by Alex Morgan
“Who would like to begin?” Ms. Carides asked, looking between me and Jessi.
“I will!” Jessi jumped in eagerly. She outlined everything that had happened so far and ended with a flourish, placing the friendship bracelet on Ms. Carides’s desk. “And here’s our proof!”
Ms. Carides picked up the bracelet and held it in her hand, staring at it thoughtfully.
“Girls, there is certainly not enough proof for me to bring any action against the Panthers,” she said firmly. “The Kicks may be having a better season this year than last, but let’s face it, you got off to a very rocky start this year. I’m not exactly sure if another team would be so threatened by you that they would go to such extremes.”
I felt my cheeks blaze red, and saw Jessi frown. Basically she was saying we weren’t good enough to be the subject of sabotage!
“But the banner is definite proof that someone is messing with us,” Jessi pointed out. “Isn’t that at least poor sportsmanship or something?”
“For all we know, that banner might have been defaced by someone from Kentville,” Ms. Carides pointed out.
Jessi looked angry. “But the bracelet—”
“Is what would be called circumstantial evidence in any court of law,” the league director interrupted. Then she sighed. “You are clearly a team that is finding itself this season, and I do commend all of you and Coach Flores for the hard work you’ve done. My recommendation is to focus on practice and not worry about these other distractions. Strong practices will continue to strengthen your team.” She handed the bracelet back to Jessi.
Coach Flores quickly stood up, looking offended. “Thank you for taking the time to hear the girls out, Beatriz,” Coach Flores said crisply. “Girls, please thank Ms. Carides for her time.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, looking at the floor. This had been a disaster. Jessi mumbled something too, but I could barely hear what she said.
Shoulders slumped, we left the office. No one said a word until we were back in the parking lot.
“She thinks we stink!” Jessi cried angrily.
“Now, Jessi,” Coach said in a soothing tone of voice. “She suggested you focus on practice and continuing to improve. It’s a valid point.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” I said, totally exasperated. That had been so embarrassing! “Ms. Carides is right. We should be worried about practices and improving, not this other stuff.”
Jessi glared at me, her arms crossed in front of her. I glared back. Coach sighed. “Oh, dear,” she said sadly. “Girls, you’ve got to let this go. Don’t let it get to you. Remember, we’re a team!”
We drove back to the school mostly in silence, Jessi and I barely speaking. If someone was really trying to sabotage us, then it was working! The Kicks were starting to come apart.
CHAPTER TEN
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
I watched, wide-eyed, as Frida recited the creepy words over a plastic cauldron in the rehearsal room at the Dramaworks Acting Studio. Her acting class was giving a special performance for family and friends. Frida had on a long, gray robe, and her hair looked messy and hung over her eyes. Even though she didn’t have any makeup on her face, she looked incredibly scary, and her voice was so spooky that it gave me chills. Now I understood why she wanted to be an actress. She was amazing!
She and two other girls dressed in gray robes danced around the cauldron. “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” they chanted, and I actually felt a little spooked.
When the scene finished, a woman with sandy-brown hair stepped in front of them.
“That was from Macbeth, act 4, scene 1,” she said. “Let’s give a hand for our students.”
The audience clapped as the girls took a bow. Frida’s eyes were shining. Next to me Emma let out a cheer.
“Whoo! Go, Frida!”
Emma, Zoe, Jessi, and I had come to see some short Shakespeare scenes that the members of Frida’s acting class had prepared. Honestly, I hadn’t been sure what to expect, but I’d really liked it. They’d picked a bunch of short, exciting scenes, and even though everyone had been talking like they did hundreds of years ago, it had still been easy to figure out what was going on. The scene with the witches closed the show, so we rushed up to Frida.
“You were awesome!” Emma cried, hugging her.
“Totally scary,” Zoe added.
Jessi nodded. “You make an awesome witch.”
Frida grinned. “Thanks. I was thinking I could use the character at our next game. Imagine if we could put a spell on the other team so that none of their kicks would reach the goal?”
Jessi giggled. “Or we could turn the Panthers into toads.”
“That wouldn’t be a fair game,” I pointed out. “I just know that we’re both going to make the play-offs, and when we face them there, I want to beat them fair and square.”
“But what if they don’t play fair and square?” Jessi asked, looking right at me.
“Come on. Let’s go eat,” Frida said, changing the subject. “Acting makes me absolutely ravenous!”
Frida’s mom had arranged to take us to Chan’s Dragon Inn after the performance, so we all piled into the car and headed out to the restaurant. I’d never been there before; inside, it looked like something out of a movie, with gold dragon statues on pedestals, ruby-red tablecloths, and a big fish tank with orange fish swimming in it by the front door.
“I love this place,” Frida said. “It’s so glamorous, isn’t it?”
“I like how it smells in here,” Jessi remarked. “Now I’m feeling absolutely ravenous!”
Frida’s three aunts walked in behind us, and Frida’s mom sat at a table with them and let the five of us Kicks sit at the table next to them. I opened up the big menu and stared at the pages; there must have been a hundred different dishes, but I knew what I wanted.
“Chicken and broccoli, please,” I said when the waiter took our order.
