Saving the Team

by Alex Morgan

  “Excellent!” said Emma.

  Now if only I could figure out where Mom had unpacked my soccer stuff . . .

  CHAPTER TWO

  My mom picked me up from school so I could go home and change before the tryouts. It was just us in the car. I breathed a sigh of relief that my dad wasn’t there doing his corny sound effects, and that Maisie couldn’t interrupt us, because I couldn’t wait to tell Mom about my day.

  “I want to hear everything!” Mom said as she navigated through the sea of cars and buses.

  “First of all, I’m going to need flip-flops,” I said, and then I filled her in on West Coast fashion, Jessi and Emma, and the news about how bad the soccer team was.

  “It’s a new year and a new team,” Mom said to encourage me. “You never know how the season will go.”

  We pulled up in front of our new house. I raced out of the van. “I almost forgot,” my mom called after me, “but Kara called. I told her you’d call her before tryouts. Oh, and make sure to grab some water to take with you!”

  I couldn’t wait to tell Kara how my day had turned around since we’d texted earlier. I ran into the house, dialing Kara on my cell phone as I headed upstairs to get my soccer stuff.

  “Guess what?” I asked her when she picked up. “I met a couple of girls—Jessi and Emma—in my gym class today. We played kickball and they were really cool. And it turns out that Jessi is in my English class too.” Jessi had shrieked and given me a high five when I’d walked into my last class of the day. It had felt great to see a familiar face in one of my classes for a change.

  “Yes! See, I knew you’d make friends,” said Kara.

  “I hope we’ll be friends,” I said. “But I am so nervous about tryouts today. I hope I can make the cut in California. Even though Jessi and Emma told me I had nothing to worry about, I’m worried they were just trying to make me feel better.”

  “What do you mean?” Kara asked.

  I quickly filled her in on the Kicks.

  “Jessi and Emma could be exaggerating,” Kara said. “But it doesn’t matter where you play, Devin. California, Connecticut, or Brazil—you’re a great player, and where you’re playing can’t change that!”

  Kara always knew how to cheer me up. “You are the best best friend ever!” I told her.

  “Don’t forget your pink headband,” Kara reminded me. Since everyone looks the same in soccer uniforms, Kara and I always used to wear bright pink headbands when we played so we’d stand out. Putting them on together had been our special pregame ritual.

  Kara filled me in on her day before we got off the phone. Dad drove me back up to school.

  “Kick some butt, Devin!” said my dad, giving me a hug of encouragement. My dad loved watching me play soccer. He’d be so happy if I made the team here. But I couldn’t help feeling the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. Even with Kara’s pep talk, and Emma and Jessi telling me not to worry, it was still hard to believe that I wouldn’t be facing Olympic-athletes-in-the-making.

  As I climbed out of the car, I saw a group of girls already on the field running laps, so I had to get my equipment on fast. As soon as I got to the field, I took off my shoes and socks, pulled my shin guards from my bag, and began to pull them onto my feet.

  “Those are some seriously fun socks,” Jessi said, complimenting the electric blue polka-dotted pair spilling out of my bag. Jessi had just arrived too, but she seemed to be in no rush, plopping down right next to me, as casual as can be. “Check these out,” she said, tugging a pair of lime-green-and-white-striped socks out of her satchel.

  “We should each trade a sock,” she said, grinning. “Here, take this sock, and I’ll take one of yours.” Before I could respond, Jessi tossed me one of her socks and held out her hand for mine.

  I grinned. “Cool!” I passed her one, and we each continued to get ready. As Jessi had her head down tying her cleats, a tall girl with dark hair walked by and gave us both a dirty look. It was so nasty, it could have scorched the grass under the bench we were sitting on. Before I could even say anything to Jessi about it, the girl walked away and Jessi, all laced up, jumped to her feet, not even noticing.

  “Jessi,” someone yelled from the bottom of the bleachers. “Let’s go!”

  “Gotta go.” With that, Jessi leaped over the short railing and raced toward the field. I wasn’t sure if I’d just cemented a new friendship or if I’d just given away a perfectly good sock. I hoped it was both.

