In the Zone

by Alex Morgan

  “Saving a table,” I said. I looked across the room to where Jessi was sitting. “Looks like there’s room for all of us.”

  I approached the yogurt bar and grabbed two medium cups. I filled one with vanilla for me, and one with chocolate for Jessi. I put mango, pineapple, and blueberries on mine. Jessi’s got sprinkles, strawberries, walnuts, and breakfast cereal.

  Pretty soon we were all sitting at the table, eating our yogurt and talking about the game.

  “I’ve got to admit, they played a good game,” Grace was saying. “Fair and square.”

  “Yeah, they’ve got some strong players and play well as a team,” Hailey agreed, shaking her head.

  Emma was looking down at her yogurt, stirring it over and over again with her spoon.

  “Don’t sweat it, Emma,” Grace said. “We’ll win next time.”

  Emma sighed. “I hope so.”

  “Cheer up, Emma,” Jessi said, putting her arm around Emma’s shoulders. Then her eyes got wide. “Look, there’s Sebastian.”

  I followed her eyes to a table across the room. A family was sitting there: a mom, a dad, a little girl, and a boy who looked to be our age—a boy with wavy dark hair and darker eyes. He was laughing with his little sister.

  “Sebastian?” I asked.

  “Sebastian Delgado,” Jessi explained. “He’s new. I have a class with him. He’s really nice and easy to talk to.”

  Hailey nodded. “Yeah, he is. He’s in my French class.”

  “How do you say ‘cute boy’ in French?” Jessi asked.

  Emma nudged her. “Jessi! Don’t let Cody hear you say that.”

  Jessi shrugged. “Why not? Cody’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Well, no, but . . .” Emma’s voice trailed off.

  There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, and then everyone started talking about soccer again. I got what Emma meant. I mean, Cody wasn’t Jessi’s boyfriend. Steven wasn’t mine either. But still, we did things together. And when I finally felt like I was ready to have a boyfriend, it would probably be Steven. Especially after the amazing cheerleading he’d done for me that day!

  I turned to Jessi. “We’re still going to the mall with Cody and Steven tomorrow, right?”

  Jessi nodded. “Yeah. Emma and Hailey are coming too. And Cody’s bringing some guys from the Kangaroos.”

  Officially, every team at Kentville Middle School was called the Kangaroos. The girls’ soccer team had always been known as the Kicks, for short.

  Jessi smiled and waved at Sebastian, and he waved back. I couldn’t help noticing that he had a really nice smile.

  “I guess he is pretty cute,” I whispered to Jessi.

  “No kidding,” Jessi said, and then she took another bite of her yogurt.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Come on!” Cody grabbed Jessi by the arm. We were at the mall. “Let’s try to run up the down escalator!”

  Jessi shook her head and pulled her arm away from Cody. “We’ll get kicked out by the security guards,” she said, her voice crackling with irritation. She rolled her eyes. “Gosh, Cody, you can be so immature sometimes.”

  Steven looked at me, his eyebrows raised. I shrugged my shoulders awkwardly, not knowing what to say. Emma and Hailey were chatting with Daniel and José, two fellow Kangaroos who played with Steven and Cody. They didn’t notice the tense exchange between Jessi and Cody.

  “Come on!” I said, trying to change the subject. “Let’s go to Sports World. Emma needs to try on some new cleats.”

  Emma sighed loudly. “Forget it. I tried on every pair of cleats there last week when I was with my mom. Like I told you, they’re either too tight or too loose.”

  “Have you tried the Bia Force 3X’s?” José asked her. “They mold to your feet. They are fantastic. I love mine.”

  Emma’s face lit up. “You know, they didn’t have them in stock when we were there. Maybe we can check to see if they’re in now.”

  We went around to the up escalator (we didn’t run up the down one like Cody had suggested), and I noticed that Jessi hung back to walk next to Hailey, leaving Cody with me and Steven.

