Switching Goals Read online

  “You need a light touch,” Charlotte had encouraged us as Kara and I practiced dribbling with both feet, seeing how many touches we could take between two cones set about two yards apart. “Some people prefer dribbling with the inside of their foot, others on their laces. Experiment and see what feels right for you.”

  Thanks to Charlotte, Kara and I both became really good at dribbling, although it’s a skill that takes years of practice to perfect. That feeling of the ball being an extension of my foot really helped me find my groove as a soccer player. I’ll always be grateful to her for that. One of the reasons I liked helping out Maisie’s elementary soccer team was because I wanted to pay forward what Charlotte did for us.

  I suddenly realized how much I missed her. We’ve kept in touch on social media since I moved, but it hasn’t been the same. I was happy for Kara but totally jealous I wouldn’t be there to share the fun and excitement of Charlotte’s big day.

  “Don’t be jelly, Devin. You’re invited too!” Charlotte’s face suddenly popped up on the screen.

  “Charlotte?” I gasped.

  “Surprise!” Kara smiled.

  Looking at Charlotte’s kind brown eyes and light red hair brought a rush of memories. She had taken us under her wing right away when her teammates started coaching us. Kara and I called her the Little Mermaid because of her hair, and she had thought that was funny.

  “I know it won’t be easy for you to come, since you live in California,” Charlotte said. “But I wanted you to know that you’re invited and I would love for you to be there. You’re going to get an invitation in the mail, too.”

  “You’ve got to come, Devin!” Kara pleaded. “It will be so much fun to have you there, and I haven’t seen you in forever!”

  I was touched that Charlotte and Kara had planned out asking me during this call. It was such a great surprise! But I couldn’t imagine any way that I’d be able to fly all the way out to Connecticut for the party.

  “I absolutely want to be there,” I told them. “Let me talk to my parents and see what they say.”

  Kara held up her right hand with her middle and index fingers intertwined. “Fingers crossed!”

  We talked some more and caught up before I signed off. Then I hurried downstairs to catch my parents alone before dinner so I wouldn’t have to have the conversation in front of my little sister, Maisie. She has a way of making everything about her!

  The delicious smell of turkey bacon frying greeted me as I walked into the kitchen. My dad was standing over a pan on the stove, tending to the sizzling slices. My mom was at the counter, slicing up a loaf of multigrain bread she had bought at the farmers market that morning.

  “Smells delish!” I said. “What’s on the menu?”

  My dad turned and smiled. “Turkey club sandwiches with avocado, and sweet potato fries,” he said. “You’ve got perfect timing. The table is ready to be set.”

  “Sure,” I said as I grabbed plates out of the cabinet. “Where’s Maisie?”

  “She earned twenty minutes of video game time,” my mom said as she popped the sliced bread into the toaster oven. “She’s got about five more minutes left.”

  Perfect! I thought. With my sister out of the way I could talk to my parents about Charlotte’s sweet sixteen party.

  “So,” I began as I placed the plates on our kitchen table, “I just got done talking to Kara.”

  “Your usual Sunday call?” Mom asked. “How is she?”

  “She’s good,” I said. “But she had a surprise for me. Charlotte was there, and I got to talk to her, too.”

  “Really? What a lovely girl.” Mom beamed. “She was so terrific with you and Kara. How is she doing?”

  “Great! In fact, she’s turning sixteen in a few weeks,” I told Mom. I had to be careful at this point. Although I knew it would be a hard sell, I also knew from many years of dealing with my parents that phrasing things in the wrong way could get them shut down immediately, with no further discussion. So I had to tread carefully here.

  I laid napkins next to the plates, carefully smoothing each one out and trying to act as casual as possible. “In fact, she’s having this big sweet sixteen party in about a month. That’s the reason she was on the call with Kara, to invite me. But I told her it would be impossible.”

  I pretended to be looking down at the table as I arranged silverware on top of the napkins, but I snuck a look at them with my eyes lowered.

