FRIDAY, AUGUST 26

8:19 P.M.

LUCI

The AC in Mel’s house feels downright frosty. Luci gets a hoodie out of her overnight bag and pulls it over her head. She knows it looks weird with her dress, but whatever. It’s just the girls now. She checks her phone—no missed calls—and puts it in the front pocket.

Someone’s in the bathroom off the kitchen. Luci waits for a minute or two. There have to be others, she figures, in a house this massive.

She takes a back staircase up to the second floor, then pads down a long white-walled hallway, her bare feet silenced by thick taupe wall-to-wall carpet. Everything in the Gingriches’ house is a neutral: black, beige, white, gray. She opens one door and finds a deep closet with shelves of tightly folded sheets and towels. The next, a library with a fireplace.

Luci doesn’t have to guess what’s behind the third. It’s already cracked.

Mel’s bedroom.

Lining up her eye with the open seam, Luci sees simultaneously exactly what she might have imagined and nothing she could have conjured herself.

The bedroom looks staged, like a shot from the pages of a Pottery Barn Teen catalog. Very gently lived in by someone perfect. The furniture is all the same beachy driftwood style. A tall headboard, fluted with crown molding. Over crisp sheets, a lavender comforter is folded halfway down to accommodate an absurd number of pillows.

The curtains, white and barely diffusing the sunset, lift with a breeze. Seconds later, Luci detects a float of gardenia, but the scent is youthful and not at all like the perfume her grandma sprayed so generously along her collarbone that it made her wrinkled skin slick. That’s because there’s something sweet underneath it. Vanilla. Or maybe honey? Luci breathes deeply but it’s too faint, probably just the remnants of whatever lotion Mel put on before getting dressed.

Luci pauses, quickly looking over each shoulder to make sure she is alone. And then she steps inside the bedroom and quietly pulls the door closed behind her.

Though the bedroom floor is carpeted like the hallway, over it there’s a thick, creamy shearling rug, on which many bags are scattered, probably from a back-to-school shopping trip. Bloomingdale’s, Sephora, Kate Spade, Victoria’s Secret. Luci peers into each one.

On Mel’s desk, the latest edition of Vogue, opened to a dense article.

On Luci’s desk, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk High School. Which, even more embarassingly, Luci’s read twice and even dog-eared.

A tall bookcase catches Luci’s eye, shelves sparkling with trophies, medals, glossy plastic streamers of pep rally pom-poms. One trophy is so tall, it is tipped on its side to fit. There are several photographs of the team—each matted and framed—along with plenty of candids of Mel and Phoebe as tourists—casting spells in Harry Potter robes, pledging allegiance in front of the White House, up on metal gates at what looks to be a rodeo—sightseeing trips probably fit in between tournament games. Luci tries to determine in which picture Mel looks the youngest, as if that could collapse the distance between them, prove to her that Mel was once Luci’s age.

On her way out, Luci spies Mel’s Wildcat varsity jacket hanging on the back of the door with its heavy leather sleeves, its striped collar, the terry loops of her C letter. Luci pets it before slipping out.

Back in the hallway, Luci carefully pushes the door until it’s almost closed. When she turns, she runs right into Coach.

“Luci,” he says, a devilish grin gracing his face. “What are you doing sneaking around in Mel’s room?”

It is a miracle she doesn’t die.

He must see the panic in her face, because Coach lifts his hands in a friendly, disarming way. “I don’t actually care what you were doing in Mel’s room.” His breathing is slightly labored, as if he just returned from a leisurely morning run. His mood seems brightened in that way too. Endorphins, blood flow. “I’m just glad I found you.”

“Okay.” Luci has no clue why that might be. She thought Coach had left. Luci feels a tickle of excitement at the thought of him hustling back for her.

He scans the hallway and makes sure they are alone. “I know my speech tonight came off a little … intense. And most of it probably went over your head. But believe me, the girls needed to hear it. Some problems I’d hoped they’d solve for themselves over the summer have gotten worse, and unless I step in and help fix them, I’m afraid there’s not going to be anything here for you in four years.”

