Saving the Team (4 page)

I giggled, but the smile was wiped off my face as Mirabelle brushed by us midcelebration, her lip curled up. “Oh, get over it. It's one goal.”

Jessi gave Mirabelle a dirty look and then rolled her eyes at me. “I'm sure if she scores, it will be the biggest deal ever. So lame.”

On the next kickoff I moved to get the ball so I could look for Jessi again. From out of nowhere Mirabelle, who was on the other team, flashed in to take the ball away from me.
That was lucky
, I thought. Mirabelle then floated a perfect pass of her own to another player, leading to a gorgeous goal. “Nice pass, Mirabelle,” Coach said. Great,
now
Coach was watching.

And Mirabelle was
good
. Fully engaged now, she kept twirling right through the chaotic pile of girls, showing off tricky step-overs, behind-the-back dribbles, and fancy ball juggles.

“Someone stop her,” I said, gasping for breath after Mirabelle scored.

Then I saw Coach Flores look at her stopwatch and reach for her whistle. Scrimmage was going to end! I had to do something drastic if I wanted to be remembered for anything at all.

If I could stop Mirabelle, I would give everyone something to remember. The next time Mirabelle hurtled toward me, I lunged at the ball.

Anticipating my move, Mirabelle countered with a full 360-degree spin. I lost my balance and sprawled out on the ground, getting a mouthful of grass as she flew past me. I got my head up in time to see Mirabelle finesse the ball into the top left corner of the goal.

Coach's whistle blew. “That's enough, girls,” she said. “You were all wonderful! Remember, no matter how you performed today, at least you all gave it your best. That's what counts. Tryout results will be posted tomorrow. Nice work, everyone.”

I dropped my head down, totally humiliated. Coach Flores had to be kidding. I'd totally blown it. As Frida stopped to help me up, Mirabelle pranced by and mimed holding a video camera in her hand.

“YouTubed,” she teased.

Brushing myself off, I stared after her.

“Oh, ignore her,” Frida said. “We all fall down every now and then.”

“Especially me,” Emma said with a sheepish smile. “Believe me, however bad your fall just looked, I've done worse.”

I was so embarrassed, I couldn't look at anyone.

Just then Jessi came up with Zoe in tow. “If that had been me, I would have just tackled her,” Jessi said.

“Well, nobody's going to want me on the team after that,” I said, bummed.

“Sure they will. You were great,” Jessi assured me. “Um, were you watching? We might have a few good players,
but the tryouts were a mess. Total disaster! You at least had an assist today!”

“I guess,” I said. How would I explain to Kara and my parents that I couldn't even make the world's worst soccer team? “I hope you're right.”

The next day during lunch I met Jessi, Emma, and Zoe behind the library building in the courtyard.

“Thanks for inviting me to eat with you guys,” I said. “Having lunch alone yesterday was not exactly my idea of a good time.”

“Oh, sure!” Jessi said. “The more the merrier.”

This was the first time I'd seen Jessi not in gym clothes or practice stuff. She was wearing a bright pink thermal top, with distressed jeans ripped open at the knees. I had dug through my closet the night before for a basic striped scoop neck, and had ditched the khakis for simple skinny jeans. Emma wore a basic hoodie and slouchy jeans on her tall frame, while petite Zoe wore a lilac lace dress and glasses with oversize frames. She looked very California chic, while Emma looked like she could have just rolled out of bed.

“The list from the soccer tryouts is going to be posted after lunch,” Emma said excitedly. “I hope we all made it!”

“I doubt I did,” Zoe said sadly, “not after the way I froze up. I hope you guys have fun on the team without me.”

“What happened, Zoe?” I asked. “You looked like you really knew how to handle the ball. It was only when everyone started calling to you that you seemed to get nervous.”

Zoe blushed. “I don't know. When Emma, Jessi, and I are kicking the ball around just the three of us, I'm fine. It's only when I feel like everyone is watching me, I freeze up.”

Emma put her arm around Zoe's shoulder and squeezed. “She's better than fine when it's just the three of us—she's awesome!”

I smiled, feeling glad I had met such a nice group of girls. Imagine if everyone in this school were like Mirabelle! I shuddered. I had to know what was going on with her and Jessi. “So . . . what's the deal with Mirabelle?” I said.

Emma and Zoe groaned. “The Mirabelle saga,” Emma said dramatically. “It never ends.”

Jessi got a sad look on her face. “This is going to be hard to believe, but Mirabelle and I used to be besties.”

“No way!” I felt my eyes grow wide. Jessi and Mirabelle were so different! Plus, Mirabelle was an entire grade ahead.

“She wasn't always like this,” Jessi explained. “We live
on the same block and are neighbors, so we basically grew up together. Our parents are good friends. We knew each other before we even went to elementary school. Believe it or not, since Mirabelle was older, she always looked out for me.”

“That
is
hard to believe,” I said, still surprised at her revelation. “Mirabelle seems to look out only for herself.”

Jessi nodded. “Now she does. We played soccer together in elementary school. Right before sixth grade she joined a traveling soccer team.”

“She mentioned that,” I said.

Jessi snorted. “I bet she did. Once she joined the team, which has girls from schools all over the county, she made friends with some girls from Pinewood.”

“It's a super-expensive private school,” Zoe explained.