  They exchanged glances, and my mom pursed her lips together, then blew out air in her version of a sigh. She always does that when she is thinking something over.

  “Hmmm . . . ,” she said. “I don’t know, Devin. Neither your father or I can take time off of work anytime soon, and I’m not sure if I’m comfortable having you fly out to Connecticut on your own.”

  My dad slid the turkey bacon out of the pan and onto paper towels on the counter. “And there’s the cost. A plane ticket across the country isn’t cheap, especially when you don’t buy in advance.”

  I thought of Kara, Charlotte, and all my old friends in Connecticut getting dressed up and going to the party together, and it made me really homesick for the first time in a while. I love living in Cali, but this was really making me miss my friends back East.

  Dad noticed my crestfallen face and came over to me, then patted my shoulder. “We’ll talk more about it, Devin. But if you can’t make it this time, we do have plans to go back East—all of us as a family—this summer. You can see Kara and Charlotte then.”

  But Charlotte’s sweet sixteen was happening soon, not this summer! I wanted to shout. Instead, I nodded my head as I finished setting the table. I thought of the fortune I got when we played the Flash Fortune game yesterday at Jessi’s house: Soon you will take a trip to a faraway place. I didn’t know about everybody else’s fortunes, but mine was definitely wrong!

  Chapter Four

  On Tuesday, Frida’s mom picked us up from school to go to her audition.

  “Nice to see you, Devin,” said Mrs. Rivera as I slipped into the backseat. Frida climbed in next to her mom. “It’s very nice of you to come along with Frida today. These things can take a while sometimes.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’m kind of curious to see what happens at an audition. Will there be any celebrities there? I’ve only seen one since we came to California, that time that Brady McCoy came to our fund-raiser. Maisie runs into them all the time. She saw Taylor Swift at a taco stand once, and now she acts like they’re best friends!”

  “I know,” Frida said, and then she did a perfect impression of my little sister’s voice. “ ‘Taylor and I both got chicken tacos with extra salsa. Can you believe it?’ ”

  “The funny thing is, my mom is pretty sure that it wasn’t even Taylor Swift. But you can’t tell Maisie that,” I said. “Anyway, I need another celebrity sighting so she’ll stop talking about it.”

  Mrs. Rivera laughed. “I’m afraid that auditions aren’t very glamorous. Usually Frida is just reading lines to a casting director or a producer. Especially for something small, like a commercial.”

  “A commercial is not small, Mother,” Frida objected. “And please do not say that inside the casting office or I will have to pretend I don’t know you.”

  “You do that anyway,” her mom countered. “So that’s not much of a threat.”

  Frida turned to me in the backseat and rolled her eyes.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Not today,” Frida said. She looked back at her mom. “I know I am getting the part. Do you know why?”

  “Because you will be the most talented and qualified actor for the part?” her mom replied.

  “Yes, but also no,” Frida said. “Because besides my obvious talent, Devin is with me, and she is my good luck charm!”

  I still wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t want Frida to lose confidence before the audition, so I kept quiet.

  “And also, the Flash Fortune app told m
e,” Frida went on. “ ‘A great success awaits you.’ That’s what it said. Right, Devin?”

  I nodded. “Right.” Then I thought of my own fortune, the one I knew was wrong, and I kept quiet again.

  “Frida, don’t put too much faith in good luck charms,” Mrs. Rivera told her. “Even when they’re as nice as Devin, you have to have faith in yourself.”

  “I do, Mom,” Frida said. “You know I do. But I am not going to ignore the signs all around me when the universe is shoving them in my face.”

  Mrs. Rivera sighed. “Shouldn’t you be studying your pages?”

  “I’ve got them memorized,” Frida replied. “It’s only two lines. But they’re, like, the most important lines in the commercial.” Then she frowned. “Although, maybe I should run through my expressions. I’m supposed to look confused, surprised, and excited. I’m pretty sure I’ve got confused and surprised down, but I think I need to work on excited.”

