Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer (21 page)

Okay, then. She might as well go for it.

“Did you give my friend that note from Rianna?” Lucy said.

“Yes.”

Lucy kicked the ball, hard, and Bella dove for it and missed. She took her time getting up.

“Why did you do it if you don’t hate me?” Lucy said.

Bella’s face didn’t change. “I wanted to see what she was up to.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

Lucy stared as Bella juggled the ball on her knee. “I can’t stop her,” Bella said. “But you guys can.” She looked at the pairs of girls scattered on their practice area and curled her lip. “You’re actually a team.”

She sent the ball to Lucy, who rebounded it and smacked it straight into the cone. She didn’t know if goal number two had just been scored or not. But she had to believe it had.

When Coach Neely sent them off to lunch, it was all Lucy could do to race straight to the spot where she’d left Hawke yesterday, and not stop to make sure the Dreams were all where they’d promised to be. She prayed and dragged in a big ol’ breath. Coming toward her in the golf cart was King Hawke.

“Finally,” he said as she hopped into the passenger seat. “It’s hard to get an appointment with you. You’re a busy lady.”

“Uh-huh,” Lucy said.

“Working on your skills. Saving girls from bullies. Taming Rianna.”

Lucy tried not to let her mouth drop open. Hawke gave her a sideways look as he drove the cart past the picnic tables.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed what an interest you’ve taken in her,” he said. “She’s a great player, but I was worried about her attitude at first, knowing other members of her family like I do. This is just between you and me, of course.”

Lucy had that throw-up feeling again. “Um, sir?”

“You’re not comfortable with that?” Hawke said.

“No, I am — but, if it’s just gonna be between us, could we talk at that table over there?” She pointed to the empty table and prayed frantically.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Hawke said.

He pulled up to the table and un-pleated himself from the cart. Lucy stole a look behind her as she climbed out too. Oscar and Emanuel were leaning lazily against the pavilion pole two tables down, between her table and the tree. They seemed to be working very hard at keeping their toothpicks out of their mouths. So far, so good.

Lucy sat where she could still see them and opened her lunch bag — but she knew she wasn’t going to eat her sandwich. She pulled off a crust and listened to Hawke.

He looked right at her over the top of his nose. Who
wouldn’t
listen when he talked? “Rianna’s a talented athlete but, like her sister, not a team player. I wanted to see ODP take a look at her, but I was afraid they’d think she played too much for herself. You see what I’m saying?”

Ya think?

“I do,” Lucy said.

“But there’s been a big change in her in the last two weeks, and I think that’s because of you, Lucy.”

Lucy was glad she hadn’t taken a bite. She knew she would have choked. “Me?” she managed to say.

Hawke sparkled his sharp blue eyes at her. “That’s what I like about you. You have special gifts you aren’t even aware of. You bring out the best in people without even knowing you’re doing it.”

Lucy felt as if the seat was sinking into the ground. If she didn’t hurry up and say something, this was going to be harder than she thought.

Hawke was grinning. “Feel free to jump in any time.”

“Um, well — ” Lucy swallowed. She was going to have to be smoother than this. She thought of Dad’s voice pouring molasses and Senora Queen Esther going face down before the king. She shot for somewhere in between.

“Sir?” she said. “I don’t think I
have
been a good influence on Rianna. In fact, I think I’ve brought out the worst in her.”

“Oh?” Hawke folded his hands on the table. “How so?”

Okay, just like you practiced it with Marmalade.

Lucy took a ragged breath and started from the beginning. How Rianna first suggested flopping. How she tried to cheat in two of their practice games. How she pretended she’d written the Fair Play Code and handed it out just to impress Hawke into giving her the VIP award. By the time Lucy pulled out the blue paper with Rianna’s note and J.J.’s picture on it, before she could even get to what J.J. had overheard Rianna and Lawanda talking about, she could tell he wasn’t accepting it all as the absolute truth, the way she had so hoped he would. He rested his chin on his fist and stared hard into her face, so hard she felt like she was at the wrong end of a bow and arrow.

“How do you know it was Rianna who sent this?” he said.

“I have witnesses,” Lucy said. She turned toward the junior girls’ table, where Yo-Yo and Januarie were sitting so close to the edge of the seat, Lucy was surprised they hadn’t fallen off.

“Those two?” Hawke said. “Your mustard girls?”

He really didn’t miss anything, just like he said.

“Where is this note now?” he said.

“J.J. has it,” Lucy said. “He’s trying to find out what it is Rianna wants the team to do so she won’t tell that lie about me.”

“So J.J. is going to come and tell us what she says and that will be my proof.” Hawke shook his head. “I’m in a very bad position here.”

Me too!
Lucy wanted to cry — with plenty of exclamation points. Where was Gabe with that soccer ball? Did something go wrong? Visions of Dusty falling down from the tree, right in front of Rianna, camera in hand, warped through Lucy’s mind like a nightmare.

But it wasn’t as bad as the real sight of Oscar and Emanuel stuffing their toothpicks into their mouths and chowing down like they were eating beef jerky. The signal. At the far end of the pavilion, Rianna was elbowing her way through startled campers, overturning juice boxes and leaving a trail of disgruntled shouts. She was going to get to Hawke and Lucy them before Gabe did. Lucy’s heart climbed up into her throat.

And then a figure launched itself into the picture, obstruction that would have had a ref ’s whistle blowing for a foul. Bella planted herself in Rianna’s path, and she didn’t move.

But someone else did. Tearing down the outside of the pavilion was Gabe, with a soccer ball under his arm — the one Dusty had kicked to him. Lucy almost cried.

Hawke was craning his neck, gazing past Lucy. “I see Rianna down there,” he said. “Let’s get her over here, and we’ll talk this thing through.”

