Playing With the Boys

by Liz Tigelaar

  “What?” he asked, the panic in his voice rising. A bunch of the guys around the perimeter of the circle began to laugh.

  “You know the rules, Benji. Girls go together,” Tank called out mockingly.

  Benji glared at him. “Shut up.”

  Tank closed in on him, ready to fight. “What’d you say, punk?”

  “Nothing,” Benji answered, obviously intimidated.

  Tank smiled, pleased with himself. “That’s what I thought.”

  “You two,” Coach Offredi insisted. “Benji, into the ring.” He tossed Lucy the ball. It slipped through her fingers and onto the ground. Embarrassed, she grabbed it up quickly, then tucked the football into her right side, just as she’d seen Tank do.

  Benji stood across from her, looking as miserable as she did. This was the last place either of them wanted to be, squaring off against each other in front of everyone. The whistle blew.

  Lucy lunged forward, using all the momentum and strength she could muster as she slammed her body into Benji’s. Her hit caught him off guard because, clearly, he had decided to take it easy on her, just as she’d decided to go all out. He stumbled back and she hit him again, knocking him off balance and to the ground. Lucy made it to the other end of the circle.

  “No way!” Kevin laughed.

  Next to him, Caleb snarfed the water he was drinking. “Dude, now I don’t feel so bad… .”

  Lucy ran out of the circle, triumphant, casually tossing the ball back to Coach Offredi.

  Tank was doubled over, gasping for breath. “Oh, man. That girl just kicked your ass!”

  Ryan shook his head, impressed. “Nice hit, Malone.” Lucy smiled shyly. Who knew her last name could sound so sexy?

  Benji ripped off his helmet, shaking his head. Lucy could tell he was embarrassed. His face was bright red.

  “I was going easy on you,” he mumbled to Lucy.

  All the guys started to groan. “You making excuses now?” “Give it a rest, Mason.” “Wuss!”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know….”

  Benji tried to reassure her. “It’s okay. I mean, I wanted you to look good in front of the team. I just didn’t want to look quite so … bad.”

  Lucy felt a lump form in her throat. Benji had been so great to her—had spent so much time teaching her. “Benji—” she started to say.

  He stepped back. The guys were watching. “I’ll call ya later, okay?” he said quickly as he hurried off. By the time everyone gathered their equipment and went to hit the showers, Benji was long gone.

  nine

  Twenty minutes later, as Lucy emerged from the girls’ locker room, the last of the cheerleaders were clearing off the sidelines, and the football team was heading for their cars. It wasn’t dark yet, but the streetlights had already come on. She walked across the field. Her dad would be picking her up any minute, and was bound to ask how her biology project was coming along. She was already anticipating lying to him, and the thought made her sick. It would be so much easier if she could just tell him what she was doing.

  It was times like this when she missed her mom—her partner in crime, always helping to convince her dad to lighten up a little and not be so strict.

  Her mind wandered as she crossed toward the parking lot, remembering how her mom’s hands looked and the smell of her spaghetti sauce on the stove and—

  Suddenly, she was jarred out of her memories. Someone was grabbing her from behind, pinning down her arms, engulfing her in a bear hug. Panicked, she let out a frightened yelp.

  “Let go of me,” she screamed. But she was helpless. Paralyzed. A bunch of guys circled around her and she recognized them instantly. They were her teammates, now in their regular Tshirts and jeans. And they were laughing, as if this was some funny prank.

  “Get her arms.” Tank laughed.

  “And her legs,” Kevin reminded them.

  Nick and Adam whipped out a roll of industrial-size duct tape as they dragged her over to the goalposts, carrying her like a sack of potatoes. She couldn’t tell how many guys were there—fifteen, twenty—it felt like half the team. She could hear both Jimmys laughing. Together, the guys hoisted Lucy up to the top of the singular post and pressed her firmly against it.

  She heard the ripping sound of the tape and felt it wrap around her body, again and again, securing her to the goalpost right above the blue pads. The guys were cracking up as they tugged at her a little, to make sure she was on there tight; then they took off running. The whole sneak attack had taken less than two minutes.

