Score for Imagination

by Jonathan Eig

  Lola and the other girls want to play soccer at school recess.

  The boys don’t want them to.

  Lola may not be the best soccer player in third grade, but she practices every Saturday, and she’s a good team player. Which is more than she can say for the boys in her class. Confident and determined, Lola sets out to convince the boys that the girls know what they’re doing.

  Albert Whitman & Co.

  More than 100 Years of Good Books

  www.albertwhitman.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Jacket art copyright © 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  For Lillian, Jeffery, and Lola—JE

  To my friend and sister, Alba—ATG

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Jonathan Eig

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  Illustrations by Alicia Teba Godoy

  First published in the United States of America

  in 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  ISBN 978-0-8075-6565-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-8075-6569-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-8075-6567-4 (ebook)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Design by Aphelandra Messer

  For more information about Albert Whitman & Company,

  visit our website at www.albertwhitman.com.

  1. Pancakes and Practice

  2. The Recess Match

  3. Grampa Ed’s Advice

  4. Cavemen

  5. The Stuck Clock

  6. Dinner Guests

  7. Empathetic Passing

  8. Goals! Goals! Goals!

  9. A Real Nice Pass

  10. So Awesome!

  11. Good and Tired

  Lola Jones

  Hi! I’m Lola.

  I love books and I love adventure. When I’m trying to solve a problem, I know I can count on my family, my friends, and characters from my favorite books!

  Lillian Jones

  I’m Lola’s mother. I love playing soccer and having crazy dance parties with my daughter.

  Grampa Ed

  I’m Lola’s grandfather. That kid cracks me up. I try to pretend I’m grumpy sometimes, but she never falls for it.

  Mrs. Gunderson

  I’m Lola’s teacher, and I love my third graders. My favorite book is Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.

  Maya and Fayth

  We’re Lola’s best friends. Whatever wild plan she’s hatching, we’re always there to help out!

  It was broad daylight when Lola got up, rubbed her eyes, and looked out her bedroom window. Sunshine brightened the brick wall of the building next door. A feathery cloud floated above the building. Above that, an airplane made a white chalk line across the rectangle of blue sky.

  For a moment, Lola thought she had overslept and missed school. She sat up in bed as a feeling of dread clutched her stomach like a cold metal claw.

  And then the claw let go. Today was Saturday! No school!

  On Saturday, Grampa Ed made chocolate-chip pancakes! On Saturday, her mother would take her to the park to practice soccer! And who knows what else might happen? Absolutely anything! On a sunshiny Saturday in the city there was lots of scope for imagination. That’s what Anne in Anne of Green Gables would say. Lola was on page 132. It was her latest favorite book.

  Lola bounced out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and went to the kitchen. Grampa Ed stood at the counter, cracking eggs.

  “Morning, kid,” said Grampa Ed.

  “Good morning, Grampa.” Lola gave her grandpa big hug.

  “How many pancakes do you want?” he asked.

  “Seventy-seven,” Lola said. “Wait, make it seventy-eight. I’m starving.”

  Grampa wrinkled his bushy eyebrows. “How about three?”

  “Good enough! Thanks, Grampa.”

  Lola Jones was eight and a half. She was small for her age but a strong and fast runner, which was good for soccer. She had dark hair and eyes and a voice that squeaked when she got excited.

  From the kitchen, she could see out the window and down to the alley, which was long and narrow and dotted with plastic garbage bins in three different colors: black, green, and blue. At the east end of the alley was a big street with rushing cars and buses; at the west end was a smaller street with parked cars and slower-moving traffic. At both ends there were handsome brick buildings and towering elm trees and oak trees. The trees, Lola thought, looked like they were trying on new green leaves for spring. Lola went to the back door and opened it to check the weather.

  “Isn’t this the loveliest day, Grampa?” she asked. “I don’t think I could even imagine a lovelier day than this one. Could you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose the alley is beautiful if you like garbage trucks.” Grampa Ed gave a little laugh. “What’s gotten into you? Did you take extra-happy pills this morning?”

  Lola paused, surprised.

  “Oh, Grampa, is there really such a thing as happy pills? I suppose you’re teasing. But if there is, I think that would be a wonderful invention, even though I wouldn’t need them today, because I’m already super happy. Because it’s Saturday, Grampa! And you’re making pancakes! And Mom’s going to take me to the park to practice soccer! And Anne of Green Gables sees beauty everywhere she looks. ‘Scope for imagination,’ she calls it. And I guess she’s got me thinking that way too. There’s so much scope for imagination on a day like today in a wonderful city like ours! Even the alley is beautiful when the sun is up and the streetlights are still on and the puddles reflect their shimmering light!”

  “Eat your pancakes, kid. If I have to listen to any more of this cheerfulness my head’s going to explode. I haven’t even had my coffee yet, for crying out loud.”

  “Oh, I’ll make your coffee, Grampa!” Lola loved making coffee. Grampa Ed taught her how when she was little and now she was an expert.

