Crab soccer!
Seriously? Who came up with that? What evil genius imagined a bunch of middle-school kids “crab-walking” around a gymnasium trying to kick a ridiculously oversize rubber ball? Lark had to wonder: Where was the athleticism (not to mention the dignity) in that? It was humiliating! And on the first Monday back to school after Christmas break, no less.
But if she wanted to pass PE, she was going to have to do it, just like everybody else. So she fell into line with the rest of her gym class and waited for the dreaded choosing of the teams to begin. Yet another brilliant gym-class custom designed to torture twelve-year-olds.
Although in this case, being the less-than-stellar athlete that she was might actually work in Lark’s favor. If the PE teacher ran out of those hideous mesh tank tops before Lark got picked for a squad (likely, since shy, lanky girls like her were usually chosen last), she would find herself happily relegated to the bottom bleacher, watching her classmates scuttle around the gym floor like sporty crustaceans.
Confident that she wouldn’t be hearing her name called anytime soon, Lark let her mind wander into a song. The possible title was “Everything’s Working Out,” and the lyrics had been rolling around in her head since the last day of school before Christmas break, when Teddy Reese had been waiting by her locker to walk her to the school bus.
Upside down’s turned right side up
The rain’s stopped falling, the sun’s shining bright
“I choose Lark.”
I feel like the whole world’s singing along
’Cause everything’s working out all right.
The problem was that Lark was suffering from a major bout of writer’s block, and she couldn’t seem to get any further than these first few lyrics.
Frustrated, she turned her thoughts to Abbey Road. “Wounded Pride,” the single Lark had written and the band had released last month, had made a dazzling climb up the charts over the holidays. It was currently at number three! Thanks to Lark’s song, social media was exploding with comments about the boys, and their newly launched website was getting more hits than a punching bag. This boded well for the success of their first album, which was due to be released very soon.
“Lark Campbell. Yellow team. Here’s your tank top.”
Lark felt someone poking her shoulder. She turned to see Jessica Ferris smiling at her. Her first panicked thought was that she’d accidentally been singing out loud.
“Something wrong?” Lark asked.
“Good news,” Jessica informed her. “You got picked. First.”
“Me?” Lark blurted. “Why?”
Jessica laughed. “Maybe it’s those long legs. Even in crab mode you’re bound to be a good kicker.”
“Oh.” Lark blinked, shaking the lyrics out of her head in an attempt to focus. “Okay.” She took a tentative step forward, then turned back to whisper to Jess. “Um … who picked me?”
“That’s the bad news,” Jess whispered. “Alessandra Drake.”
Lark’s heart sank. Miss Popular, meanest of the mean girls, and (for today at least) crab soccer team captain, Alessandra stood with her hands on her hips.
“Come on, Lark,” Ally said brightly. “You’re on my team.”
Having no other choice, Lark took the yellow mesh vest Coach Bricker handed her, then shambled over to where Alessandra waited, her sneakers squeaking on the freshly polished gymnasium floor.
The opposing team captain, Melanie Cooper, looked crestfallen at the sight of Lark joining Ally’s squad, but she rallied quickly enough by choosing Brandt Buckley, the best athlete in the entire seventh grade.
After that, the team selection went pretty much as expected. The super-popular kids got chosen early, followed by everybody else. At last Coach Bricker gave an earsplitting blast on his whistle and crab soccer was under way!
In Lark’s opinion, wrists and fingers were meant for strumming guitar strings, not for walking on. She decided that if aliens ever attacked earth during a middle-school crab soccer game, they would probably turn their spaceships around and fly away immediately, because, really, who would want to conquer a planet where this sort of madness took place?
As Lark scuttled around the gym, she noticed that Kelly Liu blocked for her whenever she could. And she wasn’t even on her team! When one of these blocks resulted in Lark actually scoring a goal, her teammates cheered as loudly as if she’d just won the World Cup. Weirder still, her opponents cheered.
Lark was thrilled when Coach Bricker blew his whistle and told them all to “hit the showers.”
Luckily, this was only an expression, because the one thing that could possibly be more horrifying than playing crab soccer in gym would be enduring the mildewed locker-room shower stalls after playing crab soccer in gym.
Lark quickly changed out of her gym clothes, back into her faded blue jeans and well-worn cowboy boots. Then she pulled her long auburn hair into a messy bun and banged her locker closed, only to find Melanie, Alessandra, and Kelly standing on the other side of it, grinning. The ambush nearly gave Lark a heart attack.
“So what was it like?” Alessandra demanded without preamble.
“What was what like?” Lark asked. “Scoring a goal?”
“No!” Kelly was wrapping a section of her sleek black hair around her thumb. “Spending the holidays with a real live band! Duh!”
