Playing With the Boys

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  “It’s not because of tryouts,” Pickle said, biting her lip. Max nodded knowingly. Lucy wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Suddenly, she had an idea.

  “I bet Benji would drive us to the party and then home after,” she offered. “And seriously, bring as many friends as you want—whoever!”

  Pickle clapped her hands together. “Awesome! This is so cool!” She pounced on Lucy and engulfed her in a giant hug. “You’re the greatest!”

  Lucy beamed, glancing from an elated Pickle to a suddenly worried Max.

  “What’s wrong?” Pickle asked, noticing too.

  Max sighed. “I just need to figure out what to do about my parents. . . .”

  Suddenly, the color drained out of Lucy’s face. She’d been so excited at the prospect of winning over Pickle and Max that she’d forgotten about one huge obstacle that came in the form of a 6’, one-hundred-and-ninety-pound man: her dad.

  “You are not going to a party thrown by someone you don’t know and whom I have never even met,” her dad said sternly as they were eating dinner in front of the television. Her mom never allowed them to eat anywhere but the kitchen or dining room table. And certainly never in front of the TV. But it was Friday night in the Malone house, and rules were relaxed. Well, some of them.

  “Why not?” Lucy whined. She had a precautionary ice bag over each ankle and was propped up on the couch.

  Her dad responded matter-of-factly. “Because you’re fifteen years old.”

  “I’m almost sixteen!” she pleaded. “I’ll be sixteen in two months! What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is, you can go to parties like that when you’re sixteen. And I talk to the parents first.”

  Lucy threw down her napkin. One of the ice bags fell to the floor. “It doesn’t make any sense! This is, like, globally unfair!” she complained, repeating what she’d heard Max say in the van.

  Her dad looked at her oddly. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Lucy tried to remain calm. She wanted to scream, It means you’re totally ruining my life! But instead she simply said, “Dad, look. People are counting on me—you really expect me to tell them I can’t go because I’m fifteen and ten months?”

  “See?” her dad said. “You do get it.” Lucy threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “Luce, you can go to the game with your friends tonight and then be home when it’s done. How long does a high school game take? A couple of hours?”

  Lucy had no idea. She didn’t know the first thing about football. All she knew about it was that there was a game tonight . . . and she was supposed to be there.

  “But Dad . . .” she protested. She couldn’t believe this. She wished her mom were there to talk some sense into him. Like the time when her dad didn’t think she was old enough for sleepaway camp. Or the time Billy Miller asked her out on a group date to a movie and her dad said no. Her mom had told her dad that they were going out for a girls’ dinner and instead had taken Lucy to the movies to meet Billy and her friends. Sure, her mom stayed and watched the movie too, but from the opposite side of the theater, far enough away that she couldn’t tell Lucy and Billy were holding hands. Or maybe she could. Either way, she’d let Lucy go, and that was the point. Her dad was never going to let her go . . . anywhere!

  “Why do you get to make all the decisions?” Lucy protested. She took a deep breath and mustered her courage. “If Mom were here . . .” She barely got half of the sentence out before her dad grabbed the remote and turned up the volume on CSI-something. New York, Miami, Topeka—whatever.

  Lucy sighed. She should have known that strategy wouldn’t work. Any mention of her mom seemed to make her dad shut down.

  “Fine,” Lucy said sullenly. She dropped her plate on the coffee table, grabbed her ice bags, and hobbled to her room, slamming her bedroom door for emphasis.

  Miserable, she collapsed onto her bed. She couldn’t just sit here and do nothing! Pickle and Max were counting on her for this party. She wasn’t going to let them down.

  An hour later, Lucy stood in a pile of clothes, having taken everything out of boxes. Now her entire wardrobe was scattered around her bedroom. After two emergency phone calls with Annie, she’d come up with a plan.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of car trouble?” Annie had asked. “I mean, it’s not your fault if Benji gets a flat, right?”

  “Wrong. My dad’s gonna see right through that,” Lucy complained. She was a terrible liar.

  “Okay, it’s simple. After the game, just go to the party. You can get Pickle and Max settled—what’s with these names, by the way?—then as soon as they’re good, you can sneak out.” It was a good idea, but Annie was forgetting one thing.

  “Well, how am I supposed to get home?” Lucy challenged.

  Annie sighed. “Does California not have cabs?”

  Lucy laughed. “Oh, right.”

  “What would you do without me?” Annie asked. “You’d be so lost.”

  “No, I’d just ask the cab driver,” Lucy joked. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she was totally lost without her best friend. And that she didn’t even care that much about the party, Ryan or no Ryan. What she cared about most was having someone to go to the party with.

