Nancy Clancy, Soccer Mania

by Jane O'Connor

  Nancy nodded.

  Then they did a cheer expressly for Lionel. That meant it was just for him. Nancy had made it up last night.

  “He tells jokes like no one can. But we’re not joking—Lionel’s the man!”

  Shaking their pom-poms, they leaped in the air.

  “You guys are the best—no joke,” Lionel said. Then he joined the Dolphins and their coach. As he walked off, he looked like a prisoner going to his doom. His Dolphins shirt hung down so low, it looked like a dress!

  Five minutes later the game started.

  Watching Lionel play was painful. There was no other way to describe it. The only time he captured the ball was when he caught it—in his arms.

  Then, in the final minutes of the game, with the Dolphins behind 5–3, something really and truly painful happened.

  Lionel was playing midfield after sitting out all of the second and third quarters. He was running after the ball. He didn’t see a big kid from the other team barreling toward him from the side of the field. The other kid was signaling for the ball. He didn’t see Lionel.

  Wham! They slammed into each other. Lionel fell backward and landed with his leg twisted in a weird way.

  “Ooooh!” Both sides of the field gasped.

  “This looks bad!” Nancy whispered.

  Bree had both hands clapped over her mouth. Her eyes were squinched shut. “I can’t look. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Nancy started reporting. “Lionel can’t get up. Both coaches are running over to him. His mom too. The kid who banged into him is okay. But he looks really upset.” Nancy paused. The coaches were lifting up Lionel. “Okay. The coaches are carrying Lionel off the field now. They’ve got him under his arms. You can look. I don’t see blood.”

  Bree cracked open her eyes a tiny bit.

  They watched Lionel pass by and waved their pom-poms at him. He managed to wave back. His face looked even greener now.

  Nancy and Bree led the Dolphins in a cheer.

  “Gimme an L, gimme an I, gimme an O, gimme an N—”

  They didn’t get to finish spelling Lionel’s name before his mom’s car sped off. It was all very dramatic—like a scene out of a movie.

  Back at Bree’s that afternoon, they called Lionel several times and left voice messages.

  Finally around four o’clock, he called. “I didn’t break anything. It’s just a really bad sprain. My mother took me to a bone specialist.”

  “A what?” Nancy and Bree both asked at the same time.

  “A doctor who knows all about bones. The guy is friends with my parents. His patients are all famous athletes.”

  Ooh la la! That was glamorous.

  “I have crutches.”

  Double ooh la la!

  “I feel terrible,” Bree said. “We didn’t bring good luck. We brought bad luck.”

  “No. You’re wrong. You did bring good luck. I can’t play for the rest of the soccer season!”

  Lionel hobbled around on crutches for a whole month.

  At recess kids raced against him with two legs tied together. Like in a three-legged race. Lionel sometimes beat them. “I’ve never won a race before—ever!” he’d say proudly. “I’m a much better athlete on crutches.”

  Throughout October Lionel arrived every Saturday for the Green Goblins games. The Goblins lost all of them.

  At the last game, Grace’s mother joined the halftime huddle and told the Goblins what they were doing wrong. She kept butting in while Nancy’s dad was talking. Finally, her father said, “Thanks for the tips. But I think it’s confusing for the girls to hear two of us.”

  Grace was glaring at her mom.

  When the game was over, Nancy overheard Grace’s mother saying, “There is no excuse for the way you played today.”

  “Mom, you make me nervous when you run down the field screaming while I’m trying to play!”

  Grace didn’t come to the King’s Crown afterward. So there was pizza left over. Nancy’s father had brought it home, and now it was wrapped in foil in the fridge.

  Around four o’clock Nancy decided a slice of pepperoni was just the thing to give her extra brainpower. She needed it. She was suffering from writer’s block. That meant she was stuck trying to come up with an idea for a short story. For Monday she had to write one with lots of Superb Synonyms.

