually turning inside out. Because that’s how she felt as she got out of her dad’s car and made her way into the school, into the gymnasium, and down the staircase toward the athletic offices. The pit in her stomach felt as wide and as deep as the Grand Canyon; her palms felt sweaty and her tongue felt as though it took up 90 percent of the space in her mouth—which made it hard to swallow. Could a person have an actual allergic reaction to the posting of the soccer list? Because it felt as though she were having one.

As she walked down the hall, a swarm of girls huddled around the sheet of paper that would determine her athletic future. Some girls hugged, others cried, and in the center of it all was Pickle, frozen. With her hair in two little poof balls on her head, she looked particularly young and vulnerable as she stared at the list, wide-eyed. Suddenly, Carla embraced Pickle from behind, lifting her slight body off the ground and spinning her around. Pickle wrapped her arms around Carla’s neck and buried her head in her shoulder, tears streaming down her face.

Lucy’s jaw dropped in disbelief.
What?
How on earth could Pickle not have made it? She’d worked so hard all summer—she’d been one of the strongest defenders, and she was the most positive, optimistic, encouraging player on the team. Honestly, without Pickle, Lucy wasn’t sure she even wanted to play soccer for Beachwood.

She moved toward Pickle, stopping behind Carla and Charlie, who were huddled around her. Over their shoulders, she caught sight of the list. “Nicole Lawson” was the third name from the top. Pickle had, in fact, made it. Lucy turned back to Pickle and saw that she was smiling. Her tears were tears of joy.

“Go Pickle,” Lucy said as she patted her new friend’s back.

She returned to the list. But as she read through the names, her face fell.

six

She scanned the list again. Where was “Lucy Malone”?

Surely, there had been a mistake. Martie had practically recruited her. She had convinced her to try out. She wouldn’t do that only to leave her off the list. On the bench was one thing, but not even on the team? Lucy read and reread the names. Hers was nowhere to be found.

Suddenly, she felt a hand pat her shoulder. It was Charlie.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” she said softly. “I guess it just wasn’t your time.”

Lucy’s eyes welled up. These were the times she wanted—no, needed—her mom. She blinked back tears.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I guess not.”

Pickle wrapped her arms around Lucy, her own tears now turning to sad ones. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “You should
so
be on this team.”

Lucy shrugged. “Maybe next year, right?”

Pickle smiled, instantly going into cheerleader mode. “Exactly. Next year. You’ll do it for sure!”

Lucy tried to keep up a brave face.The truth was, without soccer, without this team, she couldn’t imagine making it to next year. As the girls around her celebrated and congratulated each other, Lucy felt lonelier and less a part of anything than she ever had in her entire life.

 
“Can I talk to you?” Martie asked Lucy, as Lucy hurriedly gathered her books to move on to her next class. So far it had been a pretty crappy morning, and Lucy was willing to bet at least a month’s allowance that talking to Martie wasn’t going to make it any better. In fact, Martie was the last person Lucy wanted anything to do with.

Lucy had spent the better part of her fifty-minute English class with her arms folded across her chest, giving Martie the evil eye. Not even Ryan lending her a pen could cheer her up. As she listened to Martie drone on about the first few chapters of
Madame Bovary
, she still couldn’t believe that the teacher would recruit her and get her hopes up only to cut her.

“I really have to get to bio,” Lucy mumbled. She just wanted to disappear. Wasn’t there a locker she could hide in? Or a Dumpster?

Martie pressed her lips together. It was obvious she felt terrible. “Look, you’re a very talented kicker—we both know that. It’s just that some of your other skills could use a little more . . . development.”

Lucy had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

Development?
she wanted to scream at Martie.
How am I going to develop if I’m not even playing? By magic? By osmosis, whatever that is?

Martie kept on. “Like your speed and handling of the ball—you could use a little more work on those.” Lucy nodded blankly. She didn’t want to hear about handling the ball. She could barely handle this conversation.

“We recruit girls from all over L.A. County. Making this team is extremely difficult. Even the girls who get cut are still head and shoulders above most other high school players.”

Lucy’s shoulders hunched forward as she stared at her slip-on Converse sneakers, the cool kind without laces. This wasn’t making her feel any better. She didn’t care about heads or shoulders or other high school players. She cared about her friends back in Toledo. She cared about her old bedroom. She cared about having her name on that list.

“Lucy. You were hands down the best kicker on that field—the best female kicker I’ve ever seen.” She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together. “That’s why I have an idea.”

The bell rang. It meant Lucy was officially late for bio. “I should go. . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Martie said quickly. “I’ll write you a pass. I wanted to talk to you about something else. It’s about the football team.”

Lucy’s eyebrows furrowed. She wrinkled her forehead.

What did football have to do with anything?

“The field goal kicker, Matt, went down with an injury—”

“I know,” Lucy interrupted. “I saw. He tore his ACL or something.” She had no idea where Martie was going with this. “What does that have to do with me?”

“They’re having a special tryout,” Martie explained. “And I think you should.”

“Should what?” asked Lucy.

“Try out,” Martie said simply.

Lucy’s jaw dropped. “Try out for the boys’ football team? Are you kidding me?”

“Think about it. You have a strong leg; your aim is perfect; you can kick the ball, what, thirty yards easy. That’s enough for most field goals.”

Field goal? Football?
Lucy couldn’t believe what Martie was proposing.

“I’m a soccer player,” Lucy pointed out. “Not a football player.”

Martie gave her the facts. “Did you know that in the NFL, eight of the top ten kickers were soccer players before they became football players?”

“Uh-huh . . .” Lucy said, skeptically.

“And that coaches have actually adapted how they have their kickers kick the football, so that they kick with the instep, like soccer players, rather than with the toe of their shoe?”

“How many of the kickers in the NFL are girls?” Lucy asked.“I’m guessing none, because a girl can’t be on a boys’ football team. It doesn’t make any sense.” This was the craziest idea she’d heard since her dad said they were moving across the country.

Martie shrugged. “A lot of things don’t make sense the first time you hear them. You know, like twice-baked potatoes or jumbo shrimp
.”