Shaken Up

by Alex Morgan

  • • •

  The next morning I had dark circles under my eyes. Great! I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. It was definitely not the way I wanted to start a game day.

  My mom had arranged for me to ride to the game with Jessi and her parents, since both of my parents would be at Maisie’s game. It felt weird. I was so used to my pregame ritual of riding in the Marshmallow (that was what my family called our white minivan) with my ear buds in, listening to music to get me pumped up. Not that Jessi’s parents weren’t super nice, because they were, and I always liked hanging out with Jessi. But it just didn’t feel right.

  “Why didn’t you answer any of my texts last night?” Jessi whispered to me in the backseat.

  I sighed. “Because Maisie is clearly on this planet to ruin my life,” I said, before I launched into the sad tale of the kiddie dentist.

  Jessi, who didn’t have any brothers or sisters, shook her head in sympathy. “That stinks, Devin. Sometimes I wish I had a little sister, but not when I hear stories like that. Anyway, cheer up! Today is game day, the day you live for!”

  I hadn’t jumped out of bed this morning like it was Christmas. Instead I had dragged myself out, wondering what new disaster would happen today.

  I forced a smile for Jessi’s sake. “Yeah!” I tried to sound peppy, but I couldn’t convince myself—or Jessi.

  “You’ll feel better once you’re on the field,” Jessi said so confidently that I almost believed her.

  But things did not get better right away. When we did our pregame cartwheels, I fell over and ate grass. I halfheartedly chanted along with the rest of the team for “I Believe,” and during warm-ups I felt stiff and clunky.

  We were playing on the soccer field at Rancho Verdes Middle School. The field didn’t have bleachers, so people coming to the games had to bring their own chairs. It looked like a party, with a lot of the parents bringing coolers full of food and sitting under umbrellas.

  My face must have fallen when I didn’t spot my parents with the other families. Jessi noticed. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s just so weird not seeing my parents in the crowd,” I said. “I’m used to them cheering me on. I don’t see how they are going to make it to my game and to Maisie’s, too.”

  Jamie, who had been warming up next to us, looked at me. “Sorry, but you better get used to it,” she said. “It’ll be easier if you do.” But she didn’t say it in her usual bratty way. In fact, she almost sounded sympathetic. I looked at her for a second, unsure what to make of her comment. I was about to ask her what she meant, when Coach called us all together.

  “We’re facing the Grizzlies today. They’re undefeated. We’re going to need to put in our best effort,” said Coach Darby in her no-nonsense way. “Devin, Kelly, and Mirabelle, you’re starting as forwards. Get out there and get aggressive right away. We need to set the tone for this game from the start and force the Grizzlies to chase after that ball. We can’t give them an inch.”

  I felt a momentary surge of happiness. If Coach thought we needed to put our best foot forward and she’d chosen to start me, maybe it meant she did believe in me, even after that bad pass yesterday. I was determined to prove to Coach Darby that she could trust me.

  That was probably why I was way too overeager when I hit the field. The Griffons’ midfielders got possession of the ball immediately, and Kristin passed it to me. I shot forward to meet it and ran a little ahead of it to get as close to the goal as possible. I aimed and sent a perfect kick into the goal, just out of reach of the goalie’s outstretched arms.

  The referee’s whistle blew. “Offsides!” he shouted.

  I was so excited at the idea of scoring during the first few seconds of the game that I hadn’t realized that I had outrun the Grizzlies’ defenders, when I should have backed up to receive Kristin’s pass. Since I was offsides, the goal was no good. I heard our team groan in disappointment.

  “Pay attention, Devin!” Coach Darby yelled.

  And that wasn’t my only mistake. I was so shaken up that I missed an easy pass, and a Grizzlies defender came in and stole the ball. One of their forwards took it down the field and scored. Griffons 0, Grizzlies 1.