  After heating up a slice of pizza in the microwave, Nancy sat in the kitchen and pondered. She wanted her story to star Lucette Fromage. She was a nine-year-old girl Nancy had made up. Lucette had many superb adventures.

  Nancy’s mom joined her at the kitchen table. She had her laptop out and was searching for costume ideas for JoJo. Halloween was only a week away.

  “What about a deep-sea diver?” Nancy suggested. JoJo and Freddy were always going around in goggles and flippers pretending to search for treasure.

  “I suggested that. But Freddy is going as a deep-sea diver. JoJo wants to be different. So far everything I suggest is either too babyish or too scary.” Her mother kept her eyes on the laptop screen. “She’s not even sure she wants to go trick-or-treating. She’s worried other kids will look too scary.”

  Nancy folded over her pizza and let some grease dribble onto her plate. “How come JoJo’s such a fraidycat all of a sudden?”

  “Oh, it’s just a stage she’s going through. It will pass.”

  JoJo appeared at that very moment. She hopped on their mother’s lap while Mom continued to look for costume ideas. JoJo shook her head at every suggestion.

  Princess? No.

  Puppy? No.

  Dinosaur? Definitely no.

  All of a sudden, before she could take back the words, Nancy said, “Want to be a cheerleader with Bree and me?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” JoJo jumped off Mom’s lap and threw her arms around Nancy.

  “Stop!” Nancy pushed her sister away. “You’re getting pizza grease on me!”

  “I’m telling Freddy! Right now!” JoJo zipped out of the kitchen.

  Her mother closed the laptop. “Without a doubt, you are the best sister ever.”

  “No, Mom. ‘Best’ is a boring word. I am the most spectacular sister ever!”

  The pizza worked. Almost as soon as she took the last bite, a story idea popped into Nancy’s head. It was going to be about soccer, and since it was almost Halloween, she’d make it a spooky soccer story.

  On a bookshelf in the living room Nancy found the thesaurus. It was a special kind of dictionary—there was one in 3D’s classroom too. You could look up any word in the thesaurus to find words that meant the same thing. Whoever invented the thesaurus was a genius!

  The Bewitched Soccer Ball, Nancy wrote at the top of the paper. She made sure the story was loaded with Superb Synonyms. There was one in almost every sentence!

  Lucette Fromage was the most superlative runner on the Scarlet Robins. She expected the team to triumph today. But every time she attempted to dribble, the ball stopped all on its own and rolled away. It was spooky. It was eerie. It was supernatural! Had someone on the opposing team cast a spell on it? Oui, oui, oui. That was exactly what had occurred.

  Superlative—best

  Scarlet—red

  Triumph—win

  Attempt—try

  Eerie, supernatural—scary

  Occur—happen

  An hour later Nancy was done. Lucette figured out who was bewitching the ball. Lucette first told the girl to stop being a bad sport. When that didn’t work, Lucette bribed her with some candy and the girl un-bewitched the soccer ball.

  Not only was the story entertaining, it was almost two pages long. It ended with Lucette scoring the winning goal—a header—for her team. Nancy made a cover for her story. On it the soccer ball was boinging off Lucette Fromage’s head. Nancy loved creative writing because you could make everything work out exactly the way you wished it would in real life.

  The next week whizzed by. Soccer practice got canceled both times. Once because of rain and once because Nancy’s
dad had to work late. Nancy and Bree made up for lost time by doing drills in the backyard.

  During recess everyone on the Green Goblins practiced too.

  “You really are improving,” Bree said after Nancy kicked a ball past her to Wanda.

  “You think?” Nancy was trying her best. Each night, after her homework was done, Nancy even went over the soccer tips from Bree.

  “Oh yes,” Rhonda agreed. “You’re running faster. You don’t look all—” Rhonda started flapping her arms and legs as if she were a rag doll.

  Since Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, Ada M. Draezel Elementary School was celebrating it on Friday.