  And now, thanks to Annie, she had the perfect plan; what she needed next was the perfect outfit. Jeans? A skirt? A cute little sundress? Nothing seemed right for her first Friday night out in California.

  Suddenly, she heard a honk out front. Charlie and the girls were already there! She quickly threw on a faded pair of jeans and a tight red Urban Outfitters T-shirt that read LITTLE MISS TROUBLE, and wrapped a long, glittery pink scarf around her neck. Perfect or not, it would have to do.

  It was halfway through the fourth quarter (apparently there were four quarters in football), and the home crowd had just erupted in cheers as Beachwood scored against Madison. And now, according to Pickle’s play-by-play explanations, Beachwood had closed a big gap.

  “We’re only trailing by nine!” Pickle yelled. “We can win this!” Cheering wildly next to Lucy, Pickle seemed to personify school spirit and enthusiasm. “Go Beachwood!” she shrieked. “We got this!”

  Max and Lucy exchanged amused glances. Charlie, Carla, and a few other girls from the team sat on the bleachers right below them.

  “Who’s hungry?” Charlie asked. Then she said dryly, “Oh, right—me.” Carla laughed and interlaced her arm through Charlie’s.

  “I could eat,” she said. “Something warm. I swear, it’s fifteen degrees colder at the beach than in my neighborhood.”

  As Charlie and Carla headed to the snack stand, Max turned to the girls.“Hey, if we don’t make the soccer team, maybe we should go out for cheerleading.”

  Pickle hit her lightly in the arm. “Don’t even think it!” she warned. “We are so making the team.”

  Lucy laughed as the girls’ playful argument was drowned out by the marching band playing in the stands.There was one tuba that sounded so off, Lucy wondered if its owner was actually playing a different song. She tilted her head to get a better look at the cheerleaders who stood on the track that encircled the field, as they gyrated and thrust their hips. Lucy couldn’t help but be mildly impressed.

  She recognized Regan, the whatever girl, leading the charge. A few of the second-string players on the bench seemed more interested in Regan than in the game.

  “Regan Holder,” Pickle pointed out. “She’s a barracuda in lipstick. Avoid her like the plague.”

  “She’s in my English class,” Lucy mentioned. “Do you know her?”

  “All I know,” Pickle whispered as she leaned in close to Lucy, “is that Charlie hates her guts.You can’t even spell Regan’s name around Charlie without smoke coming out of her ears....” Suddenly, Pickle noticed something on the field. “Interception! Woo-hoo!” she cheered, bouncing up and down.

  “What happened with Charlie and Regan?” Lucy asked when the crowd noise had quieted down.

  “I don’t
know the whole deal, because I wasn’t at Beachwood yet,” Pickle continued, “but I guess they were best friends for, like, ever, and then one day, Regan just kind of dropped Charlie.”

  Lucy wanted to hear more but stopped talking so she could watch Ryan—gorgeous, even wearing his football helmet—throw a fifteen-yard pass on the field. Mrs. Lucy Conner, Lucy thought. It had a certain ring to it.

  “Hey.” Pickle nudged Lucy in the side.“I think he likes you.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “What? Really?” she asked. On the field, Beachwood was going to attempt a thirty-yard field goal to tie the game.

  “Yeah,” Pickle said. “Look how he’s staring.” Lucy glanced around, confused. Ryan wasn’t even facing in her direction. And suddenly, she figured out what Pickle meant. She was talking about Benji, who was looking right at her.

  He gave her an inconspicuous wave. Both Pickle and Lucy happily waved back.

  “He doesn’t like me,” Lucy protested. “He’s just being friendly.”

  Pickle shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  At that moment, the whole crowd groaned. Benji and the girls simultaneously turned their attention back toward the field. It was fourth down, and Beachwood’s placekicker, Matt, had approached the ball for an attempted field goal at the thirty-five-yard line but had been cut down by a player on the other team.

  “That’s roughing!” Beachwood’s coach screamed, irate. “Roughing the kicker!”

  “Fifteen-yard penalty to Madison,”the referee announced. “Automatic first down, Beachwood.”

  “What just happened?” Lucy asked. She knew next to nothing about football.

  “Because of the penalty, we move up to Madison’s twenty,” Pickle explained. “You have to move at least ten yards in four tries, then their team gets the ball. If you do ten yards or more—you get four new tries to move again.You’re only on your first down,” Pickle explained. She paused. “Is any of this making sense?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Not really.” Luckily, she didn’t have to understand pass plays and yard lines. She needed to know throw-ins and corner kicks.

  “Coach!” one of the Beachwood players suddenly yelled from the field. “Matt’s hurt! He’s hurt bad!”

