Score for Imagination

by Jonathan Eig

  “Wait…You know Gabriel?”

  “I know his grandfather, Francisco. He says his kids and his grandkids are all soccer stars. Maybe you and Gabriel could practice after school.”

  Lola sank deep into thought. If Gabriel was good at soccer, why didn’t he play? Maybe he was hiding something from his grandfather, or maybe there was something about Gabriel that Lola hadn’t figured out.

  “Well, what do you say?” Grampa asked. “Why don’t you ring the kid’s doorbell and ask him to practice?”

  “I don’t know,” Lola said. “It’s complicated.”

  “Why, because he’s a boy? Are you afraid he’s going to dig up earthworms and put them in your lunch?”

  “No.” Lola laughed. “But I’m pretty sure he won’t want to help a girl.”

  Lola got off the couch and went upstairs to her room. She flopped down on the bed and stared up at her poster of Team USA. All the women on the team were so big and strong. But they must have been eight and a half years old once, too. They must have played with boys like Tommy Adkins and Howie Allen who never passed the ball to girls. What did they do about it?

  As her eyes moved across the picture, from one player to the next, Lola made up her mind. She was definitely not going to ring Gabriel’s doorbell to ask for help.

  The third-grade boys were the problem, not the solution!

  At recess the next day, Lola and her friends were ready. This time they brought twelve girls. When the captains got done picking teams, there were six girls and four boys on each team.

  “This is going to be awesome,” Lola said. “We’re going to vanquish them.”

  “Wait! I know that one,” Fayth said. “It means defeat, right?”

  “Yes!” Lola smiled and pumped her fist.

  Before the game began, Gabriel huddled with Tommy and Howie. Lola thought that was strange because Howie and Tommy were on opposing teams. How could Gabriel coach both sides?

  Lola walked over to the huddle. “Excuse me, but what are you talking about?”

  “We’re talking about strategy,” Gabriel said. He held the soccer ball under one arm.

  “I want to talk about the strategy, too,” Lola said. “Howie and I are on the same team.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “That’s not nice,” Lola said, as she tugged the ball from Gabriel’s arm and tossed it to Fayth. “You’re wasting time. Let’s play!”

  They played. But having extra girls on the field didn’t help. The boys worked harder than ever to keep the ball away from girls. At the start of the game, Fayth made a perfect pass to Lola at midfield. Fayth cut toward the goal and shouted for Lola to pass it back, but before Lola could make the pass, Howie gave Lola a bump and stole the ball.

  “Howie! We’re on the same team!” Lola shouted.

  But Howie was already gone.

  The game ended in a tie, two to two.

  The rest of the day in school Lola struggled to pay attention. She was too angry. Her teacher, Mrs. Gunderson, asked her if she was feeling sick. Lola said she was fine. But she was still upset later that afternoon as she walked home from school with Maya and Fayth.

  “It’s like they don’t even want to win if we’re helping them do it!” Maya said.

  “I think they do want to win, sort of,” Fayth said. “But it’s more important for them to prove that boys are better than girls. They’re behaving like a bunch of kindergartners.”

  “Kindergarten boys, you mean,” Lola added. “Kindergarten girls would never do that stuff.”

  “I don’t understand it,” said Maya.

  “I do,” said Fayth. “That’s how my brothers behave all the time. My mother calls them cavemen. She says they haven’t evolved.”

  “Do you think cavemen ever let cavewomen play soccer?”

  “Probably not,” said Maya. “The cavewomen probably had to stay home and knit the soccer balls out of deerskin or something.”

  “Well, that’s history,” Lola said. “Ancient history.”

  When she got home, Lola gave Grampa Ed another report.

  “The score was two to two,” she said.

  “A tie isn’t so bad,” Grampa said.

  “It’s not the score that made me mad. It’s the way the boys played.” Lola frowned. “Grampa, do you think boys act like cavemen?”

  “I guess so…sometimes,” Grampa Ed said. “But, hey, cavemen can learn. Some smart caveman figured out how to make fire. Another one invented the cell phone.”