  The day before, the kids in 3D decorated their classroom. A sign on the door said, Enter if you dare! Ghosts made out of paper chains hung from the ceiling. Fake cobwebs covered Mr. Dudeny’s desk, the bookshelves, and the windows. A lot of the cobweb stuff was left over. So Lionel wrapped himself in it, and voilà, he was a mummy. But by the end of the day he had pretty much unraveled.

  Before the last bell, everybody took home a few index cards from the tombstone shoe boxes. The kids were supposed to tape them on their ghost costumes. Nancy had “nice,” “bad,” and “excited.” Bree had “sad,” “pretty,” and “awesome,” which she still didn’t think should count.

  Right after lunch on Friday, the ghosts of 3D got to parade through the hallways moaning the boring words taped on their sheets. There were flowery ghosts, striped ghosts, and polka-dotted ghosts. It turned out nobody’s family used white sheets anymore.

  “I don’t think we look very scary,” a ghost whispered in Clara’s voice. The ghost was wearing a Sesame Street sheet.

  “Same here.” Nancy had on an old Strawberry Shortcake sheet. Have berry sweet dreams! was printed all over it. “This was the only one my mom let me have.” Then she continued moaning. “‘Nice’ . . . ‘Bad’ . . . ‘Excited.’”

  It turned out there were a ton of Superb Synonyms for “excited.” And it was interesting how that one word could mean such different things. You could be excited in a happy way. The word for that was “thrilled.” Or you could be excited in a nervous way. The word for that was “anxious.”

  By Saturday evening Nancy was both thrilled and anxious. She was thrilled because it was Halloween. She was anxious because the last game of the season was only seventeen hours away.

  Nancy returned from trick-or-treating with a pillowcase full of candy. She and Bree held a weigh-in. Ooh la la! They each had hauled in more than two pounds!

  Right before Bree went home, they traded. Nancy gave Bree her Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and red licorice in exchange for all of Bree’s mini Snickers and Tootsie Pops. Yet Nancy found that she couldn’t eat much candy. Thinking about the final game made her lose her appetite. And that night she had insomnia. It took her ages to fall asleep.

  It seemed like only a minute later that her mom was telling her to get up and get ready.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, JoJo was back in her Halloween costume. “I’m going to cheer for you.”

  “Merci!” Nancy said sleepily. “But remember, Lionel will be there. He is not really a goblin. It’s only Lionel.”

  After breakfast, Nancy went and found her pom-poms. She handed them to JoJo. “Here. You can borrow these.”

  JoJo shook the pom-poms and shouted, “Yay, me!” as the Clancys piled into the car.

  It was the Green Goblins versus the Silver Streaks. The last game. The season finale.

  “Oh boy! I know some of those girls from our travel team,” Rhonda said. “They’re good.”

  “As in great,” Wanda added. “See that girl with the red hair? Number eight. She can even do behind-the-back dribbles!”

  “That’s not a problem,” Nancy’s dad said. He had everyone gathered in a huddle. “When we’re playing against a good team, what happens?”

  “We play better!” Bree said.

  “Exactly!” Nancy’s father said.

  Well . . . not exactly.

  In the first quarter the Silver Streaks scored. Twice.

  Nancy was goalie. The first time, the ball hit the net before she even realized a striker had kicked it. The second time, the ball zoomed way over Nancy’s head.

  As Nancy came off the field, JoJo was jumping up and down. “Yippee! Yippee!” she yelled.

  “JoJo, you cheer when we score, not them,” Nancy explained. Then she turned to Bree. “All that practicing—I thought I was getting better. Almost mediocre. But I still stink.”

  “Nobody could have stopped that last goal—except maybe a giant.”

  Nancy sat out the second quarter next to Lionel. They shared some of his Halloween candy until bees arrived and circled around Nancy’s head. She swatted them with a towel. Bees! How could there still be bees? It was November!

  The second quarter went no better than the first. Well, it did go a little better. The Silver Streaks only scored one goal, not two.

  At halftime the score was 3–0. Nancy’s dad gathered the team around him.

