Hat Trick Read online

  I wasn’t Brady-crazy like Emma, but I did like his music and thought he was really cute. I wouldn’t mind getting to meet him myself. I’d never met anyone famous before!

  “I can’t wait to play soccer again, Frida, but it won’t be the same without you,” I told her.

  “Does this mean we’re not the Kicks anymore?” Frida asked.

  “No way!” Zoe said emphatically.

  “We’ll always be the Kicks!” I added. “Even when we’re ninety years old and in a nursing home.”

  “And we’ll start a nursing home soccer team,” Jessi joked.

  I laughed, thinking of the Kicks as white-haired little old ladies kicking a soccer ball around. “We’ll be state champions for our age group!”

  Since the winter league was a county league, tryouts were not on our home field. Instead they were being held in the field by the Pinewood Rec Center. We had all been to Pinewood Park before. It was right next to Pinewood Prep School, an exclusive private school. They had a really strong soccer team, the Panthers.

  Our team, the Kentville Kangaroos, had played them a few times before. In fact, one of the Panthers, Mirabelle, used to be a Kangaroo. Mirabelle had been Jessi’s best friend in elementary school. She’d also turned out to be an intense player who bullied her teammates.

  So when someone had been playing tricks on the Kicks, we’d blamed Mirabelle and the Panthers. It turned out we’d been wrong. The Riverdale Rams, led by a girl named Jamie, had been causing trouble for us. Mirabelle had actually helped us out.

  I wouldn’t exactly say that Mirabelle had become friends with the Kicks. We were more like frenemies. Which was fine, because it was definitely better to have Mirabelle as a frenemy than as an enemy!

  I did a slow jog around the field to warm up, with Jessi, Zoe, and Emma keeping pace next to me. My dad had driven us all over in the van for the winter league tryouts.

  “Mom had to take Maisie to Pirate Pete’s Pizza Palace to cheer her up,” I told them. It was one of Maisie’s favorite places to go. It had arcade games and some small rides, and all the people who worked there dressed up like pirates. “Today is the day she would have started soccer practice. She was so sad.”

  “Aw, poor Maisie,” Zoe said. “I wish we could do something to help her.”

  “Couldn’t we, like, do a fund-raiser or something?” Emma suggested, panting slightly. “Brady McCoy did a fund-raiser concert for his local animal shelter. I watched online with the other Real McCoys. I even sent in a text donation. Boy, was my mom mad when she saw the cell phone bill. But Brady said to be generous!”

  “The Real McCoys?” Jessi asked.

  Emma smiled. “It’s what Brady fans call themselves.”

  “I knew you liked him, but wow.” Jessi shook her head, her dreadlocks bouncing. “That’s a little overboard.”

  If Emma was offended, she didn’t show it. “I wonder if Frida is talking to him right this very minute. Can you imagine? I would just die!” she squealed.

  Emma was in the grips of total fandom. I just hoped it wouldn’t interfere with her playing.

  “I think a fund-raiser is a great idea,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Although we’d need to earn a lot of money to get the program up and running. Maybe I can talk to my dad about it.”

  “I’ll try to think of something too, Devin,” Zoe said as we jogged.

  “We’ve got time to think right now,” Jessi teased me, “because Devin insisted on getting here so early.”

  “I wanted to get a feel for the field,” I protested. “Since the league is county-wide, this is different. We’re going to be competing with girls from different schools. We’ve got Pinewood and Riverdale players here today too. This will be a lot tougher than trying out for the Kicks.”

  Jessi nodded. “It will be tough. But the league can have as many as eight teams, so at least there is more of a chance that we’ll get to play!”

  “Eight teams in the league, and the county has fifteen middle schools,” I said. I had looked it up. “But we’re the Kicks, so of course we’ll make it!”

  As the field started to fill with girls, I began to doubt myself. Just a little bit. Among them were some of the toughest players we had faced last season.

  But my doubt lifted when I saw some familiar faces warming up. Fellow Kicks Sarah and Anna, who were seventh graders like me and my friends, were stretching. Next to them I spotted Grace, Alandra, and Zarine, eighth graders.

