by Belle Payton
Alex sat and told Cassie every last detail about Corey. Ava was happy for Alex, but like with everything she did, Alex had thrown herself full force into this boyfriend business.
“What’s the hold up?” Mrs. Sackett poked her head around the open kitchen door. She looked pretty in her white pants and tangerine-colored top, yet the wisps of hair escaping from her ponytail revealed how hard she’d been working. They’d all scrambled over the last few days to put this team barbecue together. “Alex, Coach needs those buns. The burgers are ready to go.”
“No can do. They’re talking about boys.” Ava rolled her eyes at her mom.
“I see.” Mrs. Sackett grinned. “Cassie, you be kind to my son now.”
“It’s not about Tommy,” Cassie said.
“Hey, guys—” Coach burst into the kitchen, waving his spatula.
“It’s about Alex’s new boyfriend,” Cassie finished.
“Whoa! Alex’s w-w-what?” Coach sputtered. He tilted the brim of his Tigers cap to peer at Alex.
Alex’s face reddened. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like?” Coach seemed more confused than anything. “You’re twelve.” He turned to his wife. “She’s twelve, Laura.”
“Almost thirteen,” Ava put in helpfully.
“Michael, everything’s fine.” Mrs. Sackett gently led him back outside. “It’s just a term. It doesn’t mean anything these days.”
“It doesn’t?” Coach sounded unsure.
“Definitely not. Girls today don’t care about boyfriends,” she assured him.
“I would make that some girls,” quipped Ava.
“You’ll change your mind, Ava.” Cassie shot Alex a knowing look, as if they were part of a special boyfriend club.
“Not anytime soon,” Ava said. She left Alex and Cassie composing an intricate text to invite Corey to the barbecue. Ava couldn’t figure why it had to be so complicated. Why not just text, Want to come over? Having a boyfriend seemed like a lot of work.
Ava headed into the yard with the tray of buns. As she wound her way toward Coach at the grill, she caught sight of a football soaring through the air. She reacted by instinct. In a flash, she dropped the tray on a nearby table and jumped, arms outstretched. The ball found her fingertips, and in one fluid motion, she cradled it to her body—and then boom! She was on the ground. Tommy had tackled her!
She squeezed the football tighter, wrapping her body around it. “Get off!”
“Fumble! Fumble!” cried Tommy. When she refused to let go, he began to tickle her.
“No fair!” Ava screeched between bursts of laughter. “I’m never letting go!”
“Yes, you are.” Tommy tickled harder. After years of brother-sister wrestling matches, he knew tickling always got her.
“Tigers never give up!” Ava cried.
At that moment, a shrill whistle sliced through the music, laughter, and conversation. Everyone froze. The boys knew the sound of that whistle. Ava did too. That was Coach’s whistle—the one he used on the field.
“Hey, there, folks.” Coach turned down the flame on the grill and faced the crowd of expectant faces. “I was going to make a big speech later when I brought out my Texas sheet cake, welcoming y’all and telling you how happy I am to be leading such a fine group of athletes, and I guess I’ll still do that, but I just saw something that made me realize why I am so proud to call myself an Ashland Tiger.”
He pointed to Ava, lying on the grass. Tommy had rolled off her. “Did y’all hear Ava, when Tommy was trying to get that football from her? What did she say?”
“Tigers never give up,” answered Dion Bell.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.” Coach cupped his hand around his ear.
“Tigers never give up!” yelled Dion.
“Louder,” Coach commanded.
“Tigers never give up! Tigers never give up!” the entire team chanted together. Soon the parents joined in too. Alex and Cassie hurried outside. Ava held the football high and yelled loudest of all.
“Exactly,” said Coach, once the cheers faded. “We will have our ups and downs. We will win games and we will lose them too. We will battle injuries and the loss of teammates. We will face changes. But what makes our team so fierce is our drive to succeed. As your coach, I want you to know that I believe in you. I trust you. I am loyal to you. Each and every one of you. I will never give up on my players. I hope you will grant me the same honor.”
A huge cheer rose up.
Coach fidgeted with the brim of his cap, then spotted the tray of buns. “Ava, help me get these burgers passed around. And Tommy, is that your keyboard over there?”
Tommy nodded uneasily.
Ava looked over at the electronic keyboard set up under the tree at the side of the yard. She bit her lip and glanced to Alex. Coach had never truly understood how important Tommy’s music was to him. She hoped Coach wouldn’t say anything embarrassing in front of the team.
“Did you all know that my son Tommy here is not only an amazing quarterback but an accomplished musician? Who’s up for some music?” Coach smiled.
Tommy seemed momentarily stunned.
“Go play!” Ava nudged him. Tommy stood and hurried over to his keyboard. In less than a minute, he launched into an upbeat, jazzy tune. Several parents gathered in front of him on the grass and began to move to the music. Ava watched her mom whisper something in her dad’s ear and tug him out there too.
“What’s going on here?” Alex asked Ava, sitting down alongside her. They watched in amazement as Coach began to sway to Tommy’s music. “Coach never dances!”
“Changes, I guess. Just like he said,” Ava remarked.
“Change is good,” Alex said. She flopped down on her back.
“It is.” Ava flopped down next to her. Together they stared up at the clouds in the sky.
“What do you see?” They had always looked for pictures in the clouds when they were little.
“I see a big heart and three little hearts,” Alex reported, still smiling away.
Ava made a gagging noise. “Of course you do.”
“What do you see?” Alex asked.