Jessi ordered beef lo mein, Emma asked for dumplings, and Zoe ordered the same as I had. And then it was Frida’s turn.
“Szechuan tofu please,” she said, “and we’ll all have a cup of hot and sour soup. And tea for the table.” The waiter gave a little bow and left us.
“Hot and sour soup?” Jessi asked with a grimace.
“Trust me. You’ll love it,” Frida said. “Anyway, I wanted to thank you guys for coming. It was just an informal preview, but we’ll be doing a full show in a couple of months, and that should be amazing.”
“You are totally the best one in the class,” I told her.
Frida blushed a little. “Thanks,” she replied. “It’s a really cool role to play. The witches are the ones who set the whole play into motion. They’re the ones who tell Macbeth that he’s destined to be king, and then he takes destiny into his own hands and kills the king so he can take his place.”
Emma shuddered. “That’s horrible!”
Jessi gave me another look. “Yes, people are capable of awful things. Like sabotage!”
I sighed. “Can’t we just forget about it?”
“Are you talking about the banner?” Emma asked. “I still can’t believe that someone would do that to us.”
“It’s not just someone; it’s the Panthers,” Jessi said firmly.
“Maybe it’s just Mirabelle,” Frida added thoughtfully. “In Macbeth it’s his wife, Lady Macbeth, who’s really behind everything. Maybe Mirabelle is like the Lady Macbeth of the Panthers.”
“I’m not sure about the Macbeth stuff, but I think you’re right about Mirabelle,” Jessi agreed, leaning forward. “After all, she’s the only one with a really personal connection to the Kicks.”
Zoe nodded. “You’re right. It’s
got to really bug her that she transferred to the Panthers and thought she was going to be so much better than us, but we beat them.”
“And we already know that Mirabelle was at the game when Devin’s uniform was stolen,” Jessi pointed out. “She is the most obvious suspect.”
“Listen, I’ll admit that this kind of makes sense,” I said. “But what are we supposed to do? We already talked to Ms. Carides about it, and she told us to focus and practice. I agree with her.”
“Who’s Ms. Carides?” Emma asked.
“She’s the league director,” I replied. “Coach Flores took us to talk to her, and we explained everything, but she didn’t really believe us.”
“Even after I showed her the evidence.” Jessi took the friendship bracelet out of her pocket. “Panthers colors. I found it in the equipment room.”
Emma, Zoe, and Frida looked shocked.
“No way!” Emma cried. “How could she not believe you after seeing this?”
Zoe shook her head. “That’s so not fair.”
“Exactly,” I said. “But there’s nothing we can do except keep our eyes open and play our best.”
Jessi got a devious look on her face. “Unless we get more proof.”
“And how do we do that?” I asked.
“I could spy on Mirabelle,” Jessi replied.
“That sounds ridiculous,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘spy’?”
“Like, follow her around and see what she does,” Jessi answered. “Didn’t you ever read Harriet the Spy? She got the dirt on everybody.”
“That is an amazing idea,” Frida said. “Do you want me to go undercover?”
“No, I got this,” Jessi replied. “Mirabelle and I used to be besties, remember? I know where she hangs out. We don’t have a game tomorrow, so I can follow her around.”
Zoe shuddered. “You mean, like, stalk her? That sounds super creepy.”
“Harriet the Spy wasn’t creepy. She was cute,” Jessi pointed out.
“Well, you’d just be, like, keeping an eye on things, right?” Emma asked Jessi. “Maybe that’s not so bad. If you do find something out, it could help us.”
Jessi nodded. “Exactly. So far, Mirabelle’s been trying to psych us out. Devin, you keep saying that you want us to get to the play-offs. Well, what if she messes that up for us? She deserves to be spied on.”
I just shook my head. “This whole thing is crazy.”
Then the waiter came back and put a small, steaming bowl of soup in front of each of us.
“Thank goodness! I was about to faint!” Frida cried, picking up her spoon.
The soup was a weird orangey color, and it looked like it had papery things floating in it, but I put my spoon in and took a taste. It was yummy—hot and spicy and definitely a little sour, which kind of matched my mood.
I wasn’t going to stop Jessi from spying on Mirabelle—and I knew that I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I really hoped that Jessi wouldn’t find out anything, and that all the sabotage or whatever would just stop, but I had a feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better.
I had no idea just how right I’d be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Good news, guys,” Zoe announced at lunch on Monday. She held up her right wrist. “The sling is off. But I still have to wear the bandage.”
“Does this mean you can play?” I asked.
Zoe crossed her fingers. “Still waiting to be cleared.”
“That’s so great!” Emma said. She turned to Jessi. “So, what happened with . . . you know?”
Jessi looked around, like she was making sure nobody was listening.
“Okay, let me give you guys a report,” she said in a hushed voice. “So, Mirabelle is a total mall rat. She always has been. I checked the Panthers’ practice schedule and saw they had a practice at noon yesterday, so I asked my dad to drop me off at the mall at two o’clock. I hung out in front of Crush, her favorite store. I was there for, like, a half hour, and she didn’t show up. But then there she was. I had her right in my sights.” She smiled triumphantly.
“Wait. How come she didn’t see you?” Emma asked.