  We jogged over, and everyone squealed and dove in for a big group hug when they saw us.

  “I’m so happy to see you guys,” Sarah said as she eyed the other players on the field, who for some reason looked really big all of a sudden. “I was starting to get nervous.”

  “We’ll do great,” Grace said calmly. She always kept it together. I think that’s why she made such a great co-­captain of the Kicks. And the other captain? Yeah, that’s me! I loved being captain of the Kicks. But now I was going to have to start from the bottom and prove myself all over again in this new winter league.

  As we chatted, I heard a voice interrupt us. “Hey, Jessi.”

  I turned to look, and towering over all of us, even Emma, was Mirabelle. As always when she played, she wore her dark hair pulled back into a French braid. Her shiny white jersey and matching white shorts were spotless, as usual. Mirabelle always looked perfect. When I had met her for the first time when I was trying out for the Kicks, I’d quickly figured out that the flaws weren’t in how she looked but in how she acted. Although we had gotten to see a softer side of Mirabelle, I wondered which side of her had shown up for tryouts today.

  “I hope we get on the same team,” she said to Jessi. “I’d love the chance to play together again.”

  I saw the surprise on Jessi’s face, but she quickly adjusted it so it didn’t show.

  “That would be cool,” she said.

  “Good luck.” Mirabelle nodded at all of us before jogging off.

  “Wow!” Grace said. She exchanged surprised looks with Alandra and Zarine. “I’m not sure who that was, but she looked a lot like Mirabelle.”

  “I think being on the Panthers has changed her,” Jessi suggested. “I bet it made her realize how good she had it when she was one of the Kicks!”

  Mirabelle had confided in me and Jessi how competitive the Panthers were with one another. She didn’t seem so happy there, but you couldn’t tell it by how she played. She was still a monster on the field and made for tough competition.

  As I stretched with the other Kicks, I felt a player bump into me, almost knocking me off my feet. I glanced up and saw a girl with long blond hair and cold blue eyes. It was Jamie from the Rams, the girl who’d been behind the plot to sabotage the Kicks!

  “So sorry,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. I knew she had done it on purpose.

  “Watch it,” I snapped, totally thrown that she had done something like that. Although I shouldn’t have been surprised. Jamie was the most competitive player I had ever come across, willing to do anything to win. I’ll admit it—I like to win, but I always play fair and square on the field. I couldn’t understand how Jamie thought anything other than that was okay.

  I watched her walk off with some of the Riverdale players as Jessi shouted after her, “That’s right. Keep walking!” She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “That girl is unbelievable!”

  None of us had time to think much about Jamie, because the tryouts were starting. We were separated into two groups to run some drills. Our group was split in half and lined up in pairs. We started with some heading and chest trapping drills. I recognized the girl across from me as a defender who played with the Panthers. She curtly nodded at me, no smile, before we started. She tossed the ball, and I focused on jumping up to meet it and putting that energy and power into the header. I headed the ball back toward her, and she caught i
t easily. I was proud of my control. We took turns doing that while a couple of coaches walked around, holding clipboards and taking notes.

  We moved on to chest drills. I tossed the ball at my partner’s chest. She caught it there, then let the ball drop to her feet and hit it back to me before it touched the ground.

  She was good, but so was I. I started to relax and got lost in the flow of playing soccer. It was my favorite feeling, and I was really happy to be doing it again.

  As we ran some more drills, shooting the ball back and forth to each other, one of the coaches, a tall, thin woman in a jersey and shorts, walked by, shouting out advice. “You’ve got to be quick, make the movement faster. If you need to take two touches, take two touches.”

  I felt good and warmed up as our group got divided for a scrimmage. I was on the same team as Zoe. Emma was on the other team. I saw Emma whispering excitedly to Zoe and Zoe shaking her head worriedly before the coach pulled Emma and put her in the goal.

  We played in a standard three-four-three formation (three defenders, four midfielders, three forwards). Zoe and I were forwards.

