Play With Me

in school of
course, but rumor had it his father was friends with Chief Berkley, and so Ryan
could turn up the music to a maximum all night. Beer flowed in endless rivers,
and he even had his own pool table. The closest I had been to his house was when
we drove by to get to the library, but it looked big enough to bear several halls. Getting an invitation to one of those parties meant stepping up into the cool league .
    Not that I cared
about hanging out with jerks like Cloey—yuck. But Tony had been to many of his
parties, and he never told me much about the events behind those doors. That
alone sharpened my curiosity.
    He would go
tonight for sure. The fact the Barbie Clone would be there too had my heart slipping
to my pants. I put up a nonchalant face when I actually felt like bawling and
trudged over to the water cooler to get a drink larger than the fly pee Tony
had brought me after the warm-up.
    The afternoon
dragged on with more qualifications that involved passing the ball back and
forth, zigzagging over the field with short kicks, and finally a count of how
often one could kick the ball without losing it. I shot amazing two and a half.
    This was it. I
was done with soccer. May the ball rot in hell and the players die of thirst. I
didn’t give a damn if I made it onto the team or not. Playing ball in the scorching
sun was for morons anyway.
    I wiped the
sweat off my face with the towel Tony had brought, then stuffed it back into
his backpack, and stomped off.
    “Hey, where do
you think you’re going?”
    “Home.”
    Tony caught up
with me. “You can’t. Ryan hasn’t announced the new players yet.”
    “Like I care.”
    He wrapped his
arm around my shoulders and used my speed to propel me in the opposite
direction. “You don’t want to know if you’re on the team?”
    Trying to wiggle
from him, I gave him a hard stare. “Nope.”
    “Where’s your
spirit gone?”
    “Where has your eyesight gone?” I stopped dead. “You saw what a miserable player I make.”
    “Ah, I’ve seen
worse. Actually, I’m pretty proud of you. This was the first time you came into
skin-contact with a soccer ball and you almost hit a goal on the second try. All
you need is a little training.”
    I found that
hard to believe, but the expression in his eyes told me differently. He meant
it. Confused, I gave him a sideways glance. Unfortunately, Cloey intruded my
view as she came skipping over to us like the tooth fairy. Her perfectly
manicured fingers wrapped around his biceps as she bounced up and down before
him.
    “Come, quick. Hunter
will name the players in a minute. He already told me that I was on the team.”
    “I’m not
surprised.” Tony let himself being dragged away from me. “You proved in camp
you’re a natural at soccer.”
    “Only at
soccer?” She winked at him and skipped away.
    My molars
suffered from the hard grinding I did. The thing was I needed to become a
member of this team, badly. How else could I fend off this bimbo?
    Ryan Hunter held
a list in his hands as he stepped in front of the expecting crowd. “We need
eleven new players. I’ll call out the names of those who made it onto the team.
If yours is among them, well done. If not, I’m sorry but hope you will try
again next year. You’ve all shown great enthusiasm today.” He cleared his
throat and reeled off the new players. “Stevenson. Jones. Summers—”
    Since Barbie
jumped with her friend at that name, I figured now I knew her last name.
    “—Smith.
Jackson. Daniels. Hollister. McNeal. Miller. Matthews. And Warren.”
    My jaw hit the
dirt. I pivoted to Tony. “Did he just say Matthews?”
    “Guess he did.” His
silly grin made me want to slap some seriousness into his face.
    “I’m going to
play?”
    “Yes,” he
chuckled. “Now get your things, I owe you a sundae.”
    I really made
it, and he owed me ice cream. What a freaking fantastic day. I jogged to
the bench and slung my backpack over one shoulder. Certainly, I had the most
stupid grin in the world pasted on my lips. It slipped as the word owe got stuck on repeat in my mind. What if he had asked Ryan to let me onto the
team even if I was a miserable player? At the thought of depending on Hunter’s
mercy, I felt awfully embarrassed.
    I had to know,
and Tony would spill—even if it meant I had to threaten to burn his Back to
the Future collection.
    Whipping around,
I bumped into Ryan.
    “Congrats,
Matthews,” he cheered. “You handled the tryout quite