“Because I wore a disguise.” Jessi held out her phone and showed us a photo she had snapped of herself. She wore giant sunglasses and had tucked her braids into a blue baseball cap. She also had on some kind of beige trench coat with the collar stuck up, and I figured she must have borrowed it from her mom.
Emma giggled. “Oh my gosh. You look like something out of a spy movie.”
“I looked inconspicuous,” Jessi replied seriously. “She never saw me.”
“So you just stood there like a stalker and watched her shop?” Zoe asked.
“No, I pretended I was reading a magazine,” Jessi replied. “And it worked. Anyway, she was there with a bunch of the Panthers. They looked at clothes for a while, and then they moved on to the food court, so I followed them.”
Frida leaned across the table, hanging on Jessi’s every word. “Did you hear them plotting their next move against us?”
Jessi shook her head. “No. I sat two tables away, and I could pretty much hear everything they said, and they were mostly talking about boys and their next game.”
“See? There’s nothing more to worry about,” I said.
“But I’m not done yet,” Jessi said with a gleam in her eye. “I got some very important evidence.”
She held out her phone again and showed us a picture of an arm.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“This is Mirabelle’s arm,” Jessi informed us. “And what’s key in the picture is what’s not in it. Namely, Mirabelle’s friendship bracelet.”
“What do you mean?” Emma asked.
“I mean, Mirabelle was not wearing her bracelet, but all of the other Panthers were,” Jessi answered, her voice rising with excitement. “Don’t you see? Mirabelle’s bracelet is the one we found in the equipment shed. Mirabelle is the one who’s been sabotaging us!”
Frida gasped, and Emma and Zoe looked surprised.
“You may be right,” I admitted. “So if it’s just Mirabelle, then we can confront her, right?”
Jessi grinned. “Yeah, you can count me in on that.”
“I think we should talk to Coach Flores before we do anything,” Emma suggested.
“We tried that already,” Jessi reminded her. “And all that happened was that we ended up getting insulted by the league director.”
“But this is more evidence,” I pointed out. “It couldn’t hurt.”
Jessi sighed. “Fine. But if it doesn’t do any good, then I vote for confronting Mirabelle.”
When we got to the locker room that afternoon, Coach Flores was waiting by the door—and she was holding my duffel bag!
“You found it!” I cried. “But how?”
“It’s kind of a strange story,” Coach replied as the other Kicks gathered around us to hear. “Mr. Jenkins, one of the maintenance workers, dropped it off to me this morning. He was working here yesterday, and he said somebody ran up to the door by the gym, put it down, and left.”
“Did he see who it was?” I asked.
Coach shook her head. “He said it was a girl with blond hair. He called out to her, but she didn’t answer.”
I unzipped the bag. “I hope everything’s still here.”
I pulled out my shorts, the pink SportsWrap for my headband, and then my jersey. It unrolled as I took it out, and to my shock I saw the word “Loser” scrawled across the front in some kind of black marker. A big stain of purple dye streaked across the bottom.
I stared at the shirt, unable to speak, but I could hear the other Kicks gasp. Everyone started talking at once.
“No way!”
“That’s awful!”
“Oh my gosh!”
“This is too much,” Jessi said loudly. “Remember when Mirabelle called us losers? She’s really rubbing it in. And that Panthers purple is just another insult.”
“Bu
t didn’t the janitor say that the girl who dropped it off had blond hair?” Emma asked.
Coach Flores nodded. “Yes, he did. So if you are saying that Mirabelle did this, that would rule her out.”
“Unless she wore a wig,” Frida suggested.
Then I thought of something. “Coach, did Mr. Jenkins say what time he saw the girl drop it off?”
Coach thought. “I think he said it was around three o’clock.”
I looked right at Jessi. “Then it couldn’t have been Mirabelle,” I said. I wanted to say, Because you were spying on her, but I didn’t want Coach Flores to know that.
Jessi nodded. “So it was another one of the Panthers, then. They must be working on this together after all.”
Coach Flores sighed. “Girls, I am sorry this is happening to you. It’s very poor sportsmanship. I’ll contact Ms. Carides about this right away.”
“Don’t bother,” Jessi said. “She totally insulted us. We don’t need her help. And she’d probably just tell us to practice more or something anyway.”
Coach Flores looked sad. “You might be right, Jessi, I’m sorry to say. But I can still try to talk to her. She may change her mind.”
I looked around, and pretty much the whole team was there, and they all looked upset. The Panthers’ sabotage was working, and as co-captain I couldn’t let it bring down the team.
“It’s just a dumb jersey,” I said loudly. “Forget about it. We need a good practice today so we can beat the Atoms this weekend.”
Grace spoke up. “That’s right. We can’t let whoever’s doing this psych us out. So let’s get ready!”
“That’s the right attitude,” Coach Flores said with a smile. “I’m proud of you girls.”
We all headed to the benches to get changed, and even though I had just told the team to concentrate on practice, I couldn’t. I was boiling mad. I crumpled up the jersey and stuffed it in the bottom of the duffel bag.
Jessi walked up to me. “You know, I was thinking it’s time to send the Panthers a message.”
