Playing With the Boys

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  The next morning, Lucy was drinking coffee at the kitchen table, trying desperately to wake up. She grabbed the Sports section of the L.A. Times, to read an article about the U.S. women’s soccer team. Lucy had been obsessed with them since she was a little girl. Her mom had even taken her to an exhibition game against Norway for her birthday. She’d seen the soccer documentary Dare to Dream—about the 1999 U.S.World Cup Championship team—at least twenty-five times, and it still made her cry. The team’s 2007 World Cup loss to Brazil stung, but watching Marta play had been amazing.

  Running late, she stuffed the article into her backpack and remembered it during the middle of English, when Martie was giving a particularly boring lecture about the pluperfect tense. Putting it inside her binder, she pretended to be taking notes as she read about her old favorite players—hall of famers Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy . . . just reading the names took her back to another place and time, almost like a fairy tale, where the underdogs beat the odds and came out on top.

  She scanned the article, soaking up every description and word until—

  “Lucy!” Martie scolded.

  Lucy’s head jerked up. She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d been officially caught. Martie approached quickly, too quickly for Lucy to successfully hide the article. And in an instant, Martie had snatched it up. Everyone saw. Lucy sank down in her seat—her new go-to position following any and all things humiliating—and spent the rest of class ferociously taking notes.

  After class, she quickly gathered her books. Martie approached, article in hand.

  “So . . . you like soccer?” she asked, almost suspiciously.

  Lucy nodded. “I’m sorry about that. It’s just, the U.S. team got a bunch of new players—”

  “I know,” Martie said excitedly. “That senior recruit from Huntington, right?”

  Lucy smiled, impressed. “Yeah, the forward.”

  “I read it this morning. In the middle of our morning meeting,” Martie admitted. “I was busted too.” Lucy laughed. She didn’t feel so bad now. “So, do you play? Soccer?”

  Lucy nodded. “I used to. Back home in Toledo.”

  “You play freshman?” Martie asked, trying to gauge Lucy’s skills.

  “Varsity,” Lucy admitted, a hint of pride in her voice. She’d been the only freshman who’d made the team that year.

  “You know, tryouts are starting on Monday ...” Martie hinted.

  Tryouts? It hadn’t even occurred to Lucy to think about joining the Beachwood team. She’d been so upset about the move, and so fixated on not looking like a dork, that she’d forgotten a part of her life that she loved could actually come with her. Soccer.

  “Really?” Lucy asked. “I’d be able to?”

  “Of course,” Martie encouraged. “We’d love to have you. We only have a varsity team this year—we kind of spent last year rebuilding our program, recruiting new players. . . .”

  “Winning state,” Charlie added as she walked by, her backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder.

  “Thanks, in part, to the extraordinary efforts of a certain forward,” Martie indicated, putting a hand on Charlie’s shoulder as she looked at Lucy. “Seriously, it’d be great to have you try out. If you’re interested. And it’s a good way to make new friends, too.”

  Lucy smiled. That sounded like music to her ears.

  “That’d be . . . um . . .” She caught Charlie’s eye and tried to avoid the words really and cool. She thought for a second. “That’d be totally awesome.”

  Charlie laughed and Lucy beamed. Suddenly, she was feeling more confident. Maybe she was getting better at this whole California thing after all.

  three

  Lucy had been counting down the days and minutes to soccer tryouts. By the time Monday rolled around she was so excited, she popped out of bed, not even needing coffee to wake up.

  “Someone’s excited for school,” her dad said as he buttered toast for the two of them.

  “Soccer tryouts today,” she reminded him. “You know what that means?”

  He considered. “Practices, games, a lot of smelly Adidas shorts and dirt stuck in your cleats—”

  “It means friends,” Lucy interrupted. “If I make this team, I may actually make a friend.”

  “Knowing you, Lucy? You’ll make a bunch.”

  Lucy held up her fingers. They were crossed. She really hoped so.

  When she showed up on the field after school that day, she was happy to see a few familiar faces. Not that she had ever spoken to anyone besides Charlie, but there was Pickle from her gym class and a few other girls she recognized.

  “Gather around, everyone,” Martie said. The girls formed a semicircle around her. “I’d like to welcome back all our returning players and introduce myself and the team to those of you trying out.” All the wannabe walk-ons looked around, hopeful, as the teammates from last year clustered together, already close. They seemed more like sisters in many ways than friends.

  “Last year’s state win was incredible,” Martie recounted, giving the potential players an idea of what they had to look forward to. “Especially because we came from nothing, came out of nowhere to win. Now, this year, we have a reputation to uphold. We have a title to defend. We won’t be under the radar anymore. Everyone’s going to be gunning for us, so we’re going to have to work harder than ever. And that hard work starts with . . . ?” She paused for the team to fill in the blank.