  Steven and I could tell that Jessi was aggravated, but Cody seemed clueless. He walked next to us, slurping loudly on the bright blue slushee he had gotten at a food court stand.

  The bright blue matched Cody’s eyes. He had wavy blond hair that always seemed to fall over his eyes, no matter how much he pushed it away. Steven was kind of opposite-looking, with dark eyes and short, spiky black hair.

  Usually I had my long brown hair pulled into a ponytail, but today I’d worn it down. Since I had moved to California, I hadn’t had to worry about blow-drying it as much. In Connecticut if you went out of the house with wet hair in March, your head would turn into a Popsicle. When my hair air-dried now, it had a nice wave and looked like I’d just come from the beach. The sun had also given my hair some blondish streaks. When I video chatted with Kara, she teased me about looking like a total California beach girl.

  Inside Sports World, Emma and José made a beeline for the wall with all the cleats on display. Hailey began looking through a rack of soccer jerseys.

  “Number thirteen, my favorite!” She pulled out the shirt, and then looked at the price tag and shook her head. “I’ll have to ask for it as a birthday present. It’s way more than my weekly allowance!”

  Cody came strolling out of one of the aisles wearing a plaid golf hat with a pompom on the top.

  “Golf, anyone?” he said in snooty voice. His lips were blue from the slushee, and he looked ridiculous.

  Jessi began laughing so hard that I thought she was going to cry. But she composed herself.

  “Yes, let’s play a round and then have high tea,” she joked back in a funny British accent.

  They went back and forth, each being more ridiculous, and Steven, Hailey, Daniel, and I laughed along with them. Part of my laughter was relief. It made me feel tense to hang out with Jessi when she was so annoyed at Cody, so it was nice to see everyone having a good time and getting along.

  It got even better when Emma and José came back from looking at cleats. Emma was smiling widely.

  “They didn’t have the Bia Force shoes in stock, but the guy said they could order them. He’s pretty sure they’ll work perfectly for me. The store will have the cleats in a couple of days, so there will be plenty of time for me to try them out and break them in before the next game,” she said.

  I clapped my hands together excitedly. “Emma, that’s awesome! No more cleat malfunctions for you.”

  “I just want to put that whole embarrassing incident behind me!” Emma said forcefully. “It was almost worse than the time I scored a goal for the other team.”

  “I remember that,” Daniel said. “That was one of the first games of the fall season, right?”

  Emma nodded. “Yeah. It’s how I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a midfielder. Devin is the one who saw I had a talent for the goal, and she talked me into giving it a try.”

  “And you’re a natural, Emma!” I said.

  “Um, not when my cleat is flying off and hitting me in the head,” Emma joked. “There’s nothing natural about that!”

  We all laughed, and I was glad that Emma seemed to be feeling better about the whole cleat disaster. Things were looking up!

  We headed to the arcade next, and Jessi and Cody went straight for the Dance Party! machine. It was a game where you had to follow the arrows on the screen by hitting lighted up arrows with your feet on the floor. It got faster and faster as it went. I was terrible at it, but Jessi was a pro. Two people can play against each other side by side.

  “I’m going to beat you this time, Jessi,” Cody vowed. “I’ve been practicing.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Jessi said confidently as she put money into the machine.

  The music started, slow at first but picking up speed. Jessi kept the pace, her feet moving like a blur on the pad, and Cody moved like lightning. Both of them were d
oing so great that a bunch of other kids gathered around to watch.

  Jessi was undefeated. Cody had never been able to beat her before. But when the game ended, his score was 250 points higher.

  “Ha! I told you I was going to win!” he yelled, and he put up a hand to high-five her.

  Jessi slapped his hand, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Good job,” she said, but I could tell that she wasn’t happy with his reaction.

  “Dude, not very sportsmanlike,” Steven said to Cody.

  Cody shrugged. “I was just joking around,” he said. “It’s not soccer. It’s just some dumb dance game.”

  “Yeah, dumb,” Jessi said, and she turned away from him. “I’m going to play Zombie Hunt. Emma, you wanna come with?”

