Both of Andi’s parents were home, and her mother volunteered to take her to the mall so her father could watch the finish of the Eagles and the Lions. Her dad wasn’t that big a sports fan—except when it came to the Eagles. Her mom, on the other hand, loved baseball and the Phillies.
Eleanor, Maria, and Lisa all made noises about going along to show support, but Andi quieted them down by telling them Jamie had specifically asked if she’d be bringing anyone. Jeff didn’t bother bringing it up; he knew he’d be shut down quickly if he did. Knights in shining armor need not apply.
The Eagles were trailing 17–14 when Andi’s mom dropped her off near the food court entrance just before three. The place was almost empty. Most of the city was at home living—and dying—with the Eagles, who were playing the wild-card round in Detroit.
It felt unexpectedly odd to Andi to walk into the food court and not see Jeff. Instead, Jamie was already there, sitting at an empty table, looking at her phone.
“Hungry?” Andi asked as she walked up, trying to keep things casual for as long as she possibly could.
“No, not really,” Jamie said. “Ate lunch not too long ago. Wouldn’t mind a milkshake, though.”
They quickly agreed on McDonald’s. There was literally no one in line; a first, Andi thought, in her life. She ordered vanilla, Jamie chocolate.
Andi steered them to a table on the edge of the food court where no one was around. The quieter the better, she figured.
“So,” Jamie said. “What’s up, Carillo?”
No small talk, just cutting to the chase. Fair enough.
Andi had worn her backpack into the mall. Now she put it down next to her and pulled the petition from it. There was no sense saying anything. It was pretty self-explanatory.
“I’d like to know what you think of this,” she asked, handing it to Jamie.
Jamie put her milkshake aside, wiped her hands on a napkin, and started to read. Almost right away, she looked up at Andi and said, “Seriously?” Andi’s heart sank. Jamie kept reading, getting to the end without further comment.
“I know it seems crazy and it may seem like this is just me whining about playing time, but…”
Jamie put up a hand. “Let me read it again,” she said.
They both lapsed into silence as Jamie read one more time. She finished, took the top off her milkshake—as Andi had already done—and took a sip, careful not to spill. McDonald’s shakes were too thick to drink through a straw.
“Okay,” she said finally, then paused. She looked her teammate in the eye. “Andi, this is crazy.” It was the first time she had ever called Andi by her first name. “I mean, even with all that went on, you never tried to get Mr. Johnston removed as soccer coach.”
“This is different…”
Jamie put up a hand again. “You got me down here because you want to know what I think. Let me tell you.”
Andi, the daughter of two lawyers, had a habit of anticipating people’s answers and interrupting.
“Like I said, it’s crazy. I don’t see how Block could possibly do anything other than maybe call Coach Josephson in and ask her what the heck is going on. She’ll say it’s just a handful of players who think they should be playing more and that’ll be the end of it.”
Andi waited to make sure she wasn’t interrupting. “Unless all twelve of us sign it.”
Jamie nodded slowly. “Unless all twelve of us sign it. That’s why I’m here. You need me, don’t you? If I sign it, my three friends will sign it. That will make eight—I assume Eleanor, Maria, and Lisa are on board with this already, right?”
Andi nodded.
“And Debbie would be inclined to side with you. So, if I signed and Jenny, Alayne, and Hope followed me, that would leave Randi, Brooke, and Ronnie. They’d probably go along with the majority—either way, I’m guessing.”
She was guessing, Andi was certain, correctly.
“So, I’m sort of the swing vote, right? I go along and you can almost certainly get all twelve names on this thing.”
She wasn’t smiling as if to say, “Gotcha.” Her tone wasn’t smug or sarcastic. It sounded thoughtful.
“I know it’s a tough call,” Andi said, not wanting to come across as putting pressure on her.
“It is a tough call,” Jamie said. She leaned back in her chair. “You’re basically asking the principal to fire someone who volunteered to do this and is getting paid practically nothing for giving up her afternoons five days a week.”
“Every coach in the school does the same thing,” Andi said. “Like you said, she volunteered. No one forced her to do this.”