  Out on the field a short woman wearing a bright blue athletic hoodie and black soccer shorts blew a whistle. “Welcome, ladies! I’m Coach Flores. Who’s ready to have some fun?” she asked enthusiastically, smiling from ear to ear. “One more lap, then line up at the eighteen and we’ll get started.”

  Just one more lap? I scrambled to finish getting ready. My shoes finally on, I bolted off the bench, afraid I wasn’t going to have time to warm up. I hurried to make a loop and then joined everyone else at the top of the penalty box.

  “We’re going to start with a quick scrimmage. Count off ones and twos. The twos go toward that goal,” Coach explained. “And the ones stay here with me. Remember to relax and have fun!”

  As the girls started counting off, my insides knotted up. Easy for Coach Flores to say “relax.” I hadn’t touched a soccer ball since Connecticut, and I definitely wasn’t ready for a game yet, even a practice game, especially with unfamiliar teammates. Even though Jessi and Emma had claimed the team stunk, I wanted to impress the coach. Why couldn’t we do drills first? Drills were predictable. And they gave everyone a turn, which was fair for tryouts, unlike scrimmages, where someone would have to pass me the ball for me to show off my skills. What if nobody passed to the new girl at school?

  Peering ahead, I tried to see if Jessi and Emma would be ones or twos. The girl directly to my right was really short, which made it easy to see over her head and spot Emma, who towered over the other girls. She was standing with Jessi, who waved when she saw me.

  The tiny girl beside me was anxiously chewing on the ends of her bobbed strawberry-blond hair. At least I wasn’t the only one who felt anxious. Seeing her made me feel even more nervous. If the team was as bad as Jessi and Emma said, why was this girl nervous too?

  “What did I miss?” somebody said, sliding into line beside me. “I decided to run an extra lap. I wasn’t warmed up enough.”

  “We’re counting . . . ” My voice trailed off. It was the girl who had given me and Jessi that nasty look. She towered over me, her dark hair neatly braided and crisscrossed over her head like a crown. She wore a shiny white jersey with matching white shorts.

  “Um, we’re counting off for a scrimmage,” I repeated. This is what I imagined a California soccer player would look like. Perfect. Unbeatable. The butterflies in my stomach invited a few friends over and started dancing the cha-cha.

  Too intimidated to look at her directly, I gazed down at the ground as I nervously fiddled with my pink headband. And that’s when I saw them.

  Her shoes. Pure white leather with electric blue accents and silver stripes down the side. They were so fancy. Nobody spent that much money on shoes unless they were really good, right? And since she was next to me in line, we were for sure playing against each other. Great. I tried to remind myself what Jessi and Emma had said about the team’s record. They’d seemed to think I’d be a shoo-in. I needed to relax. I was on my way to totally psyching myself out.

  “Coach Flores is such a joke. Why is she having us do a scrimmage?” the girl said. “We should just do drills. My dad said she should have been fired after last year’s disaster of a season. I tried my best, but even I couldn’t save this team. But this year is going to be different,” she added, with a determined look on her face.

  If she had been on the team the year before, that would make her an eighth grader. She was a little full of herself, and I breathed a sigh of relief she wasn’t in my algebra class, but I had to admit that I did agree with her about the drills.

>   “Yeah, it is weird that we’re not doing drills first,” I said.

  “Scrimmages are the worst for a tryout. It’s so hard to be noticed when everyone’s running around. But this team is so awful anyway, what does it matter?” She shrugged.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I found myself staring at her shoes again. “Your shoes are really cool,” I offered.

  “Aren’t they?” she asked. “My dad got them for me. ‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,’ he always says. It’s what I wore for tryouts for the travel soccer team I’m on. It’s a waaaayyyy better team than this group of losers. Some Pinewood girls are even on my travel team. They’re the real deal.”

  Pinewood again, I thought. Jessi and Emma had said they were the best team in the league. I gulped. If she was playing with girls from that team, she had to be good.

  She looked down at my legs and sneered. “Nice socks,” she said sarcastically. “You know they don’t match, right?”

