The Underdogs

by Sara Hammel

  All I felt was love.

  So there you have it—my whole story. As we say in my pack, Dogspeed, my friend.

  Epilogue

  I wouldn’t have survived that summer without Chelsea. She was like a furry angel who wouldn’t let me give up on myself. Those days when Chelsea had left my side, I was too dumb to see what she was trying to tell me.

  Every morning that summer she would hang outside the club’s front door to wait for me. She’d sit on her haunches, alert, eyebrows scrunched together as she looked out for me. Everyone who walked in or out would speak to her or touch her; there wasn’t a single person who didn’t at least smile at the regal, seventy-five-pound ball of love. She’d give them a wag or a cuddle, but beyond that she couldn’t be moved. She’d stay there until she caught sight of me walking from the back parking lot with Lucky. As soon as she saw me, she’d start jumping up and down and grinning, eyes shining and wide, her tongue flapping away, tail going ballistic. Some days near-hyperventilation would ensue.

  She’d stay with me most of the day, and the times she did go off on her own she’d always come back to me. I’d be sitting behind Court 5 reading, listening to music, thinking everything was hopeless, and in she’d trot, her nails making a click-clack sound on the concrete, smiling and wagging. She’d look at me expectantly. What now, Evie? What now? Let’s play! And we’d find some adventure, maybe go out back for a walk around the grounds and I’d laugh as she scurried after lizards or chased a bit of scrub brush blowing in the hot wind. Or sometimes we’d find somewhere to sit and watch the world go by.

  Chelsea had a beautiful face, with a wide jaw and a sweet wet nose, and the shiniest golden coat the color of spun gold. When I spoke of serious things she’d lie flat, her head resting between two paws with dog-calendar cuteness. Her whiskers would twitch sometimes when I cried, and sometimes she’d cry with me, little high-pitched whines. That would make me stop immediately. I never wanted to upset her. I’d cheer up for her, and she for me.

  The unconditional love in her eyes was always enough to soothe me. When I spoke to her, her eyes told me she knew me; her eyebrows would rise and furrow and react just like a human’s. Her giant, chocolate-brown eyes would change, too, and when I looked into them I felt like I was looking into a special soul who understood everything I was saying. It didn’t matter if it was true or not, because I believed it.

  When that humiliating encounter with Tad Chadwick and his friends happened, Chelsea was there, growling and barking at them with a ferocity I’d never seen from her, and I thought Tad was going to pee his pants. For effect, she’d even shown some teeth. When it was over and she came back to the storage room with me and put her head on my knee and wagged furiously, I almost felt human again. When Annabel died and I was terrified and my father wasn’t able to make me feel safe, Chelsea did. The love and joy in her eyes brought me so much comfort that sometimes I almost cried from relief; maybe that day wouldn’t be so dire, after all. I wouldn’t have to walk through that packed lobby alone. I’d have one of the club’s most beloved members by my side, and there was nothing I could do to make her love me any less.

  Every day I see the beauty of her understanding and the purity of her loyalty. There is a perfection about dogs we humans will never achieve, even the best of us. The dogs who drag their owners out of burning houses, who sniff out skin cancers on their leg, who guide their blind masters across deadly streets and through hazards they cannot see. Dogs understand more than we realize, sense things we’ll never see, give more than they take.

  They’re here for a purpose, and Chelsea’s was to be my guardian angel. Because when I saw her face every day as I lumbered toward the building that held all the people who thought I was a useless speck of nothing, it confirmed what I believed about myself.

  And every time I rounded that corner and saw Chelsea waiting for me, I knew I was somebody who mattered.

  I can see Chelsea right now. She’s far away from where I’m standing, but I smile at the sight of her golden curls. This is my moment, maybe the only chance I’ll get. Seeing Chelsea clears my mind. I’m hopping on my toes and focusing on my breathing as the warm-up begins.

  It’s my first tournament ever. I’m steeling my mind, the way Will taught me, to be tough and treat this like any other match. But it’s hard when you’re playing a girl who was born with a racket in her hand and is rumored to be quitting school next year to hit the pro circuit. She’s number one in New England in the fourteen-and-unders.

  It’s the last tournament of the summer and it feels only slightly less steamy than the August Annabel died. Beyond the stadium are woods and grasslands and even in here we can hear the buzz of the cicadas, which will be gone soon. I am thirteen, about to go into my last year of junior high. I have become an athlete in one year, strong and fit and happy. I’m still not as skinny as they seem to want—the popular girls at school, the boys in my class, the fashion magazines I try to avoid. I’ve sprouted up to five feet eight inches already, so I can handle a little extra weight, and personally I think I carry it well.

  Luckily, I have tennis, and Will, and we only care about how fast I can move and how hard I can hit my serve and still get it in. Serene helps, too. She is a friend now, and we even sit together at lunch at school sometimes. We just deal with whatever comes our way, she often tells me, eyes twinkling, and kick butt on the tennis court.

