Two Cool for School (12 page)

“Oh, ha,” she said, laughing mirthlessly. “Yeah, he's pretty good-looking. He's tall, with reddish hair.” Ugh, this is so weird, describing Ava's crush, she thought. She tried desperately to think of a way to change the subject, but
Lindsey and Emily seemed to be hanging on her every word, wanting more. “We—uh, we haven't been texting too much recently, with all the craziness that's been going on this week with my parents' anniversary and the first game and all.”

She hated lying. She never lied. Her stomach was starting to feel queasy.

“Oh yes, the anniversary dinner for your parents,” said Lindsey. “That's so romantic. I couldn't believe what happened last night with the pep rally. I wish I could have been there, but they had to limit the numbers and only allowed the seniors into the restaurant.”

“Although we were outside,” added Emily. “A whole bunch of your friends were there!”

Alex beamed. To think that so many of the popular middle school kids had bothered to come to the restaurant like that! Talk about great free publicity for her class president campaign. Plus, she felt so relieved that the conversation had moved away from her imaginary boyfriend.

“You're good at organizing big events,” said Lindsey. “Em and I were just talking about you. She told me you were thinking of running for class president. I think you'd be great—better than Logan Medina, who wins every year just
'cause he's a popular jock.”

Emily nodded vigorously, her blond ponytail swaying.

“Wow, thanks, you guys,” said Alex breathlessly. “I'm glad you think it's a good idea.”
Maybe giving up Corey and lying about Charlie will be worth it after all,
she thought.

“What about Ava?” asked Emily. “Is she as good at organizing events as you are? Maybe she should be in government too.”

Alex laughed. “Student government is not her thing. She's a jock, just like our brother.”

“So is she going out for cross-country?” asked Emily.

Alex hesitated. How would these girls react when they found out Ava was trying out for football? She decided to come right out with it and see if she could gauge their reactions.

“She signed up for football,” said Alex.

Emily and Lindsey both laughed but grew serious when they saw Alex's straight face.

Alex cringed. This plan of Ava's was not going to go over well at their new school. Girls didn't play football here. The last thing Alex wanted, for her or for Ava, was to cause a stir just as they were riding the tide of the anniversary dinner
and pep rally and finally settling into life at this new school. Maybe she could talk Ava out of it. For now, she decided to change the subject.

“Are you going to this Sal's place after the game?” she asked Emily.

“Of course!” said Emily. “Everyone will be there. And they have pretty good pizza, too.”

“Good. I hope it's better than the restaurant my dad took us to last week. I think it was called Eli's or something. Bleh.” Alex made a face. “Everything had meat in it.”

The girls didn't respond. Lindsey seemed suddenly to be engrossed in a text.

Alex felt a stab of horror.
Wait. Oh, no. Is it possible that Eli's is Lindsey's family's restaurant?
She'd never actually asked what it was called. From the way Lindsey was behaving, and how quiet Emily had grown, it was probably Eli's.

Just when she was getting somewhere with these girls, she'd sabotaged herself. At this rate, Ava could join the football team and the wrestling squad and Alex would still be the one to make everyone dislike them.

“Two minutes till kickoff, Kylie,” said Ava as she walked up to her friend. “I forbid you to read a book once the game has started.”

Kylie closed her book immediately and grinned at Ava. “Hey, you!” she said. “I'm so honored to be sitting with Coach Sackett's daughter at the big game. Shouldn't you be sitting with your public?”

“Please,” said Ava. “I don't want to sit with all those kids up there. I doubt they even watch the game. They're probably too busy gossiping. I'm not even sure
Alex
watches the game. She barely knows the difference between a quarterback and a running back.”

“Is there a difference?”

Ava playfully punched Kylie in the arm. “Funny. Anyway, that's why I'm sitting with you. So I can concentrate on the game.”

“Well, trust me. I won't bother you,” said Kylie. “Considering I don't know a quarterback from a running back from my big toe.”

“I'll explain what's going on during the game,” said Ava.

“Okay. I'm willing to be converted.”

The noise of the crowd swelled.

“It's kickoff time!” yelled Ava.

“Who's Dion?” demanded Kylie, looking up from her phone.

Ava turned. “He's the backup quarterback to PJ Kelly,” she explained. “Why?”

“I just got a text from my sister,” said Kylie. “She says that Dion is out. He has a stress fracture.”

Ava's eyes widened.

“Is that big news?” asked Kylie.

“Well, yeah,” Ava said. “Because with Dion out, that makes my brother, Tom, the backup quarterback, just behind PJ.”

“Oh! That's pretty cool,” said Kylie.

Ava's stomach flipped over. Of course it was highly unlikely Tommy would get into the game,
but it could happen. She wondered what was going through her brother's mind.

“Chances are he won't actually get to play. Tommy's only a sophomore,” she said to Kylie. “And PJ is really good.”

“Hey, you never know,” said Kylie. “Where's your dad?”

Ava pointed. “He's there, on the sideline. He's the one with the big headphones on. That way he can communicate with the assistant coaches up there in the tower.”

Kylie looked behind them to where Ava was pointing. She whistled. “Wow. I always wondered who those people up there were.”

“They're coaches, and also video people and TV camera guys,” Ava explained. She smiled at her new friend. Kylie seemed genuinely interested in paying attention to the game.

