by Mike Lupica
There were still a few minutes before history, so they stopped outside the classroom.
Sophie turned to Alex. “So, are you gonna tell her or should I?”
“Tell me what?” Annie said, alternating looks between Alex and Sophie.
Alex lowered her voice.
“I was going to wait until after school to tell you,” she said, “because your opinion matters to me. But I’m thinking I might want to come out for soccer.”
Annie looked at Alex with a blank expression.
“But I thought you quit soccer,” she said, somewhat puzzled.
“I never thought about it that way,” Alex said. “I just wanted to try something different. And find out if I was good enough to play football. But there’s no football in the spring.”
Alex was studying Annie’s face, trying to read it the way she would a book, attempting to predict what she thought about the matter.
“So you’d just be doing it to have something to do,” Annie said, sounding a little hurt.
“No, no, no,” Alex said. “Nothing like that. I just realized how much I missed playing with my friends.” She grinned. “At least when they were still my friends.”
“I’m your friend,” Annie said.
“I know you are,” Alex said. “More than anything, I missed playing alongside you.”
There was a silence now that Alex thought was beyond awkward.
“So what do you think?” she said to Annie.
There was a slight hesitation before Annie smiled and said, “I think you should go for it!”
The bell rang then, and Alex followed Sophie and Annie into Mr. Frye’s classroom, wondering if what she’d heard was fake enthusiasm from Annie and whether she really thought the idea was all that great.
And if someone as cool as Annie, somebody who’d stood up for Alex when none of the other soccer girls had, didn’t want her on the team, then who would?
5
“What if winning over the soccer girls is going to be just as hard as winning over the football team?” Alex said to Gabe and Jabril at lunch.
Gabe and Jabril gave each other a knowing glance and smiled.
“That sound brave to you?” Jabril said.
Gabe shook his head. “Come to think of it, doesn’t sound bold either.”
Alex wrinkled her nose, teasingly elbowing Gabe in the side while kicking Jabril under the table. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you two about my resolution,” she said.
“First of all,” said Jabril, “that resolution is meaningless because you already are those things. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t have those pictures of us posing with the championship trophy.”
“Shame none of those pictures caught your good side,” Gabe said to Jabril.
“Yeah, yeah, say what you want,” Jabril said. “Just be glad that I was playing for your side.”
Alex looked past Gabe and Jabril, a couple of tables over, and saw Lindsey sitting with the other girls from the soccer team. Now Lindsey looked up, staring daggers at Alex.
She knows, Alex thought.
“Don’t turn around,” Alex said, “but I am currently getting a death glare from Lindsey. No way she’ll let this happen.”
“Come on,” Gabe said. “Lindsey won’t have anything to say about it. It’s not like she’s captain, and anyway, only the coach gets to decide who makes the team.”
“And,” Jabril said, “from what I heard this morning, no one seems to be joining Lindsey’s anti-Alex fan club. She’s the only one still hanging on to this stupid vendetta.”
Alex knew they were right, but a part of her still worried that Lindsey could convince the other girls to ice her out.
“You just gotta go for it,” Gabe said. “Anybody who doesn’t want you on that team doesn’t really want to win, that’s the way I look at it.”
“I just miss being on the team,” Alex admitted. “When my friends were still my friends. Now every time I watch the US women’s soccer team kicking butt, I miss it even more.”
“So you play,” Gabe said, like it was simple. “Even if J and I will be on the sidelines this time instead of on the field with you.”
“Done deal,” Jabril said.
“You guys make it sound so easy,” Alex said.
“Is anything worth doing ever easy?” said Gabe.
She had to admit, he had a point.
And while they might not be on the football field any longer, they were still very much a team.
6
They’d been back at school for a few weeks now, but the actual start to spring soccer season was a long way off, not until the first week of March. They weren’t even holding tryouts until February, after which the girls would practice in the gymnasium until the weather was decent enough for them to go outside. In other words, not ten below zero.
After the last bell of the day, and before Alex got on the bus home, Sophie and Alex walked past the gym and saw the huge corkboard outside the double doors announcing the tryout dates for all the spring sports. There was a sign-up sheet pinned up for each one.
It’s not as if I don’t have other options besides soccer, Alex told herself as she stood in front of the board.
Sophie was already dressed in her cheerleading uniform, getting ready for the seventh-grade boys’ basketball game in half an hour. She sipped a bottle of red Gatorade while Alex pored over the corkboard, checking out her options.
“You’re staring at that board like it’s a crystal ball, about to determine your future,” Sophie said.
“I’m thinking maybe I don’t need to play soccer,” Alex said, her eyes scanning over the flyer for spring track.
“Nobody said you needed to,” Sophie said. “I just thought you wanted to.”
