But as Lucy changed into her cutoff sweatpants and a tank top, she couldn’t help but worry. Suddenly, she heard her voice mail beep. She’d listened to the message and realized it was her dad. And her worry turned to full-out panic!
“Hey, kid,” he’d said. “Got done early. Thought I’d come grab you and maybe we could try that Italian place off PCH for dinner. See you in a few.”
Panicked, Lucy looked at her watch. Her dad had left the message eight minutes ago. She bolted for the door and up the stairs to the field. She started to run for the parking lot but realized the cheerleaders were still practicing their half-time routine. If her dad showed up, he’d wonder why she wasn’t with them. Frantic, she ran over to Regan and breathlessly explained her situation.
“Okay, calm down,” Regan said, as the girls grabbed water, preparing to do their routine again. “Just grab some pom-poms and jump in.” Kendall sighed nearby. Regan asked her tentatively, “K, is that okay?”
“No offense,” Kendall answered, “but I’m supposed to lie for some girl I barely know?”
Suddenly, Ryan and Cope walked by, heading to their cars. Ryan saw Lucy holding two pom-poms and laughed. “Malone,” he called out, “don’t tell me you just gave up the pigskin for some pom-poms.”
Lucy blushed deeply as he walked over. “No, no. My dad—he’s coming to get me, and he thinks I’m on the cheerleading squad. . . .”
Ryan’s jaw dropped. “You’ve been lying to him all this time?”
“Well, not so much lying,” Lucy said innocently. “More like omitting the truth.”
Ryan nodded. “You seem so . . . good. Who knew you had it in you?”
Lucy shrugged. “Well, I can be bad when I want to be.” Was this flirting? Was that what they were doing? Kendall cleared her throat, obviously annoyed.
“Why don’t you two just make out already?” she said dryly. “Okay, are you doing this or not, Lucy?”
Lucy waved a quick goodbye to Ryan and took her place in the back of the formation. Regan stood beside her.
“Just try to follow along,” she instructed. Lucy nodded, then glanced toward the parking lot, just knowing her dad would be there any minute.
With Kendall leading, Lucy tried desperately to follow the dance moves. She’d follow to the left, then back to the right—suddenly, the girls were down on the ground, rolling in one direction, then jumping back up and doing a leap! Lucy could barely keep up. All this time she’d thought cheerleading was a cinch, that all you did was stand on the sidelines and cheer for other people who were actually doing stuff—this was hard work! All the girls did simultaneous backflips! Lucy was stunned. What? They were amazing!
By the time the routine ended, she had barely been able to do anything, but she was dripping with sweat and out of breath. She looked up to see her dad standing there with his eyebrows raised.
“Thanks, everyone,” Kendall said. “That’s enough for today. We’ll see you tomorrow. And if you have any time to practice during lunch, Miss Sullivan said we can use the gym.”
Lucy thanked Regan and tried to act as though she knew these girls and fit right in. Was her dad buying any of it? She wandered over to him. Regan followed, heading toward her own car.
“You ready?” he asked brightly.
“Yeah, totally,” she answered. “So, what’d you think?”
Lucy’s dad gulped.“Um . . .you were . .. good.You just seemed maybe a little . . . I don’t know . . . behind.”
Regan interjected. “She joined late. She’s just getting the hang of it.”
“Yeah.” Lucy nodded. “The hang of it.”
fourteen
The next day, Lucy hurriedly made her way to English, trying to keep all her thoughts in order for her Madame Bovary test. What with all her classes, football practice, and lying to her dad about football practice, her head was spinning. It was hard to keep everything straight—including her homework assignments.
Now she stood at her locker, frazzled, trying desperately to remember her locker combination. She could never keep it straight, and if she actually tried to think about the numbers and which direction she was going, rather than just doing it by instinct, she’d never get it open. Finally she heard a click. She sighed with relief.
As she tried to figure out what books and folders she needed, something caught her eye: a folded-up sheet of paper. She grabbed it and opened it. It was a note. She quickly scanned it, reading it to herself.
Malone—You and me. Under the bleachers. Six o’clock. Don’t tell anyone. Just meet me there.—Ryan P.S.You look cute today.
Lucy’s jaw dropped as she read the note. Bleachers? Six? Cute? What? She read it again. And again. She could feel the red creeping up her neck and over her face. She was blushing. This couldn’t be real. She had to be dreaming. And if she was, she didn’t want to wake up.
She folded the note back up, stuffed it into the outside pocket of her backpack, and rushed to class. Forget Madame Bovary, forget football practice, forget everything—all she cared about was getting through today and meeting Ryan under the bleachers after practice.