  My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe she was making fun of me. And I didn’t even know her name! Before I could think of how to reply to that, she barreled on.

  “You’re new here? I saw you talking to Jessi.”

  “I-I’m Devin,” I stammered, still at a loss as to how to deal with her rudeness.

  “I’m Mirabelle,” she said. “Good luck. You’re going to need it, especially if you hang out with Jessi.”

  I had no clue why Mirabelle disliked Jessi so much. Being the new girl definitely had its disadvantages. The butterflies decided to hold a family reunion. I felt like I usually did after drinking one of my mom’s green smoothies, and I tried to shake the queasy feeling. Mirabelle was intimidating. If I let her get to me, I could blow tryouts. I needed to stay focused. But Mirabelle’s sneering smile kept floating through my mind.

  After we finished counting off, Coach Flores waved us out onto the field. “Fantastic job, everyone!” she cheered. “Now just go on out there and have fun. Pick a position and make sure you’ve got someone on goal.”

  Just pick a position? That sounded like pure chaos to me. I played striker, so I rushed ahead to claim a spot at center field. But there were already a few girls arguing over who got to play striker. I’d never get a spot. So I rushed back to play midfield—my next-best position.

  Jessi, who was a one like me, ran by me on her way to grab a spot, giving me a concerned look. “I’d stay away from Mirabelle if I were you. She’s mean.” She raced off before I could answer. I had been able to figure that one out on my own. I wondered once again what was going on between Jessi and Mirabelle, but before I could think about it any more, Coach Flores blew her whistle to start the scrimmage.

  All at once, it seemed like, everyone started screaming.

  “Get the ball!”

  “I’m open!”

  “Over here!” It was total madness on the field, just like I’d feared.

  When a high looping ball finally came drifting over to me, a horde of charging maniacs pounced. Flustered, I booted the ball away. Half the girls watched as the ball sailed back over their heads. Then they turned to chase after it like a pack of golden retrievers.

  Even though there was a soccer ball and a bunch of players on the field, this did not feel like soccer. Organized soccer, anyway.

  “This is crazy,” I said out loud, even though nobody was around me.

  “I know, isn’t it?” Surprised by the voice, I looked over, and there was our goalie, squatting comfortably nearby. She was way outside the penalty box area. The goalie’s yellow gloves looked even brighter against her all-black outfit. Her eyelids had dramatic, thick black eyeliner swiped across them, curling up at the ends. It gave her a very fierce look when she squinted.

  “Shouldn’t you be back there?” I asked. She wasn’t in position to stop anything where she was.

  “You must be new. I’m Frida,” she said. “And I’m trying to not make the team.”

  “Trying to not make the team?” I asked. “Then why are you here?”

  “My mom,” said Frida. “I’m in drama club, and she wants me to be more ‘well-rounded,’ whatever that means. Thinks it’ll help me get into college. Heads up!”

  Unexpectedly the short girl with the strawberry-blond hair, the one who had been nervously chewing the ends of her hair, emerged from the pack with the ball, nobody anywhere near her. She dribbled up just past the halfway line when she saw the goal was empty. “Shoot it!” someone screamed.

  The girl, who had been lost in concentration, looked up like she was surprised that she wasn’t all alone on the field. When she saw everyone’s eyes on her, she grew flustered and stopped suddenly. The ball kept rolling as she stood like a statue, frozen in place.

  “That’s Zoe,” Frida said to me, shrugging. “She gets really nervous if anyone is watching her.”

  I felt bad for Zoe, but I saw my chance and charged forward and stole the ball from her. I headed toward the middle of the field. Looking up, I saw Jessi streaking in from the left wing. Applying just the right amount of lob, I floated a pass toward her, right between two defenders.

  “Jessi!” I yelled out. Since the eighth graders couldn’t agree on who should play striker, Jessi went in and grabbed the spot while they were too busy arguing to notice. She caught the ball in stride and one-timed it right past the other side’s goalie, completing a beautiful goal. Score! That had to have gotten Coach’s attention. I looked up to make sure she had seen, but Coach had an arm around Zoe and was giving her a pep talk instead of watching the game.