  All the old players chimed in together. “Hell Week.”

  Lucy looked around, nervous. Hell Week? She’d never been part of any Hell Week back in Ohio—except the week of studying for midterms and finals.

  “Hell Week’s where the real fun begins.” Martie smiled.

  The next afternoon, Lucy found out that Martie’s definition of “fun” was cruel, hard, endless torture. The girls headed up from the locker room after school, to meet in the parking lot behind the athletic field house. Together, they hopped in a van to drive to the beach. Lucy was the last to climb in and shut the door.

  On the ride over, all the girls talked ninety miles an hour, about everything from what teen star was following Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears’ foray into rehab to a sale at ZJ’s Boarding House they wanted to check out. Pickle was listening raptly to a story Heather was telling, about one of the football parties two years ago where some guy had tried to jump off the roof into the pool. Heather was a senior this year and had shoulder-length golden hair with corkscrew curls.

  “God, why don’t we ever get invited to those?” Pickle asked wistfully.

  “Because we play soccer, not football,” Jamie reminded her. “Football players and cheerleaders only.”

  Charlie rolled her eyes.“I’m glad they’re willingly containing themselves. Then we don’t have to worry about running into them on Friday nights.” It was no secret that Charlie wasn’t a huge fan of that crowd.

  “Still . . .” Pickle sighed. “It’d be nice to see what the big deal is.”

  “Casey Peterson’s D-cups,” a cute brunette, Erica, piped in. “That’s always the biggest deal at those parties. The guys throw quarters in her cleavage and she keeps the change.”

  “No way!” Max, a freshman spitfire, exclaimed. Max had short, choppy, bleached blond hair and just looked tough. Lucy had figured out that Max was short for Maxine, when she saw the tryout roster.

  “Not that I don’t want to talk about Casey’s D-cups the whole drive,” a pretty Hispanic junior named Carla said. “But did anyone see Real World last night?” Her deep brown eyes sparkled as if she’d just received good news.

  On the front bench of the van, Lucy spun around. She loved that show!

  Forgetting her shyness, she rattled off a list of highlights that had the entire van of girls enraptured.

  “And then Tucker said Marlo should just go back where she came from. The gutter!” Lucy quoted.

  “He did not say that!” Heather gasped. “He’s so homophobic, anyway.”

  “And
obviously closeted,” Jamie pointed out. “No one protests that much.”

  “I know.” Lucy laughed. “It’s like the same thing every season.”

  Carla giggled. “I know. I love it.”

  Pickle leaned over the seat, adding her two cents. “By the end, Tyler and Jason’ll be making out.”

  “I’m so sick of that show,” Erica complained.“I’m seriously not watching anymore.”

  “You say that every season,” Heather pointed out.

  “At least you’re allowed to watch it,” a sophomore redhead, Ruthie, chirped from the front seat. “My mom won’t let me. Can you believe that? No MTV?”

  Max recoiled. “No MTV? That’s, like, globally unfair.” Lucy giggled and Max looked at her for confirmation. “I mean, it is, right? Does she even let you google?”

  As Ruthie explained, Lucy listened and relaxed a little, genuinely enjoying herself for the first time in a long time. It was fun to be around these girls. Lucy hoped she’d be around them for a long time to come.

  That all changed once they arrived at the beach. While the girls were still fun, practice was not. Martie announced they were going for a short three-mile run.

  “Is that an oxymoron?” Erica asked. “Short? Three miles?”

  “You’re an oxymoron,” Heather countered playfully, as Erica fake-punched her in the arm.

  Karen, a pretty blond senior, scoffed. “Heather, that didn’t even make any sense!”

  As the girls took off running, Lucy took her place securely at the back of the pack, where she struggled to keep up. Her lungs felt as though they were going to explode; running on sand was about a million times more difficult than running on cement. Somehow Lucy made it through, coming in third to last, which was a small victory. At least she wasn’t the very slowest.

  After the run, Martie prepared to take them through various drills.

  “Can someone grab the bag of balls?” she asked purposefully.

  “I will,” Karen offered. “Or maybe Heather should. She loves to grab the balls.”

  A bunch of the girls snickered. Clearly, they enjoyed ribbing each other and giving each other a hard time. Charlie and Carla exchanged amused looks, trying not to laugh . . . but it was hard not to.

  Karen’s comment elicited a very real punch from Heather.

  “Ow!” Karen yelped. “That seriously hurt!” She nailed Heather back in the arm.