At an exhausting practice that afternoon, Lucy and Ryan hadn’t so much as made eye contact, and that was okay with her. Clearly, he was playing it cool.
She remembered Regan’s instructions from last night. “Be cool,” she’d said. And Lucy was doing her best to do that as she practiced.
The whistle blew. Coach Offredi put his hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “You ready to run now?” he asked pointedly.
Lucy looked at him blankly. Run? She was the kicker. Her job was to kick, not run.
Coach Offredi sighed. It seemed as though at every practice he had to explain something else. Yesterday it had been that the quarterback doesn’t actually say “hike” (he often said “hut”). Today it was trick plays.
“These are plays we use when the moment is right,” Coach Offredi told her as Benji waited nearby, seemingly annoyed. He hadn’t really spoken to her in days.
“So with trick plays,” Coach Offredi continued, “you’ll act like you’re going to kick, but you’ll run the ball instead.” Lucy’s eyes widened. Run the ball? Like down the field? Full of players? “We don’t spend much time practicing these things, because we don’t run ’em much,” he explained. “But you should be prepared either way. Just in case.” He looked to Benji. “You too, Mason.”
Lucy nodded obediently. But truthfully, as potentially interesting (and terrifying) as getting to run the ball was, all she wanted to be prepared for was six o’clock, when she could meet Ryan. She glanced at her watch. Only two hours and seven minutes to go.
She’d told her dad that cheerleading practice would be running late again tonight because they were learning cupies and cradle catches (whatever that meant). Surprisingly, her dad had bought it. Lucy was almost sickened by the fact that she’d become such a good liar. Who knew that all it took was a poker face and access to Google to come up with excuse after excuse?
After practice, she confronted Benji.
“Hey,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Are you still mad at me? Is this about the party? Because I’m sorry—”
“I don’t care about the stupid party,” he interrupted.
“Then what is it? Because we’ve barely even talked—”
“You seem to have plenty of other people to talk to,” Benji said, nodding over to where Ryan, Cope, and Sascha were standing. “Must be a perk of being the star kicker.”
Lucy sighed. Obviously, his dad’s words had gotten to him. He was upset that Lucy had, according to Mr. Mason, “stolen his spot.”
“Benji,” she pleaded. “Please don’t be mad at me. It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” he said. “Get used to it.” He grabbed his stuff and hit the showers. Lucy couldn’t believe he was acting this way. Where was the boy who’d thrown rocks at her window? But the truth was, she didn’t have time to worry about him right now. She ran to the locker room to shower and change.
<
br /> She spent the next half hour doing homework on a bench in the main hallway. Finally, she glanced at her watch. It was five forty-five. She wasn’t sure if she should show up “fashionably late,” but after showering after football and slipping on her Gap boyfriend trousers and ribbed white tank top, she wasn’t sure how fashionable she was anyway.
She closed her book and spiral notepad and headed outside. The air was breezy and cool; her hair was still a little damp from showering after practice. Since she’d forgotten a hair dryer, she’d tried to use the electric hand dryers in the locker room, but instead of dry hair, all she’d gotten was a wrenched neck. Whatever. It was all worth it.
Rounding the corner of the school, she hurried down to the bleachers. Stuffing her hand into her book bag pocket, she grabbed the note and reread it just to clarify. It specifically said under the bleachers, not on top.
Following the instructions, she dropped her book bag and headed under the bleachers, although she didn’t go too far. She wanted him to be able to see clearly that she was there. She glanced at her watch again. It was five-fifty. She had ten more minutes to kill.
She grabbed her phone and texted Annie.
“Under bleachers waiting for R as in cute QB. ttyl.” she typed. “Loooong story. Will tell you later. So excited! Xoxo.” She hit send and checked the time again. It was five fifty-five. Only five more minutes to go. She paced back and forth nervously, taking deep breaths, the kind she took in yoga the two times she’d tried it with Annie.
Her phone beeped. She grabbed it.There was one new text. She clicked and opened it. It was from Annie.
“No way,” it read. “You are a rock star.” Lucy smiled. She loved Annie’s enthusiasm, even about people she didn’t even know.That was why Annie was her best friend. It was as if she was experiencing everything right there with her. Lucy was about to type a reply when she heard . . .
“Lucy?” a girl’s voice asked. Lucy spun around, coming face-to-face with Pickle.
fifteen
Lucy gasped, surprised.
“Pickle . . . um . . . hi,” she stammered. “What’re you doing here?”
Pickle shrugged shyly and held up a folded piece of paper. “I’m supposed to meet Ryan. Under the bleachers.”
Lucy’s face turned white. How was that possible, she thought? She was supposed to meet Ryan under the bleachers.