  “Wait!” Lucy called after them, practically in tears. “Wait! You can’t leave me here!”

  As she watched the guys run for the parking lot, she made out a few more faces. She recognized Aidan, Devon, and Carl…. There was Daniel, Cope… and then there was Ryan. Lucy felt as though she’d been slapped. Ryan? She couldn’t believe it.

  She looked over, crushed, and to her surprise, realized that Benji was right beside her. He’d been taped to a goalpost too.

  “Benji?” she asked, shocked.

  Benji looked as pathetic and helpless as she did. “Guess I don’t need to call you later, huh?”

  Lucy wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It felt like hours, but maybe it had only been minutes. She and Benji were both too upset to speak. The tape was digging into her skin, cutting off her circulation. Eyes wet with tears, she hung there, stunned that her own teammates could be so cruel and so mean. She could make out the bricks of the building and the blades of grass on the field, but just barely. Everything was beginning to blur together. She wondered if she was going to pass out.

  Suddenly, in the distance, she saw someone. A girl.

  “Help!” Lucy yelled. When the girl didn’t turn, she screeched, “Please help me!”

  Mercifully, the girl turned at the sound of her voice and caught sight of Lucy hanging from the goalposts. Breaking into a sprint, the girl ran over, horrified. As she ran closer, Lucy saw it was Regan Holder. The whatever girl from her English class. The cheerleader.

  “Oh my God,” Regan gasped, clapping her hand over her mouth. “What happened to you?” Lucy couldn’t even look Regan in the eye. Another person witnessing this— especially someone as perfect and popular as Regan—was almost too much humiliation to bear.

  “The guys—they taped me up here,” she explained, her voice wavering a little. “Both of us.”

  Benji tried to comfort her. “Luce, it’s okay. They were just … being guys.”

  “How comforting,” Lucy mumbled.

  Regan reached up and grabbed a piece of tape. With a giant rip, she began stripping it off, piece by piece, until Lucy fell in a heap onto the ground. Regan did the same thing for Benji.

  “Are you okay?” she asked them both, genuinely concerned. “I mean, I’ve seen them do some stupid things before, but this is seriously twisted.”

  Lucy could barely speak.

  “Here, come on,” Regan said, helping her up. “Do you have a ride home?”

  Benji said he had his car.

  “I should call my dad,” Lucy said. Her dad had probably shown up and not seen her waiting. “He’s probably worried sick by now. I don’t even know what I’m going to tell him… .”

  “You could tell him I’m bringing you home,” Regan offered.

  “Oh, I can give her a ride,” Benji said quickly.

  “I don’t mind,” Regan insisted.

  Benji reluctantly agreed and gave a little half-wave to both girls. “See you tomorrow then,” he said. “And Regan … um, thanks.”

  Lucy and Regan walked in silence to Regan’s BMW and got in. They drove silently for a mile or so. Lucy could still feel the stickiness from the tape on her legs and arms. She wasn’t sure what to say, but she figured she should probably say something.

  “My dad—I didn’t exactly tell him I was playing football,” she began, then corrected herself. “Well, I told him I was playing. He said I couldn’t, and I did it
anyway.”

  Regan glanced over at Lucy from the corner of her eye. “Huh,” she said. Lucy failed to detect any judgment in Regan’s voice.

  “He’s going to kill me,” Lucy continued.“I don’t know why I even wanted to play stupid football anyway—this is all Martie’s fault.”

  “Ugh,” Regan groaned. “Martie drives me crazy. It’s like she’s trying to be thirty or something.”

  Lucy remembered the soccer girls talking about Martie’s birthday one day before practice. “Um, I think she is thirty.”

  “Whatever,” Regan interrupted, changing the subject back to football. “Those guys are serious jerks. All of them. People at this school can be such a-holes.”

  Lucy didn’t mention that she’d heard Regan had been exactly that to Charlie. This wasn’t the time to bring that up, she figured.

