“So, take some pressure off.”
“I’m all ears.” Maybe Ali was the wrong person to talk to. I mean, what kind of pressure had she dealt with? Bowling was worlds away from football. At least in Texas. In Texas, football was everything. “The pressure to win, impress recruiters, and get a football scholarship are real. I can’t make them disappear.”
“I sort of think you can. What’s your backup plan?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your backup plan if a football scholarship doesn’t work out.”
“I’ve got one plan. Football. Football has been my life since before middle school. It’s all I’ve dreamed about. It’s all my family has dreamed about. You don’t think I’m good enough?”
“I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is it might be a good idea to have a fallback in case the football thing doesn’t work.”
“That’s like planning to fail. That’s not how I roll. I focus like a laser on a goal and throw everything I have toward it.” I jumped off the tailgate, grabbed an apple from the ground, and threw it into the darkness. “Then when I’ve done my best and the cards are dealt, I’ll see what I’ve got.”
“I respect the passion, but if the pressure is affecting your game, then your method isn’t working, is it?”
“What about you? What if you don’t get a bowling scholarship?” I asked, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. Maybe I was a little defensive. “What’s your backup plan?”
“I’ve got three. Community college, work full-time until I have enough to pay for college, or go to trade school, like welding or something.”
“You want to be a welder?” I tipped my head down and gave her one of those “get real” looks.
“No, I don’t want to be a welder.” She rolled her eyes at me. “But it’s a viable option that pays enough to live on. Bowling scholarships are rare and competitive. I have better odds of winning the lottery than a scholarship. Bowling isn’t like football where they practically toss money at you like confetti in a parade.”
“If you won the lottery”—I moved in close, resting my hands on the tailgate on either side of her hips, and leaned in—“you wouldn’t need a scholarship.”
“Very funny.” Ali laughed and pushed my chest to get me out of her face. “Fine. Win the lottery. Now I’ve got four backup plans. What do you have?”
What did I have? Outside of football—not much.
“Apparently, a lot of thinking to do.”
15
Bowlers Have Balls
Ali
Pizza Party, Nov 2, 1 p.m.
“Are ten pizzas enough?”
“You did not order ten pizzas. Dad! I said seven girls, not a football team.”
“I wanted to make sure your friends get enough to eat. Plus, I had to cover everyone. Meat lovers, vegetarian, gluten-free, kosher, nondairy.”
“Dad, I love you. Especially this new mushy side of you I’ve never seen.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a mean, crusty old football coach. I don’t do mushy.”
“Of course you don’t. But seriously, it’s just a few friends.” I sent him a warning look. “Don’t get weird.”
“Define weird.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and sent him my “oh no you don’t” look.
“Kidding. I’m kidding. I’ll be as cool as I can manage. But between you and me, this is a good thing, kiddo. You’re making friends again. It’s good.”
The doorbell rang, sending Bella sprinting to the front door with a bark. Dad got a funny look on his face. It was the same look he had when I played a flowerpot in the school play in kindergarten.
“Dad…”
“I’m cool. Totally cool. Not being weird. Is it okay if I light the fire pit for you and your friends? It’s a nice place to hang out.”
“That would be okay. Thanks.” Dad headed out back while I took hold of Bella’s collar and opened the front door to welcome the first teammate who’d arrived. But it wasn’t just one of them. It was the whole team. “Did you all carpool together?”
“Yeah. We always do,” Shani said. “Gaby doesn’t have her license since she’s an exchange student. Ro is afraid to drive. Mari says carpooling today means our kids will have a planet tomorrow and Bhakti has to share her mom’s van with her sister.”
“So, it’s usually Shani.” Gaby shrugged. “But now that you’re going to be hanging out with us, we can squeeze into your Volvo. Which is retro cute, by the way.”
“Thanks. Come on in. Is everyone okay with a dog?” Bella sat whining, her tail swishing at full speed on the floor.
