Win or Lose Read online

  “There is no food in my store!” Debi said, clutching her hand over her heart as her eyes widened in shock. “If you can even call that food!”

  “Sorry,” Emma mumbled, spraying little orange crumbs out of her mouth. She swallowed and then looked at her hand. The cheese puff had turned her fingers bright orange. She wiped them on her shirt, adding a smear of orange to all the mud.

  “Oops,” she said as she looked down at her jersey. Debi folded her arms and gave Emma a look like no other. Although, come to think of it, it did remind me of my dad’s face when Maisie had dropped his cell phone into the toilet.

  Emma smiled sheepishly and put the bag of cheese puffs back into her bag. I glanced at Zoe. She was too miserable to say anything.

  Then Jessi ran back in, carrying a bunch of green rain ponchos.

  “Mom always has these in the car for soccer games,” she said. She pulled one on, the hood making a green point over her head. “See? Instant protection.”

  Emma giggled. “You look like a gnome.”

  “I was thinking more like a pea,” I said. I took one of the ponchos from Jessi and put it on. “What do you think?” I did a twirl.

  “Very fashionable!” Jessi said. “Maybe we can just wear these to the bat mitzvah.”

  Zoe winced at that as Emma and Frida put their ponchos on too. “You’re, like, a supergenius, Jessi,” I said. “All the dirt and mud is sealed inside. Debi, your store should be safe.”

  Zoe looked hopefully at her mom and Debi. The store owner didn’t look thrilled, but she reluctantly gave in.

  “Please, my name is pronounced ‘de-BEE,’ ” Debi said snootily. She sighed. “Oh, very well. I suppose if you just sit very still and don’t go near my dresses,” she said. “And, you!” She pointed at Emma. “No more of those orange things!”

  Zoe immediately got happy, as if the mud and the cheese puffs had never happened. “Oh, thank you!” Then she turned to us. “I’m trying to decide between this and another dress. And I picked out some that I think would look great on all of you. We can always come back so you can try them on.”

  “I love the dress you’re wearing,” Frida said.

  Zoe grinned. “Thanks. I kind of love it too. But then there’s this other one that’s just a little more fashion forward.”

  We tried not to move around as we waited for Zoe to return from the dressing room with her mom. Debi went to help some other people who came into the shop, but she kept looking at us to make sure we weren’t moving.

  Emma glanced at some of the mannequins in the window.

  “These dresses are fancy,” she remarked. “Do you think I’ll have to wear heels?”

  I giggled. “Oh my gosh, Emma. You know I love you, but you have a hard time not tripping in sneakers. How could you wear heels?”

  “I know!” Emma wailed. “Besides, I’d be, like, eight feet tall!”

  We were all giggling now, but we stopped when Zoe came back.

  “Wow, that’s really cool,” I said. This dress was strapless too, with a full skirt, but it was black, and then it had all these silvery flowers sewn down the bodice and on the skirt.

  Zoe twirled around in the mirror. “I really like it,” she said.

  “It’s pretty,” Emma said. “But the pink one seems more fun.”

  “And it’s a little more youthful,” her mother added.

  Zoe frowned. “I can’t decide!”

  “Why don’t you show us the dresses you picked out for us?” I suggested. “Maybe you just need to step back, you know?”

  Zoe nodded. “Good idea.”

  So then Zoe gave us a fashion show as she tried on the dresses she thought each of us would like. I guess I should admit that I wasn’t superbig on fashion. I didn’t wear jeans and T-shirts all the time, like Emma, but I didn’t read magazines and watch all the fashion TV shows like Zoe did either. So I was kind of glad that Zoe had some dress ideas.

  “Okay, this one’s for Frida,” Zoe said when she came back wearing a black sleeveless dress with layers of fringe all down the front. It kind of looked like something from the 1920s.

  Frida gasped. “That is fabulous!”

  “It fits your dark and quirky personality,” Zoe remarked. “Plus, I think black looks nice with your hair.”

