A Whole Lot of Lucky (11 page)

I stand, move into the grass. Nerves jangle across my cheek where he brushed it.

Mrs. Burns comes out. “Hi, Hailee! Where's Amanda?”

I rotate like a zombie and point. Mrs. Burns shades her eyes and squints. “Okay. See you at the game!”

Matthew blares the horn as he passes Amanda, who shouts, “Matthew!” Then to me, “I hate when he does that!” as she rides up the driveway. “It startles me.”

I think of his face so close to mine, his fingertips touching my cheek, and even though it was a swat instead of a stroke, my heart knocks around in its cage like a super-bouncy ball. “He startled me, too.”

“This bike,” she says, leaning it back to me, “is
nice.”

“Yours is nice, too,” I say, because it
is
nice, for a bike with only twelve speeds.

I swear Amanda is secretly racing me as we wind through town to the field. Anytime I get a little ahead of her, she catches up and then I have to pedal harder to keep my position. Black, mushy lovebugs flit across the road searching for girlfriends. They splat against my fenders, dotting the Treads Silver Flash 151 with their buggy guts.

Stupid lovebugs. Stupid, stupid lovebugs.

* * *

Amanda and I mill around the fields with our cotton-candy cones. Boys tower over us with their high school bodies, and girls their age pretend not to see them, but then there they go, flipping their hair and giggling even louder until the boys pass. Then they huddle and laugh again.

We take our time getting to the bleachers. The broiling smell of hamburgers on the grill drifts over the sidewalks and we filter through the people aiming to get their food before the game starts. Music pumps over the loudspeakers; every bass note vibrates inside me. Some people we say hi to and some we don't.

“Oh, gosh,” Amanda says.

“What?”

She gestures with her cotton-candy cone toward the bleachers.

Some of Palm Middle School's popular people sit on the first two benches. Avoid! Avoid! My eyes detect an opening on the other side, but then someone rolls up in a wheelchair, closing the gap. Old people sit in camp chairs right in front, forming a scowling fence of too many years in the sun and the deep creases to prove it. They look like alligator wrestlers.

“Over here, honey,” Amanda's mom shouts and waves from the back row of the bleachers.

Some of the popular girls wrinkle their eyebrows, then titter.

Amanda covers her face with her hand. “Oh, my God. Why does she have to be so embarrassing?”

It would be wrong to disturb the man in the wheelchair, and just plain scary to bother the alligator wrestlers. The only way to our seats is through the popular people. Amanda realizes this the same time I do, and she trudges reluctantly toward that side.

These girls don't look up or move their knees or do anything a normal polite person would do to let you get by.

Amanda shifts uncomfortably in front of them as I stand behind her. “Um … excuse me?”

The two closest girls lean apart ever so slightly without a glance in our direction.

“Thank you,” Amanda says and slips through.

One of the girls rolls her eyes.

For a second, I'm afraid to pass through their invisible barbed-wire fence, but what else can I do?

“Excuse
me,” one of them says as I follow Amanda's path.

“Oh, I'm”—about to say I'm sorry, but then something overtakes me. Something powerful and strong, because though they are the popular people, they're not
my
popular people anymore.

I fix my face into a happy expression. “Oh, hi, Maggie! Hi, Natalie!”

Their faces go into shock. A mere citizen has broken the rules by speaking to them. The fence goes down. I
rattle my way up the bleachers, stomping on each step and calling out names as I pass. “Hi, Morgan! Hi, Kayla! Hi, Stephanie!”

“Hailee!” says Stephanie, whose corn-silk-colored hair goes almost to her waist and has been the envy of every girl since kindergarten. She twists her whole body around. “Don't you go to Magnolia now? How is it?”

Stephanie Mills is asking me a question. Hanging around with Morgan and Kayla and sometimes even Megan, Stephanie isn't supposed to be nice. She's supposed to push people in the hallways and call them losers. I check my mental notes. Nope, no record of Stephanie Mills doing anything at all like that. I may have to open up a new folder for this strain of popular beings.

Her smile and open eyes wait for my answer. Morgan and Kayla stare up at me, but their mouths are forward slashes—grimaces that disapprove of Stephanie talking to me.

