by Nancy Rue
The next day, she decided they had. Not only did J.J. sulk at the wall again when recess started, but as Lucy arrived with the ball — just in case they needed two — she saw two female figures flanking Gabe like a pair of giggling bookends.
“Will he let us play?” Veronica said, lip hanging almost onto Gabe’s shoulder. “Even if we don’t know how?”
Oh, nuh-uh.
“I know how,” Dusty said. She waggled her head back and forth on her skinny neck. “Well, sort of.”
“Nobody else knows how to play either,” Gabe said. “ ’Cept me.”
Lucy chomped right down on her lip to keep from yelling, “Hel-lo-o!”
She didn’t want to sound like the two who were practically drooling on Gabe’s shoes and scooping their hair into ponytails as if they were actually going to do something athletic.
“Did you bring more recruits?” Mr. Auggy stopped juggling the ball with his thigh, to Carla and Januarie’s squeals, and tipped it to Oscar. He tried to catch it with his chest, and dumped himself straight to the ground on top of it.
“Is that how you do it?” Veronica said.
“I told you they don’t know how to play,” Gabe said to Dusty.
“To you, Mr. Gabe.” Mr. Auggy suddenly had the ball and was kicking it, high, to Gabe. He had no choice but to try to head it, but it bounced off the top and went straight up into nowhere.
“I guess we could all use some lessons,” Mr. Auggy said.
Lucy smothered a smile. Okay. She’d give him a point for that.
“You ladies want to play?” Mr. Auggy said.
Lucy felt her face stiffen again as Veronica and Dusty looked at Gabe and giggled and nodded and basically acted more like they were going out on a date than out on the soccer field.
“A few basics, then,” Mr. Auggy said.
While he was starting all over with them, Lucy took her own ball and motioned Oscar, Emanuel, and Carla Rosa over. Januarie stood watching Dusty and Veronica as if Hannah Montana and her sidekick Lilly had just joined the team.
“Let’s do that one juggling drill he taught us,” she said. “Get in a circle.”
“Hey,” Gabe said.
“What?” Lucy said. She bounced the ball off her foot once, twice, three times.
“How come your boyfriend isn’t playing?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” Lucy sent the ball to Oscar with her thigh.
“You missed,” Carla Rosa said.
Gabe trapped it with his foot and bounced it up to his thigh where he kept it going for four, then five bounces. “He’s your boyfriend,” he said, and made a kissing sound.
“Then those two must be your girlfriends,” Lucy said.
The ball came at her. She caught it with her chest and started a juggle with her foot.
“They worship me,” Gabe said.
“Excuse me while I go throw up.” Lucy passed the ball to Emanuel, but it went past his foot and rolled to where Mr. Auggy was cheering Veronica on in a clumsy dribble.
“Hey, Mr. Aug — !” Oscar put his hands on his stocky hips. “Why can’t we just play?”
“You throw in,” Mr. Auggy said. “Miss Dusty, you’re on my team with Miss Januarie and — ” He looked back at the wall, where J.J. was pretending to be asleep. “Mr. E. — you come over to my side.”
Why couldn’t he take Gabe? Now it was her, Gabe, Oscar, Carla Rosa, and Veronica. She’d rather stick her hand in a blender.
“Choose a goalie!” Mr. Auggy said, over Januarie’s whining that she wanted to be on Lucy’s team.
“You,” Gabe said, pointing to Oscar. “With all that fat, you should be able to block a ball.”
Lucy looked at Mr. Auggy, but he was huddled with his team. They came out shouting, and Januarie headed for the cones at the other end of the area. It was pretty clear he didn’t expect anybody to get close to making a goal.
“Do you think Gabe is cute?”
Lucy turned to find Veronica’s lips almost at her ear. She was twiddling with her blackish ponytail, which hung down one side of her head.
“Huh?” Lucy said.
“Gabe. Do you think he’s cute?”
“No. Ick.”
Ickety-ick.
“Heads up!” Mr. Auggy shouted.
The ball came out of nowhere, and Lucy ran right into it and kept going, that is, until a foot came between hers and she was on the ground spitting out playground dust. Above her, a whistle blew.
