The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls

“Good luck.” Jill pulled the car up to the curb. “Break away—not a leg.”

Fee sighed at her mom’s humor attempt as she stormed across the field, backpack thwacking her butt while she dribbled the soccer ball left to right. She came to a tire-balding halt in front of the group of girls already passing balls back and forth. Crap. Marjory. Had she become even blonder and curvier in the two weeks since school let out? And why was she here, anyway? After making the ninth-grade cheerleading squad, Marjory had broadcast the news that she wouldn’t have time for club soccer in the fall—an announcement that had been A-OK with Fee. Not only had it improved Fee’s chances of moving from defense to offense, it meant an upcoming season without Marjory’s inflated head blocking everything—the starting center position, Coach Wyatt’s notice, and possibly even the sun itself. Marjory going out for the private—thus more competitive—fall club team meant she probably had her sights set on the spring high school team, too.

Fee, scowling at the prospect of going head-to-head with Marjory for another year, turned to her friend Cass. “What’s she doing here?”

“Trying out like the rest of us,” Cass said.

“Lucky us,” Fee said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a LIVESTRONG band, which—speaking of luck—channeled hers.

“Uh-uh,” Cass said with a shake of her head. “We make our own. Remember?”

With a sigh, Fee dropped the band back into her pack. The gesture was testament to Fee’s trust in her SFAM—sister from another mother.

“Gather up,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind. Fee turned to find an old guy in a tracksuit holding a clipboard.

“This is the U-16 tryouts,” the guy said. Fee detected an accent similar to Magda and Borka’s, but harsher, more clipped—something she hadn’t thought possible.

A couple of girls continued their conversation.

“Ladies.” He glared them into silence. “You give me your attention or you give me two laps.” Clamped mouths indicated their preference of the two. “I am Coach Yuri and I will be replacing Coach Wyatt this season.”

A ripple of surprise played over the small group. “Where’s Coach Wyatt?” someone asked.

“Not here,” was Coach Yuri’s bark of a response.

No one dared asked for elaboration. Whereas Coach Liz Wyatt had considered soccer a game you played as in had fun, this Yuri character looked more the win-at-any-cost type—more KGB than BFF.

“Line up,” Coach Yuri said.

Fee wondered what his experience was with that particular command. It’d be useful for—say—a firing squad.

“Two lines. We start with speed drills.”

Coach Yuri tossed a ball about thirty yards and blew his whistle. Two girls raced to the ball. Whoever footed it first was offense; the other became, by default, a defender. They then battled it out to the goal at the other end of the field. It was no coincidence that Fee and Marjory lined up against each other. They’d been doing so for the past three seasons. It used to be a healthy rivalry between two close friends. Not so healthy anymore. Not since the Cedar Rapids tournament, where the team had lost in the finals: one to three. Postgame words had been exchanged. Fee had blamed Marjory for her two failed breakaways. Marjory had blamed Fee for letting three shots on goal get past her. Then Marjory had called Fee a loser, on and off the field. Fee may have, in response, called Marjory a stuck-up bitch. In truth, the disagreement had little to do with soccer. It was, rather, a hard boil of resentments left simmering for far too long.

Eighth grade had been a turning point in the once-tight trio of friends: Fee, Cass, and Marjory. For starters, Marjory had become the declared crush of half the boys in school, something Fee could have lived with had it not produced profound changes in Marjory’s personality. She was becoming a hall-squealing, boy-crazy, popularity junkie: all the things she, Cass, and Marjory had once hated about the Godz—their own personal term for the arrogant better-thans, bigger-thans of the school. The term had originally been a shortened form of Godzilla, but worked just as well as a reference to false idols. And it wasn’t that Marjory was just emulating the Godz, she was becoming one—an almighty gargantuan of self-worship. As the school year came to an end and the move to a new building—the high school—had been contemplated, Marjory had pitched her strategy for success: she was to make cheerleading; Cass was to quit band and acquire a flatiron; Fee was to abandon her interest in the Geography Club, an organization Marjory had described as “Future Roadkill of America;” and they all three were to make the right friends. The last three weeks of school, Marjory had sat with “the right friends” at a separate table, leaving still-curly-haired Cass and wanderlust Fee with half-eaten sandwiches, an empty chair next to Cass, and glum faces. Cass, the peacemaker of the three, had predicted Marjory would tire of the phonies. It hadn’t happened yet, but Cass’s big black eyes were ever hopeful. Fee, on the other hand, was ready to offer next year’s chair to someone else.