  My players’ box is full. Oh, wait—did I mention I’m in the finals of my first-ever tournament? The championship matches of each age group at this massive event are held at the Yale Bowl, a modest stadium in Connecticut that nonetheless reminds me of a big-deal Grand Slam–type tournament so I am trying not to freak out. Will is sitting next to Lucky, and Goran is there with his new girlfriend. He easily won the boys’ eighteen-and-unders yesterday—launching him firmly from number two to number one in New England, so he’s riding a major high—but he stayed in New Haven to cheer me on. My mom sent flowers from Portland, where she’s still finding herself.

  My dad, Will, Beth, and Chelsea are sitting in the front row. There are no dogs allowed inside the Yale Bowl, but Beth pulled off a miracle with her renowned bull-in-a-china-shop fearlessness. I hear she really laid it on thick about me and Chelsea. When the usher heard the story, he voluntarily pronounced Chelsea a service dog, winked, and let her in. I can’t take the underdog’s dog away from her, he’d said with a smile. No way.

  My friend is slower on her feet now. I mean, she really didn’t need a bullet to the chest after all she’d been through, but I know she’s happy. She still bounds about, still loves me, still sits courtside when I train, still helps me gather up balls when lessons are over, still watches out for Beth and me.

  I get the signal and I walk to the net for the racket spin for serve. Starting in ninety seconds, I will either pull off one of the biggest upsets in New England junior tennis history, or I will do exactly what is expected of me and lose, maybe humiliatingly badly. I inhale the smell of summer’s end, and I wonder if I will beat this girl, and I wonder how long we’ll have Chelsea with us given her health challenges, but I’m not going to worry about either of those things. What will happen will happen, and I’m not going to waste precious time carrying a sadness about things I have no say over, things that might never happen. If and when life takes a new turn, we’ll deal with it then. Chelsea taught me that.

  After a brisk warm-up, I take my position halfway between the baseline and the service line, the crowd goes silent, my opponent serves, and from that moment on I never take my eye off the ball.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  (major spoiler alert!)

  I got to tell this story because my indomitable agent, Steven Chudney, took hold of my book and wouldn’t let go; because the brilliant Janine O’Malley championed it and made it readable and beautiful with help from Angie Chen, Andrew Arnold, and their team; and because I was lucky enough to have family and friends who helped along the way and always believed I would someday be in prin
t even after five hundred million rejections: Chris, Vicki (Mom), Jed, Liza, Jason, Samm, Christi, Rob, Linda, George, JIB, Angie, Ed, Bob and Anne, Laurie Anne Tarkington, Cheryl Holmes, Eileen Makoff, Peggy Davis, Tania Schnapp, and Rebecca Tauber (you are missed). THANK YOU, ALL.

  Huge thanks to the people who first paid me to write, or then helped me do it better, to name but a few: Bryan Alexander, Simon Perry, Monique Jessen, Sally Bray, Nicky Briger, Bill Holstein, Judith Chilcote, Kristin Lindstrom, and the gang back at the paper—Rus Lodi, Mike Sereda, Gene Cassidy, Dwight Blint, Scott Matson, Meredyth Inman, Andrea Haynes, and many more.

  And here’s to the eighties tennis/pool/frozen yogurt crowd who helped inspire Evie’s story: Peter Blacklow, Kathy Bradford, Maura Bannon, Ross “Just One Pepsi” Ginsberg, Megan Kelly, Katherine Parker, Shane Sibley, Cori Sibley, David Stolle, and to David Brown for saying nice things when I was young (keep saying them to your tennis kids; we remember even if you don’t).

  To my friends in the rescue community who I’ve watched risk their sanity and their relationships to save animals like Chelsea, I salute you. I hope this book will help educate those who aren’t aware about the extent of pet overpopulation in this country, and about how thousands of sweet, perfect dogs and cats are euthanized each year because of a lack of spaying and neutering and a culture of overbreeding. There is almost no breed or age of dog or cat you cannot find in a shelter or with a rescue organization. Visit your local shelter to find your own Chelsea. Our fosters and rescues have been the biggest gifts, and we thank Los Angeles–based Molly’s Mutts and Meows and Connecticut’s CT Animal House, who allowed us to foster and save abandoned dogs Brody, Billy, and Maggie; and Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter for giving us Guinness. (All are local, grassroots organizations that survive on donations.) When people abandon their pets, it’s saviors like Molly Wootton, Chris Lamb, Mary Beth Stark, and their dedicated teams who rescue them, often from death row. Save a life—adopt, don’t shop. Let’s clear the shelters.

  To all the underdogs, human and otherwise—this is for you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sara Hammel is a former ranked tennis player and an award-winning journalist with more than fifteen years’ experience writing for major publications including People, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), U.S. News & World Report, Glamour, and Shape. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Floorplan

  August 4

  After

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  Epilogue: Evie

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

  Text copyright © 2016 Sara Hammel

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  eBook edition, May 2016

  mackids.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Hammel, Sara.

  The underdogs / Sara Hammel. — First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: “A shy, overweight 12-year-old & her best friend take on the case of a popular 16-year-old who died mysteriously leading to a breathtaking surprise twist”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-374-30161-3 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-0-374-30163-7 (e-book)

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Country clubs—Fiction. 4. Dogs—Fiction. 5. Overweight persons—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.1.H363Und 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015018069

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  eISBN 9780374301637