  I felt like the goal was totally my fault! Again I checked the spectators, hoping to see my parents’ faces to give me a surge of support so I could shake off the way I had been playing. But they weren’t there, and while I was looking for them, I missed another pass. The second in a matter of minutes! I couldn’t believe it. My face turned bright red. I felt totally mortified.

  My shoulders slumped as the whistle blew, signaling the end of the first quarter. Coach Darby was waiting for me on the sidelines.

  “Devin, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but we can’t afford these kinds of mistakes,” she said, as blunt as always. “You’re out and Jamie is in.”

  Jamie jogged onto the field without even looking at me. I slumped onto the ground, feeling completely embarrassed at how I had played. This was just like the last game all over again! Only this time it was bad playing. I couldn’t blame it on a shoelace.

  “You can’t win them all, Devin,” Katie, benched too, said to me. I guessed she was trying to cheer me up. But it just made me feel even more self-conscious.

  “Yeah,” I said as I fixed my eyes on the field, pretending to be absorbed in watching the game. Katie took the hint and didn’t say anything else, which was a relief. I didn’t feel like talking.

  The Grizzlies had turned up their aggressiveness and tightened their defense. Jamie had squeezed through their defense and had a clear path to the goal, when a Grizzlies defender slid toward her, looking like she was trying to trip Jamie. Yet at the last minute Jamie was able to deftly turn herself and the ball away, maneuvering around the defender and giving herself a clear shot at the goal. She took it and scored. Griffons 1, Grizzlies 1.

  When the Grizzlies saw how dangerous Jamie was, they overcompensated by concentrating on her. It gave Mirabelle some breathing room, and Sasha in midfield sent her a pass that led to another scoring opportunity for the Griffons. We were now 2–1.

  I heard a familiar voice cheering from the sidelines. I looked across the field and saw my dad, hooting and hollering about the goal my team had just made. He met my eyes and waved at me enthusiastically. Mom and Maisie, who was still in her soccer uniform, were sitting with him, clapping and cheering too. It felt so good to see them that for a moment I forgot how horrible I had played. Then I remembered and just felt terrible all over again. At least my family hadn’t been there to see it.

  After Mirabelle scored, the Grizzlies seemed unsure about who to cover. The defenders couldn’t control Mirabelle or Jamie, who were consistently breaking free and dribbling through the defense. They were aided by our midfielders and defenders, who were dominating the ball. With that kind of pressure, the Griffons were able to put two more balls into the net.

  When the game ended 4–1, my teammates went wild. After all, we had just beaten an undefeated team. Even though I joined the group hug and cheer, I felt totally empty. The win had had nothing to do with me. And yes, soccer was a team sport, but the only thing I had done this game was to help the Grizzlies score their only goal. I didn’t deserve to celebrate.

  I couldn’t get over the fact that my mistake had caused the Grizzlies to score. Yesterday I hadn’t helped my team at all. Today I had actually hurt them.

  I knew what Dad would say. Every player has a bad game. But this wasn’t one bad game; it was two. If I had thought before that I was losing my soccer mojo, now I was sure of it. The thing that I loved the most just wasn’t working anymore. Did that mean I wasn’t cut out to play?

  For the first time in my life, I thought about quitting soccer.

  On Sunday night Mom surprised me and Maisie at supper.

  “You girls have been behaving nicely since yesterday,” she said. “If you can both apologize to each other, I think we can restore your privileges.”

  Pr
ivileges—meaning I could finally video chat with Kara again! Apologizing was not going to be a problem, especially since I wasn’t feeling mad at Maisie anymore.

  “Maisie, I really am sorry I told you to shut up,” I said. “I was having a really bad day, and I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “And I’m sorry too,” Maisie said.

  We both looked expectantly at my mom.

  “Fine,” she said. “Your privileges are restored.”

  “Yay! TV!” Maisie cheered, and I hurried to finish my broccoli and brown rice. I couldn’t wait to talk with Kara! I hadn’t talked to her since Friday night, and I had so much to tell her—my two bad games, and the disastrous dentist trip.

  Kara’s eyes got wide when I finished my story.