  Lola had the feeling Grampa Ed was joking about the cell phone, just like the happy pills, but she let it go.

  “But, Grampa, how do you know it wasn’t a cavewoman who invented fire? You don’t know at all!”

  Grampa Ed rubbed his bald head.

  “That’s the thing,” Lola said. “You boys have all this extra confidence. Too much! You think you invented everything. You think you should get the ball on the soccer field and the girls should get out of the way. You think if you keep treating us badly, we’ll give up. But we don’t have to give up. We’re not going to!”

  “You’re right,” Grampa Ed said. “Sorry. I should not have assumed that a caveman invented fire. But, hey, maybe I can help.”

  “How?”

  “Well, your mother showed me that soccer book you borrowed from the library.” Grampa Ed picked up Smarter Soccer from his drawing table. “Your mother thought the book would be easier to understand if it had pictures. So I read a few chapters and made illustrations. Here, let me show you.”

  Lola flipped through Grampa Ed’s drawings.

  “Wow, these are beautiful.” She rubbed her chin. “But wait, there’s something wrong. There’s no ball in these pictures. If there were a ball, wouldn’t all the players be near the ball?”

  “I don’t know,” Grampa Ed said, “because I didn’t understand all the soccer terms in the book. But I think the author is saying you don’t have to run around as much if you know what you’re doing.”

  “Interesting,” Lola said.

  “Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Grampa Ed said. “I invited Gabriel and his grandfather over for dinner Friday.”

  Lola dropped the drawings and stood up.

  “You did what?” Her voice squeaked.

  Grampa Ed shrugged.

  “But, Grampa, I told you, Gabriel is part of the problem. He’s one of the cavemen!”

  “Well, you know what they say…”

  Lola interrupted. “Grampa, I really don’t want Gabriel coming over here for dinner.”

  Grampa Ed pretended he wasn’t listening.

  “You know what they say,” he continued. “Keep your friends close…and keep your enemies closer.”

  Lola shook her head, frustrated.

  “Grampa,” she said, “I love you, but trust me…no kid would ever listen to that advice.”

  The classroom clock seemed to be stuck. The morning stretched on and on. When it’s almost recess, it’s always hard to pay attention to the teacher, even a wonderful teacher like Mrs. Gunderson.

  Lola looked at the clock ten times between 9:33 and 9:34. “Recess is never going to get here!” she thought. “If it’s 9:34 and recess starts at 12:20, how many minutes do I have to wait?” She tried to do the math. Was it more than a hundred minutes? It seemed like that! There was no way she could wait that long if the clock kept moving so slowly. She was trying to do the math again when she heard her name called.

  “Lola,” Mrs. Gunderson said, “perhaps you can tell us the answer.”

  “A hundred and fifty minutes?”

  Laughter came from the children sitting around her.

  “Lola,” Mrs. Gunderson said in a calm voice. “I guess you didn’t hear the question. I asked the class if anyone knew why Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an important person in history?”

  “Wasn’t she the star of the women’s soccer team that won the World Cup in 1999?”

  “No, you’re thinking of Mia Hamm,” Mrs. Gunderson said
. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought against slavery and to give women the right to vote.”

  “Wow, I wasn’t even close!” Lola made a crooked, uncertain smile. She felt embarrassed.

  Mrs. Gunderson nodded sympathetically. Then she put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. “Children, as you know, this is Women’s History Month. We’re going to split into groups of four. Each group will produce a report on an important event in women’s history.”

  The classroom got quieter than usual.

  “You’re free to do any kind of report you choose. You may write an essay. You may compose a song. You may build a website. You may make a poster. Surprise me.”

  The mood in the classroom brightened slightly.

  “Can we pick our own groups?” a boy named Bryce asked.

  When Mrs. Gunderson said yes, everyone cheered. When she said each group had to be a mix of boys and girls, everyone moaned.