  Lucy saw Matt, Beachwood’s kicker, lying in a heap, gripping his knee. Coaches rushed the field. The crowd waited breathlessly. The guys on the bench strained to see. The same trainer that worked with the soccer team knelt down beside Matt, trying to assess the injury. He waved toward the sidelines, and within seconds, a medical team ran onto the field with a stretcher. Matt was carefully loaded on. As he was carried off, the crowd respectfully applauded.

  “Matt Alexander,” the announcer’s voice boomed. Again, the crowd cheered. Charlie and Carla returned and took their seats in the stands.

  “That sucks,” Carla muttered in front of them as she stuffed the rest of a hot dog into her mouth. “Can you even imagine?”

  “Dude, if he tore his ACL,” Charlie said, dipping a corn chip into warm cheddar cheese, “stick a fork in him. He’s done.”

  Carla shook her head sympathetically. “Poor guy.”

  “Poor Beachwood, too,” Pickle commented. “We don’t have another decent kicker. This is bad.”

  “So what does that mean for the game?” Lucy asked.

  “It means Madison’s probably going to run out the clock and win.”

  There was a glimmer of hope when, with two minutes to go, Beachwood’s defensive tackle picked up a loose ball and managed to run it back to Madison’s twenty-five-yard line. But on the next three plays with three incomplete passes thanks to an aggressive Madison defense, Beachwood needed to go for three points in one last attempt to win the game.

  With Matt hurt, the coach had no choice but to put in Benji to go for the field goal. The tension in the stands was palpable. It was the first game of the season. Everyone wanted to win.

  Pickle covered her face, unable to even look. “Oh God, here he goes. I can’t watch.”

  Benji jogged out with ten other guys and walked off his steps from the holder. He stood, waiting for the snap. The crowd grew silent. Lucy strained to look over Heather and Jamie’s heads. On the call, the ball was snapped back and set up by the holder, as Benji went in for the kick. . . .

  Everyone watched as the ball sailed up and up and up ... and, just as the clock ran out, pinged off the outside of the left goalpost, barely missing the goal, but missing it just the same.

  On the sidelines, the coach cursed. “Damn it!” He threw his clipboard onto the grass.

  On the field, Benji hung his head. In the stands, Lucy’s heart sank. It was over. Beachwood had lost—not only their kicker but the game. The deflated crowd began to disperse. Charlie and Carla headed for the parking lot.

  “You guys need a ride?” Charlie asked, then noticed the cheerleaders running for the locker room. “Ugh.” Charlie rolled her eyes. “I’m sure they’re hurrying to slut it up for some stupid party.”

  Pickle covered, not wanting to mention that they were hoping to go to the same “stupid party.” “Um, that’s okay. I think, um . . .” She looked at Max for help, but Max was suddenly engrossed in a Pixy Stick.

  Lucy jumped in, saving her. “You have to take Carla all the way home. My dad can pick us up.”

  “Okay.” Charlie shrugged. “See you tomorrow at practice.” Pickle waited for Charlie and Carla to leave, then grabbed Lucy’s arm.

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said, in a rush to make her way down to Benji on the sidelines. “It’s party time!” Lucy and Max followed her to the chain-link fence, which separated the field from the fans, looking for Benji. He was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’ll find him,” Lucy offered. After all, she was the ring-leader of this little plan. She snaked her way through the crowd, searching, but after ten minutes she walked back to Pickle and Max with bad news.

  “Well?” Max asked, jumping around to stay warm. Even Southern California got a little cold at night.

  “I don’t know where he went,” Lucy admitted. She pulled out her cell phone to try calling him. But the number just rang and rang. Time passed. The stands and field emptied out.

  “Maybe we should wait by the locker room door,” Pickle offered. “We could catch him when he comes out.”

  “Sure,” Lucy said. She was open to suggestions. She just felt like an idiot. These girls were waiting and counting on her. Where was Benji? It was understandable if he wasn’t exactly in the party mood, but would Pickle and Max understand? After all, Lucy had convinced them to come.

  After they’d been waiting another twenty minutes with no sign of Benji, Lucy didn’t know what to say. “I left him a message that we were coming and needed a ride—I don’t know what happened.”

  “He probably just forgot. I mean, he did blow the game,” Max reminded them. “That may be all he’s thinking about.”

  Pickle sadly agreed. “I’d just never been to one of these parties before. . . .” She trailed off, her voice filled with disappointment.

  Lucy looked around, one last time, feeling terrible. “I’m really sorry, you guys.”

  Pickle looked at her watch. “Tomorrow’s the last day of tryouts anyway,” she said. “I should just call my mom and have her pick us up,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Max shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. That’s fine.”

  Pickle turned to Lucy. “Are you okay to get home? Because my mom could probably drive you. . . .”