  Dance Party! was Jessi’s favorite game, and Zombie Hunt was Emma’s. It was kind of funny, because Emma loved all things cute and fluffy, but she could slay zombies in that video game like a champ.

  I noticed that two of the kids who had been watching Jessi and Cody square off during the dance video game were whispering and pointing at Emma. One of them pulled out his phone and pointed. They both looked up at Emma and started laughing.

  Nobody in our group seemed to notice. What’s going on? I wondered. If they were laughing at my friend, I wanted to know why.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked as I walked over to them.

  The one boy, who looked around ten, began to fidget nervously.

  “It’s just your friend,” he said, pointing at Emma, who was talking to Jessi. “She’s, like, famous on SnapFace.”

  He showed me his phone, and there was a picture of Emma at yesterday’s game. It was taken right at the moment when her cleat had hit her. Her mouth was open and her tongue was sticking out in a really unflattering way. Someone had turned the photo into a meme. Written on it was, “Runaway Cleats!”

  I gasped. “Where did this come from?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s a bunch of them.”

  “Let me see,” I demanded.

  His hand shook a little as he searched on his phone. I realized I might be coming on too strong.

  “It’s okay.” I smiled. “Emma’s my friend, and I’m just protective of her. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  That relaxed him, and he began to talk.

  “There’s a ton of memes with your friend’s picture on them,” he said. “I saw them on SnapFace, InstaPhoto and TextFest.”

  He began pulling up photo after photo. One was a close-up of Emma’s face with her tongue protruding. It looked like she was about to lick her cleat. That caption said, “The taste of deFEET.”

  “Where did these all come from?” I wondered out loud.

  “Somebody probably used a meme generator to make them,” the kid replied. “You can upload any photo and write a caption on it, and then share it on all different social media sites.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I told the kid. “Please do me a favor and don’t like them or share them. That’s a picture of my friend, and she’s going to be really upset. Imagine if it was a photo of you.”

  He nodded, his eyes wide.

  I walked back to the group, not knowing how I was going to break the news to Emma. I decided to be straightforward. “Rip the Band-Aid off quickly,” my grandpa always said.

  When I got there, Cody was on his knees, playfully begging Jessi to forgive him.

  “I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I never thought I’d beat you at that game, ever. You’re the best. It’s like beating Lionel Messi in soccer. I got a little too excited.”

  I could see Jessi’s face soften, and she gave a small smile. “Okay, fine. You’re forgiven.”

  It was a cute moment, but I had to interrupt it to break the news to Emma. “Emma, I need to tell you something,” I told her while everyone listened. “Someone was taking pictures of our game against the Rams. They took one of you with your cleat hitting your head, and turned it into a bunch of stupid Internet memes.”

  “What?” Emma asked, a look of surprise crossing her face. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I wish it weren’t true,” I said. “But that kid over there recognized you, and he showed me,” I explained, pointing. “It’s on SnapFace, InstaPhoto, TextFest, everywhere.”

  Emma gasped. “Let me see. No, I don’t want to see.” She shook her head. “No, I do. I mean, yes I do. Ugh! Just show me!”

  Everyone got their phones out and searched.

  “Oh no,” Jessi groaned.

  “Jeez.” Steven shook his head.

  Hailey sighed. “That’s not nice.”

  Emma peered over Hailey’s shoulder. “Oh my gosh! I look like a total dork.”

  Cody let out a loud laugh. “DeFEET. Get it?” he said as he chuckled.

  Jessi whacked him on the arm. “What’s wrong with you? Emma is upset.”

  Again Cody looked confused. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just a joke.”

  “You and your jokes,” Jessi said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You need to get a better sense of humor.”

  I nudged Jessi. “Not helping!” I said as I looked at Emma’s face. She looked like she might cry.

  “I want to go home,” Emma said, her voice shaking.

  “We’ll go with you.” Jessi put an arm around her shoulder while very purposefully not looking at Cody.

