Switching Goals

by Alex Morgan

  “Come on.” Jessi threw her arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go shake hands with the other team. We’ve got to give them some mad respect—they were awesome.”

  “No prince’s hand in marriage for me,” Frida chirped as we lined up. “Oh well. I’ve still got my commercial.”

  Even though we had lost, the rest of the Kicks were in a good mood. We had played our best against a tough team and held our own.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Devin.” My dad knew what I was thinking as soon as I walked off the field toward my family. “That was a tough game, and you were mentally and physically drained by the end. Anyone could have made that same mistake. Focus on the good. Your throw-ins have really improved. I can see the wheels spinning in your brain as you check the field. It’s a great skill to have.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I gave him a big, sweaty hug.

  As we loaded into the Marshmallow (that’s what we call our family’s white minivan), my mom shared some news.

  “During the game, Ashanta called,” she told me as Maisie and I buckled up in the second row of the van. “She wanted me to tell you that the photos from the shoot came out terrific. She was really happy with them, but more importantly, the client was thrilled.”

  “Wow,” I said, my mouth hanging open in surprise. “I didn’t think I did such a great job.”

  “You did,” Mom said. “In fact, you did such a great job that Ashanta wants to know if you want to do another shoot for a clothing catalog this week.”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. . . . When is it?”

  Mom smiled. “I know exactly what you are thinking. It’s on Tuesday, when you don’t have soccer practice.”

  That was a relief. I wasn’t entirely sure about the whole modeling thing yet, and if it meant distracting myself and letting down my team, I didn’t think I’d do it again. But if I didn’t have to miss practice, maybe I’d give it another shot. If it could help me afford a ticket to Charlotte’s party, it was worth it. My parents hadn’t made a decision yet, but I might as well earn some extra money while I had the chance.

  “Since I don’t have to miss practice, I’ll take the job!” I said. “After today’s game, I need all the practices I can get.”

  I sighed as I settled back into my seat. Even if I blew the soccer game, at least I was winning at something!

  Chapter Eight

  The following Monday at school, I was sitting in the Kentville Middle School cafeteria with Jessi, Emma, Zoe, and Frida, eating lunch.

  “They were as wild and unpredictable as lightning,” Frida said about the Buccaneers as we rehashed Saturday’s game. “They’ve definitely earned their name!”

  “Just like the Kicks!” cheered Emma. Officially, our soccer team was the Kentville Kangaroos, but the team was nicknamed the Kicks years ago because of our great kicks!

  “Except the Buccaneers zapped us,” I said, frowning. “Especially when I made that boneheaded offsides move.”

  Jessi slammed her hands down on the cafeteria table.

  “Ugh, Devin. Knock it off!” she growled. “You are way too hard on yourself. We all make mistakes sometimes. Nobody can be perfect, on the soccer field or off.”

  Emma just laughed. “Yeah, remember when I scored a goal for the other team? Or when my cleat shot off my foot and I became an Internet meme? You can’t even compare one offsides in a game to that!”

  I frowned again, but this time for a different reason. Was I making the game all about me? As I’ve been told ever since I started playing soccer preschool, there is no “I” in team.

  “You know what? You’re right,” I admitted. “We all make mistakes sometimes. We’re a team. I shouldn’t be focusing on one mistake, even if it was mine. What we should be focusing on is ways to counteract the Buccaneers’ speed and aggressiveness the next time we play them.”

  Zoe sighed. “I’m a little soccered out. We’ve been talking about it ever since the game. What about our community service next Sunday at the animal shelter? Do you think we’ll have to pick up dog poop?”

  “Any way you look at it, my future is filled with poop,” Jessi groaned. “Baby poop, dog poop . . . What’s the difference?”

  Frida shook her head. “Nice subject change. From soccer to poop. I haven’t finished eating yet, people! But anyway, your future isn’t filled with poop, Jessi. Remember? The Flash Fortune app said chaos was coming your way, not dog poop.”

  Jessi rolled her eyes. “I think I’d prefer the dog poop.”