“Oh, well, actually—”
“Did they sing carols around the tree?” asked Kelly dreamily.
This earned Kelly a jab to the ribs from Melanie. “Don’t be so politically incorrect. Maybe they don’t celebrate Christmas,” she hissed.
“They’re from England,” Kelly snapped back. “Everybody in England says ‘Happy Christmas’ and eats a big old disgusting goose on Christmas Day.”
“I think you mean everybody in a Charles Dickens story,” Lark muttered, slipping her backpack onto her shoulder. “Anyway, Max and Ollie went back to London for the holidays. I didn’t spend Christmas with the boys.”
“ ‘The boys.’ ” Melanie sighed. “It’s so cool that you call them that.”
Alessandra rolled her eyes. “Well, what else would she call them?”
“Lots of things,” said Melanie. “The band? The hotties? The rock gods?”
“How about ‘the houseguests who finish the potato chips and put the empty bag back in the pantry’?” Lark blurted. “Or ‘the guys who rehearse in what used to be my music room until three a.m. on the night before I have a huge math test’?”
The girls stared at her. It wasn’t like Lark to blurt, especially in front of A-listers like Ally and her crowd.
“It sounds like you’re complaining,” said Alessandra, lifting one perfect brow accusingly.
“I’m not complaining, I love the boys—er, I mean, Max and Ollie.”
“You love them?” Kelly repeated, her voice lifting a full octave, her fingers going into a hair-twirling frenzy. “Like, you love love them? Both of them?”
“No!” Lark’s cheeks burned and her eyes darted to the locker-room exit. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Which one do you love?” Melanie asked, ignoring Lark’s last statement. “And does he love you back?”
“It’s really not like that,” Lark assured them. “I don’t love them, I just love them. You know, as friends. Actually, more like big brothers.”
Again Ally, Mel, and Kelly stared.
“That,” said Kelly, flipping her hair disdainfully, “is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Seriously,” Melanie agreed. “Two gorgeous rock stars living under your roof and you can’t even muster up a crush.” She wrinkled her nose in a way that had Lark wondering if maybe she should have taken a postsoccer shower. “What’s wrong with you?”
This had Lark’s embarrassment boiling into anger. “Nothing’s wrong with me!”
“Maybe she likes someone else,” said Alessandra, her eyes glinting like a cobra’s. “Maybe someone from this country.”
Lark did not like being interrogated, and was not about to reveal her feelings for a certain adorable, musically gifted eighth grader to Alessandra Drake. “It’s one thing to have a crush on a cute musician you see performing onstage, or posing in a magazine,” she explained as calmly as she could, “but it’s another thing entirely when you share a bathroom with them. Or watch them guzzle a whole can of soda and then try to burp the lyrics to a Rolling Stones song.”
“A rolling who song?” asked Melanie, looking baffled.
“Max and Ollie are great,” said Lark, taking advantage of their confusion to slip between Ally and Mel and head for the door. “But it’s hard to be starstruck when you know what brand of zit cream a guy uses.”
“Did she say zit cream?” asked Mel, horrified.
“Ewww,” said Kelly.
Alessandra was pressing her hands to her ears. “I know you’re just saying that to gross us out,” she called after Lark. “But I’m not going to let you ruin this for me!”
As the locker-room door swung closed behind her, Lark felt her mouth kicking up into a grin. She finally had a secret weapon for getting Ally Drake off her back: personal hygiene products.
“Today, zit cream,” she said, chuckling to herself as she burst out of the gym and into the school’s main corridor. “Tomorrow, deodorant! And the day after that—”
“Mouthwash?” This guess came from across the corridor. “Medicated foot powder, maybe?”
Lark stopped short. The voice belonged to none other than that certain adorable, musically gifted eighth grader.
Teddy Reese.
He was wearing jeans and a bulky “Property of Ronald Reagan Middle School Athletic Department” sweatshirt.
Lark found this odd because that morning, when she’d seen him heading into homeroom (not that she’d been waiting in the eighth-grade corridor just to catch a glimpse of him or anything like that) he’d been wearing an Abbey Road T-shirt.
Abbey Road. Once just a classic Beatles album Lark and her father would occasionally listen to between scratchy old records by Patsy Cline and Lyle Lovett, but now one of the driving forces in Lark’s life.
Because Abbey Road was the name of the boy band imported from England by the music mogul Donna Campbell (aka Lark’s mom). The group had originally consisted of three talented young Londoners, but when one of them was suddenly shipped back to England for “creative differences” (aka really bad behavior), Donna was forced to find a replacement. And in what was perhaps one of the savviest twists in the history of the music industry (okay, maybe not the entire industry, but certainly in the history of Donna’s label, Lotus Records, which was only one year old), Lark’s mother had signed one of Lark’s schoolmates to replace the mischievous Brit.