  “I know what you’re going to tell us,” Grace said. She was sucking an orange slice and sounded bored. “You’re going to say the score isn’t important.”

  “That’s right. It isn’t.” Nancy’s father reminded the Goblins that there were two quarters left in the game. “We are going to play hard and finish the season the way we started. As a team.” Then he made everybody do a palm pileup and shout, “Go, Goblins!”

  The third quarter began and—lo and behold!—the Silver Streaks started making mistakes. Nancy was playing midfield. A player didn’t notice where the last defender on her team was. Instead of slowing down, she sped up.

  “Off sides!” The ref blew his whistle.

  Tamar took the ball for the free kick. No one was defending Bree. Tamar passed to Wanda, who passed to Bree for a kick that the Silver Streaks’ goalie missed.

  The Goblins scored!

  “Way to go, Bolt!” Nancy’s dad screamed.

  “Gimme a B, gimme an R . . . ,” Lionel started cheering.

  Nancy wanted to run over and high-five Bree. But the Streaks were already in position and ready to kick off again. A Streaks player sent the ball soaring in an arc high in the air. Nancy watched as it rose up, up, up before it started to drop.

  Sacre bleu! The ball was heading right for Nancy! A Streaks defender nearby moved in closer to her.

  Oh, no, you don’t! Nancy thought. This one is mine! She took a step back, her eyes still locked on the ball.

  And then . . .

  And then Nancy panicked.

  A bee—a big, fat, hungry-looking one—was buzzing toward her!

  She forgot about the soccer ball flying at her. She crouched down and covered her head.

  Too late! The bee zapped her in the neck. Nancy shot up from the pain.

  Zwock! She got zapped again. This time in the face.

  Was it another bee?

  No! It was the soccer ball. It smacked her in the nose. Hard.

  The next thing Nancy knew she was lying facedown on the ground.

  “Medical emergency!” she heard Lionel yelling.

  In a flash her father was beside her. Lots of Goblins too.

  “Are you okay?” her dad was asking.

  “I think so.” Nancy rolled over. She kept her hands cupped over her nose. Sacre bleu! Did it hurt!

  “We just scored!” Bree told her. “After you stopped the ball.”

  “With your face,” Grace added. “And then I scored.”

  Nancy sat up. Her upper lip felt wet and sticky so she wiped it with the back of her hand. “You mean the score is now three to two?”

  Bree did not reply. She was staring at Nancy’s face. All of a sudden Bree’s eyeballs rolled back in her head and her legs got wobbly.

  “Timber!” Lionel shouted as Bree fell to the ground.

  After Bree came to, her parents wanted to take her home. But she refused. “No way am I leaving before this game ends.”

  Sh
e and Nancy were sitting in beach chairs that Nancy’s mom had brought. There were umbrellas attached to the arms.

  Nancy’s nose stopped gushing blood once her mother put ice on the back of her neck. That also made the bee sting feel better.

  “I can’t believe I fainted!” Bree kept saying. She held a wet towel pressed to her forehead. “Was it like in a movie? Was it very dramatic?” Then suddenly she stopped talking. “Oh, look! Clara just kicked a nice ball.”

  “Clara?”

  “Yes, and Wanda’s got it. She’s heading downfield!”

  Nancy and Bree both jumped out of the beach chairs to watch the action.

  A couple of the Silver Streaks tried to overpower Wanda and steal the ball away. But she was too fast for them. Down the field she charged. When she saw that Rhonda was open, she side-kicked to her. Rhonda took control of the ball. Tap, tap, tap, she dribbled the ball from foot to foot. She was way past the center line now. Wanda was running right beside her. As soon as she got a little bit ahead, Rhonda whizzed the ball over to her.

  “Go, Double Trouble!” Nancy’s dad was screaming. “You can do it!”

  Now all the Goblins parents were on their feet, cheering.

  Wanda was no more than ten feet away from the Streaks’ goal. Streaks defenders were gaining on her.

  “Take your shot!” Nancy’s dad yelled. “Kick that sucker now!”