“You are?” Lucy asked, shocked.
“Wait—what’re you doing here?” Pickle asked, equally as surprised and caught off guard. Lucy couldn’t even think quick enough to lie. Not that she would have wanted to lie to Pickle anyway. There was no poker face or search engine good enough to help her get out of this one.
“I . . . um . . .” Not knowing what to say, she held up the similar note. “I got the same thing. From Ryan.”
Pickle gasped. “What? Let me see that.”
Lucy handed over the note, not knowing what else to do or say. “It said to meet him here. And to not tell anyone.”
“I don’t get it,” Pickle said, squinting as she read the note again, as if she thought the words would somehow change. “It doesn’t make any sense. He couldn’t have given this note to both of us—”
“No,” Lucy supposed. Why would anyone do that? “Unless . . .” she wondered. “Do you think it’s possible he didn’t write it?”
“Then what?” Pickle said quickly. “Someone else did? Why would anyone write a note pretending to be Ryan?”
Lucy thought hard. She had no idea.
Suddenly, a look of even greater concern crossed Pickle’s face. “Wait a minute,” she realized, folding her arms across her chest. “Why would you be meeting Ryan here either way?”
“What do you mean?” Lucy said, worried. The tone in Pickle’s voice was different than she’d ever heard before. Of course, she’d only known her a few months, but still . . .
“Well, think about it,” Pickle reasoned. “Let’s just say you got that note in your locker, and let’s just say that Ryan likes you. You know I like him, and you said you’d help me get together with him . . . so why would you be here unless . . .” Suddenly, she stopped short, realizing she already knew the answer. Lucy felt her entire body cringe, knowing what Pickle was about to say.
“Unless,” she added slowly, “you like Ryan too. And just didn’t tell me.”
Lucy pursed her lips together. Pickle stared at her, waiting. Lucy shifted uncomfortably, gazing down at her Converse. This was beyond awkward.
“I’m sorry, Pickle,” Lucy said softly. “I like Ryan too. And I didn’t tell you because . . . I don’t know . . . I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Pickle threw her hands in the air.“So going behind my back isn’t hurting me?”
Tears welled up in Lucy’s eyes. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done that. I just—you asked for my help, and I tried to give it to you.”
Suddenly, Charlie showed up, with Carla and Max.
“Hey. I thought I heard yelling.What’s going on here?” Charlie asked.
Lucy spun around. Charlie was here? And Carla? And Max? A crowd of soccer girls started to form. “Nothing,” Lucy said quickly. “Nothing’s going on.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Max retorted. She rushed over to Pickle’s side. “You okay?” Pickle just stared at Lucy as if no one else was even there.
“I was your friend,” Pickle said slowly. “I thought you were mine.”
“I am,” Lucy said quickly trying to reassure her. “I am, Pickle. Seriously, you have to believe that.”
Charlie stepped in. “Pickle, what’s going on?”
Pickle finally looked at her. “You know that note I got from Ryan?” Pickle reminded Charlie. “Well, he’s not here. But she is.”
“I don’t get it,” Carla said. “Why would Lucy be here?”
“Because it was a trick!” Lucy tried to explain. “Someone was playing a trick on us!”
“Who would do that?” Carla asked, confused.
Suddenly, there was a chorus of giggles and laughs.The soccer girls looked over their shoulders and saw a group huddled by the wall, cracking up.
There was Kendall, covering her mouth, giggling. Next to her was Regan. And behind them, a few football players were gathered. Cope, Adam, Nick, Caleb . . . and—When Lucy saw him, her heart dropped. Ryan. Ryan was standing there. Right next to Benji, of all people. Clearly, they’d all heard the entire fight.
Suddenly, it made perfect sense. This had been a huge setup.
Lucy’s face turned a deep shade of red. She stood there, completely speechless, as Kendall smirked in delight.
“You did this?” Lucy asked.
Kendall chuckled. “Everyone knows Pickle had a thing for Ryan. She’s liked him since last year. And you came along all moony-eyed—” she broke into laughter—“It was just too easy!” Lucy turned to Regan. “And you helped her?” Regan looked down at her shoes, guiltily.
Charlie shook her head. “I guess Pickle was telling the truth, Lucy.” Charlie stared her down. “Regan Holder’s clearly not your friend at all.”
Lucy felt a wave of humiliation crashing over her, drowning her. She couldn’t take the eyes staring at her, the kids laughing at her, amused by her crush on Ryan and her argument with Pickle, as if her feelings were some sort of joke. She grabbed her stuff and ran out from under the bleachers, past the kids, past the school—she just had to get out of there.
Playing With the Boys Page 18