Fee and Marjory were up. Coach Yuri lobbed the ball and blew his whistle. Fee could feel every muscle in her legs grind as she raced down the field. She’d always had the height advantage, but somehow those twiggy uprights of Marjory’s had traditionally pumped harder and faster. Joy burst from Fee’s air-strapped lungs as she, a full step ahead, got to the ball first. There was no time to celebrate; Marjory elbowed her hard from behind. Fee knew all too well that possession was a disadvantage at this point. The dribbler had to time strides in relation to the ball, whereas the pursuer had no encumbrances, just an opponent in sight and a kick to block. Marjory gained the lead and rounded on Fee’s right flank ten feet from the goal. Lefty Fee faked right, waited for Marjory’s falter, and shot. Her kick bounced off the post, missing its mark.

“Clutch out again on that shot of yours?” Marjory asked.

Fee hung her head and braced her arms on her knees, a twofold out-of-air and in-frustration momentary collapse. She jogged back to the starting line.

“Your name?” a pen-in-hand Coach Yuri asked.

“Fee McCloud.”

With the cap of his ballpoint, he scanned the roster. “Ah. Here. Felicity McCloud,” he said, as if correcting her.

Fee noticed his Fs sounded like Vs.

“Was fast. Good.” He looked up, scrutinizing her with squinty eyes of the palest gray blue Fee had ever seen. “Maybe I call you Velocity McCloud.” He scraped his hand through the gray fringe skirting his bald dome.

Fee inhaled a big gulp of sweet confidence-filled air. Marjory crossed her arms over her heaving chest. It was either a new figure-enhancing bra, or Marjory, like carbon emissions, was a growing concern.

Fee thought back to last semester’s dreaded science class, a third-period torture chamber in which she sat behind Marjory. The teacher, Mr. Gomez, had described a theory of evolution that believed attraction—i.e., species continuation—was based on brain chemistry. With all-too-bright eyes, he’d described scientific tests involving college-age male subjects, photos of random females, and increased brain activity and a flood of feel-good chemicals when the images depicted curvaceous women. Mr. Gomez had described the male subjects as snapping “to attention.” Some smart mouth from the back of the room had called out, “Marjory has my attention.” Marjory had swiveled in her seat to identify her admirer. Before turning back, she had whispered to Fee, “I guess that puts you at an attention deficit.”

Fee looked down at her long, sturdy legs, boyish waist, and in-no-hurry breasts. Eat my dust, Mr. Gomez—and Marjory—she almost said out loud. Fee, no question the better student of the two, figured her type and Marjory’s type had been going head-to-head since the days of loincloths and woolly mammoths. As Fee saw it, the advantage was hers. Smarter in situations—outmaneuvering a saber-tooth for instance—where cunning was required; and finally, yes finally, reaping the faster-than advantage her build predestined. Should one lone apple dangle across the clearing, Fee was sure her postpuberty Cro-Magnon counterpart would have reached it first—no bouncing pre-jog-bra boobs to slow her down. And Fee would choose survival over attention any day.

The rest of day one’s tryouts went as expected. Fee and Marjory were the stars, locking eyes and going at it whenever they could. Never once cracking a smile, Coach Yuri wrapped up the session with “See everyone day two.”

As they often did, Fee and Cass walked over to Dairy Queen after soccer. They were just sliding into a booth, dipped cones in hand, when the door opened and Marjory walked in with Logan Jones, the to-die-young-for hottie of Fee’s grade. Practice over, Marjory had transformed herself. Her hair was pony-free and brushed out; she’d cinched her jersey into a hiphugging knot; she’d slipped a denim miniskirt over her shorts; and had traded her cleats for wedged sandals. Fee—whose closet was way more Adidas than Abercrombie and who hadn’t even removed her shin guards—watched as Logan dropped an arm over Marjory’s shoulder and she, in turn, nestled into the crook of his neck. So they were an item. Since when? And as much as Fee didn’t get all the fuss over Logan, a big ox of a boy—there was one thing she did get: the day’s punch line. Paleolithic Logan didn’t give a rat’s ass about Fee’s smarts or stash of apples.

Fee watched them holding hands in line. He stepped away from the counter with a large sundae; she had a pop. Logan called over to a group of boys at a table near the back. Marjory, to Fee’s complete surprise, slid into their booth next to Cass.

“Good tryouts,” Marjory said.

Fee was too wary to respond.

“Thanks. You, too,” Cass replied, practically panting with her readiness to forgive and forget.

A fat kid—around eleven or twelve with thick glasses and knock-knees—passed in front of their booth, tripping and spilling his shake down the front of his shirt.

“Must have his retard shoes on,” Marjory said in a loudon-purpose voice. She had the kind of vocals that carried, the way germs do.

“Marjory,” Fee whispered pleadingly. She looked down at the table, not wanting to know if the boy—or his family only two tables over—had overheard.

“Why so touchy?” Marjory asked, her tone lowered now. “Do handicap parking permits run in your family?”

Glaring at Marjory, Fee thought not mine, but remembered walking into a basketball game behind Logan and his family and holding the door open for his younger sister.

“What’d you think of Coach Yuri?” Cass asked, changing the subject.

