Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer

by Rue, Nancy

  “Guess what?” Carla Rosa said. “I think Dusty’s crying.”

  “Tell them I’m fine,” Dusty whispered to Lucy.

  “You’re not,” Lucy whispered back.

  “Dusty?” Mrs. DeMatteo said. “Veronica, did you hurt Dusty’s feelings?”

  “Why is it always my fault?”

  “Because you are a drama queen — ”

  While Veronica and her mother batted that back and forth and Carla Rosa and Januarie looked on like they were watching a TV show, Dusty lifted her face and gave Lucy a watery smile.

  “I am fine now,” she said. “I’m glad we finally talked.”

  We hadn’t, and Lucy had more questions than she had answers.

  What was happening to her Los Suenos Dreams? Why had soccer turned into a nightmare?

  And who in the world was Zen?

  Mrs. DeMatteo stopped the van in the parking lot, and the doors flew open. Veronica flounced out of the front seat, and Januarie shot from the second seat like Godzilla was after her.

  “Guess what?” Carla Rosa said.

  “What?” Lucy and Dusty said together. Dusty giggled.

  “Januarie has something she’s not supposed to have.”

  Lucy sighed. “What is it?”

  Carla Rosa shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do you — ”

  “I can just tell. Guess what — she can’t get in trouble or those foster care people will take her — ”

  Dusty squeezed Lucy’s arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell J.J.”

  She ran off happily with Carla Rosa, leaving Lucy feeling like her head was on backward.

  The instant Lucy sat on the bench to put on her cleats, Rianna appeared beside her as if somebody had beamed her down from a spaceship. Lucy concentrated on her shoelaces to keep herself from shoving her off the end. There just wasn’t room for her bullying right now.

  But Rianna’s voice was high and light as she said, “For you, Rooney,” and put a piece of blue paper in Lucy’s lap. “Here’s one for you, Sarah — Kayla — ”

  Rianna handed out a whole stack of blue papers as if she were distributing Halloween candy. Lucy forced herself to look at hers. It was probably guidelines for flopping and charging and obstructing.

  Lucy felt her eyes bug, though, as she read the words typed at the top in bold red letters: FAIR PLAY CODE.

  Was she kidding?

  * Play fair.

  * Play to win, but accept defeat with dignity.

  * Observe the laws of the game.

  * Denounce those who attempt to discredit our sport.

  Lucy blinked. She wasn’t even sure what that one meant, but it didn’t sound like something Rianna believed. Neither did the last item.

  * Use soccer to make a better world.

  “You wrote this?” Sarah said. She looked as if she sincerely doubted it.

  Coach Neely looked up from her copy. “It’s the FIFA Fair Play Code.”

  “Didn’t I put that on there somewhere?” Rianna said.

  Lucy looked. She hadn’t. She’d made it look like she made it up herself.

  “What’s FIFA?” Waverly said, not smiling, as usual.

  “Excuse me for being a moron,” Patricia muttered.

  “This is great, Rianna,” Coach Neely said, but she looked a little uncomfortable, like she had a piece of meat between her back molars. “Do you have permission to hand this out though? Hawke has to okay any flyers — ”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rianna straightened importantly. “I had a lo-o-ong talk with him yesterday because — ” She looked around, like there might be spies in the group.

  “Because what?” Coach Neely said. “You can trust your team.”

  Lucy chomped down on her lip.

  “Okay, well.” Rianna tossed her ponytail. “I went to him because I found out that some people — on other teams, not ours — aren’t playing by the rules. They’re, like, playing dirty and then saying it’s only cheating if you get caught.”

  Lucy knew her mouth had fallen open, but she couldn’t close it.

  “I told him I didn’t want our camp to be like that,” Rianna went on. “And I asked him if I could hand out a flyer.”

  “You made this yourself ?” Coach Neely said. She took off her sunglasses. She was clearly impressed.

  “Oh yeah. It’s not that hard with a computer. And I was really into it.”

