Playing With the Boys

by Nicole Leigh Shepherd

  She tried again and was much improved. After a few more kicks, she headed to the bench to grab some water. A senior with thick glasses approached her.

  “You’re Lucy Malone, right?” he asked, pad and pencil in hand.

  “Um, yeah,” Lucy answered self-consciously, as she took off her helmet and pushed her hair behind her ear.

  “I’m Wesley,” he said. “I write for the Sand Dollar.” Lucy quickly put two and two together. The Sand Dollar could only be the school paper. “We wanted to do an article on you, to come out in tomorrow’s edition.”

  Lucy noticed Coach Offredi looking over at her. “Um ... I don’t really think—”

  “A good story always helps get people in the seats,” Wesley interrupted. “Tomorrow’s game against Curtis is a big one. Team could use all the fans it can get.”

  Lucy hesitated. “I don’t know if writing something about me would really help. . . .”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be solely about you,” he explained. “It would be about the whole team.”

  Lucy considered for a minute, then tentatively agreed. “If you really think it’s a good idea.”

  “Absolutely. You know what they say—any press is good press.”

  Lucy bit her lip and shrugged. “Okay, well then, I guess ... ask away.”

  Wesley followed Lucy back onto the field, asking her questions and taking down her every word.

  “Have you always been interested in football?” No.

  “When did you start playing?” Um . . . two days ago?

  “What’s the most fun about being on this team?” Definitely staring at Ryan’s butt in tight pants.

  Okay, so she didn’t actually say any of those things. She answered the questions as simply as possible, talking about how she had just moved from Toledo, how she’d been a soccer player all her life, blah blah blah.

  Then one question stopped her in her tracks.

  “So, how are your new teammates treating you?” Lucy thought about that. With the exception of Benji and Ryan, they pretty much acted like she was a social pariah. And she had the cut-out jersey to prove it. It was definitely going to take longer than five minutes to explain that.

  Lucy tried her best. Then Coach Offredi blew the whistle. “Sorry,” Lucy apologized to Wesley. “Gotta go.” She and the rest of the guys quickly began their ritual warm-up: running fast in place, dropping down to hammer out ten to twenty push-ups, popping back up for jumping jacks and then back down for push-ups, flipping over for sit-ups, getting back up to run, dropping back down for mountain climbers. . . .Since Lucy was new to the routine, it was tough to follow. She watched Benji and thought she was keeping up okay. When they finished, Coach Offredi called them over.

  “Okay, bring it in, bring it in,” he said. “Offense, let’s work through some pass patterns; line up Split T first, then Two Tight Ends. I want to see some buttonhook passes—Cope, you listening?” A scruffy-looking junior, Cope, who was momentarily distracted by the cheerleaders, jerked his head back around.

  “Yeah, I’m listening,” he assured Coach Offredi.

  “Good, because this is for you. Your timing last week cost us at least two first downs.”

  Cope hung his head, ashamed. Lucy had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. And what kind of name was Cope?

  As Coach Offredi continued, Lucy was surprised to see that the emo girl, Morbid, had joined Wesley. She raised up a Nikon camera and began snapping rapid-fire pictures. Lucy didn’t know quite what to make of it. She’d figured that in her spare time, Morbid wrote depressing poetry or filled vials with her own blood to wear around her neck. Who knew she was a photographer, too?

  Lucy chuckled to herself. It was always important to have a hobby.

  She supposed she should act natural as the click, click, click of Morbid’s camera drifted toward her. But nothing about being singled out and photographed felt natural.

  And the stares of the guys on the team were making her uncomfortable.

  When Lucy, Benji, a cute freckled redhead named Caleb, and the rest of the Point After Touchdown team broke off to practice their drills, Morbid followed. Finally, when Coach Offredi called them in for plays with the rest of the team, he put his foot down.

  “No more pictures,” Coach Offredi snapped to Morbid. “PAT team, on the field! Defense, line up against them.” Lucy took a deep breath. This was her last chance to kick before tomorrow’s game—to prove to herself that she could handle this tomorrow, under the lights.

  Wesley waved to Lucy as he and Morbid packed up to leave. Lucy gave a slight nod and took her place on the field.

  She lined up for a field goal kick as the defensive team took their place a few yards away. She hadn’t yet kicked from a snap. The key, Benji had told her, was working out the timing. She raised her arm as a signal that she was ready.

  Coach Offredi’s whistle blew.

  From seven yards downfield, Caleb snapped the ball back to Benji. Benji had trouble putting it down as it slipped in his hand. One second passed, then another. . . . The defensive line was closing in, a solid wall of muscle aiming to run her down.