  Frida ran a hand through her wavy auburn hair. “Yes, I know,” she said in a fake snooty voice. It reminded us all of Debi, and we broke out in giggles. Frida held up her phone. “Let me take a picture.”

  Zoe posed like a model, and Frida took the shot. Next Zoe put on a dress for Jessi. This one was strapless and straight and made of sparkly silver fabric.

  “That’s right! I need some bling!” Jessi cried happily, high-fiving me.

  “Zoe, you are great at this,” I said. I was starting to get excited to see what she had picked out for me. “You could so be a professional stylist.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, mimicking Frida. “Okay, let me try on Emma’s dress.”

  The next dress she modeled was a shimmering emerald green with a halter-type top, a belt around the waist, and a longer skirt.

  “It’s the hot color this year,” she explained. “And it doesn’t look exactly right on me because I’m so short. But it will look perfect on you, Emma.”

  Emma’s eyes were wide; she looked excited and nervous at the same time. “Whatever you say!”

  “Me next! Me next!” I was practically bouncing in my seat the way Maisie did when she was excited.

  “Okay! Okay!” Zoe said, laughing. She left, and it seemed like forever before she came back, but when she did—I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  I swear it was the prettiest dress I had ever seen. It was light blue and sleeveless, and the bodice had these silver flowers sewn on one side. The skirt was layers of light ruffles that made me think of clouds and the sky.

  “Kicks blue,” Zoe said with a grin.

  “I love it!” I cried. “What do they call that fabric on the skirt part?”

  “It’s organza,” Zoe answered. “Sometimes organza layers can look like a ballet costume or something, but these are draped in a really natural way. It’s going to look great on you.”

  “Now I need to take a picture,” I said, and Zoe posed while I snapped one on my phone. I couldn’t wait to show Kara.

  “I will put these dresses aside until you girls can come back for a fitting and your parents can buy the dresses for you,” Debi said, walking up with a clipboard in her hand. “Just give me your sizes.”

  When Debi was done with us, we carefully stood up and packed up the ponchos. Zoe had changed back into her regular clothes.

  “Sorry about being so dirty,” I said. “The field was really muddy today.”

  “I’m glad you guys came,” Zoe said. “And I’m sorry I missed practice. But this is a big deal for me, you know? I’ve been waiting for this for, like, my whole life.”

  I nodded. It was kind of how I felt about getting into the play-offs.

  “When we come back, we’ll be clean,” Jessi promised.

  “I certainly hope so,” Debi said loudly, and Jessi and I looked at each other, trying not to crack up.

  We tumbled outside, laughing.

  “I thought she was going to clean us off with a fire hose,” Jessi said.

  “Actually, that sounds like fun right now,” Emma said.

  I sniffed the air. “You know, I just realized that we probably smell as bad as we look.”

  Frida shuddered. “Let’s just get home and shower, please.”

  Jessi’s mom pulled up, and we all piled into the minivan. Picking out dresses had been pretty easy. I just hoped that beating the Tigers would be easy too!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I could swear a bunch of butterflies were doing a little dance in my stomach as Dad pulled into the Newton Middle School parking lot Saturday morning. It was an hour before game time, but Dad, Mom, and Maisie had come to get good seats for the game while I warmed up with the team.

&nb
sp; The last time we’d played the Tigers, they had destroyed us, but that was before we’d gotten our act together as a team. I knew the Tigers would be confident going in, and it looked like their fans were too. They had tied about a hundred black and orange balloons to the fence surrounding the field, and the stands were already filled with Tigers fans wearing black and orange.

  As we walked toward the field, I looked back at my family and was grateful that they were all wearing Kicks blue.

  “So when you win this game, do you get a big trophy or something?” Maisie asked.

  I shook my head. “No, but close. This is just the first round of the play-offs. If we win today, we’ll have to go on and play one more team. If we beat them, we’ll get the division trophy. We’ll be league champions!”

  “And then they can go on to enter the early rounds of the state championships,” Dad said, and I felt a little shiver of excitement.

  The state championships! There was actually a chance that we could win state, just like the Kicks had when Coach Flores had played on the team. I felt the butterflies flutter again, and then I told myself to focus. We had to win this game first.