  “We should all be into it.” Coach Neely gave Rianna one more admiring look before she put her sunglasses back on. “Rianna’s set an example for us — what do you say we set one for the rest of the teams?”

  Taylor snorted. Patricia muttered something. Everyone else looked at Lucy, for no reason she could figure out. But the only face she could look back at was Rianna’s. She sent Lucy an eye-message so clear she might as well have yelled it across the soccer field.

  I bet you wish you listened to me. Now I’m getting all the credit.

  Lucy turned and squinted into the sun, just so she wouldn’t send back: I am SO going to tell EVERYBODY that this is just a way for you to get the VIP award — and you don’t deserve it!

  It was so hard not to. Maybe she even would have — if familiar movement hadn’t caught her eye on the other side of the field, where the Los Suenos Dreams were kicking the ball around a line of orange cones. J.J. was dribbling like that mad dog Mr. Auggy was always talking about — and Gabe was sticking his foot in like a stick in a bicycle spoke instead of dribbling his own ball. Carla Rosa looked like Lucy had never worked with her for a single minute, much less hours in her backyard. Oscar and Emanuel were doing nothing but punching each other, and she could hear Veronica squealing as a tall, fast kid with a lot of hair stole her ball.

  Lucy would have called it a nightmare — that is, if Dusty hadn’t waved her arms over her head and gathered everyone around her, and they hadn’t all looked like they were listening. Like they wanted the Dreams to come back.

  “Well, what about it?” Coach Neely said.

  Lucy pulled her eyes away from her friends. “I say we go for it,” she said. “Play clean and fair.” She waved the blue sheet. “Just like this says.”

  She looked straight at Rianna, who had the nerve to look right back. Her eyes weren’t friendly.

  Late that afternoon, Lucy and J.J. and Januarie went to Pasco’s café for grilled cheese sandwiches. Inez had to take Mora to dance class, and Dad said Lucy could treat J.J. and Januarie to an early supper, like they used to do before Inez became Lucy’s nanny. He even called Felix and told him to put whatever they wanted on his account.

  Lucy waited until Januarie was busy picking out a flavor from the ice cream case — a major decision-making process apparently — before she said, “Rianna still acts like one of those little terrier dogs the way she bosses us all around. But when we were playing our practice game today, she didn’t try to get me to fall down, and she didn’t pull on anybody’s shirt or foul on purpose.”

  She chewed on the extra pickle Felix put on her plate, “For old time’s sake,” he’d told her, with that sad look he had in his eyes these days.

  “Maybe she won’t try to cheat now,” Lucy went on. “Maybe she’ll just get noticed being, like, the Fair Play Queen instead of scoring goals any dirty way she can. She could ‘show’ Hawke whatever she wants to show him that way.”

  “You believe that?” J.J said.

  Lucy shrugged. “I want to. Don’t you?”

  J.J. didn’t answer.

  “Don’t you just want to get back to playing soccer?” she said.

  He still didn’t answer.

  “You can’t be so negative all the time, J.J.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He had his neck craned toward the ice cream case.

  “You want dessert?” Lucy said. “You didn’t even eat your sandwich yet.”

  “Januarie,” he said.

  “What about her?”

  “What’s she doing?”

  Lucy squinted. “Trying to dec
ide between mint chocolate chip and that gross thing with the marshmallows — and I’m not getting her two scoops.”

  J.J. shook his head and pointed. When Lucy looked even closer, she saw that Januarie wasn’t checking out the ice cream at all. She was loading her pockets with ketchup packets from the basket on Felix’s counter.

  “What’s up with that?” Lucy said.

  “She’s weird.”

  “At least she’s not bugging us all the time.” Lucy nudged him. “Now that she has her own team, you don’t have to be her babysitter every minute.”

  J.J. grunted.

  “What?” Sometimes she really did wish he would use more actual words.

  “She’s started cussing.”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  “The girls on her team do it.”

  “They’re in fourth grade!”

  Lucy knew she was overdoing the exclamation points, but this discussion screamed for them. J.J. shrugged.

  “I haven’t been helping you with her,” Lucy said. “Maybe that’s why.”