  “Oh, take a right here,” she said, remembering she was supposed to be the one who knew where they were going.

  “So what’re you going to do?” Regan asked. “About the team? Isn’t tomorrow supposed to be your first game?”

  Lucy nodded. It was the first game, but it wouldn’t be hers. “I’m quitting,” she said simply. Obviously, that was the only option. Tomorrow she would march into Coach Offredi’s office and tell him and his ugly walrus mustache to shove it. She was almost looking forward to it. They could lose every game for the rest of the season for all she cared.

  But before she could deal with Coach Offredi, she had to deal with her dad.

  When Regan pulled her car into Lucy’s driveway, almost careening into the garage, the front door flew open. Lucy’s dad rushed out, worried sick.

  “Lucy!” he yelled. She could see the look of relief on his face, even in the dark.

  “Thanks so much for the ride,” Lucy said quickly to Regan. She grabbed her bag from the backseat.

  Regan smiled politely. “Sure.” Then she added, “I know it’s hard to, you know, come to a new place and make friends. So if there’s anything I can do …”

  “How about talk to my dad for me?” Lucy joked as she jumped out of the car. She quickly rushed up to her dad, without a clue as to what she was actually going to say.

  Fifteen minutes later, after hearing her dad rant about how he had checked everywhere at the school (well, not quite everywhere) and how he’d been “this close” to calling the police, she still hadn’t come up with an explanation.

  “We agreed to meet at six,” he said, then finally asked the question she’d been dreading. “Where were you?”

  Lucy’s head spun.What could she say? She debated just telling him the truth. But why? It wasn’t like she was going back to the team. Not if this was how her teammates were going to treat her.

  All that would happen was that her dad would be pissed. Pissed that she’d defied him and joined the team. She would not only get a big “I told you so” about why she didn’t belong on the boys’ football team, and she’d probably be grounded for all eternity. If she thought her social life was nonexistent now, imagine what it would be if she couldn’t leave the rental house.

  No, “the truth” wasn’t an option.

  What she needed was a good excuse. She’d already used the class project, but he’d checked all the classrooms and the library, so that wasn’t going to hold up. She could say she’d taken off with friends, but that would seem irresponsible and would probably get her grounded as well. And why hadn’t she picked up her cell phone when he’d called (according to the “missed call” log, seventeen times), leaving four panicked messages?

  Then suddenly she had an idea.

  “I was locked in the women’s bathroom,” she lied, hoping desperately that he would buy it. Frankly, it wasn’t that hard to believe. She was clumsy. And it had happened before. Just in the past year alone she’d been trapped in ladies’ rooms three times: once on the plane to L.A., once at a Mexican restaurant, and once at Annie’s cousin’s apartment, where she’d had to climb out the window on the second floor to the fire escape!

  “What?” he said. “Locked in the bathroom?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded vigorously.

  “For all that time?” he asked. “Why didn’t you crawl out under the stall?”

  Hmm. Good question. She thought fast.

  “Well, it wasn’t that kind of bathroom. You know, with the stalls. It was the one-person kind. So it was the main door that locked. I’d slammed it really hard. And no one knew I was in there because it was downstairs, by the boiler room.”

  “The boiler room?” he asked. “What were you doing there?”

  Oh God. This was the problem with lying. It always required more lies.

  “Um, I was upset. About not making the soccer team. And about having to tell Coach Offredi that I couldn’t play football. And, um … people … other kids … they were making fun of me. You know, because of my clothes and Midwestern accent and … you know … it’s just hard. I don’t really fit in… .”

  Her father’s face softened. “So you went down there to kind of hide out?” he guessed.

  Sure. That sounded good. Right. Hide out.

  “Exactly,” she said. “I just … didn’t want to be teased by everyone.”

  Her dad thought for a minute. “Here’s the thing, kid,” he said warmly. “You can’t let other people keep you from living your life, from doing what you want. You’re not always going to fit in someplace, especially someplace new, and people, especially kids, can be jerks.”

  If she hadn’t been so freaked out, she would have smiled at her dad’s encouragement.