  I felt a little more comfortable when we got a view of the away-team stands and I saw some blue shirts. There were a lot of Kicks on the field already.

  “See you later!” I said, and then I ran toward my team.

  “Good luck, honey!” Mom called out. “And don’t forget—”

  “To hydrate! I know!” I called over my shoulder. I think Mom thought I was going to shrivel up and turn to dust out on the field.

  I caught up with the rest of the team and tossed my duffel bag onto the sidelines. Everyone was stretching or talking or walking—you could almost see the nervous energy in the air.

  Anna was jumping up and down.

  “Anna, what are you doing?” I asked.

  “Can’t . . . stop . . . jumping,” she said, her curly hair bouncing on top of her head.

  I shook my head and walked over to Jessi.

  “Everybody’s, like, freaking out,” she said.

  “No kidding,” I replied. “I hope we can keep it together on the field.”

  Frida ran up to us. “Devin, any ideas for me today? I can’t think of anything.”

  Frida always played better when she pretended she was someone else on the field. It might sound weird, but it totally worked for her.

  “How about a Wizard of Oz thing?” I suggested. “You’re Dorothy, and the other team’s players are flying monkeys, trying to capture you.”

  Frida nodded. “That could work. And you guys could all be my friends, the munchkins.”

  “Hey! I’m no munchkin,” Jessi protested.

  “I’ll be a munchkin,” piped up Zoe, who had been behind us the whole time. “I’m the right height, anyway.”

  “Can I be a witch?” Emma asked, overhearing us.

  “No, you need to be that guy who guards the Emerald City gates, because you’re the goalie,” Frida said.

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t he have a mustache?”

  “You might look cute with a mustache,” Zoe said. She put a lock of Emma’s long black hair under Emma’s nose. “See? Not bad?”

  “So it’s settled. I’m Dorothy,” Frida said. She looked down at her cleats. “Too bad I can’t wear ruby slippers out there.”

  We were all cracking up when Grace’s voice cut through everyone’s talking.

  “Sock swap, everybody!” she yelled.

  As we got into a circle to do our sock swap, I couldn’t help thinking that Grace had been acting kind of different lately. She was always pretty quiet, and almost never called for the sock swap.

  It’s ever since the article came out, I thought, but I pushed the thought away. The last thing I wanted to think about today was that stupid article.

  Emma nudged me out of my thoughts and handed me a pink sock with green polka dots.

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. Then I quickly took off my right sock—Kicks blue with white stripes—and handed it to Jessi on my left. Then I put on Emma’s sock. We had been doing the sock swap since our first game, and it had become a Kicks tradition.

  When we had our cleats back on, Coach Flores got us into a huddle.

  “We’ve still got some time before the game, so I think we should warm up with some simple drills,” she said. “You guys have been working really well as a team lately. Just keep that up and you’re going to do great.”

  I glanced at Grace. I hoped we were still working as a team. We all piled hands on top of one another in the middle of the circle and let out a cheer.

  “Gooooooo, Kicks!”

  We dribbled and practiced passing for a little while, and then the refs started coming out onto the field. Coach called us into a huddle again.

  “Emma, I want you to start on goal,” she said. “Giselle, Anjali, Frida, you’re on defense. Midfield is Jessi, Grace, Maya, and Taylor. Devin, Zoe, and Megan, I want you on the forward line. Got it?”

  We nodded. Coach was basically putting up our strongest players first, in the positions we all played best. Not a bad strategy to start off an important game.

  Then Grace went out for the coin toss, which we won, and we chose to receive the ball first. I took a deep breath as I ran out onto the field to take my place.

  Then the ref’s whistle blew, and the Tigers player kicked the ball pretty deep into our midfield. Jessi stopped it with her foot and then dribbled it down the right side as two Tigers charged for her. One of them stole it right out from under her and passed it to another Tigers striker farther down the field. That Tiger started dribbling it toward the goal, but Frida zipped in front of her.