And that schoolmate just happened to be Teddy Reese.
Aka Lark’s reason for living.
Okay, maybe not her entire reason for living. But definitely her crush.
And there he was. Looking adorable in an oversize sweatshirt.
“You won’t believe what happened,” said Teddy, falling into step beside Lark as they mashed their way through the crowded hall.
“Try me,” said Lark. “I just scored a goal in crab soccer, so I’m pretty much ready to believe anything.”
Teddy laughed. “Well, this morning I was wearing one of those Abbey Road T-shirts your mother had made up as a promotional giveaway.”
Lark gave him a curious look. “You were?”
“Yeah,” said Teddy. “I was a little embarrassed about it, to be honest. It felt kind of … I dunno … egotistical or something. But your mom said it would be a great way to publicize the band and I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
Lark of all people knew how persuasive her mother could be.
“So where’s the shirt now?” asked Lark, who was suddenly getting the weird sensation that they were being followed, and not just by kids who happened to be headed to class in the same direction.
“That’s the crazy part,” said Teddy. “I put it in my locker and went outside to the track. When I got back, the shirt was gone.”
“Somebody stole it?”
“Yep. Some sixth grader swiped it, cut it to shreds, then sold off the pieces for five bucks each because it had, and I quote, ‘touched Teddy Reese’s rock-god bod’!”
“You’re joking!” Lark didn’t know whether to be horrified by the crime or impressed by the enterprising sixth grader’s marketing skills.
Teddy shook his head. “Coach Evans dug this up for me to wear for the rest of the day, but it’s an XXL, so I could probably fit my piano and the rest of the band in here with me. I look like a total goof.”
“I think you look amazing,” came a voice from behind them.
Lark glanced over her shoulder and saw that this comment had come from a girl in her English class—Chrissy Lawson. They were being followed … by Chrissy and about twenty-five other starry-eyed girls!
“Teddy would look awesome in anything!” an eighth grader chimed in.
This remark set off a chorus of giggles. The next thing Lark knew, the tall, blond captain of the girls’ volleyball team had sidled up and was inviting Teddy to a dance the following weekend.
Lark held her breath, waiting to hear his answer. Teddy had always been popular, and she’d been well aware that she wasn’t the only girl in school who’d secretly admired him from afar. But now that he was in a band and on the verge of superstardom, it seemed that “secretly” and “afar” no longer applied.
When Teddy made a polite excuse to the volleyball player—something about a rehearsal with Max and Ollie—the mere mention of the British boys set off an eruption of squeals and shouts. Luckily, the commotion brought Principal Hardy out of her office. When she gave the crowd of girls a stern look, they scattered.
This left Lark and Teddy standing there alone to face the principal’s wrath.
But to Lark’s shock, Principal Hardy beamed at them. “Lark,” she said, “the lyrics you wrote for the band are wonderful. I told your English teacher to give you extra credit for them. And Teddy, when you get a minute, I was hoping you could autograph a photo of Abbey Road for me to send to my niece in San Francisco. She’s a big fan.”
Teddy smiled awkwardly. “Sure thing, Principal Hardy.”
Lark was stunned. Bonus points for writing a pop song? She managed to murmur a thank-you before Principal Hardy disappeared into her office.
“I think that’s what’s called a perk,” said Teddy as they continued on toward class.
“A perk, huh?” Lark gave him a teasing look. “And what are stolen T-shirts called?”
“Occupational hazards.”
They continued on their way, laughing together. It was still mind-blowing to Lark that she would be walking this close to Teddy Reese, let alone sharing jokes with him.
“I bet you’re beginning to wish you never asked me to play guitar for you in the talent show,” she said, remembering the fateful day in the music room when he’d proposed doing a duet in the school talent show. She could hardly believe over two months had passed since, blushing and stammering, she’d explained her extreme stage fright to him. But he’d talked her into it, and in the end, their performance had been a huge success!
“Why would I wish that?” asked Teddy.
“Well, if you and I hadn’t performed together, my mother never would have come to the show, and she never would have seen how talented you are, and she never would have hired you to replace Aidan after he got kicked out of Abbey Road. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with all this craziness.”
Teddy stopped walking and turned to face her. His blue eyes reminded her of twilight in Nashville, and she felt his gaze right down to her toes, which wiggled in her boots.
“A little craziness isn’t such a bad trade-off for the awesome opportunity your mom’s given me,” he said, his tone grateful and sincere. “And besides, if I hadn’t begged you to back me up in the show, you and I never would have gotten to know each other, would we?”
Lark felt her cheeks redden; her heart was doing a two-step in her chest. But before she could come up with an appropriate response—something clever, or better yet, flirty, or even just audible—the class bell rang.
“Gotta get to class,” she squeaked.