“Magnolia is great!” I settle next to Amanda, who'd better shut her mouth before bees fly in there after the cotton candy. Remembering that Stephanie is in drama, I add, “They have a whole building just for theater classes.”

“Wow,” she says in a respectful tone. “I would love that.”

I smile because I can't think of anything else to say.

Kayla tugs on Stephanie's arm.

“Well, good luck,” Stephanie says to me.

“Thanks!” I wait for her to turn back to her friends before I whip around to Amanda with my oh-my-gosh face.

Amanda's got hers on, too. “I can't believe you talked to them!”

“I can't believe I did, either!” I can't believe Stephanie talked back. She's never talked to me before. But actually,
I
've never talked to
her
, either. I guess I've never looked at it that way.

The game starts and it's kind of boring until it's Matthew's turn to bat. He takes a couple of practice swings, then steps up to the plate. The pitcher nods to the catcher, then winds up and burns one into the mitt.

“Stee-rike one!”

Matthew steps back, loosens his shoulders, and readies himself. He swings hard. The sound of the bat hitting the ball sends all the players into motion.

“Foul ball! Strike two!”

Matthew's coach yells from the dugout, “You're swinging at high balls! Don't give it to them!”

“Come on, Matthew!” a girl shouts.

Amanda and I lean over to see who's rooting for her brother. Halfway across the bleachers, a girl whose prettiness is in the middle sits with her eyes fastened on Matthew.

“Who's that?” I ask, but Amanda shrugs, stuffs a knot of cotton candy into her mouth, and focuses on
the game. I perform a laser scan on the girl. Age: same as Matthew's. Rank: I'm guessing normal person, since she's sitting with only one other girl, probably her best friend. Prettiness: a little more than in the middle, now that I look at her.

She leans forward and bites her lip as if his next swing will decide the fate of the entire galaxy, including planets we haven't even discovered yet and all their moons.

Matthew bends his knees, brings the bat behind his shoulder. I hold my breath as the pitcher lets go a fast one, and then
crack!
Matthew's off! His feet turn up red clouds of clay as he rounds first base and stops at second. Everyone cheers. I spy on the girl, and she's clapping and smiling with her friend.

Amanda's finished her cotton candy and hands both of our sticky wands to her mother. “Thank you!” Amanda says.

“Oh, brother.” Her mom smirks.

The next batter hits Matthew to third.

“What're the popular people like at Magnolia?” Amanda asks. Points at popular heads. “I still can't believe you said hi to them.”

“I'm already friends with the most popular girl in school,” I say, maybe even loud enough for Palm populars to hear me. “Her name's Nikki.”

The catcher misses the next pitch. Matthew starts
down the third-base line until the catcher charges him back. The other coach yells, “When he does that, when he starts to run again, FINISH HIM!”

I'm not even a player and
I
'm scared to move.

“Matt!” Matthew's coach stands near third base. He taps the brim of his baseball cap, touches his nose, tugs two times on one ear, and slides his fingertips across his stomach. Matthew nods—he has decoded the secret message.

Every single back on our side straightens; all pairs of eyes lock onto the field; hands clasp and fingers touch lips. As the catcher crouches, Matthew leads off. He is not afraid.

Everyone is silent.

The next batter drives the ball across the infield. The shortstop catches it, stumbles, and the ball shoots into the grass. Matthew sprints home and, as the outfielders chase and drop the ball, Matthew's teammates cross the plate right behind him. Our side lights up like fireworks, shooting from our seats, whistling and cracking high-fives. The girl cheering for Matthew raises her arms over her head and claps hard.

The visiting coach clutches the chain-link wall of his dugout. “East Panthers!” A colonel commanding his troops. “If they start that merry-go-round again, SHUT THEM DOWN!” He could win wars all by himself with his yelling. It's his words, his loudness, the granite set of his face when he blasts out his orders.

I glance at the scoreboard and see we're down by six runs. Maybe our coach should start yelling, too.

The game goes on and Amanda presses me for more details about Nikki. What does she look like, how old is she, does she wear makeup—I answer all her questions as though I've known Nikki all my life instead of just two days.