  Lucy tried to kick anyway, but as her foot barely grazed the ball, BAM! She was pummeled to the ground. Her head whacked against the dirt with a deafening thud.

  “What the hell—” she mumbled, dazed. She could feel her head still rattling inside her helmet. It felt like her organs had been scrambled inside her body.

  Benji ran over. “Luce, you okay?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.

  “That was roughing, Adam,” Coach Offredi warned one of the linebackers, his voice much more calm than the situation warranted.

  Roughing? Lucy wanted to scream. Try attacking, for no good reason!

  “Cute.” Tank laughed, nudging Devon. “Benji’s worried about his girlfriend.” Benji looked down at his shoes as Adam tried to explain himself.

  “I couldn’t stop, Coach,” he lied. “What’s that equation? Momentum plus force . . . ?”

  “... equals girls shouldn’t be on the team,” Nick chimed in, finishing Adam’s thought.

  “Hey.” Tank shrugged. “If she can’t take a hit, she should get off the field.”

  The other guys laughed as Lucy lay there, motionless, the wind knocked out of her. If she’d been able to breathe, she might have thought of a witty retort. But all she could do was gasp for air. She’d never taken a hit that hard before. Not in soccer, not anywhere. Her eyes welled up with tears. She didn’t feel like crying, but clearly, her eyes had a mind of their own. A few blurry faces above her stared down at her. Suddenly, Coach Offredi’s walrus mustache came into focus above her face.

  “Hey? You crying?” he asked, louder than he really needed to. “Are those tears?”

  Lucy sniffed. “No.” She sat up.

  “There’s no crying in football,” he reminded her. Lucy wanted to roll her eyes but she hurt too much to even do that. Who was this guy? Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own? She remembered renting that movie with her mom. Did Coach Offredi really need to steal other people’s lines?

  “You’re here to kick,” he reminded her. “Not cry.” Lucy felt like melting into the grass. Thanks for the news flash, she thought. Although at this point, she wasn’t sure what she was there for.

  The coach turned to Benji. “And you call that a set? What, d’ya have grease on your hands? When the ball’s snapped, you put it down or you sit on the bench. Your choice.”

  Benji nodded obediently. Lucy felt worse for him than she did for herself. Well, almost.

  Coach Offredi blew the whistle. “Let’s go. Bull in the Ring. Tank and Caleb, you’re up first.

  Lucy rolled over, groaning. God. This practice was far from over and already her entire body was black and blue. How was she going to hide that from her dad? Say she’d been beaten with a floor hockey stick in gym class? And what was “Bull in the Ring,” anyway?

  Lucy stood up and turned to Kevin. “What’re we doing?” she asked
curiously. Well, only semi-curiously. A part of her didn’t really care. She just wanted a warm shower, an ice pack, her big comfy bed—and maybe a plane ticket home to Toledo.

  Kevin nodded toward the circle. “Whoever has the ball has to run to the other side. The guy in the middle has to stop him.

  Ryan tossed Tank the ball.Tank tucked it in to his right side and faced off against Caleb, who was about half his size. Tank smiled sadistically; Caleb gulped. They squared off against each other. The whistle blew. Tank and Caleb ran straight into each other. Lucy cringed at the sound of their helmets crunching as Tank plowed right through the smaller guy, knocking Caleb to the ground. The whistle blew again. Tank had made it to the other side. He’d won that round.

  Not that it was exactly a fair matchup, Lucy thought. Running into Tank was like crashing into a brick wall—a brick wall who could scarf down five double-doubles from In-N-Out Burger in one sitting.

  Coach Offredi picked two other players. “Devon, Ryan,” he ordered.Tank tossed the ball back to Ryan. Lucy wished she’d been paired with him. If she was going to end up on the ground anyway, it’d be better to end up there with Ryan on top of her.

  She watched as Ryan beat Devon, then Max beat Kevin, then Nick beat Little Jimmy and Big Jimmy . . .and then Coach Offredi looked in her direction.

  “Benji, Lucy—you’re up.” Lucy’s eyes widened to the size of doughnuts. Benji looked like he’d just been punched in the gut.

  “What?” he asked, the panic in his voice rising. A bunch of the guys around the perimeter of the circle began to laugh.

  “You know the rules, Benji. Girls go together,” Tank called out mockingly.

  Benji glared at him. “Shut up.”

  Tank closed in on him, ready to fight. “What’d you say, punk?”

  “Nothing,” Benji answered, obviously intimidated.

  Tank smiled, pleased with himself. “That’s what I thought.”