“We’re fine.” Gaby held her hand out. “Come here, pretty girl.”
Bella happily soaked up the attention.
“She’s adorable,” Shani said.
“She’s also a thief, so watch your shoes and zip up your purses.” I led the way to the back of the house. “I hope you guys are hungry because my dad went overboard on ordering pizza.”
“I ran three miles around the track, so I’m hungry,” Mari said. “Oh, but I don’t eat dairy, meat, or eggs.”
“Got you a vegan pizza,” I said. “Let’s grab some drinks from the fridge and carry the pizzas out back.”
We raided the refrigerator on our way through the kitchen, grabbing drinks and a bowl full of grapes. After lifting the lids on the pizza boxes everyone found a pizza they liked and carried them outside. It looked like Dad had finished getting the fire pit going.
“Dad, I want you to meet my friends. Shani, Gaby, Mari, Rowena, and Bhakti, meet my dad.”
“Girls.” My dad gave them a nod and a smile. “Great to meet you.”
“You too, Mr. Frost,” Mari said. “Oh, I love the fire pit.”
My dad stood like his feet had rooted to the ground until I cleared my throat and jerked my head toward the house.
“Right. I’ve got stuff, important stuff, to do inside. You girls enjoy.” He gave me a wink on his way into the house.
It was quiet for a second until the door shut behind Dad, and then they all turned to me wide-eyed.
“That’s your dad?” Shani asked. “I’ve seen him at our competitions, but I didn’t know he was your dad!”
“Holy moly! I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but your dad is hot,” Gaby said. “Smoking hot.”
“He looks like Chris Pine, only older.” Bhakti blinked, still staring at the door like she was waiting for another peek.
Rowena sighed. “Your mom is a lucky woman.”
My shoulders stiffened and I sucked in a breath. “My parents are divorced. It’s just me and my dad.”
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend?” Shani asked. “That’s crazy.”
“The divorce wasn’t that long ago. And it was kind of sudden.” I put two pieces of pepperoni pizza on my plate and moved over to one of the chairs that circled the fire pit. “I don’t think he’s ready to date yet.”
We all settled around the fire with our pizza and talked about school, and boys, a little bowling, more boys, calculus, the new hit song we couldn’t get enough of, and boys.
“I heard Paige cornered you at the football field.”
“How did you hear that already?” The memory was enough to take away my appetite.
“Giiirrrl, you’re dating Dax DeLeon. Everything you do is being talked about.”
“What did she say? Was she her normal snotty self?”
“Pretty much. She said if I didn’t break up with Dax, I’d be sorry.” I could still see her angry pinched up face as she hissed her warning. My stomach had twisted at her threat. It was a good thing my stargazing date with Dax was coming up. Once he met Dad, I could end this farce. I could take the target off my back and Paige and Gwen could go back to ignoring me.
That thought should have brought me peace of mind. It didn’t. Because the idea of not spending time with Dax anymore made my stomach twist even worse than Paige’s threat had.
“This is Paige were talking about,” Bhakti said. “I think she cracked the genetic code on mean.”
“That girl serves an all-you-can eat buffet of mean. But you’ve got Dax, so who cares about her?”
“Yeah, you and Dax. It’s pretty exciting. Is he a good kisser?” Gaby asked, and all eyes turned to me.
“Um… I don’t know.” Yikes! I didn’t want to talk about kissing Dax. I didn’t even want to think about kissing Dax. Although that hadn’t stopped me.
“You mean you and Dax haven’t kissed yet? Or you don’t know if it’s a good kiss?”
“Are you worried that you’re a bad kisser?” Rowena asked. “I worry about that too. I mean, how does a girl learn to be a good kisser?”
“My older sister practices by kissing the back of her hand,” Bhakti said.
“No. I’m not doing that.” I shook my head and laughed. “Honest, everything’s fine. The subject of kissing is closed.”