“Yeah, I keep hearing about how good they are at soccer,” I said.

“Both the boys' and girls' teams,” Jessi said, and nodded. “Anyway, Mirabelle really wanted to go there, but her parents couldn't afford it. When she started sixth grade at Kentville, she completely changed. New wardrobe. New attitude. She acted like she didn't even know who I was. We stopped hanging out. My mom said it was because we were at different schools, but something about her had changed.

“I was so nervous to go into the sixth grade, knowing Mirabelle wouldn't even talk to me,” Jessi said, and she smiled at Emma and Zoe. “But luckily I met these two
on the first day, and I wouldn't trade them for all the Mirabelles on the planet!”

I shuddered as the image of an army of snotty Mirabelles popped into my mind. “If Mirabelle ditched
you
, why is she so angry at you?”

Emma and Zoe giggled as Jessi sighed.

“At first I missed the old Mirabelle,” Jessi admitted. “I was hurt and confused. I thought if I could just make her remember all the fun times we used to have, we could be friends again. So one day last year I put this picture of us together in elementary school in her backpack, thinking it would remind her of what good friends we used to be. But the picture fell out in the locker room at her travel team's practice. All the Pinewood girls saw it and gave her a hard time about it.”

“Why?” I wondered. “What's the big deal of having a picture in your backpack?” I kept one of me and Kara in my bag.

Emma began to giggle again. “Let's just say that Mirabelle wasn't always the perfect, fashionable person you see today.”

“She had an awkward phase,” Jessi explained. “And maybe she used to dress a little dorky. I didn't care. She was my friend. But she thought I'd planted the pic in her backpack on purpose, to embarrass her in front of her new friends. And she's been mad at me ever since.”

“It's been a whole year?” I asked. “Boy, she really holds a grudge.”

Jessi nodded. “So, sorry, but if you're friends with me, Mirabelle won't be very nice to you.”

Emma and Zoe laughed again. “Yeah, because she treats everyone else sooooooo nice, right?” Zoe said, and chortled.

Jessi laughed. “Well, she is friends with all the popular eighth-grade girls,” she said. “I guess she figured they were the only kids in Kentville good enough for her.”

“Sometimes I think the only reason they're friends with her is because they're afraid of her,” Emma said. “She is really bossy.”

“And pretty rude,” I added.

At that moment Frida appeared from around the corner. “The list from tryouts is up!” she said. “Here's hoping I didn't make it!”

Jessi jumped up and grabbed my hand to help me. The five of us raced toward the back of the gym and the locker rooms. My heart pounded as we ran, which didn't help my increasing nervousness. Even though the team didn't have a great record and seemed pretty disorganized, I really wanted to make it. I loved playing soccer, and I'd play anywhere I got the chance. Plus, I really liked Jessi, Zoe, and Emma.

As we got down to the locker room, a few of the girls from tryouts were already there, taking turns looking at a list of names posted on the wall.

“Frida, you're on here!” someone cried out from the front.

Frida let out a disappointed sigh at the news. Clenching her fist, she shook it at the sky. “Curses!” she exclaimed.

Jessi patted her on the back. “Sorry, Frida. You should thank your mom for me, though. You're a great player, even if you don't want to be.”

“This is just going to cut into my audition time!” Frida wailed as she turned around and left the locker room.

Just ahead of us Emma was craning her neck, trying to see if our names were on the list.

“Devin, your name's on the list,” Emma said. “And there's Jessi, Zoe, and me, too. We all made it!”

Zoe had a look of complete shock on her face. Emma gave her a hug. “Awesome! We're all on the team together,” Emma cheered.

“Wait a second.” Jessi got up close to the list and squinted. “Every person who tried out made the team!”

I squeezed past Emma to take a look at the list with my own eyes. I scanned the page, and ten eighth graders and nine seventh graders had made the team.

“Nineteen girls tried out yesterday,” I recalled. “And everyone made it? Wow, that's a big team.”

In soccer only eleven players could be on the field at a time. Most teams had spots for three or four alternates, but the Kentville Kangaroos had eight. That was a lot.

Emma shrugged. “That's Coach Flores for you. She wants everyone to have a chance.”

I felt silly for even being nervous about tryouts. I could have sat on the field, recited nursery rhymes, and
still made the team. That fact took away my feeling of accomplishment. I never imagined soccer in California would be like this! On the bright side, I had three new soccer friends to hang out with. But then Mirabelle's face popped into my mind. How was I going to deal with her?

After school the next day I realized I'd forgotten my gym clothes, so I had to go home to change for our first practice. I didn't want to be late, so I hustled over to the Kentville soccer field as fast as I could. I had on my pink headband and was ready to go. As I arrived, I saw a bunch of boys stretching and getting ready for
their
practice. All of them were laughing and joking with one another, completely oblivious to me, standing by the far goalpost. There wasn't a girl soccer player in sight. Had I gotten something mixed up? When was our practice? This
was
where we'd had tryouts the other day.

Setting my bag down, I pulled out my phone and pulled up the schedule Coach Flores had e-mailed out to us yesterday. Yes, it was right there: Wednesday, September 3, two forty-five p.m., girls' practice. So where was everybody?

“What're you doing here?” a voice said from behind me.

I jumped. A skinny boy with spiky black hair squinted hard at me. He looked familiar. I was pretty sure he was in my English class.