  She demonstrated by making this really wide, openmouthed smile and raising her eyebrows so high, they disappeared under her bangs. She definitely looked excited, but kind of in the way a cartoon character would.

  “Not bad,” I said. “But maybe not so . . . extra?”

  Frida nodded. “I knew it! I’ll practice in the mirror. You don’t mind, do you, Devin?”

  I shook my head. “No, go ahead.”

  Frida pulled down the visor and started making faces in the tiny mirror. I scrolled through my phone. Charlotte was posting ideas for her party on Pinterest. It looked like she was doing a World Cup theme, with each table named after a different country, and cupcakes decorated like soccer balls.

  Wow, she’s still really serious about soccer, I realized. Then I had a pang of regret. Now it was going to be tougher than ever to miss that party!

  As I scrolled through the pictures, Frida’s mom pulled into the parking lot of a one-story stucco building with a line of palm trees out front.

  “Here we go,” Frida said. “Stick close to me, Devin.”

  “You got it!” I said. I hooked my arm in hers.

  We entered the building into a narrow hallway lined with folding chairs that led to a closed door at the end of the hall. Already, there were a dozen girls and their moms and dads sitting in the chairs. A woman with short, white-blond hair and silver glasses was walking around with a tablet, and she approached us as we took our seats.

  “Name,” she said, in a flat voice.

  “Frida Rivera,” Frida replied, and the woman tapped the tablet screen. Then she looked at me.

  “Oh, I’m not here to audition,” I told her. She just stared at me, which made me nervous. “That’s okay, right? I mean, it’s okay if I hang out?”

  The woman didn’t even answer me. She just moved on to the next person.

  “Well, she wasn’t very friendly,” I muttered to Frida.

  “It’s not an easy business,” she replied. “You need to have a tough core to do it, like I do.”

  We sat down. “It’s pretty competitive, I guess?” I asked.

  Frida nodded, then motioned to a girl across the hall from us a little ways down. She had wavy hair, the same auburn color as Frida’s.

  “That’s Luna Murillo,” Frida whispered. “She goes to a lot of the same auditions as I do. When I got the Mall Mania movie and she didn’t, she moved to New York for two months to study acting with this top teacher there.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Frida continued. “And then she landed the guest role on Middle School Witches that I lost last month. But I am so not worried about this commercial. Because she might have had fancy acting lessons, but I have you.”

  “I have nothing to do with it,” I told her. “Your mom’s right. It’s all about you and your talent. You can do this!”

  Frida shook her head but took a deep breath. “I’ve got this.”

  After that, we waited for a pretty long time while the other girls went into the room behind the door, one by one. When Luna went in, Frida didn’t take her eyes off the door for one second. She came out after five minutes and stopped as she passed Frida.

  “Don’t even bother going in there,” she said. “I nailed it.”

  “Yeah, well . . . that’s what you say!” Frida replied.

  Luna walked off, and I gave Frida a puzzled looked. “ ‘That’s what you say’?”

  “I know, I should have had a better comeback,” Frida said. “But that girl makes me so nervous! I bet she did do great. Maybe there is no point in me going in there. Maybe I should—”

  “Frida Rivera.” The blond woman called Frida’s name.

  “You can do this, Frida,” I said. She still looked freaked out, though, so I figured I’d better go along with her superstitious stuff. “Your good luck charm is here. And the Flash Fortune app said you were going to get it.”

  “That’s right!” Frida said. She jumped up. “I’m here!”

  She marched into the audition office, followed by her mom.

  “Just hang in the hallway, Devin,” Mrs. Rivera said. “We’ll be right out.”

  I nodded. There were still a few girls and their moms and dads left, but the hallway was empty. I stood up and stretched. I’d been sitting for way too long!

  I steadied myself against the wall to do some calf stretches. Then I spotted a balled-up piece of paper on the floor and started kicking it around the empty part of the hallway. Eventually I kicked it through two legs of one of the folding chairs.