Jamie said nothing in response. Andi was tempted to fill the void but remembered something she’d read about waiting when people were quiet to give them a chance to think.
“Did you know she’s going through a divorce?” Jamie finally asked.
Andi didn’t know. She wondered how Jamie knew—but realized it didn’t matter much.
“No, I didn’t,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. That might explain why she’s in a bad mood so much of the time.”
“Or not. She could be happy to be rid of her husband. It also might explain why she’s coaching,” Jamie said. “I know her daughter’s in college. She might be pretty lonely right now.”
Andi’s stomach was turning over. She didn’t want to bring more unhappiness into a life that might already be unhappy. Then again, did that make it right for her to make an entire team—or most of an entire team—miserable? This time she didn’t say anything for a full minute. Jamie waited patiently.
“Let me put it to you this way,” Andi finally said. “Regardless of her personal circumstances, from what you’ve seen so far, should she be coaching this team?”
There was another long silence—broken suddenly by a loud cheer coming from a nearby TV set. Several people were standing around it. Clearly, the Eagles had just scored. If Jamie cared, she didn’t show it.
“Repeat your question,” Jamie said.
Andi did.
This time, the answer came right away. “No,” Jamie Bronson said. “She shouldn’t be coaching. I think I knew that when she made the crack in the locker room at Chester Heights. I don’t even think she meant it maliciously, it was just…”
“Stupid?” Andi said.
Jamie shook her head. “No, not stupid. Ignorant.”
She took another sip of her milkshake. “I’ll talk to the other three and get back to you by lunchtime tomorrow.”
She was as good as her word—better, in fact.
Just as Andi and Jeff were sitting down at lunch, Jamie walked over and handed Andi a large envelope. “I think everything you need is in there,” she said, without so much as glancing at Jeff. “Let me know what you decide to do with it.”
Andi and Jeff sat down and Andi pushed her tray aside and opened the envelope. She looked at it, smiled, and handed it to Jeff, just as Eleanor, Maria, Lisa, and Danny—now a regular at the table—arrived.
Below the “Yours Truly” were four signatures: Jamie Bronson, Hope Allison, Jenny Mearns, and Alayne Jolie. Next to Bronson’s name were parentheses with the words Team Captain inside.
“Wow,” Jeff said. He could think of nothing to say beyond that, so he handed the document back to Andi before he got pasta sauce on it.
As the others sat down, Andi passed it around.
“Who’d have thunk it?” Lisa said, intentionally misspeaking.
“Not me,” Maria said. “I know there were a couple of clues she wasn’t happy, but you must have done a great job yesterday, Andi.”
Andi thought perhaps she should stand and take a bow. Then again, the fact that Bronson had been willing to meet with her was a pretty clear indication that she was willing to listen.
“Turns out there’s more to her than meets the eye,” she said. “She’s pretty thoughtful.”
“So, what’s next?” Danny asked.
Andi looked around the room to see if they were attracting any attention.
“First, the four of us need to sign it,” she said. “Then, when I get to the locker room before practice, I have to grab the other four, show this to them and get them to sign it.”
“What if the coaches see you?” Jeff asked.
“They don’t come into the locker room before practice,” Eleanor answered. “But there won’t be that much time.” She looked at Andi. “You need to get a copy for each one so they can read it at once rather than pass it around.”
Andi nodded. “Problem is, the only place to make a copy of anything is the school office. I can’t just walk in and say I need to make copies of a petition to remove our sixth-grade basketball coach.”
“Yeah, but I can go in there to say I’m making copies of a poster for tryouts for the sixth-grade spring play, which I’m codirecting,” Danny said. Danny was taking an elective theater class, and he and a girl named Valery Levy had been named codirectors of an April production of Twelfth Night.
“You sure?” Andi asked.
“Give it to me right now,” he said. He glanced at his phone. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
He was back in a few minutes. “I made ten copies to make it look more real,” he said, passing them to Andi.
“What happens when there are no posters up around the school?” Eleanor asked.
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it,” Danny said with a wide smile.
