Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer (14 page)

“How come you didn’t come over yesterday,
Bolillo?”
Dusty whispered as Lucy buckled her seatbelt beside her.

“I couldn’t.”

“Did you get in trouble or something?”

Lucy shook her head and pretended that seatbelt fastening was way more complicated than it was. After Dad’s news about the radio station, she’d forgotten all about Dusty’s invitation. She’d practically forgotten everything, except to pray in her Book of Lists — although unless God made some kind of miracle happen, she didn’t see how all the begging and whining she’d written down was going to do any good.

“You know something, Lucy?”

Lucy looked up sharply at the tone of Dusty’s voice. It sounded like tears weren’t far away.

They weren’t. They were about to spill over onto Dusty’s cheeks.

Lucy didn’t know what to do. She’d only recently figured out what to do when
she
cried.

She decided on, “What?”

Dusty blinked fast. “I know you can’t eat lunch with us, but I don’t think your coach said you can’t talk to us
any
time.”

“She never — ”

Dusty curled her fingers around Lucy’s T-shirt and pulled her in closer — as if Lucy weren’t practically sitting in her lap already.

“I wanted you to come over because I can’t talk to anybody else about this — ”

“About — ?”

“And it might not be happening if you didn’t have to be on that other team — even though I know it’s the special team and you deserve that — but without you, everything is so awful — ”

“What — ?”

“Veronica’s grounded because my mom told her mom she saw her holding hands with the new boy on our team — ”

“What new — ?”

“So she won’t talk to me
or
her mom — like it was
my
fault my mom can’t mind her own business — although, I was already mad at Veronica because she’s so busy flirting with Zen — ”

“Who in the world — ?”

“ — she doesn’t pay any attention to soccer — which doesn’t actually matter because neither does Seth, and he’s supposed to be the coach but all he does is send text messages and say we have to work out our own problems, which we wouldn’t even have if you were there.” Dusty took a breath and surged on. “Gabe is all mad because he isn’t on the Boys’ Select Team, so he’s in a bad mood all the time — plus now Veronica likes Zen — ”

“Who — ?”

“ — and even though Gabe pretends he doesn’t like Veronica as a girlfriend, he likes it that
she
likes
him
— so anyway he’s being stupid like he used to be, all acting like a moron, and I tried to talk to Mr.

Auggy, and he said we need to talk to our own coach but Seth — ”

“ — is too busy sending text messages to
my
coach,” Lucy managed to get in.

“Yes!” Dusty’s eyes filled with new tears. “I knew you’d get it!”

Lucy didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“Soccer used to be so fun,” Dusty said, “and now I don’t even like it anymore. I wish we could just stay in Los Suenos and play on our own field — only we don’t even have one now. We’re not the Dreams — we’re the Nightmares!”

All Lucy could do was nod, but that seemed to give Dusty permission to let go of all the crying she’d been holding back. She pasted her face to Lucy’s shoulder and sobbed.

“Everything all right back there?” Veronica’s mother said.

“Guess what?” Carla Rosa said. “I think Dusty’s crying.”

“Tell them I’m fine,” Dusty whispered to Lucy.

“You’re not,” Lucy whispered back.

“Dusty?” Mrs. DeMatteo said. “Veronica, did you hurt Dusty’s feelings?”

“Why is it always my fault?”

“Because you are a drama queen — ”

While Veronica and her mother batted that back and forth and Carla Rosa and Januarie looked on like they were watching a TV show, Dusty lifted her face and gave Lucy a watery smile.

“I
am
fine now,” she said. “I’m glad we finally talked.”

We
hadn’t, and Lucy had more questions than she had answers.

What was happening to her Los Suenos Dreams? Why
had
soccer turned into a nightmare?

And who in the world was Zen?

Mrs. DeMatteo stopped the van in the parking lot, and the doors flew open. Veronica flounced out of the front seat, and Januarie shot from the second seat like Godzilla was after her.

“Guess what?” Carla Rosa said.

“What?” Lucy and Dusty said together. Dusty giggled.

“Januarie has something she’s not supposed to have.”

Lucy sighed. “What is it?”

Carla Rosa shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Then how do you — ”

“I can just tell. Guess what — she can’t get in trouble or those foster care people will take her — ”

Dusty squeezed Lucy’s arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell J.J.”

She ran off happily with Carla Rosa, leaving Lucy feeling like her head was on backward.

The instant Lucy sat on the bench to put on her cleats, Rianna appeared beside her as if somebody had beamed her down from a spaceship. Lucy concentrated on her shoelaces to keep herself from shoving her off the end. There just wasn’t room for her bullying right now.

But Rianna’s voice was high and light as she said, “For you, Rooney,” and put a piece of blue paper in Lucy’s lap. “Here’s one for you, Sarah — Kayla — ”

Rianna handed out a whole stack of blue papers as if she were distributing Halloween candy. Lucy forced herself to look at hers. It was probably guidelines for flopping and charging and obstructing.

Lucy felt her eyes bug, though, as she read the words typed at the top in bold red letters: FAIR PLAY CODE.

Was she kidding?

* Play fair.

* Play to win, but accept defeat with dignity.

* Observe the laws of the game.

* Denounce those who attempt to discredit our sport.