“There will be none of that,” Mr. Auggy said.
Lucy scrambled up in time to see Dusty blink at him as if he were speaking Chinese.
“Tripping,” he said. “That’s a foul. The other team gets a direct kick.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Dusty said.
“That’s good to hear,” Mr. Auggy said. “Because, seriously, if a fight breaks out, the game stops. Who wants that, right?”
“Not me!” Carla Rosa said.
There were some other mumbles. Gabe looked like he would love nothing better.
“I just want to play soccer,” Lucy said.
“Then let’s do it.” Mr. Auggy tossed her the ball. “You know what to do.”
After school, Lucy was on her way to Pasco’s — thinking it would be the last grilled cheese sandwich before that Inez lady started on Wednesday — when Januarie caught up to her. She looked over both frog-green shoulders before she whispered, “The pizza has — aw man, those things that start with an A. Auggies? No — ”
“Hand it over,” Lucy said. She held out her palm.
Januarie shook her head. “He got in trouble for taking the pizza menu off the refrigerator last time. He just said to tell you something.”
Lucy stopped on the dirt path that lined Granada Street. “What did he say?”
“He said not to tell you until you shared a grilled cheese with me.”
“He did not!”
“But I’m hungry!”
“Oh, come on.” Lucy curled her fingers around Januarie’s backpack strap and pulled her along. “You can have the whole thing. Just tell me what he said.”
“Promise?”
It took swearing with spit on her palm and two bites of the sandwich for Januarie to finally spill J.J.’s message.
“He said that Dirty girl — ”
“Dirty?” Lucy said. “You mean Dusty?”
“Yeah. He said she did trip you on purpose.”
“That didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out.” Lucy nodded at the plate. “Take the pickle too.”
“I don’t like pickles. But could we get ice cream?”
“Not until you tell me the rest.”
Januarie stretched her arms up over her head, for no particular reason that Lucy could see, revealing a roll of flesh that she took her time covering back up with her sweater. Lucy felt a little guilty about promising her ice cream, but this was about J.J.
“Well?”
“He said he bets the Hispanic kids are gonna gang up on you.”
“How does he know?”
“I don’t know.” Januarie suddenly leaned forward, squishing her belly against the table. “If they do, I could get back at them for you and nobody would know it was me.”
Lucy’s jaw dropped so hard she knew she must look like Veronica.
“What?” she said.
“I know how. I get away with stuff all the time. J.J. never does.” Januarie poked a piece of sandwich into her round mouth and talked as she chewed. “Like right now — he’s grounded because he took one of our dad’s bicycle wheels out of our yard. I take stuff and nobody knows, ever — ”
“J.J. got in trouble for that?” Lucy said.
“Yeah. That’s why he’s not here.”
Lucy sagged against the chair.
“It’s only ’til my dad isn’t in a bad mood anymore,” Januarie said. “I can take care of that too, if you want me to.”
“Don’t do anything to Dusty or Veronica,” Lucy said. “I mean it.” Sh
e pulled the plate toward her. “No more ’til I’ve heard it all.”
“J.J. said he’ll come back and play soccer, but only so Gabe and them can’t beat up on you. Now?”
Lucy let her have the sandwich. J.J. really thought they wanted to bust her. What did that mean, exactly? And why? She just didn’t get it.
“J.J. hates playing with me,” Januarie said. She pulled the last of the melted cheese off the plate with her finger and twirled it like an expert before she stuck it in her mouth. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
Januarie looked suddenly shy. “Do you hate playing with me?”
Lucy’s heart tied itself into a knot. “No,” she said, even though she did.
Because for the first time ever, she thought she might know how it felt to be Januarie.
8
“Look at you go.”
Lucy spread both hands over her paper. Mr. Auggy squatted beside her.
“I’m not reading over your shoulder,” he said in his private-conference-with-a-student voice. “I don’t like somebody reading my first drafts either.”
“What’s a first draft?” Carla Rosa said from across the table. Evidently the private-conference voice wasn’t soft enough.