  “Girls!” Martie said sternly, and Karen instantly snapped to attention. Lucy giggled. Heather grabbed the balls and the girls composed themselves as Martie explained what they were doing next. Of course, when she said, “We’ll do various touches on balls,” everyone—Lucy included—burst out laughing again.

  But soon, Lucy was hard at work, focusing on the ball in front of her as she tried to follow Martie’s footwork instructions. Running behind Carla and Charlie, Lucy dribbled around orange cones in as fast and controlled a manner as possible . . . and then came the trapping drills.

  Lucy hated trapping. Using her body to stop a ball careening toward her wasn’t really at the top of her to-do list. In fact, it was a giant “to-don’t” ever since she’d been nailed in the chest by a soccer ball three years ago. To this day she blamed that incident as the reason her boobs had failed to grow past A-cups.

  Now, as a punt came right toward her, she backed up, letting it fall to her feet rather than stopping it with her body.

  “Lucy, go to it,” Martie ordered. “You don’t back away!”

  I do, Lucy thought. But instead she just mumbled, “Sorry.” She hoped Martie wasn’t making a mental note of that weakness—but then she saw Martie taking literal notes. Crap! Had she noticed how many extra mountain climbers and push-ups Lucy had done? Had she written that down on her yellow pad? By the end of practice, Lucy was too tired to worry about it.

  When she arrived home that night, thanks to a ride from Charlie, her eyelids were so heavy she was barely able to make her way from the car to her bedroom. She collapsed on the bed without eating dinner, doing her homework . . . or, worse, calling Annie. When her dad came in to ask how practice had gone, she could barely muster a response. All she could think about was sleep, but once she finally drifted off, she even dreamed of soccer.

  The next morning at breakfast, when she was well rested and more alert, she gave her dad a rundown of the girls on the team.

  “There’s Charlie,” Lucy explained. “She’s the surfer I told you about. From the beach that day. She’s kind of what Mom would call a tough cookie, you know? Like, hard to get to know. I guess she had this older sister, Krista, who graduated—and was totally best friends with Brooks Sheridan!”

  From her dad’s blank expression, he had no idea who that was.

  “You know, Brooks Sheridan? The actress? She had all those straight-to-DVD movies? Remember Girl for Sale? And then Mom got me the sequel, Boy for Sale? Anyway, I guess Charlie and her sister were, like, the big stars of the team last year and now that Krista’s gone, Charlie’s the leader. Along with Carla . . .” Lucy told her dad how Carla was from East L.A. and commuted all the way to Malibu in order to play soccer and have a better education. “She was recruited, like, handpicked by Martie last year and got this, like, mondo scholarship—”

  “Mondo?” her dad questioned. “Wow. You’ve already been living in California way too long.”

  Lucy kept going. “Charlie and Carla are funny together. They’re kind of opposites—Charlie’s, like, dark and sarcastic, while Carla’s totally optimistic and, like, super-positive. Then there’s Pickle. Her real name’s Nicole, but everyone, like, calls her Pickle. She’s a sophomore too—we have, like, three classes together—”

  “What’s with all the ‘like’s?” her dad asked.

  Lucy sighed. “Do you want me to tell you or not?”

  “No, no, go ahead,” her dad urged, then added, “minus the likes.”

  Lucy glared, then continued. “Well, I heard she—Pickle— was cut from the team last year. She tried out as a goalie, but then she played on this league all summer, as a fullback, and now she’s trying out on the field. So it’s cool because we’re, like—” She stopped abruptly, realizing she’d said “like” again. “Sorry,” she said quickly, then continued. “So we’re both defenders—me and Pickle—”

  “Pickle and I,” her dad corrected.

  “Pickle and I,” Lucy emphasized. “And we get to practice together. I’m just happy because maybe we’ll get to be friends or something. Oh, and there’s Max.”

  “Max?” her dad questioned.

  “Short for Maxine. She seems pretty cool, too.” Just up from eighth grade, Max had been recruited by Martie this summer. With her short blond hair and slightly rebellious attitude, Max had so much confidence, she could even make the senior girls laugh. Lucy couldn’t help but be awed by the younger girl’s lack of intimidation—and by what a strong player she was. Every shot on goal that Max took, she made. Not to mention, she was fast. Max had been clinically diagnosed as hyperactive, although Lucy wondered if that was due to the twenty Pixy Stix she consumed daily.

  “Well it sounds like this team was just what you needed, kid,” her dad said, pleased, as he helped himself to more coffee.

  Lucy nodded. “Yeah, I think it is.” As she scooted her cup closer for a refill and watched her dad pour, she decided that the glass—or in this case, coffee mug—was definitely looking half full.