Ava watched the clouds. She wanted to say she saw a tiger. Or a tiger attacking a falcon. Something that would prove that the team would be okay without PJ and whichever other boys chose to leave. But she didn’t see any animals. In fact, she didn’t see anything special up there. “Maybe a bike being ridden by a witch?”
“Really?” Alex squinted. “More like a kite being flown by a wizard.”
Ava watched as the breeze slowly moved the clouds across the sky. Even though dozens of people milled around them, she didn’t get up. Neither did Alex.
They both knew if they stayed a little longer, the clouds would change.
They wanted to see what happened when they did.
CHAPTER 1
Creeeak . . .
Thud!
Zoey Webber heard the glamorous thump of glossy paper meeting floorboards, and raced down the hall to the front door to get the mail. Only one thing could make that sound: the newest issue of Trés Chic arriving through the mail slot.
Yes!
She scooped it up along with some envelopes and interior design magazines and put everything but Trés Chic on a table for her aunt. Then she scanned the cover to see what was trés chic for July:
The Long (Dresses) and Short (Shorts) of Summer Style
Dots Are Hot!
25 Fresh Fashion Faces to Watch
Be Inspired . . . by BOLD Colors!
Zoey grinned at the last headline. Oh, she was inspired.
She was also lucky. She was spending her summer days at Aunt Lulu’s house instead of the usual: being stuck at home with her big brother, Marcus, as her babysitter, or stuck at day camp for what felt like the hundredth year in a row. This summer was different. Her brother was busy with a part-time job and her dad finally agreed that she was getting a little old for day camp . . . at least if she didn’t
want to go.
Zoey discovered pretty quickly that “Aunt Lulu camp” was better than any day camp. Aunt Lulu ran her interior design business out of her home office, but even when she had to work, she made it fun for Zoey. She let Zoey suggest fabrics and color combinations for clients’ inspiration boards and make collages and paper doll clothes with old wallpaper samples. And if she had to go out for a meeting or something, she actually paid Zoey to dog-sit—which basically meant watching Aunt Lulu’s fourteen-year-old mutt, Draper, snore.
Plus, Zoey and her aunt loved doing a lot of the same things: getting mani-pedis, baking cookies, reading magazines, watching old movies, and indulging in reality TV shows—they both were hands-down obsessed with fashion design competitions. Too bad Dad and Marcus couldn’t stand them. “Boys will be boys,” Aunt Lulu always said.
Zoey walked over to the kitchen table without taking her eyes off the magazine cover for a second. She sat down on a chair and then gently let the magazine’s uncracked spine fall open to a random page. It landed on a perfume sample. It was the newest in a popular line of scents by a young fashion designer. Zoey closed her eyes and took a whiff, inhaling the amber and tuberose, and letting her mind wander. . . .
What if I were a fashion designer someday? she imagined. I’d get to look at pretty clothes and read magazines all day long! Maybe I’d make my own perfume too, and it would smell like . . . um . . . gardenias? Yeah. And maybe one day I’d be in Trés Chic’s “Day in the Life of a Designer” section! How cool would that be if it really happened?
It might have just been a daydream, but it sounded pretty amazing to Zoey. She sighed, put the magazine down on the table, and began to flip through the pages, scanning each spread to make sure she saw every square inch of it.
Beep-beep.
Zoey quickly lifted her head. Did she hear a beeping sound?
Yep, that was definitely her phone saying a text had just come in!
“Coming!” she yelled toward the muffled ringtone. She stood up and looked around the kitchen.
Beep-beep.
She twirled in place. Where exactly was her phone? She was sure she’d left it on the table . . . but it wasn’t there.
Maybe on the kitchen counter? Nope. She even checked inside the fridge.
She crawled around under the table in case it had dropped on the floor. Still no luck!
“Excuse me, Draper,” she said as she gently slid her hand under his belly. Maybe he fell asleep on top of her phone? His ear twitched and his leg kicked, but his snoring never stopped. She groaned and started to get up.
Beep-beep.
Okay . . . her phone had to be somewhere . . . somewhere very close. She had spent most of the morning planted at the kitchen table drawing imaginary outfits in her newest sketchbook. It was her favorite thing to do at Camp Lulu by far.
At the beginning of summer, Aunt Lulu noticed all the fashion drawings Zoey was doing on the back of used printer paper and started hanging them on the fridge.
When there was no space left in the “art gallery,” as Aunt Lulu started to call it, she surprised Zoey with a beautiful sketchbook tied with a big raffia bow. “I’m glad you’re saving the Earth, but drawings like yours deserve to be on something better than scrap paper, don’t you think?” she had asked. “Plus, I don’t want you to lose any of them!”
And the rest, as they say, was history—soon Zoey had filled a few sketchbooks with original clothing designs. Well, some were inspired by her favorite designers, like Blake and Bauer and the amazing Daphne Shaw, especially in the beginning. But most of them were unique, and her aunt loved them all.
Belle Payton isn’t a twin herself, but she does have twin brothers! She spent much of her childhood in the bleachers reading–er, cheering them on–at their football games. Though she left the South long ago to become a children’s book editor in New York City, Belle still drinks approximately a gallon of sweet tea a week and loves treating her friends to her famous homemade mac-and-cheese. Belle is the author of many books for children and tweens, and is currently having a blast writing two sides to each It Takes Two story.
Look for more It Takes Two books at your favorite store!
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT
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This Simon Spotlight edition June 2016
Text by Heather Alexander
© 2016 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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Designed by Ciara Gay
The text of this book was set in Garamond.
ISBN 978-1-4814-5267-0 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-5266-3 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-5268-7 (eBook)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015938114