“I do,” Alex said. “Or at least I thought I did before I got that sketchy vibe off Annie. And she’s supposed to be my biggest advocate.”
“Annie’s fine,” Sophie said, waving Alex off. “Probably just surprised you wanted to rejoin the team is all.”
“But say the coach wants to put me back at center middie,” Alex said. “How would Annie feel about that?”
“And how many things are we going to worry about today?” Sophie said.
Alex ignored her and pointed at the board.
“What about tennis?” she said. “I could totally see myself playing tennis!”
“You’ve never even picked up a racket!” Sophie said.
“Hadn’t played football either.”
Sophie gave Alex a look as if to say, Those two sports could not be more different, and you know it.
“Even so,” Sophie said. “They’re going to have the same six players they had last year. The only person they’d probably make room for is Serena.”
“What about track?” Alex said. “You’re the one always telling me how fast I am.”
“I know they call it a track team,” Sophie said. “But in the end, even if you’re running a relay, it’s still just you against the clock. Alone.”
Alex looked away from the board now and turned to Sophie. “And how is this helping me?” she asked.
“I’m helping you,” Sophie said, “by telling you to play soccer.” She smiled. “The world’s most popular sport.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “With the school’s most unpopular ex-soccer player.”
One of Sophie’s teammates came running down the hallway then, and Sophie glanced at her watch. “To be continued,” she said, twisting the cap on her drink and grabbing her duffel bag.
She patted Alex on the shoulder, then headed inside the gym to start warming up with her team.
With Sophie gone, Alex drew her attention to the only thing on the board that mattered: the sign-up sheet for soccer. A couple of her classmates who hadn’t made the team last fall had already written their names in,
even though there was a message at the top of the sheet that read:
THIS TEAM WILL ONLY BE ABLE TO TAKE ON A FEW NEW PLAYERS.
IF YOU PLAYED ON THE TEAM DURING THE FALL SEASON, YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY ON THE ROSTER. ALL OTHERS MUST PARTICIPATE IN TRYOUTS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE TEAM THIS SPRING.
It almost read to Alex like a warning. And although she’d played spring soccer in the sixth grade, and everybody in school knew she would have made the fall team, she wasn’t exactly sure where she stood now.
“You’re not technically part of the team. You get that, right?”
She didn’t even have to turn around to know who the voice was coming from. It was unmistakable.
Lindsey.
When you shadowed a player in soccer, it was called ghosting. They’d only been back at school for a few weeks, and already Alex felt as if she were being ghosted by Lindsey Stiles.
Alex sighed and turned around, forcing a smile, even though both of them knew it was phony.
“I can read,” she said.
She was starting to think she should have expanded her resolution. Be bold. Be brave. Beware of seventh graders named Lindsey Stiles.
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the fine print about the rules,” Lindsey said.
“Fine?” Alex said. “If the print about us adding new players were any bigger—”
“Us?” Lindsey interrupted. “Allow me to fill you in—this team stopped being yours when you decided to play football last season.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Did you really tell Annie that you missed us?” Lindsey said, doing her best to embarrass Alex.
“Did Annie volunteer that?” Alex said.
“I saw you two talking in the hall and I asked her,” Lindsey said. “So if that’s the case, how come you didn’t worry about missing us last fall?”
“I did,” Alex said, trying to keep an even tone, “whether you believe it or not.”
“You quit,” Lindsey said.
“Because I wanted to find out if I was good enough to play football,” Alex said. “I wanted to try something new.”
“Here’s an idea,” Lindsey said. “Try something new in the spring.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Yay, team, Alex thought. And headed for the bus.
7
Alex was happy to be back at school. She liked to be busy and had never been afraid of a little work. Even a lot of work. She liked challenging herself. To her, it was just another way of competing.
She liked winning, of course. There was no getting around that. But to Alex, competing was about more than just keeping score. It was about achieving her best.
Over the next few weeks, she tried keeping herself distracted with homework and studying so she wouldn’t obsess about spring soccer. After discussing it with Sophie and Gabe and Jabril, by now she was all talked out.
And anyway, talking wasn’t going to win her a spot on the team. That is, when and if she decided to try out.
The subject came up again at dinner the following evening, despite Alex trying to avoid it altogether. Though they were almost to February now, and her dad would want to know what she’d decided.
“Still thinking about it,” she said when he’d asked her the inevitable.
“Sounded to me all the way back on Christmas Eve as if you’d already thought about it,” he said.
Alex let out a long breath. “It’s just—” She paused, composing herself. “What if I don’t make it?”
Her dad looked up from his chicken cutlet and set his fork down on the plate. “I know that’s not my daughter talking,” he said.
He smiled at her.
“Want to kick it around a little more?” he said, winking.
“Good one, Dad,” she said. “But I really have kicked it around enough, with you and all my friends. I just have to figure it out myself.”