  “Seriously,” he insisted. “They can be. But the answer isn’t running away. It’s not letting the jerks win. You stay and you face them and you show them that you aren’t backing down… .”

  Lucy stared at her dad, taking in every word. He had no idea how appropriate his advice was—how scared she’d been tonight. She could feel her eyes welling up with tears.

  Her dad looked at her, worried. “Hon? What is it?” He pulled her chair close to him. “Lucy? What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, unable to answer. Try everything. She missed her mom. She missed trading clothes with Annie for school. She missed being on a team where her teammates actually liked her—or at least didn’t try to cut off her circulation with duct tape. She missed having a dad she could talk to about things, instead of hiding things from him.

  But instead she just said, “I don’t know.” She tried to compose herself. “It’s fine,” she quickly added. “I’m okay.” Over the years, she’d become good at putting on a brave face.

  Her dad put a firm hand on her shoulder. “I know this is tough, Luce. But so are you, okay? Just remember that. You’re tougher than you look. You know your mother dropped you on your head at least …”

  “… five times,” Lucy and her dad said simultaneously. Lucy smiled. Her mom loved to say she had the toughest head in the Midwest. Maybe now she had the toughest head in California, too. Both her dad and mom were right. She was tough. Tougher than Coach Offredi or any of those stupid boys were giving her credit for. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by their stupid hazing or pranks. And it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t ever going to be one of the guys. She was a girl. A determined girl who was a member of the boys’ football team. From here on out, she was going to act like it. Her dad, without even knowing it, had made her see that.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She smiled, giving him a tight hug back. “That really helped.”

  He tousled her hair, pleased, having no idea that his little speech had just convinced her to do the last thing he would have wanted. She was going back to the team.

  ten

  The following morning, as Lucy grabbed her bag for school, she made a startling discovery. Pom-poms.

  Rifling through it, she realized that she must have accidentally grabbed Regan’s bag while hurrying out of the car the night before. That meant Regan had her backpack, which she desperately needed. But it also meant something else—the perfec
t excuse she needed to keep her dad from knowing what she was up to.

  “You what?” he gasped as they drove to school. That was what? Big lie number two? Or was it three? She was losing track.

  “I joined the cheerleading squad!” Lucy explained. She couldn’t even believe she was uttering the words. She held up Regan’s pom-poms, pretending they were her own. “See?”

  “Between last night and this morning you joined?” he questioned, as if this were impossible … which, in fact, it kind of was.

  “Um, well,” Lucy stammered. Here came lie number four. “No. I joined yesterday. I just didn’t get to tell you about it. I’d been thinking about it, ever since the whole football thing didn’t work out. Regan—she’s the girl who drove me home… . Anyway, she said they needed a few more girls, so …” She trailed off, barely even knowing what she was saying. Was her dad actually buying this crap?

  “Aren’t you the one who said cheerleaders aren’t real athletes?”

  Lucy nervously tugged at the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Did I say that?” she wondered innocently. “I don’t think so.” Not only had she said it, she remembered exactly where she’d been when she’d said it. At Hillcrest’s homecoming game. She was sure she was so transparent he’d be able to see right through her.

  “It’s just, I love … you know … school spirit. And clapping.”

  Her dad raised his eyebrows but didn’t question her. “Well, I’m just happy you’re getting so involved. Maybe this will help you feel like you’re fitting in.”

  Lucy kept a fake smile plastered to her face. Fitting in was apparently not what she did best. However, lying? It turned out she was pretty good at that.

  And actually, this plan was perfect. The cheerleaders and the football players had identical practice and game schedules. It was the ideal cover, until …

  “So what time’s the game?” her dad asked enthusiastically.

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “The game tonight. What time? It’d be fun to see you out there. You know, with your pom-poms and school spirit.”

  Lucy gulped. Oh no.

  “It’s just—it’s my first game … and I don’t even know all the details. I mean, I just don’t think I’m ready to have you see me yet—I haven’t even had one practice with the team, and if I totally suck, well—”