  Jessi ran all the way from across the field to toss her arms around me in a huge hug.

  “Such a great pass!” she exclaimed. “Sock sisters for life!”

  I giggled, but the smile was wiped off my face as Mirabelle brushed by us midcelebration, her lip curled up. “Oh, get over it. It’s one goal.”

  Jessi gave Mirabelle a dirty look and then rolled her eyes at me. “I’m sure if she scores, it will be the biggest deal ever. So lame.”

  On the next kickoff I moved to get the ball so I could look for Jessi again. From out of nowhere Mirabelle, who was on the other team, flashed in to take the ball away from me. That was lucky, I thought. Mirabelle then floated a perfect pass of her own to another player, leading to a gorgeous goal. “Nice pass, Mirabelle,” Coach said. Great, now Coach was watching.

  And Mirabelle was good. Fully engaged now, she kept twirling right through the chaotic pile of girls, showing off tricky step-overs, behind-the-back dribbles, and fancy ball juggles.

  “Someone stop her,” I said, gasping for breath after Mirabelle scored.

  Then I saw Coach Flores look at her stopwatch and reach for her whistle. Scrimmage was going to end! I had to do something drastic if I wanted to be remembered for anything at all.

  If I could stop Mirabelle, I would give everyone something to remember. The next time Mirabelle hurtled toward me, I lunged at the ball.

  Anticipating my move, Mirabelle countered with a full 360-degree spin. I lost my balance and sprawled out on the ground, getting a mouthful of grass as she flew past me. I got my head up in time to see Mirabelle finesse the ball into the top left corner of the goal.

  Coach’s whistle blew. “That’s enough, girls,” she said. “You were all wonderful! Remember, no matter how you performed today, at least you all gave it your best. That’s what counts. Tryout results will be posted tomorrow. Nice work, everyone.”

  I dropped my head down, totally humiliated. Coach Flores had to be kidding. I’d totally blown it. As Frida stopped to help me up, Mirabelle pranced by and mimed holding a video camera in her hand.

  “YouTubed,” she teased.

  Brushing myself off, I stared after her.

  “Oh, ignore her,” Frida said. “We all fall down every now and then.”

  “Especially me,” Emma said with a sheepish smile. “Believe me, however bad your fall just looked, I’ve done worse.”

  I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t look at anyone.
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  Just then Jessi came up with Zoe in tow. “If that had been me, I would have just tackled her,” Jessi said.

  “Well, nobody’s going to want me on the team after that,” I said, bummed.

  “Sure they will. You were great,” Jessi assured me. “Um, were you watching? We might have a few good players, but the tryouts were a mess. Total disaster! You at least had an assist today!”

  “I guess,” I said. How would I explain to Kara and my parents that I couldn’t even make the world’s worst soccer team? “I hope you’re right.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next day during lunch I met Jessi, Emma, and Zoe behind the library building in the courtyard.

  “Thanks for inviting me to eat with you guys,” I said. “Having lunch alone yesterday was not exactly my idea of a good time.”

  “Oh, sure!” Jessi said. “The more the merrier.”

  This was the first time I’d seen Jessi not in gym clothes or practice stuff. She was wearing a bright pink thermal top, with distressed jeans ripped open at the knees. I had dug through my closet the night before for a basic striped scoop neck, and had ditched the khakis for simple skinny jeans. Emma wore a basic hoodie and slouchy jeans on her tall frame, while petite Zoe wore a lilac lace dress and glasses with oversize frames. She looked very California chic, while Emma looked like she could have just rolled out of bed.

  “The list from the soccer tryouts is going to be posted after lunch,” Emma said excitedly. “I hope we all made it!”

  “I doubt I did,” Zoe said sadly, “not after the way I froze up. I hope you guys have fun on the team without me.”

  “What happened, Zoe?” I asked. “You looked like you really knew how to handle the ball. It was only when everyone started calling to you that you seemed to get nervous.”

  Zoe blushed. “I don’t know. When Emma, Jessi, and I are kicking the ball around just the three of us, I’m fine. It’s only when I feel like everyone is watching me, I freeze up.”