“You always do,” he said.
After dinner, she went upstairs to her room, pressed play on Taylor Swift’s newest album, then plopped down on her bed and closed her eyes.
What if she wasn’t the same soccer player she’d been last year? She was completely out of practice. Sure, football and soccer required some of the same skills—running, strategy, looking up the field for open teammates. But Alex had to admit she might be a little rusty.
Which called something else into question. What if the girls trying out—the ones who hadn’t made the team last fall—had been training in their off time, improving their skills? They might even be better than Alex now.
But that wasn’t the biggest question of all, and Alex knew it. Because the biggest question of all was this:
If the other girls on the team wouldn’t accept her, did she really want to be on a team with them? She knew what it was like to be shunned by those girls.
As much as she wanted to play, did she really want to go through all that again?
Her dad said she always figured things out, but Alex wasn’t so sure this time. She closed her eyes and listened to the music and wondered if Taylor Swift had had this much trouble figuring out seventh grade.
For now, though, she knew she was on her own.
Again.
8
When Alex got home from school the next day, she knew exactly what she needed to do:
She needed to move.
So she put on her black-and-gold Steelers hoodie, found her soccer cleats underneath the piles of sneakers and shoes in her closet, and tried them on to see if they still fit. They were a little snug, but they would do for now, Alex thought, as she headed down to the garage and grabbed her Adidas ball. Clutching it under her arm against her hip, she rounded the corner of the house outside and into the backyard.
The snow had almost completely melted, and the sun was out. It was cold, but not too cold. And once Alex started moving, started working up a sweat, she felt good. Really good. She felt the warmth of the sun on her face and imagined it was already spring. That tryouts were over and she’d made the team.
She pushed the ball up and down the yard, pretending it was open field in front of her, left foot, right foot, left foot, occasionally making a pass to an imaginary teammate, using a tree or fence post as a target.
Alex’s cheeks were flushed, and a little frozen from the cold, but she smiled all the same.
The simplest things in sports could make you happy, if you could just get out of your own way.
It made her feel like herself again. Alex wasn’t a worrier by nature. She’d sometimes doubt herself in sports, like she did at the start of football season. When it felt as if she were competing against her own team. But the feeling didn’t last long.
She ran faster now, pushing the ball without ever having to look down, picking it up occasionally and tossing it in the air so she could practice using her chest or head to direct it, controlling the ball the way she used to. It was funny, she thought: one of the things she’d told herself last fall was that she’d never be great at soccer.
But soccer was making her feel pretty great right now.
She had originally only planned to spend a half hour out here at most. But she was having too much fun. The first thirty minutes were more like a warm-up.
She ran back to the garage, and after rummaging past a few shovels and gardening tools, she pulled out the small soccer goal her dad had bought her last year. Dragging it out back, she set it up near the tree line, so she’d have the slight wind at her back.
She took shots from all angles, getting in some practice with both feet. She was naturally right-footed but had always been able to kick with either one. They called you “two-footed” in soccer when you could do that. The goal may have been three-quarters as wide as a normal soccer goal, but before long she was hitting it with ease, low to the corners, high to the corners. L
eft foot. Right foot.
Really feeling it now.
She set the ball down in front of her and backed away a few paces, pretending she was about to take a penalty kick during overtime to win the big game.
She inhaled deeply, picking her spot against the imaginary keeper, then took a running start and—
Score. She buried the ball with her left foot into the upper right-hand corner of the net.
Setting the ball down again, she used her right foot this time, stepping into the kick and sending the ball rolling across the grass into the left corner of the goal.
Out here, alone, she felt like an athlete. It was fun to talk about sports—player stats, margins, hypothetical situations. Her dad said that any conversation about sports, didn’t matter which, was part of the fun of being a fan.
Not as much fun, Alex thought, as being on the field, or the court, or wherever else sports happened.
When she took a break, she looked up and saw her dad watching from his office on the second floor. He waved. She waved back. Then he opened the window.
“I can’t decide,” he called down to her, “whether you remind me more of Megan Rapinoe or Alex Morgan.”
“Ha!” she yelled back. “But if you have a choice, I say you always go with an Alex.”
* * *
• • •
It was getting close to dinnertime when she put away her equipment and came inside to take a shower. She had just begun on homework when the doorbell rang.
Maybe it was a package, Alex thought. Sometimes the mail carriers didn’t make it to their house until late in the evening.
“I got it,” her dad said, clambering down the stairs. “Time for me to pay off on your IOU.”
“My IOU?” Alex asked.
“How quickly they forget,” he said.
Then Alex remembered. Christmas Eve. The certificate. The mysterious way her dad presented the gift. Alex had to admit, curiosity was getting the better of her.
She jerked up from her desk chair and followed her dad downstairs.