  Lola didn’t want to choose between Maya and Fayth, so she asked her friend Eva to be in her group. Eva asked Bryce to join, and Bryce asked Howie. The four of them found a quiet corner of the room and sat down to make plans. Eva, Bryce, and Howie did most of the talking. Lola still felt a little embarrassed.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Howie said. “Let’s do Elizabeth Cady Stanton!”

  “Why?” Eva asked.

  “Because we already know Mrs. Gunderson likes her!”

  “That’s true,” Eva said. “But I’d rather pick someone more modern. What about Rosa Parks? Or Michelle Obama?”

  “What about the person Lola said? Mia Hamm!” said Bryce. “We could make a video about how her team won the World Cup!”

  Lola was no longer counting the minutes until recess. She was not embarrassed anymore, either. “That sounds fun!” she said.

  Gabriel and his grandfather, Francisco, were coming to dinner. That afternoon, Lola stood at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables. Her mother was preparing her special macaroni and cheese, which she made with elbow noodles, three kinds of cheese, plus salsa, chopped red peppers, and avocado. It tasted even better than it looked.

  “Do I have to sit next to Gabriel tonight?” Lola asked. “I’m sure I won’t have anything to say to him.”

  “Are boys really so bad?” Lillian Jones asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, they are,” Lola said. “They have no scope for imagination. They’re small-minded, overly confident, and wearisome. That’s a big word for tiring.”

  “All boys?” Ms. Jones snatched a carrot from Lola’s cutting board and popped it in her mouth.

  “I don’t know about all of them. But at my school, a lot of them are. And Gabriel is part of the problem. Even though he doesn’t play soccer, he helps the boys come up with their strategies to keep the girls from getting the ball. It’s so mean.”

  “Maybe he’s doing it to make friends.”

  “Do you really think that’s OK, Mom?”

  “Maybe not,” Ms. Jones said. “Maybe you should ask Gabriel why he only helps the boys.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Lola asked. “It’s because he’s a boy.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Lillian Jones turned and gave Lola a hard stare. Lola called it the Interrogation Stare.

  Long before Lola understood that her mother was a police officer, she knew about the Interrogation Stare. Lola got the Interrogation Stare every time her mother wanted her to think a little harder about her answer. When she was three years old, she drew on the wall with a permanent marker and told her mother that a unicorn did it. That was the first time she could remember getting the Interrogation Stare. But even as she got older and learned not to lie, Lola continued to get the Interrogation Stare. She hated it.

  “What? What did I say?” Lola asked. “Why am I getting that stare?”

  “You tell me,” Lola’s mother said.

  Lola huffed and went to her room. She stretched out on her bed, looked up at the poster of Team USA, and picked up her library book on soccer strategy.

  Lola opened to the first page and began to read: “Have you ever seen the movie Star Wars? What if I told you Luke, Leia, and Han had all the advantages in fighting Darth Vader? What if I told you that they knew they could defeat the Galactic Empire because they understood that speed was more important than size in their battle? And what if I told you that winning at soccer is easy when you understand what’s important and what isn’t?”

  Lola kept reading as the house filled with the smell of baked noodles and garlic bread. She was beginning the third chapter of Smarter Soccer when she heard the timer on the oven ding, followed minutes later by the buzzer at the front door.

  “Lola! Get the door, please!” her mother called.

  Lola shuffled down the hall. She opened the door and Gabriel and his grandfather stepped inside.

  “Hola, Lola.” Gabriel’s grandfather smiled and handed Lola a bouquet of yellow tulips. “These flowers are for you and your mother.”

  “They’re from my grandfather,” Gabriel said. “Not me.”

  Francisco Contento gently nudged his grandson as if to say, “Behave yourself.”

  Lola smiled.

  “Thank you for the flowers, Mr. Contento. Hi, Gabriel,” she said. “Come in, both of you. May I take your coats?”

  At the dinner table, the grown-ups talked about the giant grocery store that opened on Belmont Avenue and about the city’s new mayor and about the rising costs of a lot of things that didn’t really concern Lola. She felt she should talk to Gabriel, but she didn’t know what to say. She certainly couldn’t talk about soccer. It would only make her angry again. Finally, she had an idea.