  As Lola went to the cabinet to take out Grampa’s coffee cup, her mother came into the kitchen. Lillian Jones was already dressed for soccer in green sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt, with her brown hair tied in two short pigtails.

  “Good morning, sweetie,” she said, hugging Lola first, then leaning in to peck Grampa Ed on his stubbly cheek.

  “Hey, Lillian…” Grampa Ed’s voice was deep and scratchy. He had hairy arms and a bunch of tattoos, including one on his arm that read Whatever Lola Wants. “Isn’t it the most beautiful morning ever? The garbage trucks smell like flowers and it’s super-duper great to be alive!”

  He smiled and gave Lola a wink. She cracked up.

  Lillian Jones scrunched her eyebrows and looked at her daughter, hoping she would explain Grampa Ed’s behavior.

  “I think he took too many happy pills!” Lola giggled. “Either that or he’s been reading Anne of Green Gables!”

  “I need to start getting up earlier,” Lola’s mother said. “I can never understand what’s going on when I walk in on you guys. Anyway, finish your pancakes and let’s go, girl. We’ve got work to do on the soccer field!”

  A boy named Gabriel Contento lived at the east end of Lola’s block, in a third-floor apartment. Gabriel’s window faced the alley. When he played games and watched videos on his computer, he kept a sharp eye on the alley, from one end to the other, so that he knew when a kid got a new bike or skateboard or when
a grown-up got a new car. If you walked your dog and didn’t pick up the dog’s poop, or picked it up and dropped it in one of the blue or green recycling bins where it didn’t belong, Gabriel probably knew about it.

  When he saw Lola and her mother walking down the alley, Lola gently kicking a soccer ball, he thought about shouting “hello” out the window to her, or at least just waving. But he didn’t. They were in the same grade, but not the same class. Some kids made friends easily. Gabriel wasn’t one of them.

  Lola and her mother walked to the park.

  “Don’t take it easy on me today, Mom,” Lola said.

  “I won’t.”

  “I mean it! I have to get better.”

  “You’re taking these soccer games seriously,” Lola’s mom said.

  “You would too if you were playing,” Lola said. “It’s a battle for the ages. It’s epochal. That’s a new word I learned. I’m trying to get more big words. Anne of Green Gables says you have to have big words if you want to express big ideas. Anyway, epochal means marking a big event or a big period in life.”

  “What’s so epochal about these soccer games?” Lola’s mom asked.

  “Well, you know our playground, right? It’s small. So, there’s only room for one soccer game at a time at recess. And if the first graders get there before us third graders, we can’t play at all. If the third-grade boys get there first, they don’t let the girls play. And if Mr. Nick tells them they have to let all the kids play, the boys don’t pass to us and they don’t let us take throw-ins or penalty kicks. It’s a real predicament. That’s another big word I learned. It means ‘mess.’”

  “That sure is a predicament,” her mother said.

  They got to the park and Lola took off, running across the grass as fast as she could.

  “Kick the ball so I have to run for it!” Lola shouted, and her mother did.

  They played for hours. When Lola finally got tired, she and her mother took the bus to the library, where Lola asked the librarian to recommend a book about soccer strategy.

  “Let me show you my favorite,” the librarian said. She pulled out a book called Smarter Soccer. “It doesn’t have any pictures, but I think you’ll like it.”

  With her soccer ball under one arm and her new book under the other, Lola walked out of the library. She and her mother took the bus home.

  The following Monday, when the bell rang for recess, Lola and three other girls hurried to the playground to claim the soccer field before the boys got there. They were too late. As usual, Gabriel Contento was sitting on a soccer ball in front of one of the two goals. Though he never played, Gabriel, somehow, almost always got to the field before anyone else, reserving the ball and the field for the third-grade boys.

  “Hey, Gabriel!” Lola yelled. “How about letting us use that ball until the boys get here?”

  “Sorry,” Gabriel said.

  “Then how about this? Let’s be on the same team!” Lola raised both hands. “Pass me the ball and I’ll pass it back to you.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “I’m the coach.”

  A bunch of boys burst through the double doors and ran across the playground. Gabriel gently kicked the ball to Tommy Adkins.

  The playground was small and had three parts: the jungle gym, with its slides and monkey bars; the basketball court, with its lone backboard and hoop atop a metal pole; and the soccer field, where the cracked blacktop was painted green with white lines to resemble a grassy field.

  As the boys began passing the soccer ball across the blacktop, Lola and the girls spread out across the field.

  “We’re playing, too!” Lola shouted.

  “Sorry,” Tommy Adkins shouted back. “The game already started.”

  “Did not!” answered Fayth.

  Mr. Nick stepped across the field and put his foot on the ball. Mr. Nick was a giant. Everyone said he used to be a champion boxer but quit boxing because it was too easy and he got tired of knocking people out.

  “Pick teams and get started,” he said as he kicked the ball to Lola. “Everyone plays.”

  Recess lasted only twenty minutes, so they had no time to waste. Tommy Adkins and Howie Allen—the two best boy athletes in third grade—volunteered to be captains. They quickly picked teams, four boys and three girls on each side. Lola was the last one picked. She was on Howie’s team.