  One of the midfielders intercepted a pass from the other team and sent it my way. I had to run to keep up with it, but once I was on it, I kept the ball close. The defenders ran up to stop me, but luckily I had a clear shot to Zoe. I passed her the ball, and she got it and charged toward the goal and her best friend, Emma.

  Emma didn’t seem to be paying attention. It looked like she was staring at her gloved hand. Zoe froze, unsure what to do. In that split second a defender swooped in and kicked the ball across the field, far away from the goal.

  Zoe shook her head, frustrated. She had missed a perfect scoring opportunity. The coach yelled, “Pay attention, people!”

  I got another pass from a midfielder on our team, and I zipped past a defender to launch the ball into the goal. Once again I saw Emma looking like she was fiddling with something in her glove. What the heck was she doing? Definitely not paying attention to the game. The soccer ball I had launched hit her squarely in the face. She didn’t even see it coming. Emma crumpled over in a heap, and I saw her gloved hand open and her cell phone drop out onto the field.

  “Emma! Are you okay?” I ran over as I heard the coach’s whistle blow.

  “Ouch!” She gingerly poked at her nose. “I think I’m okay. Nothing broken, anyway.”

  She grabbed for the cell phone next to her and picked it up. “Look!” she said excitedly. “Frida just texted me a picture of Brady McCoy!”

  A cell phone on the soccer field? Emma had just completely blown her tryout!

  “Oh my gosh! You are kidding me! She had her phone on the field? In the goal? I’ve never heard of anyone doing something like that!” Kara, my best friend from Connecticut, shook her head in disbelief. We video chatted with each other almost every day, and I had been so excited to tell her what happened at today’s tryouts.

  I sighed. “She has gone completely Brady McCoy crazy. We knew she liked him and stuff, but ever since Frida told us she was going to be in a movie with him, Emma has gone over the edge. I don’t get it. She’s such an awesome goalie.”

  Kara wiggled her eyebrows at me. “He is really cute, though, don’t you think?”

  I giggled. “Yes, he is, but I’d never risk a soccer game over a boy!”

  Kara arched an eyebrow. “Not even Steven?” she asked.

  “Not even Steven,” I said firmly. Like me, Steven was in the seventh grade, and he was on the boys’ soccer team. In my opinion he was just as cute as Brady McCoy, and he was really nice, too. We hung out sometimes, and we had two classes together.

  As Kara filled me in on what was happening back in Connecticut, I heard a strange rustling noise near my door. I saw it creak open a few inches, just enough to fit a hand through. A crumpled ball of white paper rolled in on the floor, followed by a small hand. On the back of the hand was drawn a little soccer player, the index and middle fingers acting as the legs.

  The index finger pulled back and “kicked” the ball of paper into the middle of my room. “Score!” I heard Maisie’s voice yell. I shook my head.

  “What’s going on?” Kara asked as Maisie crawled through the door, a silly smile on her face.

  I usually got mad at her if she interrupted me when I was talking to Kara, but that had been really adorable.

  “Come say hi to Kara,” I told her. She squeezed in next to me on my chair and waved at Kara.

  “Show her your soccer hand puppet,” I said.

  Maisie flipped her hand around and began kicking her fingers to show her creation to Kara.

  “That’s so cute!” Kara laughed.

  Maisie pulled a sad face. “It’s the only way I can play soccer.”

  With all the excitement of the tryouts, I had forgotten to tell Kara about Maisie’s school soccer program, so I filled her in while Maisie looked pitiful. It was a look she had perfected, and it worked with our parents. I’d hardly ever seen her make that face without it resulting in her getting a cookie, some fruit punch, or a trip to Pirate Pete’s.

  Turned out Kara wasn’t immune either.

  “Awwww, poor Maisie!” Kara squealed. She opened her arms wide. “I’m giving you hugs through the computer.”

  Maisie blew her kisses back, loving the attention.

  I guess I wasn’t immune to Maisie when she made her sad face either. I’ve got to figure out a way to help her! I thought.

  * * *

  The next day at lunch I sat with Zoe, Jessi, and a gloomy Emma.