Luci can’t believe that Coach would go out of his way to check in with her like this. That her future would be a consideration is both humbling and validating.

Coach rocks side to side with boyish energy. Nervous and excited. Like they are running out of time on a clock Luci can’t see. “You trust me, right, Luci?”

She has no idea why he’s asking. But really, isn’t there only one answer to give?

“Yes!”

He smiles. She wonders if he thought she would say no.

“Good. Because I came up with a little surprise team-building exercise for you girls tonight. Something to help bring the team together. And I need your help to pull it off. Cool?”

Luci bites her lip and nods. “Absolutely.” She’s not sure her heart is still beating.

“Excellent.” He checks the hallway again. “Do you have your phone on you?”

Their conversation now revving, Luci slips into a faster gear to keep pace. She pulls it out of her pocket, unlocks it, and passes it to him. He taps the screen with this thumbs then hits send. Luci hears his phone buzz in his pocket. Before handing it back, he switches her ringer to vibrate.

“Okay, so here’s the plan. On the table near the front door are Mel’s car keys. Once I take off, I want you to slip outside and hide your phone somewhere in the back seat. Don’t let anyone see you.”

Luci has no clue what he is talking about, why she would need to do such a thing, but she nods, like this is a perfectly normal request. “Got it.”

“I knew I could count on you, Luci,” he says, walking backward away from her.

“Oh. So that’s it? That’s all you need me to do?”

He winks and says, “For now,” and then hustles down the stairs.

Luci presses her back against the hallway wall and tries to catch her breath. She hears the front door open and close.

Her phone doesn’t have much charge, only 30 percent, and she contemplates powering it down to conserve it. But Coach didn’t say to. So she doesn’t. Luci slips downstairs and heads toward the front door.

She’s just about there when Mel walks in, a duffel bag in her hands.

Luci freezes. There’s nowhere for her to hide, so she spins and pretends to be admiring the family photos on the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, Luci watches Mel drop the bag on the floor and push it with her foot underneath the console table. She lets out a deep, cleansing breath, checks her hair in the mirror, and then walks into the living room.

Luci’s heart takes a second to resume beating. She could not do this, come up with some excuse why she was unable to do this very small but very important favor. Instead, Luci tells herself not to be nervous. She does trust him. He’s given her no reason not to. In fact, quite the opposite.

With quick, quiet steps, Luci picks up Mel’s keys from the table. They are exactly where Coach said they’d be.

It’s finally dark outside. That soft, fuzzy dark that happens only in summer. Fireflies are flickering across the front lawn. Coach’s Escalade is gone; Mel’s Mini Cooper is parked in the driveway next to Ali’s Jeep.

Luci clicks the unlock button on the key fob and opens Mel’s back passenger door. As she leans inside, her phone buzzes in her hand, and she startles so badly that she nearly drops it.

COACH:

COACH:

Luci ducks her head to peek out the rear window. See if she can find where Coach is watching her. But there’s no sign of him.

Maybe he’s not watching. Maybe he just knows that Luci’s going to deliver.

LUCI:

LUCI:

She does exactly what Coach asked her to do, sliding her phone into the space between the cushions that Luci sat on earlier this afternoon. When she locks Mel’s car up, the alarm beeps once, but no one inside seems to hear.

Luci hurries up the steps and through the front door, gingerly setting the keys where she found them.

“Cupcake, Luci?”

Luci spins. Mrs. Gingrich is practically on top of her with a platter of them. “Yes, please.”

Luci goes into the living room, sits next to Grace on the couch, and takes a bite. The cake is soft and moist. She’ll have to check her braces once she’s done eating. Despite the pop of sugar, her heartbeat begins to slow.

Luci passed Coach’s test. Plus now she knows something is going to happen tonight, even if she has no idea what. And like her two teammates were trying to explain, right before Coach made his speech, it’s both scary and exciting all at once.