  “Howieeeeee! Howieeeeee! I’m open!” she shouted as she raced around. She really was open, sometimes, but Howie never passed the ball to her. None of the boys did.

  Fayth and Maya tried, too. “Howieeeeee! Howieeeeee!”

  The boys never passed the ball to the girls, never congratulated them when they made a good play, and never looked them in the eyes.

  When the bell rang, the game ended. Lola’s team lost, six goals to four.

  “That was so unfair,” Lola said, wiping her sweaty forehead and tucking her hair behind her ears.

  “So, so, sooo unfair!” Fayth said.

  “They pretend they don’t see us!” Lola said.

  “Like we’re invisible!” agreed Maya.

  “Did you see how Tommy stole the ball from Sevilla?” Fayth said. “And they were on the same team!”

  “They don’t even care about winning,” Lola said. “All they want to do is score goals.”

  “And make sure we don’t!” said Maya.

  “I’m so mad!” Lola said.

  “My brother says don’t get mad…get even!” Maya said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Lola said. “Maybe if we get more girls tomorrow, the teams will be more even and we can make it harder for them to ignore us.”

  “Yeah,” Fayth said. “Mr. Nick says everybody plays. No subs. So if we get ten girls, we can take over the game.”

  “That’ll be epochal!” Lola said.

  Maya and Fayth, who knew all about Lola’s new interest in big words, waited for the definition.

  “That means it’ll be a game-changer!” Lola said.

  When Lola got home from school on Monday, her mother was still at work. Lillian Jones worked for the police department and that meant she never knew exactly when she would get home because crime didn’t happen on a schedule. Lola went downstairs to visit Grampa Ed, who lived in the first-floor apartment and also had an art studio there. It was messy, but Lola loved it.

  “Hey, kid, how was school?” Grampa Ed looked up from his art table as Lola came in the door. He had a pencil in one hand and a big pink eraser in the other.

  Lola took a deep breath. Grampa’s apartment smelled warm and sweet and sour all at the same time. She moved carefully to make sure she didn’t step on a pencil, a plastic cup, or a paint brush. “We lost, six to four,” she said. “The girls didn’t even get to touch the ball.”

  “I asked about school, not recess,” Grampa Ed said. “Did you learn anything?”

  “I learned boys don’t play well with girls.”

  “That’s an important lesson, I guess.” Grampa Ed scratched his bald head with his eraser.

  “Grampa,” Lola said, “you were a boy once, right?” She brushed a few crumbs off the couch and sat down.

  “Sure was.”

  “Did you do a lot of boy stuff?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like burping and cutting the heads off dolls and digging up earthworms and putting them in the teacher’s lunch and hogging the soccer ball?”

  “Have you been reading my old report cards?” Grampa laughed.

  “I’m serious. Did you do stuff like that, Grampa?”

  “Burping and earthworms, yes. Cutting heads off dolls, no. Why?”

  “Well, I was just thinking that maybe if I tried to understand the boys, I could convince them to play fair. I could appeal to their sense of camaraderie. That means mutual friendship and trust.”

  “Oh yeah, I know that word,” Grampa said. “But I hate to tell you, I think you’re wasting your time.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, when I was a boy I was a
lot more concerned with winning than playing fair. If you want to convince the boys to play fair, you’re going to have to do more than ask them. You’re going to have to prove to them that your way is better. And you probably have to prove it a few times before they get it. We’re a stubborn bunch.”

  “Grampa! That’s terrible! I can’t believe you’re saying that boys won’t respond to a call for camaraderie.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll see,” Grampa said. “In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to keep practicing.”

  Lola rubbed her chin.

  “Grampa,” she said, “can I tell you a secret?”

  Grampa put down his pencil and eraser, put his hands on his lap, and waited for Lola to speak.

  “Well…,” she said. “It’s a little embarrassing.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, kid,” Grampa said, “but I’m sort of crazy about you. I don’t think there’s anything you can say that’s going to change that.”

  “OK.” Lola took a deep breath. “Well…” She lowered her voice until the sound hardly came out at all. “I’m…um…pretty…um…bad at soccer.”

  Grampa waited. And then he rolled his eyes and laughed. “Is that it?”

  “You shouldn’t laugh,” she said. “It’s embarrassing! It’s like my feet get nervous around the ball. They never do what I want them to do. No matter how much I practice, I don’t get better!”

  “So, quit,” Grampa said. “Switch to ping-pong. Or chess.”

  “No way, Grampa! I’m not quitting soccer. I love soccer! And you don’t have to be good at something to love it. That’s what Anne of Green Gables says. She says that after trying and winning, trying and failing is the next best thing, because the trying is exactly the same in both cases. Trying is the important part.”

  “OK, then don’t quit.” Grampa picked up his pencil. “Keep trying. Hey, maybe you can ask that kid Gabriel from down the street to give you some pointers. I hear he’s good.”