When Matthew comes to bat again, he strikes out. He jogs to the dugout with a determined look on his face. I can't imagine what it must feel like to strike out in front of all these people. But as he passes the next batter, his teammates clap him on the shoulder or say “Good try.”

Even when the game is over and we've lost, Matthew is fine. He jokes around with friends as Amanda and I walk our bikes alongside Matthew and their mom through the parking lot. As he opens the trunk of the van and throws his bag in, that girl and her friend catch up.

“Matthew, hi!”

Matthew whips around, sees her, and I swear he looks more scared for a second than he ever did out on that field. But he covers it quickly. “Shana!” He closes the distance between them. “I didn't think you were coming.”

Swinging her shoulders, she says, “I told you I would, silly.” She playfully nudges his arm.

Scanning … scanning … Scan complete:
prettier up
close, but not stuck-up pretty; voice good (not that stupid singsong, high-pitched tone some girls suddenly use when a boy they like is near); giggling—none. She even says hello to Amanda and me.

“Okay, girls,” Mrs. Burns says to us. “Better start riding before it gets dark.”

Matthew and Shana keep talking.

“Bye, Mom,” Amanda says. “Good game, Matteew!”

I don't even think he hears her.

As we pedal home, I ask Amanda if Matthew's allowed to have girlfriends.

“Beats me,” she says.

He asked her to come to the game.
To watch him,
I realize. That's how it works when you're a teenager.

“If he runs,” Amanda bellows, “finish him!”

“Shut him down!” I crow. I wonder if Matthew and Shana will become boyfriend and girlfriend. Does your cheek tingle when any boy touches it, or only when certain boys touch it? I don't think my cheek would tingle if Tanner Law flicked a bug off me.

Some of the popular girls have boyfriends. They hold the boys' hands in the hallways, then talk about them in class. And even before boyfriends, they acted like they knew something the rest of us didn't. Except maybe Stephanie. I mean, she
is
popular, but she acts like a normal person. Also, that nice cheerleader I bumped into on my first day at Magnolia. But then there're the rest of
them, the ones who think they're better, which I don't get because Morgan has a wart on her left hand that has a brown dot on it. I'm not saying warts make a person bad—I'm just saying how can you act like you're all that when your left hand looks like the tip of a witch's nose?

Amanda and I don't have any warts. Also, we are nicer. For instance, I hold the door open until the person behind me grabs it. Once I was holding the door, and instead of falling behind and taking the door for herself, Kayla and another girl walked straight through as if I were their servant. Ladies of leisure, as my mom would say.

“SHUT THEM DOWN! Shut them all down!” I howl. Amanda's a couple feet in front of me. I knock my bike into a different speed to catch up.

She stands on her pedals and pumps even faster. “You're out!” she yells.

I'm not out. I'm not a loser. I whip the Silver Flash into a frenzy, and we tear up the road, Amanda and I, fast as cheetahs and cracking up all the way home.

The tardy bell has already rung for fifth-period history when the door swings open.

Mrs. Fuller crosses her arms. “Well, Miss Simms, we're glad you could join us.”

Miss Simms? I strain around the big head of the girl sitting diagonal from me to see who's come in.

It
is
her.

Nikki Simms is in my history class.

Mrs. Fuller's stare is so sharp it could cut down trees, but Nikki is not affected by it. She strolls to a desk in the back row. She thumps her backpack on the floor. She rattles her paper, creaks open her book, and pops her gum.

“Miss Simms?”

Nikki stops chewing.

Mrs. Fuller raises her eyebrows.

Into a piece of notebook paper, Nikki spits her gum,
then walks to the front of the class and throws it out. After Nikki sits down, Mrs. Fuller drops her arms.

“What were we chatting about? Oh, yes.” Her voice takes on the quality of a game show host. “The structures in Rome represent the most superb architecture aside from the pyramids in the ancient world.” She waves her arm. “When you get off the plane, the Pantheon is to your right.”

Nikki lifts her hand.

“Yes, Miss Simms?”

Nikki clears her throat. “I believe the Pantheon is to your
left
as you get off the plane.”