  “You two,” Coach Offredi insisted. “Benji, into the ring.” He tossed Lucy the ball. It slipped through her fingers and onto the ground. Embarrassed, she grabbed it up quickly, then tucked the football into her right side, just as she’d seen Tank do.

  Benji stood across from her, looking as miserable as she did. This was the last place either of them wanted to be, squaring off against each other in front of everyone. The whistle blew.

  Lucy lunged forward, using all the momentum and strength she could muster as she slammed her body into Benji’s. Her hit caught him off guard because, clearly, he had decided to take it easy on her, just as she’d decided to go all out. He stumbled back and she hit him again, knocking him off balance and to the ground. Lucy made it to the other end of the circle.

  “No way!” Kevin laughed.

  Next to him, Caleb snarfed the water he was drinking. “Dude, now I don’t feel so bad. . . .”

  Lucy ran out of the circle, triumphant, casually tossing the ball back to Coach Offredi.

  Tank was doubled over, gasping for breath. “Oh, man. That girl just kicked your ass!”

  Ryan shook his head, impressed. “Nice hit, Malone.” Lucy smiled shyly. Who knew her last name could sound so sexy?

  Benji ripped off his helmet, shaking his head. Lucy could tell he was embarrassed. His face was bright red.

  “I was going easy on you,” he mumbled to Lucy.

  All the guys started to groan. “You making excuses now?” “Give it a rest, Mason.” “Wuss!”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know....”

  Benji tried to reassure her. “It’s okay. I mean, I wanted you to look good in front of the team. I just didn’t want to look quite so . . . bad.”

  Lucy felt a lump form in her throat. Benji had been so great to her—had spent so much time teaching her. “Benji—” she started to say.

  He stepped back. The guys were watching. “I’ll call ya later, okay?” he said quickly as he hurried off. By the time everyone gathered their equipment and went to hit the showers, Benji was long gone.

  nine

  Twenty minutes later, as Lucy emerged from the girls’ locker room, the last of the cheerleaders were clearing off the sidelines, and the football team was heading for their cars. It wasn’t dark yet, but the streetlights had already come on. She walked across the field. Her dad would be picking her up any minute, and was bound to ask how her biology project was coming along. She was already anticipating lying to him, and the thought made her sick. It would be so much easier if she could just tell him what she was doing.

  It was times like this when she missed her mom—her partner in crime, always helping to convince her dad to lighten up a little and not be so strict.

  Her mind wandered as she crossed toward the parking lot, remembering how her mom’s hands looked and the smell of her spaghetti sauce on the stove and—

  Suddenly, she was jarred out of her memories. Someone was grabbing her from behind, pinning down her arms, engulfing her in a bear hug. Panicked, she let out a frightened yelp.

  “Let go of me,” she screamed. But she was helpless. Paralyzed. A bunch of guys circled around her and she recognized them instantly. They were her teammates, now in their regular T-shirts and jeans. And they were laughing, as if this was some funny prank.

  “Get her arms.” Tank laughed.

  “And her legs,” Kevin reminded them.

  Nick and Adam whipped out a roll of industrial-size duct tape as they dragged her over to the goalposts, carrying her like a sack of potatoes. She couldn’t tell how many guys were there—fifteen, twenty—it felt like half the team. She could hear both Jimmys laughing. Together, the guys hoisted Lucy up to the top of the singular post and pressed her firmly against it.

  She heard the ripping sound of the tape and felt it wrap around her body, again and again, securing her to the goalpost right above the blue pads. The guys were cracking up as they tugged at her a little, to make sure she was on there tight; then they took off running. The whole sneak attack had taken less than two minutes.

  “Wait!” Lucy called after them, practically in tears. “Wait! You can’t leave me here!”

  As she watched the guys run for the parking lot, she made out a few more faces. She recognized Aidan, Devon, and Carl.... There was Daniel, Cope… and then there was Ryan. Lucy felt as though she’d been slapped. Ryan? She couldn’t believe it.

  She looked over, crushed, and to her surprise, realized that Benji was right beside her. He’d been taped to a goalpost too.

  “Benji?” she asked, shocked.

  Benji looked as pathetic and helpless as she did. “Guess I don’t need to call you later, huh?”

  Lucy wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It felt like hours, but maybe it had only been minutes. She and Benji were both too upset to speak. The tape was digging into her skin, cutting off her circulation. Eyes wet with tears, she hung there, stunned that her own teammates could be so cruel and so mean. She could make out the bricks of the building and the blades of grass on the field, but just barely. Everything was beginning to blur together. She wondered if she was going to pass out.

  Suddenly, in the distance, she saw someone. A girl.