  Mrs. Kim had offered to drive us home. Emma texted her mom to pick us up early. Hailey was driving back with the boys. Her family and Steven’s were good friends, and they lived on the same block.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said to Steven.

  He made a sad face. “I hope Emma is okay.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  When Mrs. Kim picked us up at the mall entrance, Emma immediately told her mom everything.

  Mrs. Kim patted her daughter on the leg.

  “We’ll look into it as soon as we get home and see if there’s anything we can do to get those pictures taken down,” Mrs. Kim tried to reassure Emma. I could tell that Emma felt better just by talking with her mom, but I still felt really bad for her. I’d goofed up plenty of times in soccer. If someone had made a meme about it, I’d have wanted to crawl into a cave and never come out.

  Later that night I video chatted with Kara and told her the entire story.

  Kara frowned, her big blue eyes looking sad. “Poor Emma! She is such a sweetie!”

  Kara had come out to visit me once since I’d moved to California, and she had gotten the chance to meet all my new friends.

  “I know,” I sighed. “Why her? She’s always so cheerful and positive. But she’s having a hard time being upbeat about this.”

  Kara shuddered. “Who can blame her? I wouldn’t know how to find the bright side either. I’d be totally embarrassed.”

  I remembered what Emma had said before the game and the whole cleat incident had happened.

  “You know, before the game even started, Emma was trying to describe how much pressure there is on the goalie,” I told Kara. “I’d never really thought about it before.”

  “You remember Julie, right?” Kara asked. She was on Kara’s soccer team, the one I used to play on before I moved.

  “Julie? Of course!” I answered. We had been friends.

  “She got moved from defense to goal this past fall, and she had a tough time with it,” Kara revealed. “She’s really good, but she said the anxiety of it was what bothered her the most at first.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Julie said that as a defender, she might miss a tackle. It upset her, but it was easier to move on and not dwell on it because it wasn’t so instant and game-changing as missing a goal,” Kara explained.

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I get it. As a striker, if I miss a scoring chance, I just focus on catching the next one. The game isn’t dramatically affected right away like it is when someone scores a goal.”

  “It really bothered Julie every time she let someone score,
” Kara said. “But eventually she got over it.”

  “How did she do that?” I asked, hoping it could be something that could help Emma too.

  “She had a lot of talks with Coach,” Kara said. “Coach gave her some breathing exercises to do and a mantra to chant before each game. It helped her get in the zone, she said.”

  “Hmmmm.” I thought about that. Zoe had once taught me some relaxation techniques when I was having a hard time on the field. Maybe that could help Emma too.

  “Do you know what exercises she used?” I asked Kara.

  She shook her head. “No, but I’ll find out and let you know.”

  I was finally understanding just how hard it was to be a goalie. If Emma’s confidence had been hurting before, the online memes were going to make it worse. But now I had some ideas about how I could help get her back into the zone!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When we moved to California, I started going to Kentville Middle School. It was pretty much like my old middle school back in Connecticut, except for the palm trees on the lawn. And the fact that we could eat lunch outside pretty much every day if we wanted to. And some kids wore flip-flops to school.

  Otherwise, it was a lot like other schools, I guess. It had easy teachers and tough teachers. Interesting classes and boring classes. And at lunch, kids sat in groups: sports kids, drama kids, art kids, tech kids. During soccer season, members of the Kicks usually sat together.

  When I got to the cafeteria on Monday for lunch, Emma was slouched in her seat. She had her big World Civ book open on the table, hiding her face.

  “Um, are you studying?” I asked. “I didn’t think we had a test today.”

  “We don’t,” she said. “I’m hiding.”

  “Hiding from what?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what?” asked Jessi, as she, Zoe, and Frida took their seats at the table at the same time.

  Before Emma could answer, a boy came up to our table. I knew his name was Brandon, but that was all I knew about him. He was in eighth grade.

  He walked right over to Emma. “Oh, man. It really is you! You’re famous! I love your memes.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma responded.