The Mainville Eagles won the toss, so they started with the ball. But Ashland's defense stopped the first drive. Then, just at the three-minute mark, the Ashland Tigers scored a touchdown. The crowd went wild.

“Yaaaaay!” yelled Kylie along with everyone else. “That's good, right?”

“That's good, but it's early,” said Ava. She
glanced down at her dad, who was yelling something into the mouthpiece of his headphones and pacing up and down along the sidelines. He was looking at PJ in disbelief. Ava wondered why.

And sure enough, Mainville scored two unanswered touchdowns and led for the rest of the half, fourteen to seven.

During the halftime show Kylie went off to the refreshment stand. Ava was too nervous to do anything but sit and pretend to be watching the high-steppers and the band, although her mind was a million miles away, thinking about the game, about Tommy, and about her dad. It would be so awful if he lost his first game. She hoped no one would come try to talk to her. Thankfully, they didn't, and the game resumed.

“What's going on?” yelled Kylie at the end of the third quarter. The Ashland fans were booing.

Ava turned to explain. “We were in a good position to score. We had that interception, and our safety made a really good return to set up a touchdown. But PJ is not having a good game. He just had three incomplete passes, and that
fourth-down running play got snuffed. So now it's Mainville's ball.”

The Ashland Tigers managed to stop the Mainville team from scoring. Then the offensive squad trotted onto the field. The Ashland fans booed even louder.

“What? What's happening?” demanded Kylie.

Ava's jaw fell open. “It looks like Coach has yanked PJ,” she said to Kylie. “Tommy's in.”

Something isn't right,
she thought. A coach didn't usually pull out the first-string quarterback—an experienced senior—in the middle of the first game of the season, unless the quarterback was injured, and Ava hadn't seen PJ get hurt. The other reason might be that the coach wanted to teach him a lesson. She remembered what Tommy had said, about PJ being all over the place. Maybe he'd done something to really make Coach mad.

The score remained the same. Ava could sense the Ashland fans' unease. Maybe they were blaming Coach for the way the game was going. He had so much to prove to everyone.

And then, in the fourth quarter, Tommy completed a pass to Tyler Whitley in the end zone with four minutes and twenty-two seconds left.
The score was fourteen to thriteen. The crowd rose to its feet, roaring.

“Woooo!” yelled Kylie, jumping up and down. “We scored! We're going to win!”

Ava cheered too, but she'd learned not to let down her guard. Ashland had an uphill battle ahead if they were going to beat this team.

A few minutes later it was the Mainville fans' turn to roar.

Ava groaned as the Mainville band played a triumphant tune and the other team's fans all stomped and clapped along.

“What! What just happened?” asked Kylie. “Why did that guy just get to run all that way? Why didn't we tackle him?”

“Mainville had a sixty-one-yard kickoff return,” said Ava. “We should have stopped their guy, but we didn't. And now—” She groaned again, as did the rest of the Tigers fans.

“Touchdown?” asked Kylie softly.

Ava nodded. She put up a finger to indicate that Kylie should wait.

The Tigers fans erupted in cheers.

“We just blocked the extra point. So the score is twenty to thirteen.”

The girls watched the scoreboard click
through a blur of numbers until it read
HOME: 13, OPPONENT: 20.

“Can we get a touchdown in one minute, forty seconds?” asked Kylie anxiously.

In spite of Ava's anguish, she was pleased to note how into the game Kylie was.

“It's going to be close,” said Ava.

“Now what's happening?” demanded Kylie.

“It's the second down and—wait—oh, Tommy come on, come on—”

Ava's voice was drowned out in the roar of the crowd. Many of the Tigers fans reached out their hands to grasp an imaginary football, as though collectively willing the long pass Tommy had thrown to be caught by Tyler.

Tyler caught the pass at his own thirty-yard line and intentionally ran out of bounds.

“Why did he do that?” demanded Kylie. “So those two goons wouldn't tackle him?”

“To stop the clock,” said Ava. “He knew they were about to tackle him, and if they'd done so on the field, the clock would have run down. When he runs out of bounds, the clock stops.”

Kylie nodded, trying to chew on eight of her fingernails at the same time.

“I'm going to sit down,” she shouted to Ava
over the roaring fans. “My nerves can't stand it. Can you poke me when something big happens?”

“Okay, now you have to stand up,” yelled Ava a few minutes later.

Kylie stood up. “All right—tell me.”

“It's fourth down with eight yards to go at the thirty-eight-yard line. We have one chance to get a touchdown, and the other team knows Tommy's going to pass it, because there's no time for a running play. Because look how much time is on the clock.”

Kylie gulped. “Seven seconds!” she croaked.

Tommy threw the pass high. A perfect spiral.

The crowd on both sides went almost silent as the pass was in the air. The whole stadium seemed to be holding its breath.

Ava felt Kylie's fingers dig into her arm.

Then the crowd went crazy.

“He caught it!” screamed Kylie, but no one noticed, because everyone else in the Tigers stands was screaming too, including Ava.

Kylie stopped jumping up and down. “But wait! The score is only twenty to nineteen, and there's no time on the clock. Why is everyone still screaming? Did we lose or didn't we?”