  “Mustard,” J.J. said.

  “Huh?”

  He pointed to the counter. “Now she’s getting mustard.”

  Januarie was indeed stuffing yellow plastic packets into the back pockets of her shorts.

  “She looks like she’s growing an extra — ”

  “Don’t say it, J.J.” Lucy put her hand over her mouth, but a large guffaw splattered out anyway.

  “How many condiments do you need for ice cream?” Felix Pasco leaned on his glass counter between the stack of menus and the jar where people put their tips.

  “Busted,” J.J. muttered.

  “What are condiments?” Januarie said.

  “All that mustard and ketchup you just took.” Felix shook his square head, but he still looked more sad than mad as far as Lucy could tell. “You would be welcome to all that I have. Mi casa es su casa.”

  “Huh?” Januarie said.

  Felix just moaned on. “But now I have to watch every penny. Times are hard, muchacha.”

  Lucy remembered where she’d heard that before. Dad and Mr.

  Auggy told her that when she got so angry about the big corporation that was trying to bribe people like Felix out of their votes against the soccer field.

  “He’s not gonna bust her if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Lucy looked at J.J. in surprise. He was watching her and speaking without even moving his lips.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” she mumbled back.

  She jerked her head toward the door, and they both slipped out while Felix was still lecturing Januarie about the economy. Lucy was sure Januarie didn’t know what that was either.

  “Let’s go to our soccer field,” she said.

  “Sheriff said not to,” J.J. said, even as he took two long-legged strides toward Highway 54.

  “That was right after the flood. I think it’s okay now.”

  “Race ya, then.”

  They ran almost the whole way, and Lucy guessed they’d gotten to the tumble-down bleachers before Januarie even knew they’d left the cafe. She would probably talk Felix into two scoops after all. Lucy leaned over to catch her breath.

  “Why’d you want to come here?” J.J. said.

  “I don’t know.” Actually she did, but she wasn’t quite sure even J.J. would understand that she just wanted to let the field know somebody still cared about it.

  “I liked playin’ here.” J.J. ‘s voice squeaked on the ‘here.’ “Better than camp.”

  Lucy nodded. Maybe it wasn’t as slick as High Noon, but it was their place — their safe place.

  “You cryin’?” J.J. said.

  “Hello! No!” Lucy smeared at her eyes with the heels of her hands and turned her face to the refreshment stand. Someone had taken all the fallen-down parts and put them in a pile, leaving the building where their fans had once bought Felix’s nachos and Claudia’s chocolate soccer balls looking naked and embarrassed. The splintered lumber from the bleachers was also in a neat stack, which made it easier to see that the metal frame that had once held them together was still standing as if it were waiting to be covered in seats once more.

  Lucy went to it and ran her hand along the metal. She might even have told it she would make sure it got fixed, right out loud, if J.J. hadn’t been there. And if her hand hadn’t caught on a sharp edge.

  “Yikes!” she said as she drew it back. Blood beaded from her palm and trickled toward her wrist. She stuck it up to her mouth.

  “What?” J.J. said.

  “I cut myself.”

  “Bad?”

  “Nah.”

  Lucy took another look at her hand and pressed down on it with her other thumb. She hadn’t been a tomboy all her life without seeing a little blood once in awhile. J.J., meanwhile, examined the metal.

  “Wind didn’t do it,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  Lucy forgot her hand and leaned in to look. The metal was cut and bent, and not just there but further down, and on the next support, too. With a chill, she remembered Dad and Mr. Auggy talking again. I’m thinking something more than the storm hit it, Mr. Auggy had said.

  “Did it get hit with something?” Lucy said to J.J.

  J.J. didn’t answer. He was walking over to the stack of ruined wood, and when he got there, he kicked at it, knocking it over. He pawed through it with his foot.

  “What are you looking for?’ Lucy said, though she had a feeling she already knew. “Is it that tire thing we found before? You think somebody used that to tear up what the wind left? ”

  J.J. still didn’t answer. He just kept shoving wood around, first with his feet and then with his hands, until the way he was throwing it started to scare Lucy.