  “I asked Coach Flores what we would be doing,” Emma said. “She said the shelter would want us to play with and exercise both the dogs and cats. We can take the dogs for walks, and the cats have a room where they can roam free, and there are a bunch of toys you can use to interact with them.”

  “Unless you want to practice your new diaper-changing skills on some of the dogs.” I couldn’t resist teasing Jessi.

  Jessi blew out a big mouthful of air in an exaggerated sigh. “This conversation makes me believe my life is already filled with chaos.” She stood up. “I’m going to see what Sebastian and his crew are up to. I’d rather hear some sci-fi geek convo than another word about dog poop.”

  With that, she marched over to her friend Sebastian’s table and stood there talking to him and his friends.

  I shook my head and began piling my garbage from lunch onto my cafeteria tray. Usually my mom packs me something healthy, but today she gave me money to buy lunch, and I had splurged on some chicken fingers and french fries. Even though my mom reminded me there are healthy options available in our cafeteria, like salads and veggies, or today’s special of whole wheat spaghetti with turkey meatballs, I decided I eat plenty of turkey meatballs at home, and I could not resist the smell of the fries.

  I did take a picture of the fancy spaghetti and meatballs, though, and texted it to Kara. Our school cafeteria back in Connecticut never had anything like that on the menu.

  I was walking over to the trash can to dump out my stuff when I ran into my friend Steven, who was doing the same.

  I am kind of crushing on Steven, and Jessi has been crushing on Steven’s best friend, Cody. Recently things had gotten complicated, though, when Jessi started hanging out with Sebastian, who was a cute sci-fi geek, while Cody was a cute athlete.

  According to our parents, Jessi and I aren’t allowed to date boys, but we are allowed to hang out in groups with some of our guy friends. When I thought that Jessi and Cody weren’t going to be friends anymore, I thought I wouldn’t be able to see Steven as much. But Jessi and Cody worked it out. Jessi is friends with both Sebastian and Cody, and I’ve hung out in groups with both of them. So it all worked out, and I was relieved. I really liked spending time with Steven. He has a soccer-ball brain like I do!

  “Hey, I heard the Buccaneers gave you a hard time on Saturday,” Steven said. “If they are as fast as the boys’ team, you must have been running like crazy to catch them.”

  “Oh, man.” I slumped next to the trash can. “They were zipping around the field. Whenever we had the ball, they would kick it out-of-bounds.”

  Steven laughed. “I wonder if the boys’ and girls’ teams practice together. The boys play just like that too.”

  “Have you played them yet this spring?”

  “Nope, but we did last fall. They had us running in circles,” Steven said. “Hey, did you get a chance to study for the World Civ test today? I hate having tests on a Monday. Mr. Emmet is getting harder as the year goes on.”

  “I studied last night,” I told him. “He said it was going to be multiple-choice, no essay questions, so it should be a breeze.”

  “Some of us don’t breeze through our quizzes, Devin,” Steven told me. “I studied a little bit on Saturday morning but not at all last night. Would you mind cramming with me? We’ve got about ten minutes left before lunch is over.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “I really don’t want to go back to our table and have another talk about poop.”

 
; “Poop?” Steven asked as he arched his eyebrow. “You Kicks really have some interesting lunch conversations.”

  I laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. Let me get my backpack—I’ll meet you in a sec.”

  As I grabbed my backpack from our table, I heard a murmur in the cafeteria and the sound of rushing wheels.

  I looked up, and I saw Arlo, an eighth grader, zooming past me on a skateboard, holding a cafeteria tray loaded high with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Arlo, Arlo, Arlo, Arlo!” I heard voices chanting from the table next to us. Arlo had been sitting there with a bunch of his eighth-grader friends, and they were laughing and pointing as they chanted his name. I grabbed my backpack and Zoe shook her head.

  “They just dared Arlo to deliver lunch to Stella on his skateboard,” Zoe said. “Apparently he’s crushing on Stella.” Stella was also in eighth grade. “But if Assistant Principal Castillo sees him, he’s in big trouble.”