  “Follow the Yellow Brick Road!” she yelled, kicking the ball away from the striker. It was a wild kick that went out of bounds, but it was worth it to see the look on the striker’s face. Frida grinned at me as I jogged past her.

  “It was a ruby slipper malfunction,” Frida said sheepishly.

  The Tigers player tossed the ball in from the sidelines, and the play continued up and down the field. The soccer ball bounced from player to player like a ball bouncing off bumpers in a pinball machine. Every time we got control of it, one of the Tigers got it away from us—and we did the same to their attackers. I think the Tigers were a little surprised to see us putting up such a good fight.

  Then one of the Tigers found herself surrounded by Kicks, so she kicked the ball hard across the field to one of her teammates. Grace was all over it, intercepting it and making a mad dash to the goal straight down the middle of the field. None of the Tigers could catch up to her.

  “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!” I yelled, and I could hear the other Kicks yelling behind me. The Tigers goalie had her hands on her knees, ready to dive, jump, or catch, trying to anticipate what Grace would do.

  Grace waited until she was about twenty feet away from the goal, when she kicked it hard and fast—not too high and not too low. For a second I thought the goalie might catch it, but it flew just over her head. She jumped, reaching for it, and it brushed her fingertips as it went into the goal.

  “Whoooo!” I hollered and high-fived Zoe, the closest player to me. The rest of the girls erupted into cheers and hugs. But there wasn’t much time to celebrate, because the Tigers set up for kickoff just seconds after the goal.

  “There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!” Frida yelled down the field.

  “Nice one!” I said to Grace as she caught up with us, but she didn’t say anything in response.

  The Kicks and the Tigers did the back-and-forth pinball thing for a while, and then suddenly the Tigers were all over the Kicks goal, passing the ball back and forth to each other so that our defenders were practically running in circles trying to stop them.

  “Curse you, flying monkeys!” Frida cried.

  Emma got confused too, running back and forth across the goal, trying to keep pace with the ball. Then a Tiger made another quick, short pass to a teammate,
who headed it right into a wide-open part of the net. Emma wasn’t anywhere near it.

  There wasn’t much time left after that, and the first half ended in a tie, 1–1.

  We jogged back to the bench. I grabbed my water bottle and held it up to the stands so my mom could see me take a big, long drink.

  “You guys are doing great out there,” Coach said. “Defense, they tuckered you out in those last ten minutes, so I want to put in Jade, Olivia, and Alandra when the half starts. Zarine, you go in for Emma for a while. Brianna, you go in for Megan, and Anna, you go in for Maya.”

  I saw Megan frown, and I knew she didn’t like being taken out of the game. But I understood Coach. She took me out sometimes too.

  When the second half started, the Tigers had control of the ball. I got lucky when one of the Tigers passed the ball right in front of me, and I stopped it with my foot. The two players converged on me, so I passed the ball to Zoe.

  “Zoe, do your lightning thing!” I yelled. Zoe’s size and speed meant that she could zigzag her way through defenders so fast, they didn’t know where to turn. She got all the way down to the goal and made a solid shot, but this time the Tigers goalie stopped it.

  The Tigers took the ball all the way down to our goal, and one of their strikers sent a shot skidding toward Zarine. She made a spectacular dive, stopping it with her body.

  “Way to go, Zarine!” Emma yelled from the sidelines.

  The second half sped by. We went back and forth up and down the field. Coach put Emma back in when Zarine got tired, and she switched up some of the midfielders, too, when she had a chance. A few minutes before the game ended, we were still tied 1–1, and she sent Megan back in to sub for Zoe.

  That’s when we finally got a break. One of the Tigers kicked the ball out of bounds, and Taylor tossed it in.

  Jessi got it and headed it right to me. We were pretty close to the Tigers goal, and I had a clear path right to it.

  “Devin! Over here! Over here!”

  Megan was running parallel to me. I know she wanted me to pass it to her, but there were two Tigers defenders about to overtake her, and I didn’t want to risk it.

  So I did the next best thing. I faked like I was going to pass to Megan, and while the goalie’s head was turned, I kicked the ball right into the goal.