The question was obviously directed at Marjory as Fee and Cass had already declared him a Soviet defector in the witness protection program.

“Tough, but fair.” Marjory took a big slurp of her pop, probably diet. She was becoming the type of girl who didn’t ingest calories in the presence of boys. For weeks, and from three tables over, Fee had watched Marjory’s diminishing lunch tray.

Fee lapped a big tongueful of soft serve into her mouth. No way on God’s great green soccer field did Marjory think Coach Yuri was fair. Something was up.

“Did you guys hear about that old lady who died, Hester Fraser?” Marjory placed her cup on the table. “You hear about that, Fee?”

“Yep.” Fee cracked the last bite of her cone.

“My grandma knew her really well,” Marjory said.

Neither Fee nor Cass responded.

“How about the nephew, Keith? You hear about him?” Marjory looked at Fee as she spoke.

“I met him,” Fee said, fiddling with the tabletop saltshaker.

Marjory crossed her arms and sat back against the padded vinyl booth. She held Fee’s stare for a long time, then turned to Cass. “Did your dad have a good Father’s Day, Cass?”

As random a question as the girls had ever exchanged. Cass’s dad was an insurance agent. Besides answering the door or providing the occasional ride, he rarely factored into their lives, never mind conversations.

“I guess,” Cass said.

“Anything new with your family, Fee?” Marjory asked.

Though Fee was following Marjory’s dropped hints—Hester, Keith, Father’s Day, Fee’s family—she was confused. When she asked her mom, just hours ago, the response that she’d met Keith “just after” had been end-of-story emphatic. She passed the shaker from hand to hand; salt granules skittered across the table.

“Why?”

“Not knowing anything about your dad must make Father’s Day rough.”

Fee hated the way Marjory was watching her with little piggy eyes for some sort of crack. And she was definitely steering the conversation. With her right hand, Fee brushed the spilled salt into her cupped left hand and quickly tossed it over her shoulder. Ever-practical Cass gave her a luck-is-dumb look.

“It’s true I don’t know my dad, but it’s not true that I don’t know anything about him. It’s just . . . I’m not supposed to talk about it.” It was a bold-faced lie, but Marjory deserved the detour.

“What’s so top secret about deadbeat?” Marjory said, rolling her eyes.

Fee knew what kids whispered behind cupped hands. Poor Fee. No dad. No picture. No nothing. “He’s not deadbeat; he’s missing,” Fee snapped, surprising even herself.

“What’s the difference?” Marjory asked.

“As in a missing person,” Fee said.

“Oh my gosh,” Cass said, “you never told me.”

Regret colored Fee’s face. It was one thing deceiving Marjory, but there sat Cass: her dark eyes flared with concern.

“Sounds like the kind of thing people would know about,” Marjory said.

“Know what?” Fee held her ground. “There was so little to go on that there really was no story.” If Marjory hadn’t been glaring at her with her eyebrows pinched together, Fee might have backed down, reined the story in. Instead, she unfurled it with a snap. “He was a foreign exchange student from Turkey”—the type of sandwich she’d had for lunch. “They met at Iowa. He went home for Christmas break, was expected to come back, finish the year, but he never did.”

“Where’s the mystery?” Marjory asked.

“He never made it back to Turkey either. He never boarded his connecting flight in Paris”—the topic of Fee’s world cities report for social studies last semester. Her mind careened from a list of monuments to images from a made-for-TV movie where a guy had been shoved roughly into the back of an awaiting van. “Witnesses say he was with two men. That they were arguing.”

“It’s just like that show my mom used to watch,” Cass said, “Unsolved Mysteries. The ghost stories and Bigfoot sightings were crap, but the missing persons’ reports were the real deal.”

“It happens more than you’d think,” Fee said with an authority she never knew she had.

“So then how did you even know?” Marjory asked.

“The guy’s parents have money. They hired investigators who talked to my mom, but they never found anything, ever.”

“So if there are grandparents, how come you never talk about them?” Marjory asked.

“My mom never told them she was pregnant.”

“Why not?” Marjory asked.

“The two guys he argued with were reported drug smugglers. My mom was scared. That’s why she changed his name to something American and totally common.” Fee never should have stayed up so late last weekend watching that movie. It had stuck with her, enough even to add an unnecessary layer to an already complicated story. Behind her navel, a burn of remorse began. “You guys have to promise you won’t say anything. My mom would kill me.” The first true thing she’d said for quite some time.

“Not to mention there’d be drug smugglers after your family,” Marjory said.

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” Fee said.

“So what’s up with that Keith guy, then?” Marjory scooted forward, lacing her fingers around the perspiring cup.

Something Fee was asking herself. “Nothing.”

Marjory got up from the booth. “Crazy stuff. I hardly know what to think. So many stories.”

“I’ve trusted you with a secret,” Fee said, lowering her voice. “Do you promise not to tell?”

Marjory left behind a promise—and her empty cup.