Andi thanked him and put the copies of the petition into the envelope she’d been handed by Jamie. Her mind was going a million miles an hour. She was confident she’d get the remaining four signatures. The question was: Then what?
Burn that bridge when I get to it, she thought.
The five-minute bell rang. They all stood up and looked at each other.
“We need to talk more once we have the other four signatures,” Maria said.
“Let’s get the signatures, then worry about that,” Lisa said.
“A-men to that,” Andi said. “A-men.”
As soon as last period was over, Andi bolted from her earth science class and headed straight to the locker room. Since the girls were on the road the next day—at Malvern—they had the early practice. She walked into the locker room and found it empty.
She began changing into her practice gear while waiting for others to start arriving. Eleanor and Maria showed up first. “No one yet, huh?” Maria said, stating the obvious.
A minute later, several players came piling in, including Debbie Lee, Brooke Jensen, and Randi Eisen. Andi handed them the document as they headed in the direction of their lockers. “Do me a favor and read this before you change,” she said. “As you can see, eight of us have already signed it. If you want to sign, too, I have the original.”
They looked at her a little bit funny but took what they were handed and sat down on stools in front of their lockers to read.
Naturally, Ronnie Bonilla—one of the four whose signatures Andi still needed—was the last to arrive. Andi had the feeling that everyone was looking at her as she handed the document to her and said, “Ronnie, please read this as quickly as you can.”
It was 3:10 p.m.
Debbie and Randi signed almost as soon as they walked in the door. A moment later, Ronnie did, too. They now had eleven signatures. It was 3:12. Brooke Jensen was sitting on her stool, still looking at the document. Finally, as the others were walking out the door, she walked over to Andi, still holding it.
“I can’t sign something like this without talking to my parents first,” she said. “I’m not saying I disagree with anything you’ve written, but to challenge authority this way … I’m just not sure.”
“You know everyone else has signed this,” she said.
Brooke nodded. “I know,” she said. “I get it. I’ll let you know tonight.”
Andi understood her position and respected it. She knew she probably wouldn’t have gone ahead with the whole thing if her parents had disapproved. It was also entirely possible that when Brooke explained the situation to her parents, they’d tell her it was okay to sign. But for the moment, she was stuck on eleven signatures.
She needed twelve.
“I understand, Brooke,” she said.
Jensen seemed frozen in front of her.
“We better get going,” Andi said, standing up. “Or there’s going to be an authority figure very upset with us.”
Brooke’s face broke into a wide smile and the two of them sprinted through the door to the court.
Andi stopped while leaving the court after practice to update Jeff. He agreed she needed all twelve signatures. “Eleven is good,” he said. “But twelve means they have to pay attention.”
Practice had been the same that day as the week before—Andi spectating throughout the scrimmage period. At one point, Coach Tuller walked over to her during a water break and said, “Stay ready, Carillo.”
“Why?” Andi answered.
Coach Tuller didn’t respond. Clearly, she’d just been mouthing a sideline cliché—maybe she was reading books now, too?—and hadn’t expected a sharp-tongued response.
The boys’ practice was routine, except for the fact that Ron Arlow was absent. Coach C told the team that Arlow had left school early, feeling sick. Coach C was waiting to hear back on whether he’d be in school the next day and available for the Malvern game.
Jeff wasn’t sure how to feel. Arlow was one of the team’s better players, but he certainly wouldn’t mind playing the point for an entire game and wouldn’t miss his presence in the locker room. Coach C seemed to read his mind. While everyone was shooting free throws, he waved him over to where he and Coach B were standing at midcourt.
“So, I’m guessing you aren’t going to be brokenhearted if Ron can’t go tomorrow,” he said with a smile.
Jeff shrugged as if to say it was no big deal one way or the other. “Coach, he’s one of our better players…”
“But he can be a pain in the butt, and this way I’ll have to play you at the point most of the game.”
Jeff nodded. “True.”
“Which one?” Coach B asked—also smiling.
“Both,” Jeff answered.
“I appreciate your honesty,” Coach C said. He blew his whistle to get everyone back onto the court.
Jeff really liked Coach C. He just wished he’d be a little less mysterious about Ron Arlow.