“Truth circle time.” Rowena moved to sit in the grass.
“What’s a truth circle?” I asked as we all joined her on the lawn, holding hands so the circle was complete. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not answering any more questions about kissing Dax.”
“It’s for team building,” Mari said. “We each tell one truth about ourselves that most people don’t know.”
“We started it at the pizza parties last year as a team bonding exercise,” Bhakti said. “Plus, it’s fun and sometimes hilarious.”
“Yeah it is.” Shani laughed. “Ali, you’re fresh meat, so you go first.”
They already knew my parents were divorced. No way was I going to mention what had happened at my last school. Or how angry I was at my mom. What else did I have? “Um… Oh, I keep a V-log and record something for it almost every day.”
“Fun! Is it on YouTube?” Gaby asked.
“Yeah, my private channel. It’s not a big deal, just a thing I started after my parents…broke up.”
“Oooh, I like that idea,” Shani said. “How do you do it? On a computer with a camera?”
“Sometimes. Most of the time I use my phone and upload it to my channel.”
Bella nudged her way into the circle, a piece of paper in her mouth, and dropped it onto Mari’s lap.
“Aw, she brought me a present!” Mari gave Bella a pat and opened the folded paper. “What did she—”
“Don’t open that!” But I was too late. I took a second too long to figure out what it was. Bella had raided my backpack.
“What the heck is this?” Mari frowned down at the note. “Oh, wow. This can’t be right. It’s a ransom note.”
“What?” Gaby leaned over Mari’s shoulder to look as the other girls closed in. “Where did it come from?”
“My backpack.”
“You know who took Mr. and Ms. Jackalope?” Rowena asked.
“No! I have no idea.”
“Where’d you get this note?” Shani took it from Mari’s hand for a closer look.
“It was a mistake! Someone slipped it in my locker, but they think I’m some other girl,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Bhakti asked. “Explain.”
So I did. I told them about the goons outside of Bowl-O-Rama and “Where’s the playbook?” and the milkshake. Everything.
“Some girl offered these jerks a football playbook?” Gaby cocked her head. “These guys are trying to cheat.”
“Did you tell someone?” Mari asked. “Your dad? Principal Barstow?”
“No. I didn’t want to worry my dad over a case of mistaken identity.” I’d never forget the pain in his eyes. “And the principal? I couldn’t—for a few reasons.”
“Like what?” Rowena blinked at me in confusion.
“For one, I never got a good look at them. I have no idea who they are or what they look like. I never even saw their car.”
“But you said they were big,” Gaby said. “They’ve got to be football players from a rival school.”
“Yeah, but which school? I see the problem,” Shani said.
“There’s another reason… Seven months ago I lost it. It was after my parents’ divorce and things were—not good—and I broke down.”
“What do you mean by ‘broke down’?” Bhakti asked. “Like an actual mental break down?”
“No, but according to the school psychologist at my old school… Yes,” I said. “Things happened and it was bad and kept getting worse. One day I snapped.”
“You’re one of the calmest, quietest girls at school,” Rowena said.
“Not that day I wasn’t.”
“You’re worried they might think you made it up?” Gaby frowned. “You know, like, for attention? Or maybe even that you imagined it?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Mostly though, is the fact that my dad is finally in a good place. There’s no way I want to give him a reason to start worrying about me again.”
Shani looked around at all of us nodding. “So, we handle this.”
“We? No—you guys don’t have to—”
“We’re friends, Ali. You can trust us. We’ve got your back,” Mari said.
“Absolutely,” Gaby said. “But why do we have to do anything? The fact that they’ve got the wrong girl doesn’t make it Ali’s problem.”
“The problem is they don’t know they have the wrong girl,” Shani said. “And now they’ve got Mr. and Ms. Jackalope.”
“We can’t let anything happen to those poor rabbits.” Mari clenched her napkin in her hand and her eyes teared up. “They need special care. Proper food and enough water. Rabbits can die of fright. A dog bark or loud music can give a rabbit a heart attack.”