Lucy closed her eyes and waited. Come on, Gabe. Come on.

Hawke stood up and waved his arm in Rianna’s direction. Oscar and Emanuel looked like they were about to swallow their toothpicks. Januarie actually did fall off her bench. Lucy watched in horror as Rianna faked around Bella and made a beeline for Hawke. It was all over.

Until a curly red head popped up next to Rianna. Lucy watched the mouth open. She couldn’t hear what it was saying, but she knew Carla Rosa was clearly asking, “Guess what?”

Rianna kept walking until the next words came. Lucy mouthed them with Carla.
You have a booger hanging out of your nose.
While Rianna stopped and wiped frantically at her nostrils, Gabe picked up speed and landed at the end of Lucy and Hawke’s table. He was barely breathing hard as he set the soccer ball down in front of Hawke. All that mad dog dribbling had paid off.

“And this is?” Hawke said.

Lucy turned the ball over and revealed a cell phone, taped to it by Dusty’s precious hands.

“This is proof, sir,” Lucy said.

16

Lucy had never been in Hawke’s office before, but she had the whole waiting room memorized by the time J.J. and then Yo-Yo were ushered out and Hawke finished looking at the video Dusty had taken from up in the cottonwood tree on Mora’s camera phone. Lucy forgot all of it when Hawke came out of the inner room with a grim look on his face.

“Thanks for staying here,” he said. “I know you would rather have been playing a practice game with your team, but I didn’t want you and Rianna together until I had a chance to review this.”

Lucy had definitely been grateful for that. As it was, she’d felt Rianna shooting bullets into her back with her eyes as Hawke had driven off with Lucy in the seat beside him, before Rianna could even get to them.

But as Lucy followed Hawke into his private office now, she didn’t know whether to be grateful or not. Hawke was quiet and still, but she was sure there was anger right under his skin. His jaw muscles were twitching, just the way J.J.’s did when he was holding back a big-time mad.

Hawke motioned her into a canvas chair and sat in another one facing her.

“Do you know what’s on this?” he said, nodding at Mora’s cell phone on the desk.

“Not exactly,” Lucy said.

“It’s Rianna telling J.J. he has to mess up every shot she passes to him in the first play-off game, or she will fake an injury and say he purposely inflicted it on her. She seems to think J.J. would get in more trouble than anyone else who got sent off for dangerous play.”

“He’d get sent to foster care!”

Lucy clapped her hand over her mouth, but Coach Hawke was already nodding.

“I know about J.J.’s situation. Coach Auggy tells me he’s never lost his temper on the field.”

“He never loses his temper
any
time. He doesn’t want to be like his father.”

“And what about this picture?”

“It’s not what it looks like! She kept pushing at him, and he was just telling her to go away before — ”

“Before?”

Lucy couldn’t answer. She’d already said enough to send J.J. straight to Winnie, the State Lady. All this, and she’d only made things worse? Lucy swallowed hard, but the tears gathered anyway.

Hawke looked at the blue paper again. “You know, it’s ridiculous really. No one is going to hurt another player on purpose and get away with it. We have refs with eyes like hawks.” He pointed to his own.

“They can spot that stuff from a mile away. Even if Rianna had come to me with this, I wouldn’t have believed her.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

“Part of me wishes
you
had come to me right away, before this appeared.” He tapped the paper and then put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “But part of me is glad it worked out this way.”

“Glad?” Lucy said.

“I think I can teach Rianna a valuable lesson, and not just her, but the whole camp. We’re not just about soccer here. We’re about people learning to live with integrity.” He stood up and motioned for Lucy to do the same. “I’m going to call the Monday awards assembly now. You sit with your team like you always do, and don’t say a word to Rianna. Do you trust me?”

Lucy looked at her lap.

“No?” he said.

“I trust you about soccer.” Lucy swallowed again and prayed so hard she was sure he could hear it in her head. “But about J.J. — he shouldn’t get in trouble for that picture. He was just protecting me — so let me be the one who — ”

“Lucy.”

She still couldn’t look at him.

“I think you’ve learned a lot about soccer here.”

“I have, but — ”

“But I think this situation — I think this is the real reason you came.” He nodded toward the door. “I’ll see about J.J. You go back to your team.”

Lucy met them at the bleachers and sat between Kayla and Sarah. Bella was in front of her. Lucy leaned over and whispered, “Thanks.”

Bella just nodded.

“So what’s this about?” Waverly said on the other side of Sarah.

While the Select Team came up with every explanation from “Coach Neely is announcing her engagement to Seth,” to “Somebody got in trouble for kicking a soccer ball out of a tree,” Lucy looked over at her Los Suenos Dreams. They were looking back at her, faces full of question marks.

“You tricked me,” said the hot breath that went down Lucy’s neck. “You’ll get yours.”

The microphone squealed, and people shushed each other. Everyone was obviously dying to know what was going on.

After his usual call for everyone to yell that soccer was the best — which came out sounding more like “could we get on with it already?” — Hawke held up his hand.

“I’ve decided to give this week’s VIP award early, since we’re starting the play-off games on Monday,” he said. “Would Rianna Wallace please come up to the platform?”

Rianna didn’t even gasp, though several other people did — like most of the Select Team. A low murmur growled through the rest of the crowd. More kids must know Rianna than Lucy thought.

As Rianna inched impatiently down the row to the aisle, Coach Neely turned around and gave her a thumbs-up. Wow. Mr. Auggy was wrong about her. She wasn’t hands-off with Rianna.

“While Rianna is making her way up here,” Hawke said, “I just want to remind everyone that the VIP award is given not to the best player in camp. You’re all the best, as far as I can see.”

Lucy could almost hear Carla Rosa saying, “Guess what? Everybody can’t be the best.” Lucy decided she would never be annoyed by Carla’s “guess whats” again.