  Skateboarding in or anywhere near the school was a big no-no. There were a bunch of kids, mostly eighth graders, who brought their boards in and left them in their lockers, taking them out at the end of the day to use at the skate park a couple blocks from the school. Because of this, students could have skateboards in their lockers but were never ever allowed to use them on school grounds. Arlo was going to get himself in big trouble.

  I watched as Arlo skateboarded from one end of the cafeteria to the other, tray in hand. As he got close to Sebastian’s table, where Jessi was standing, a girl suddenly pushed her chair out to get up. She didn’t see Arlo coming toward her!

  Arlo tried to steer his skateboard around her, but he was going too fast. The skateboard skidded, and Arlo began to lose his balance.

  He tried to steady himself, but the tray in his hands flew up in the air. A hush fell over the cafeteria as everyone watched the plate of spaghetti and meatballs soar up into the sky in what seemed like slow motion.

  “I’ve got it!” Arlo yelled as he reached for the plate. As he caught it, though, he tripped over his skateboard, and the plate flew up into the air again, this time landing upside down on the nearest person’s head. And that person just happened to be Jessi!

  “Arrrrgggggghhhhhhh!” Jessi yelled. The paper plate looked like a silly white hat. Red sauce dripped down her face, and spaghetti noodles hung over her head like a weird wig.

  As everyone watched, astounded, the plate slid off Jessi’s head and down her body, leaving a trail of sauce, bits of spaghetti, and meatballs down her whole outfit.

  “Jessi!” I cried, and I ran over to her.

  Then Mrs. Castillo’s voice rang out through the cafeteria. “Arlo Anderson! My office, immediately!” Arlo put his head down and skulked out of the cafeteria while everyone laughed.

  “This is not funny!” the assistant principal barked. She shook her head. “We’ve been lenient letting students keep skateboards in their lockers. If this is how you are going to behave, then that privilege is revoked until further notice. Just being seen with a skateboard on school grounds will result in immediate detention. Understood?”

  The cafeteria grew quiet as she walked over to Jessi. Mrs. Castillo shook her head. “Oh, Jessi, how awful! I’m going to make sure you get an apology from Arlo. We are going to have to call your parents. You need to go home and take a shower. You are covered in sauce. I’ve never seen anything like this. What chaos!”

  Jessi sighed. “Let me get my backpack.”

  All eyes were on her as she walked back to the table. I walked with her silently, not sure what to say. Part of me wanted to laugh, but I knew Jessi wouldn’t find it funny right now.

  Frida looked up at us, her eyes wide. “Chaos! Jessi’s fortune has come true.”

  “Aw, come on, it’s just a coincidence,” Zoe insisted.

  Frida smirked. “Let’s see. Two fortunes down. Mine came true, and now Jessi’s. I wonder who will be next: Emma, Zoe, or Devin?”

  Zoe just shook her head. “No way. I don’t believe in this stuff.”

  “How can you deny it?” Frida asked Zoe. “Look at everything that happened so far, including me getting the commercial and scoring the winning goal in our game against the Roses.”

  “If Devin and you have that whole lucky vibe thing going, then why didn’t we win the game against the Buccaneers?” Zoe shot back.

  Frida waved a hand in the air as if dismissing the idea. “Good luck doesn’t mean everything is going to go your way every single time. In fact, we could have lost by a lot more to the Buccaneers. And it’s not like we asked Flash Fortune about that game and it told us we were going to win.”

  Emma wasn’t paying attention to the back-and-forth between Zoe and Frida. Instead, she was looking freaked out.

  “Maybe that spaghetti was meant for me!” she said. “Maybe I was supposed to get sauce in my eyes and see things in a new way, like the fortune-telling app said.” She shuddered. “I’m scared. Since the spaghetti didn’t get me, I could be in store for something worse!”

  I didn’t know if I believed in any of this. I mean, Frida did get the part she wanted, and Jessi definitely did get caught up in chaos. But both of those things could have been coincidences. I mean, Frida got the part because she’s a good actress, right? And there’s almost always chaos in our cafeteria.

  A little part of me hoped Flash Fortune was real, though. It would be really cool if my fortune came true. Who knew? If I did a really great job at the next modeling shoot, I could earn more money and get to go to Charlotte’s sweet sixteen party!