“I hate to say this but I agree with Mari.” Bhakti looked around at us all. “I think we have to make the drop to save Mr. and Ms. Jackalope.”
“Meeting them at the bridge and handing over the playbook would get us close enough to see their faces.” Shani wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Then we can find them in a yearbook and turn them in.”
“Agreed. But how do we get our hands on the playbook?” Rowena asked. “By tonight?”
All eyes turned to me.
“If only we knew someone dating a football player…” Bhakti tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.
“No. I wouldn’t feel right handing them Dax’s playbook.”
“We can’t show up empty-handed,” Mari said. “We have to give them the playbook to get the rabbits back.”
“We could grab the playbook back as soon as they hand over the rabbits and run.”
“Outrun football players? That’s not going to happen.” Rowena shook her head vigorously.
“Hang on,” I said, as the wisp of an idea formed in my head. “What if we didn’t hand over ‘the’ playbook, but gave them ‘a’ playbook. We can make a fake one.”
“I like it.” Shani grinned.
“I’ll make it! There’s a printing shop right down the street from my host family’s house.” Gaby said. “I love the idea of tricking these jerks.”
Me too. Relief swept through my body now that I had a plan to resolve the situation and the fact that I wasn’t dealing with it alone.
“Whoa, wait. What about your date with Dax tonight?” Bhakti asked.
“I’ll make sure I’m home early.” Honestly, it was a good thing. The date was for my dad, not me. Keeping it short and sweet would help me remember that Dax and I weren’t real.
“Look at us,” Shani said. “Who would have thought our team of nerdy bowlers could be so badass?”
“It actually makes sense.” I smiled and couldn’t resist. “I mean, we’ve got balls. Bowling balls.”
16
You Lied to My Dad?
Dax
First Date, Saturday Night, 6:15 p.m.
My phone rang and I smiled seeing “Ali Frost” on my screen. She’d n
ever called me before but I liked it. I liked it a lot. I answered before the second ring.
“Hey, Ali Frost.”
“Don’t forget you have to come to my door and pick me up for the date. So that my dad can meet you.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Did she think I was raised by wolves? No, my Southern mama made sure all her boys knew how to be a gentleman.
“Lots of guys don’t. They sit in their car and text from the driveway.”
“All your old boyfriends, huh?”
She hesitated before saying, “Sure. Look—remember when you said you owed me one and I said I aimed to collect? This is it.”
“All I have to do is ring your doorbell and meet your dad? That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I shrugged. “I feel like I’m getting off easy.”
“After dealing with your ex, I agree.”
“Crap, Ali. Has she been bad? We can end this right now if she’s being vicious. You don’t need to put up with that. I’d hoped she would move on once she saw I was with someone else. It’s not like there’s a shortage of guys who want to go out with her.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“You let me know when it’s not. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Okay. I’ll be on your doorstep at seven o’clock.”
I rang Ali’s doorbell at six-fifty-nine. Maybe Ali was as anxious as I was because she opened the door right away.
“Hi, Dax.”
“You look…” She wore a pair of faded jeans and long-sleeved shirt the exact same shade of green as her eyes.
“Comfortable?” Ali raised an eyebrow at me.
“Well, yeah… But I was going to say pretty.”
“Thanks.” Her cheeks blushed a soft pink.
“Is your dad here? You know… So I can meet him?”
I heard a loud throat clearing from the room behind Ali as she stepped back to let me in.
“Dad?”
“I’m sitting here reading my magazine.” Her father rattled a magazine in front of his face from where he sat in a big leather chair. “Relaxed and cool, that’s me. I’m not an overprotective father waiting to grill my daughter’s date. Not me. No sir.”
Ali & the Too Hot, Up-to-No Good, Very Beastly Boy: A Standalone Sweet YA Romance (Jackson High Series Book 1) Page 9