  “You are not thinking of quitting soccer!” she said. “You can’t! It’s your life!”

  “But what if I’m not meant to play?” I asked. “I mean, just because you love something doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at it.”

  “But you are good at it,” Kara insisted.

  I sighed. “I haven’t been good at anything since the earthquake.”

  Kara’s blue eyes got so wide, I thought they might pop out of her head. “Devin, maybe you’ve been cursed by the earthquake!”

  I laughed. “Kara, how can an earthquake curse you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s when all your bad luck started,” she said. She ducked her head as she began typing on her keyboard. “You need good luck instead of bad. Let’s see if there is something on the Internet that will help.”

  Her eyes began skimming over her screen, looking at the search results. “This one looks good! Now repeat after me, ‘Bad luck, bad luck, you’re a schmuck, time to go in the garbage truck. Sun above and land below, time to make the good luck flow!’ ”

  I repeated the words after her, laughing the whole time. “Come on!” I cried. “This can’t be real. Somebody just put this on the Internet so people would make fools of themselves.”

  “Oh wait!” she suddenly cried. “You’re doing it wrong. You have to hop three times in a clockwise circle on one foot while you’re saying it. Like this!”

  Kara stood up and demonstrated. I could see only the middle of her body as she hopped around. She looked ridiculous! Then she looked back into the camera.

  “Okay, this may not be real, but it’s fun!” she said.

  I got up from my desk chair and started hopping on one foot in a circle as Kara read the words of the chant to me again. When I got to the part about making the good luck flow, I accidentally hopped right onto the leg of my computer chair.

  “Whoa!” I said as I toppled to the floor.

  The chair rolled away and fell onto its side as I heard Kara yelling, “Devin! Devin! Are you okay?”

  I staggered up and grinned into the computer camera. “No broken bones. I think I’ll live. But I don’t think it’s a good sign that I had bad luck right in the middle of the good luck chant!”

  Kara laughed just as my dad stuck his head into the room. He noticed the desk chair toppled over and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Devin, honey, are you all right?”

  “Kara and I were just trying to undo my bad luck. It didn’t work out so great,” I said as I pointed to the chair.

  “Hi, Kara!” My dad leaned into the camera and waved. “How are things going?”

  They chatted for a few moments while I righted my chair and wheeled it back over to the desk.

  “Devin, are you done talking to Kara? Could we talk for a little bit?” he asked. I nodded and said good-bye to Kara.

  “You’ll see!” Kara told me encouragingly before she signed off. “Nothing but good luck from now on!”

  “Let’s head outside,” said my dad. “It’s a nice night.”

  We went downstairs, and Dad flipped on the backyard light. It was almost fully dark. He jogged up to a soccer ball on the grass and passed it to me.

  “So what’s this about bad luck?” he asked with a frown on his face. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I made that bad pass yesterday, and today you missed it, but I made a really bad play. And it’s not just soccer. Everything’s been going wrong since the earthquake. I can’t sleep, and I think I failed a test, for the first time in my life!”

  I started dribbling the ball around the yard. It felt good to be moving instead of sitting around worrying.

  “So this all started with the earthquake.” Dad stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wish you had told me or your mother how upset you were about the earthquake. You didn’t say anything.”

  “I guess that’s because everyone else was acting like it was no big deal,” I said, coming to a stop in front of him. “Even Maisie didn’t seem bothered by it, and she’s younger than me.”

  “It’s a scary thing. It threw me, too,” he said.

  “You were scared?” I asked incredulously. I couldn’t believe it.

  He nodded. “Sure. The earth moved! That’s not something I’m used to happening. But then I reminded myself of all the safety plans we have in place as a family. That makes me feel better. And I also thought about how common earthquakes are. Minor ones happen thousands of times every day. Major ones are rare.”

  “They happen thousands of times every day?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yes, and most of the time you can’t even feel them,” he said. “So would it help if we went over our earthquake readiness plan and did a few more drills as a family?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I would like that, Dad.”