  Chapter Nine

  That night, I started to get a little nervous about my photo shoot the next day after school. I guess I had done a decent job, or Ashanta wouldn’t have offered me another one. But I definitely hadn’t been in my comfort zone the first time. The soccer field was where I felt confident. At the last shoot, I got to pretend to be playing soccer. That helped me feel more comfortable. If I didn’t have that going for me at this shoot, would I be a complete disaster?

  After I finished my homework, I started to think about soccer versus modeling. Why did I feel so much more comfortable on the soccer field? Maybe natural talent was part of it. But also, I practiced my butt off, so I was prepared. Do models practice too? I wondered.

  At the photo shoot, I’d had trouble smiling naturally. Zane had even told me that I looked like I was grimacing. So I decided I could practice smiling—although I had no idea how to do that!

  I stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door and gave a big smile. My eyes were wide and popping out of my head, and you could see every single tooth in my mouth. I didn’t look happy at all.

  I shook my head. No good. And I felt really silly. While I never felt silly playing soccer, sometimes I wanted to learn new techniques, and there were a lot of great tutorials online. Maybe there was the same for modeling?

  So I opened my laptop and found a bunch of tutorials about how to smile like a model. I watched a ton of videos and then tried out the techniques. One of them was to close your eyes and take a few relaxing deep breaths before opening your eyes and smiling. The other was to relax your jaw and face muscles, which at first I did too much, and my face looked droopy. I also tried a technique that said to pretend someone you really liked was behind the camera, so I pictured Kara encouraging me, and that seemed to help.

  I tried a closed-mouth smile, a partly-opened mouth smile, and smiling with my hands on my hips. Then I smiled while I tossed my hair over my shoulders and almost cracked myself up when I saw myself in the mirror.

  I even practiced something called smizing, which is when you “smile with your eyes” instead of with your mouth. I widened my eyes, I wiggled my eyebrows, I narrowed my eyes, and I cracked up again. I still looked ridiculous!

  But I didn’t give up. I practiced smiling until my cheeks hurt. I flopped onto my bed, exhausted, while I massaged my face with my hands. Could you sprain your cheeks like you could sprain your ankle? Who knew model
ing could be so dangerous!

  Even though it felt super weird spending all that time looking at myself in the mirror while I practiced smiling, it definitely helped me feel less self-conscious. I really liked the idea of pretending Kara was taking the picture, and thinking of silly jokes we shared. That seemed to get my smile to be more natural. And practice had helped me relax my facial muscles, so I didn’t feel all tense and weird when I smiled. I was totally feeling more confident.

  Bring that feeling to the shoot with you tomorrow, I coached myself. If you can, you’ll be smiling like a pro!

  • • •

  My mom picked me up after school the next day so we could drive right to the photo shoot.

  On the way over, I video chatted on my phone with Kara.

  “I can’t believe that my bff is going to be a famous model!” Kara gushed. “I always thought you’d be a famous soccer player, Devin. But your life is so glamorous since you’ve moved to Cali. Meeting the pop star Brady McCoy, having a friend who is an actress—nothing like that ever happens here in Franklin.”

  Franklin is the Connecticut town my family lived in before moving to California. It’s a really pretty town, with tree-lined streets and some old houses that date back to the 1700s. The leaves on the trees would turn orange, yellow, and red each autumn before falling off. I really missed that, and the change of seasons in general. We’d also get huge snowstorms in the winter, and snow days where we wouldn’t have to go to school. Kara lived only a few blocks away from our old house, so I’d go to her house and we’d build snowmen or take our sleds up to the hill in her backyard and go racing down. Then we’d have hot chocolate and cinnamon toast and warm up in front of Kara’s living room fireplace.

  I felt a wave of homesickness overwhelm me, and my eyes filled up with tears.

  “Devin, what’s wrong?” Kara asked, her brow creasing with worry.

  I was sitting in the passenger seat next to my mom, and I saw her shoot me a glance out of the corner of her eye. This is why I usually video chat with Kara in the privacy of my own bedroom, but I needed a pep talk from my very bestest friend before the photo shoot.