“The sloppy copy,” Mr. Auggy said.
Carla Rosa cocked her cap-topped head, sending the big white sequins dancing. “All my copies are sloppy.” She went back to engraving her paper.
Lucy slid hers into her lap. It wasn’t any kind of copy. It was just a list she was making to transfer into her book later, so Mr. Auggy would think she was doing the assignment in class. They were supposed to be brainstorming about “My Biggest Problem.” At the moment, her biggest problem was him.
He stood up and tucked his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans so that his elbows stuck out like chicken wings.
“Remember, this is just brainstorming. It doesn’t have to be neat — or written in complete sentences. It doesn’t even have to make sense to anybody but you.”
“That’s good,” Oscar said. He grinned. “ ’Cause this don’t make no sense at all.”
Lucy waited for Mr. Auggy to correct him.
“Everybody have some ideas written down?” he said instead.
They all nodded. Except for J.J., who turned his paper over and pushed it back and forth with his pen. He didn’t rock at writing either.
“Now you’re gonna make us turn it into them sentence things, right?” Oscar said.
J.J. glared at him. “Quit giving him ideas.”
“Yeah,” came the echo from Emanuel.
“Actually, no.” Mr. Auggy reached under his desk and produced one of the boxes from his first day and dumped it onto the table. Slick magazines slid out, spilling their bright colors into a cheerful pile. He spread them with his hands.
“I’m going to ask you to turn them into pictures.”
“Huh?” Oscar said.
“Why don’t you shut up and let him explain it?” J.J. said.
Mr. Auggy made a loud buzzing sound that turned all heads in his direction. “ ‘Shut up’ is now a taboo word.”
“J.J. doesn’t know what taboo is,” Carla Rosa said.
“Shut up!”
Mr. Auggy buzzed again. “From now on, if you tell a classmate to shut up, it’s going to cost you.”
Carla Rosa jiggled the sequins as she shook her head. “We don’t have any money.”
“No, but you do have integrity.” Mr. Auggy smiled the small smile. “It’s just buried.”
“What’s — ”
“Knowing right from wrong and doing it,” Lucy said, “even if you don’t want to.”
Heads swiveled toward her. “What are you, the dictionary?” Oscar said.
Her face felt like someone was coloring it with a red crayon. Things just seemed to pop out of her without permission lately.
“My dad says that,” she muttered.
“Ding-ding-ding!” Mr. Auggy said.
Oscar shook his head. “You are so weird, Mr. Auggy.”
“Ding-ding is the opposite of — ” Mr. Auggy buzzed again. “When you get buzzed for dissing a classmate, you have to try to perform an act of integrity until you hear — ” He made the bell sound.
Oscar twisted to look at J.J. “So do something integrity.”
“Shut — ”
“Watch it now,” Mr. Auggy said.
J.J. slid his backbone down in his chair.
“What’s he s’posed to do?” Oscar said.
Lucy closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see what was going to happen if Mr. Auggy tried to make J.J. do anything right now. J.J. sitting on his own shoulder blades was a signal Lucy knew well.
“He just needs to show who he really is,” Mr. Auggy said. “And he doesn’t have to do it this minute.”
He brushed a hand across J.J.’s shoulder and moved to the magazine table.
“Between now and recess, go through as many of these as you want and pull out pictures that remind you of your problem — the one you were just brainstorming about.”
Faces crumpled up, and “Huh?” and “I don’t get it,” erupted from mouths. Lucy looked at J.J. He tucked his hands into their opposite armpits.
“Just give it a try,” Mr. Auggy said.
Lucy went to the table and scooped up two armfuls of magazines. She deposited one stack on the table in front of J.J.
“Just pretend,” she whispered to him. “That’s what I do.”
Then she sat down, f lipped open a copy of Sports Illustrated, and tore out the first picture she found: a girl with her face all set like she was going to smack somebody. Maybe a lot of somebodies.
She showed it to J.J. He nodded and slowly opened the magazine on the top of his stack.