  Dad smiled. “We’ll have a family earthquake night when we can make sure we are totally prepared for another quake. We can even make it into a party.”

  I smiled. Leave it to my dad to make earthquakes fun!

  “You know, Devin,” he said, “part of the reason why the earthquake was so scary for me is because I like to be in control. I like planning out our dinners and knowing what I’m going to be doing at work each day and being prepared so I’m ready for it. There is no controlling an earthquake, only our response to it. I think you’re a lot like me. From the soccer field to your homework, you’re always in control. The earthquake has shaken that up for you. But once you feel balanced again, you’ll feel a lot better. What do you think?”

  Have I mentioned how much I love my dad? I gave him a hug.

  “One last thing, Devin,” he said. “I know you were upset about the soccer game today. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for all of it. I hope you know how much it means to me to be at your games. I’ll always do everything in my power to be there, cheering you on.”

  “It just felt weird not having you guys there the entire time,” I said. “But after it was all over with, I’m glad you didn’t see me play. I was terrible!”

  “You’ll get them next time, Devin,” he encouraged me. “Everyone has a bad game every now and then. Even the most famous soccer players in the world.”

  I knew Dad was trying to help. But that was the same thing he always told me when I had a bad game, and right now it wasn’t making me feel any better.

  “It wasn’t just one bad game; it was two,” I reminded him. “Two in a row.”

  And I think I’ve lost my soccer mojo and that maybe I shouldn’t even be playing anymore, I wanted to add, but I stopped myself. Kara was right—I did love soccer. Maybe this was just a slump.

  “Learn from your experience and move on, Devin,” Dad told me. “That’s all you can do.”

  I knew Dad meant well, but his lecture was just making me feel sad. So I decided to turn it around.

  “That’s not all I can do,” I said, and then I started hopping around in a circle on one foot, and Dad laughed. He started hopping around on one foot with me.

  Maisie ran out into the yard. “What are you guys doing?”

  “We’re getting rid of bad luck!” I told her.

  Maisie looked thoughtful. “I don’t have any bad luck. Can I do it anyway?”
>
  “Of course!” Dad called out.

  Maisie started hopping along with us. “I’m getting dizzy!”

  Soon we were all cracking up, and then we had a hopping race across the yard. (Dad won, but I think that was because he had the longest legs.)

  Maybe Kara’s hopping chant worked, and maybe it didn’t. But it definitely made me forget about my bad luck for a little while.

  I wished Kara’s chant had helped me get a good sleep that night, but it didn’t. I fell asleep right away, but during the night I dreamed about the earthquake again. This time soccer balls started flying at me from everywhere as the floor shook beneath my feet.

  I woke up with a start and looked at my clock—1:16. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but my heart was still pounding from the dream, and I couldn’t. I kept opening my eyes and looking at the clock. 1:33. 2:07. 2:59. 3:12 . . . When I finally did fall asleep, it felt like my alarm went off just seconds later.

  “Did you floss this morning, Devin?” Maisie asked me cheerfully as she dug into her bowl of cereal.

  “No,” I grumbled, and grabbed a protein bar off the counter.

  “Devin, you look so tired!” Mom said. “Have you been staying up past your bedtime?”

  “No,” I said. “Just a bad dream.” And then I yawned.

  This was the second night in a row when I hadn’t slept well. Which explained what happened next, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it.

  My first period class was algebra with Mrs. Johnson. I was pretty good at math, so when I’d first come to Kentville, I’d gotten placed in algebra with mostly eighth graders, even though I was only in seventh grade. At first it was awkward, but then I realized that Cody, who’s also in seventh grade, was in my class too. And so was Grace, my co-captain on the Kicks.

  When I got to class that Monday morning, I felt like I couldn’t keep my eyes open—and I didn’t. One minute I was listening to Mrs. Johnson talk about polynomials and exponents, and then the next moment I heard her saying, very loudly, “Devin! Head up from your desk, please!”

  I started awake and heard some kids laughing.