  “I almost took down all my Brady McCoy posters last night,” Emma said sadly. “But when I looked into those beautiful brown eyes, I couldn’t do it.” She sighed loudly before putting her head down on the table, ignoring her cute pink bento box. Emma was Korean, and her mom was an awesome cook. She always filled the sections in Emma’s lunchbox with the yummiest types of food. My mom was a health nut, so my lunch today was almond butter and jelly on spelt bread. I would have traded for Emma’s lunch in a second!

  “I don’t get it, Emma. What were you thinking?” Jessi asked.

  Emma groaned. “Frida had texted saying she would get a picture of Brady and send it to me. It was all I could think about. It was like my brain turned to Brady mush!”

  “We already know that Devin’s brain is a soccer ball, and now yours is a pile of Brady mush.” Jessi shook her head. “I have some weird friends.”

  “Hey!” I yelled, playfully slapping her arm.

  Zoe, Jessi, and I laughed, but Emma still looked sad.

  “There is no way I’m making the team,” she mumbled, her face still on the table.

  Zoe tried to reassure her. “You never know,” she said softly as Jessi and I exchanged glances. Jessi and I had talked the night before. We were kind of worried for Zoe, too. She’d frozen up on that goal because of Emma, and we knew it might hurt her chances.

  “They said they would post the results online today,” Jessi said as she pulled her phone out of her backpack. We were allowed to use them during lunch only. “I can check to see if they are up yet. That way we’ll know.”

  As Jessi looked, I tried to comfort Emma.

  “Even if you don’t make it, we’ll be playing again as the Kicks before you know it.” Emma was the biggest cheerleader in our group. She always saw the bright side of things, so it felt weird having to cheer her up for a change. I wouldn’t have minded hearing some reassuring words myself right then. I felt I had done really well in the tryouts, but I was still anxious about knowing if I had made the winter league or not.

  So when Jessi said, “It’s up!” I think we all felt butterflies in our stomachs. As Jessi scrolled through her phone, she let out a whoop of excitement. “I made it! I’m on the Griffons, and so are you, Devin.”

  Yes! I felt like getting up and doing a little dance, I was so happy, but
since we didn’t know about Emma and Zoe yet, I waited.

  “I don’t see you, Emma,” Jessi said gently.

  Emma frowned, and then shrugged. “Well, we knew that was coming, didn’t we?”

  “How about me?” Zoe asked. I could hear the nerves in her voice.

  Jessi kept scrolling. “Zoe Quinlan, Gators.”

  Zoe let out a big exhale. I could feel the air blow toward me, all the way across the table.

  “I’m not on the same team as you guys, but at least I’ll be playing.” She sounded happy.

  “That’s great, but it’s going to be weird, playing without you, and Emma, and Frida, too,” I said.

  “Ugh,” Jessi interrupted, before Zoe or Emma could say anything. “I’ve got some bad news. Mirabelle is on our team, and—”

  It was my turn to interrupt. “That won’t be so bad, will it? She seems to have changed, and she told you she wanted to play with you.”

  “I’m kind of nervous about playing with her again, but I think you’re right. She’ll probably be a lot cooler to be on a team with this time,” Jessi said. “But Mirabelle isn’t the bad news. It’s Jamie from the Rams. She’s on our team too!”

  Yikes! I thought about how she’d bumped me on purpose and for no reason at tryouts. It would be a challenge to have to play on a team with her, but I’d been through so much with the Kicks that I felt like I could handle anything at this point.

  “Maybe if we’re going to be on the same team, she’ll cut the attitude,” I said. “Soccer is all about teamwork. We’re going to have to work together.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jessi said, but then we all noticed that Emma’s head was back down on the table.

  “How could I have been so stupid?” she moaned. “Now you guys are all going to be playing, and I’ll have nothing!”

  First Maisie, now Emma. This was just so sad.

  “I know!” Zoe chimed in, her eyes bright. “Emma, you are the best at cheering all of us up when we are sad. It’s time for us to do the same for you. We need to have an Emma Appreciation Day!”