Mrs. Gomez always just let J.J. sit and do nothing if he wanted to because she was too busy trying to keep Oscar in his seat and make Carla Rosa hush up. But this Mr. Auggy person wasn’t leaving anybody alone. And sometimes, J.J. just had to be left alone.
She watched him pull something out of his Soccer World, and she let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“How’s it going, Miss Lucy?”
“Fine,” Lucy said, and she ripped out a picture of a leg in the air with muscles like bungee cords.
Then she found a soccer ball. A mascot dressed up like a coyote. An Olympic gold medal.
The ripping and tearing and Carla Rosa’s questions and Oscar’s comments on every single thing he saw filled the room. Mr. Auggy leaned against his desk and nodded like they were all solving the mystery of the comma. Oscar was right. He was very strange.
Lucy found a picture of some fans with their faces painted in their team’s colors and carefully eased it out. And then there was one of a girl looking all sweaty and pleased with her sweet self —When the bell rang for lunch recess, Lucy was surprised.
“Good work, team,” Mr. Auggy said.
Lucy looked around. Each person had a clutter of pictures in front of them, even J.J.
But he still hadn’t earned a ding-ding-ding, and from the way he hurled the ball onto the field after lunch, he wasn’t going to get it anytime soon. It hit a startled Gabe square in the nose before he could even get his neck forward to head it. Mr. Auggy blew loud and long on the whistle.
“That’ll be a do-over, Mr. J.J. ” He fake-punched J.J.’s shoulder. “Glad you decided to join us, though. You’ll be on my team.”
J.J. looked at Januarie, lifted his lips, and narrowed his eyes.
“Problem?” Mr. Auggy said.
J.J. shook his head and threw in again. Lucy quickly cut in front of Gabe and ran through the ball, directing it toward Carla Rosa, who let it fall beneath her. She stared at it as if it had just arrived from another planet.
Veronica called out something in Spanish and smacked the ball with the side of her foot. Lucy chased it and passed it back to Carla Rosa, who made a wild, flailing kick, lost her balance, and fell against Dusty.
“I
sn’t that one of those foul things, Mr. Auggy?” Dusty’s cheeks became blotches of purple.
“Hel-lo — yes!” Veronica said.
Lucy couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Like Veronica actually knew what a foul was.
“Purely an accident,” Mr. Auggy said. “Let’s focus on some teamwork.”
He held his arms out for them to gather, and Lucy gritted her teeth. Were they ever going to just play?
“Take three minutes in your team,” Mr. Auggy said, “and come up with a name for it.”
He steered Dusty, Januarie, Emanuel, and J.J. into a circle and squatted with them. The rest stood looking at each other and looking away. It was sort of like being in an elevator with strangers.
Carla Rosa poked Lucy. “What’s our name?”
Oscar wiggled his eyebrows. “The Assassins.”
“Ewww.” Veronica wrinkled her nose and scooted up next to Gabe. “What should we be called?”
Gabe juggled the ball off his head — once, twice, three times. Show off. Lucy waited for it to bounce away so she could —
“The Banditos,” he said.
“Cool!” Veronica said.
Lucy rolled her eyes again. “That’s almost like Assassins, and you said ‘Ewww’ to that.”
“It sounds better in Spanish.” Veronica sent Gabe a sideways smile. “At least when you say it.”
Maybe Gabe was right. Maybe she did worship him. Ickety-ick.
“Teddy Bears,” Carla Rosa said.
“Lame,” Gabe said.
“Bandito Assassins,” Oscar said.
“Okay, you know what?” Lucy snatched the ball — her ball — from Gabe and stuck it firmly on her hip. “It should actually sound like a soccer team. Like there’s the Atlanta Beat and the Carolina Courage and the Philadelphia Charge — ”
“The Los Suenos Lame-o’s,” Gabe said. “Gimme the ball, Lucy Goosey.”
Lucy shoved it behind her back.
“Let’s call it Lucy’s Gooses,” Carla Rosa said.
Gabe tried to slap at the ball. “Not like I really care, but I’m not being a goose.”
“We better hurry.” Carla Rosa pointed to Mr. Auggy’s group, which was currently high-fiving.