And she took off.
After class, Lark found Mimi waiting for her at her locker. Like a Christmas present that had gotten lost in the mail and finally arrived on her doorstep, Mimi was a belated but welcome surprise.
“Meems!”
“Lark!”
The girls clutched each other in a hug. They hadn’t seen each other since the day before Christmas Eve. Mimi had been completely booked up with holiday travel and family visits. They had FaceTimed and texted themselves silly, but Lark hadn’t realized how much she missed seeing her best friend in person until just this minute.
“Did you have a great Christmas?”
“It was incredible!” cried Mimi. “Fireworks, posadas, piñatas, and of course my bisabuela’s famous tamales! After midnight mass we had a huge feast at my aunt Josefina’s house, and my little cousin Matteo spilled pozole all over the shepherd’s costume he wore for the nativity play.”
Lark laughed. “I only understood about half of that, but I think I got the general gist of it. You had fun, right?”
“Oh yeah!” said Mimi, bobbing her head. “And my brothers and sisters all chipped in and bought me the film-editing software I’ve been wanting. How about you? How was your first Christmas in California?”
“Nice,” said Lark. “Mom surprised me with new hiking boots and a road trip up north to put them to use. We stayed at this really cozy lodge in the woods. No smog, no LA traffic, and—the best part—no cell phone reception!”
“How could no phone reception be the best part of a hiking trip?”
“Because it forced my workaholic mother to leave the music business world behind and just relax,” Lark explained with a grin.
What she didn’t mention was that no amount of breathtaking mountain scenery could make up for not seeing her father on Christmas. But in true BFF fashion, Mimi was able to read Lark’s mind.
“Too bad you couldn’t go back to Nashville for a few days,” she said softly.
“Wouldn’t have been much point,” said Lark with a shrug. “Daddy had to work. But he sent me the coolest gift ever from the road.”
“New laptop?” Mimi guessed. “Diamond earrings shaped like the state of Tennessee?”
“Nope. A vintage Loretta Lynn album! Rare, and in mint condition!”
“I have no idea who that is,” Mimi admitted, checking her dark curls in the magnetic mirror stuck to the inside of Lark’s locker. “But if you like her, then I like her. Same way you like movies directed by Tim Burton, just because you know I think he’s a genius!”
“Exactly,” said Lark, nudging Mimi away from her reflection, toward the caf-a-gym-a-torium. “Now let’s get to lunch. I’m starving.”
“You know what would be really great?” Mimi mused as they hurried along. “If one day Tim and Loretta collaborated on a music video.”
“It’s a cool thought,” said Lark, smiling. “But since Loretta Lynn is about the same age as your bisabuela, I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Oh. Well, speaking of music videos …” Mimi gave Lark a sly look. “Yours is doing great. But I bet you haven’t checked out any of the recent comments.”
Lark shook her head. She was still having trouble wrapping her mind around the fact that a few months back, Mimi had made a music video featuring Lark singing one of her original country-pop songs, called “Homesick,” and uploaded it on YouTube. To preserve Lark’s anonymity, Mimi had posted the song under the name “Songbird”—the nickname Lark’s father had given her when she was small and just starting to show her singing talent.
So far, the video for “Homesick” had been extremely well received by viewers—more than eighty thousand of them, according to Mimi (Lark couldn’t bring herself to look!). By some miracle, no one at school had stumbled across the video yet. Lark was sure that if anyone had, they would have announced it to the entire student body by now, or worse, identified her by name online. Lark took some comfort in the fact that very few of her schoolmates were into country music, so it was unlikely that they’d find the “Homesick” video while searching the Internet. Still, the thought of being in the public eye—even anonymously—made Lark cringe.
The talent show had been an exception. She’d forced herself to perform because she simply couldn’t bring herself to refuse Teddy’s request to duet.
“I bet if your mom knew how much attention the ‘Homesick’ video has been getting,” Mimi was saying, “she’d have spent all that time in the mountains trying to talk you into signing with Lotus as a performer and not just a songwriter.”
“You’re right,” said Lark. “My mother knows I hate performing live, and she knows that being in the entertainment industry can be tough on someone my age. But I don’t think even that would keep her from trying to make a recording star out of me. I love writing songs for the band to perform, but when it comes to concerts, I’m happy to just watch from the wings.”
“Too bad,” said Mimi, opening the door to the crowded lunchroom. They moved down the lunch line, and Mimi helped herself to a plate of macaroni and cheese and a butterscotch pudding. “Because you’re an amazing performer. In fact, I’ll bet my dessert you’ll be a star one of these days.”
Reaching over, Lark plucked the cup of butterscotch pudding off Mimi’s tray. “I’ll just take it now, Mimi,” she said with a grin. “Because that is NEVER going to happen!”