  “Hey, Gabriel,” she said, between bites of mac and cheese. “Have you ever read Anne of Green Gables?”

  Gabriel was moving noodles around his plate but not eating. He looked up and shook his head. “What’s it about?”

  “About 300 pages!” Lola said.

  Gabriel’s eyebrows scrunched and he scratched his head. “Huh?”

  “That was a joke,” Lola said. “Anyway, it’s about an orphan girl named Anne who goes to live on a farm with two grown-ups who really wanted a boy orphan, not a girl orphan. Anne talks too much and uses a lot of big words, but the grown-ups get used to her. At school there’s this boy named Gilbert who teases her. Anne’s really smart and competes with that boy to see who’s the smartest kid in class.”

  Gabriel moved more noodles around on his plate. “I bet you the girl turns out to be the smartest,” he said.

  “Really?” Lola asked. “Why?”

  “Because the book is named Anne of Green Gables, not Gilbert of Green Gables, right? Kind of obvious.”

  Lola admitted that was a good point, even though she wasn’t sure if Anne would turn out to be smarter than Gilbert, or if they would get to be friends or even if it mattered. She hadn’t finished the book yet.

  Gabriel went back to playing with his food. Mr. Contento was bragging about Gabriel’s older brother, who was only a freshman in high school but already playing on the soccer team. He said that Gabriel’s father had been the captain of his high school team. Gabriel’s mother had played soccer, too, and would have won a scholarship to play in college if she hadn’t hurt her knee.

  Lola stared at Gabriel as she listened. It looked like the elbow noodles on his plate were arranged in some kind of pattern. He moved one noodle at a time. Lola thought the pattern looked familiar, but when Gabriel noticed her stare he scrambled the food into a big pile and took a bite. A few noodles bounced from his plate to the floor. Gabriel bent to pick them up. As he sat up again, he hit his head on the table. He rubbed his head and smiled as he sat back up.

  “Are you OK?” Lola asked.

  Gabriel turned red and said he was fine.

  Lola looked at his plate again for a few minutes until she figured out why the noodle patterns there had looked familiar.

  “Mom,” she said, “may Gabriel and I be excused for a few minutes? I want to show him something in my
room.”

  “Of course, honey,” Lillian Jones said. “We’ll call you when it’s time for dessert.”

  Lola marched into her room, with Gabriel trailing. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the drawings that Grampa Ed had made after reading the first chapters of Smarter Soccer.

  “Is this what you were doing with your noodles?” she asked. “Were you making soccer plays?”

  When Gabriel blushed and stammered, Lola knew she was right.

  “Have you read this book?” she asked, reaching for her copy of Smarter Soccer.

  “No.” Gabriel picked up the book and looked at the front and back covers. “I get my plays from video games.”

  Lola’s eyes went wide. “How do you do that?”

  “I play a lot of video games. And I mean a lot. But sometimes I don’t try to win. I just study the computer’s moves. The programmers have analyzed the best soccer teams in the world. So, if I can figure out the moves in the video game, I should learn how to play better soccer.”

  “And you’re using this to coach the boys at recess?”

  “Trying.” Gabriel frowned. “It doesn’t work. The boys never do what they’re supposed to.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lola. “Why don’t you join the game and make the moves yourself?”

  “No, no…I can’t. I need to control the whole team to see if my strategy works. And I can’t. Even if I did play, the other guys still wouldn’t do what I want them to.”

  “That’s because the boys are not empathetic,” Lola said.

  Gabriel laughed. “Is that one of your big words from Anne of Green Gables?”

  “Actually, it’s from Smarter Soccer.” Lola turned the book over in her hands. “The author says that winning soccer players need to be speedy. That’s probably the most important thing…make speedy passes. But good soccer players also need to be empathetic, according to the author. That means players need to understand one another. For example, don’t just yell, ‘Howie! Howie! Pass it to me!’ I’m supposed to think about where Howie wants me to be so he can make a good, speedy pass, and then get to that spot. And then if Howie goes to an even better spot, I’m supposed to pass it right back to him. Fast!”