  “I don’t think it’s here,” she said, She swallowed hard. “Maybe we shouldn’t be either.”

  J.J. pulled back his arm and hurled a short, smashed board so hard it slid a long time on the dusty ground and set up an anxious swirl of dirt around it. Lucy could taste it on her dry tongue.

  “Come on, J.J,,” she said. “I don’t want to be here. “

  Finally he grunted and followed Lucy back to the road. They trudged along saying nothing until Lucy couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “You know what I bet?” she said. “I bet it was those evil people that want to build the mini-market. I bet they came after the storm and smashed it all up so we’d all think the wind did it.”

  “It wasn’t them,” J.J. said.

  Lucy stopped in the middle of the bridge over the creek and stared at his back as he kept going.

  “How do you know?” she said.

  “I just do,” he said.

  Without looking back at her he waved his arm for her to come on.

  She hurried to catch up, but she already knew this conversation, too, was over.

  It seemed like nothing ever got where it needed to go any more.

  11

  “Ready for a little Knockout, ladies?” Coach Neely said Wednesday morning.

  “That depends on who gets knocked out,” Waverly said. She surprised Lucy with a smile.

  “You don’t know that game?” Rianna looked at Coach Neely — probably to make sure she was still impressed with her. “It’s where you find, like, a wall, and mark off a goal area, only we’d have to do it with cones, and then — ”

  Coach Neely threw her arm around Rianna’s neck. “Sorry, Rianna, but we’re going to use a real goal and a real goalie. Who wants to volunteer to play goalkeeper first?”

  Rianna only looked miffed for a second. Then she said, “I’ll do it” like she was offering the team a huge favor.

  “Oh, brother,” Patricia muttered to Lucy.

  On the other side of her, Taylor gave Lucy her snort.

  “Line up, team,” Coach Neely called out. “The first person takes a shot at the goal. If Rianna blocks it — ”

  “Which I will,” Rianna put in.

  “The next person h
as to get the rebound and try to one-touch it into the goal, and so on. Got it?”

  “Huh?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, we’ve got it,” Rianna said.

  Coach Neely blew her whistle.

  Kayla gave Lucy a tiny push. “You go first. She’s not gonna try anything with you.”

  Lucy was sure Rianna wasn’t going to try anything at all, not now that she’d made such a big deal out of Fair Play. Lucy even smiled at her as she studied her position. Rianna was already on one knee, as if she knew Lucy was going to send in a ground ball. Lucy ran up on the ball and lobbed it into the air over Rianna’s head. It bounced cheerfully into the goal.

  “Heads-up, Rianna!” Coach Neely said. “You showed your opponent what you were expecting her to do.”

  “I know,” Rianna said through tight teeth and kicked the ball — hard — toward the line of players.

  So much for Fair Play.

  Rianna didn’t allow another ball to get past her, and by the time it was Lucy’s turn again, Lucy could tell she was getting tired.

  “You want me to be goalie now?” Lucy said to Coach Neely.

  “What?” Rianna said. “No, try to score on me, Rooney.”

  “Remember, this is about practicing rebounds,” Coach Neely said.

  Lucy dribbled the ball away from the goal, passed it to Bella, and let Bella pass it back to her. She could feel Rianna watching her, trying to guess what she was going to do. She stood in the middle of the goal, slightly crouched, looking ready for anything. She really was a great soccer player. If only they could work together.

  “Shoot it already!” Rianna yelled at her and stood straight up.

  Up. Tall.

  Lucy didn’t take the time to set up her shot. She sent a ground ball along the edge of the goal. Rianna had to dive for it and just missed snagging it before it slid into the back corner. Behind Lucy, the team cheered like they were competing in the Euro Cup. Rianna scrambled up, face twisted into a red knot.

  “That’s not fair! There aren’t any defenders! You can’t expect me to do this all by myself!”

  “Rianna, it’s not about that.” Coach Neely came toward them, sunglasses on top of her head. “I said we’re just practicing rebounds.”