Lucy blinked. She wasn’t even sure what that one meant, but it didn’t sound like something Rianna believed. Neither did the last item.

* Use soccer to make a better world.

“You wrote this?” Sarah said. She looked as if she sincerely doubted it.

Coach Neely looked up from her copy. “It’s the FIFA Fair Play Code.”

“Didn’t I put that on there somewhere?” Rianna said.

Lucy looked. She hadn’t. She’d made it look like she made it up herself.

“What’s FIFA?” Waverly said, not smiling, as usual.

“Excuse me for being a moron,” Patricia muttered.

“This is great, Rianna,” Coach Neely said, but she looked a little uncomfortable, like she had a piece of meat between her back molars. “Do you have permission to hand this out though? Hawke has to okay any flyers — ”

“Oh, yeah.” Rianna straightened importantly. “I had a lo-o-ong talk with him yesterday because — ” She looked around, like there might be spies in the group.

“Because what?” Coach Neely said. “You can trust your team.”

Lucy chomped down on her lip.

“Okay, well.” Rianna tossed her ponytail. “I went to him because I found out that some people — on other teams, not ours — aren’t playing by the rules. They’re, like, playing dirty and then saying it’s only cheating if you get caught.”

Lucy knew her mouth had fallen open, but she couldn’t close it.

“I told him I didn’t want our camp to be like that,” Rianna went on. “And I asked him if I could hand out a flyer.”

“You made this yourself ?” Coach Neely said. She took off her sunglasses. She was clearly impressed.

“Oh yeah. It’s not that hard with a computer. And I was really into it.”

“We should all be into it.” Coach Neely gave Rianna one more admiring look before she put her sunglasses back on. “Rianna’s set an example for us — what do you say we set one for the rest of the teams?”

Taylor snorted. Patricia muttered something. Everyone else looked at Lucy, for no reason she could figure out. But the only face she could look back at was Rianna’s. She sent Lucy an eye-message so clear she might as well have yelled it across the soccer field.

I bet you wish you listened to me. Now I’m getting all the credit.

Lucy turned and squinted into the sun, just so she wouldn’t send back:
I am SO going to tell EVERYBODY that this is just a way for you to
get the VIP award — and you don’t deserve it!

It was so hard not to. Maybe she even would have — if familiar movement hadn’t caught her eye on the other side of the field, where the Los Suenos Dreams were kicking the ball around a line of orange cones. J.J. was dribbling like that mad dog Mr. Auggy was always talking about — and Gabe was sticking his foot in like a stick in a bicycle spoke instead of dribbling his own ball. Carla Rosa looked like Lucy had never worked with her for a single minute, much less hours in her backyard. Oscar and Emanuel were doing nothing but punching each other, and she could hear Veronica squealing as a tall, fast kid with a lot of hair stole her ball.

Lucy would have called it a nightmare — that is, if Dusty hadn’t waved her arms over her head and gathered everyone around her, and they hadn’t all looked like they were listening. Like they wanted the Dreams to come back.

“Well, what about it?” Coach Neely said.

Lucy pulled her eyes away from her friends. “I say we go for it,” she said. “Play clean and fair.” She waved the blue sheet. “Just like this says.”

She looked straight at Rianna, who had the nerve to look right back. Her eyes weren’t friendly.

Late that afternoon, Lucy and J.J. and Januarie went to Pasco’s café for grilled cheese sandwiches. Inez had to take Mora to dance class, and Dad said Lucy could treat J.J. and Januarie to an early supper, like they used to do before Inez became Lucy’s nanny. He even called Felix and told him to put whatever they wanted on his account.

Lucy waited until Januarie was busy picking out a flavor from the ice cream case — a major decision-making process apparently — before she said, “Rianna still acts like one of those little terrier dogs the way she bosses us all around. But when we were playing our practice game today, she didn’t try to get me to fall down, and she didn’t pull on anybody’s shirt or foul on purpose.”

She chewed on the extra pickle Felix put on her plate, “For old time’s sake,” he’d told her, with that sad look he had in his eyes these days.

“Maybe she won’t try to cheat now,” Lucy went on. “Maybe she’ll just get noticed being, like, the Fair Play Queen instead of scoring goals any dirty way she can. She could ‘show’ Hawke whatever she wants to show him that way.”

“You believe that?” J.J said.

Lucy shrugged. “I want to. Don’t you?”

J.J. didn’t answer.

“Don’t you just want to get back to playing soccer?” she said.

He still didn’t answer.

“You can’t be so negative all the time, J.J.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He had his neck craned toward the ice cream case.

“You want dessert?” Lucy said. “You didn’t even eat your sandwich yet.”

“Januarie,” he said.

“What about her?”

“What’s she doing?”

Lucy squinted. “Trying to decide between mint chocolate chip and that gross thing with the marshmallows — and I’m not getting her two scoops.”

J.J. shook his head and pointed. When Lucy looked even closer, she saw that Januarie wasn’t checking out the ice cream at all. She was loading her pockets with ketchup packets from the basket on Felix’s counter.

“What’s up with that?” Lucy said.

“She’s weird.”

“At least she’s not bugging us all the time.” Lucy nudged him. “Now that she has her own team, you don’t have to be her babysitter every minute.”

J.J. grunted.

“What?” Sometimes she really did wish he would use more actual words.