  Goal! I congratulated myself.

  “Devin!” I turned from my celebration to see Frida and her mom standing in front of the open doorway with another woman. Frida’s eyes were shining with excitement.

  “Thanks for coming, everyone, but you can all go home,” the woman said, and the girls left in the hallway groaned with disappointment. I dribbled my paper soccer ball over to Frida.

  “Does this mean you got it?” I asked.

  “I did!” Frida squealed, and she hugged me. “You really are my good luck charm, Devin!” I hugged her back. I still wasn’t so sure about that, but I was excited for her anyway.

  “Devin, are you in the business?” asked the woman who had dismissed the rest of the girls. She looked really professional in a black, sleeveless dress with no wrinkles, and her dark hair neatly pulled back.

  “Me? No, I’m just Frida’s friend,” I said.

  She handed me a business card. “I’m Ashanta Waters, and I’m a casting agent. I saw you playing around over there. I’ve been trying to find the right model for a shoot coming up, and I think you’d be perfect. I need someone tall and athletic to model workout clothing for girls.”

  “Um, thanks?” I said, taking the card from her.

  “Ashanta is a wonderful agent,” Mrs. Rivera said. “I can talk to your mom about it if you’d like.”

  “Think about it,” Ashanta said, and then she ducked back into the room and closed the door.

  “Devin, this is a-MAY-zing!” Frida said. “I booked the commercial, and you booked a modeling gig!”

  “I don’t know,” I said as we walked outside. “I don’t think I’d be a good model. I don’t know anything about fashion. And I can barely take a decent selfie. I’m much more comfortable on the field with a soccer ball.”

  “Exactly! That’s why she wants you—she needs an athletic girl. You’re perfect!” Frida said.

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised.

  “Well, anyway, the Flash Fortune app was right!” Frida said. “I am going to be such a great spokesperson for them now that I know it works. Maybe they’ll send me on tour. I’d love to go to Paris. . . .”

  While Frida kept daydreaming about her world tour, I looked at the business card in my hand.

  Me, a model? I thought. The app definitely didn’t predict that!

  Chapter Five

  “Devin! Over here!”

  I kicked the ball to Grace, and she dribbled it down the field until she got into goal range. Then she kicked it over
Zarine’s head, and the ball bounced into the net. Score!

  Coach Flores’s whistle blared across the field. “Great scrimmage, everyone!”

  We all jogged over to coach, panting and sweaty from the practice.

  “Everybody, hydrate! Then I need to talk to you for a few minutes before I dismiss you,” she said. She walked off toward the locker room while we got our water bottles.

  “That sounds ominous,” Emma whispered.

  “Ominous. Wait, isn’t that on our vocab list this week?” Jessi asked.

  Emma grinned. “Ominous. Giving the impression that something bad is about to happen,” she recited. “I’ve been studying.”

  “Well, it does sound a little ominous,” Zoe agreed. “Do you think there’s more trouble over the whole blue roses thing?”

  “I hope not,” I said, taking a swig from my water bottle.

  Frida took her phone out of her duffel bag. “Let’s see,” she said. She started tapping on her screen.

  “Wait, are you checking the fortune app?” Jessi asked. “I thought you said you shouldn’t check that all the time.”

  “Well, now that I’ve booked the commercial, I really need to use the app as much as possible so I can get into character,” Frida replied. “Okay, here we go. It says, ‘Don’t worry. Be happy.’ So Coach isn’t going to say anything bad.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” I said.

  We headed over to the locker room and sat on the benches.

  “I just want to begin by saying that I’m really proud of how you played on Saturday,” she said. “Everyone had to step out of their comfort zone, and you did great.”

  Everyone started cheering and clapping.

  “The suspension against some of our eighth graders has been lifted, and hopefully won’t ever be repeated, so we’ll be able to focus on our game against the Bayside Buccaneers this Saturday,” Coach went on. “Keep focused and playing like you’re playing, and we’ll stay on track to make the playoffs.”