On Sunday morning Mom, Dad, Maisie, and I headed to the Victorton Middle School soccer field. In the fall season we had lost to the Victorton Eagles once, and then beaten them the next time we’d faced them.
Dad parked the minivan, and I stepped out onto the bright, sunny field. When we’d left the house, the temperature had been 87 degrees, and it was only supposed to get hotter. Mom was already fanning herself with her hand.
“Ugh, another heat wave,” she complained. “I thought it was always supposed to be a perfect seventy-two degrees in Southern California?”
“It’s not that hot,” Dad said. “And anyway, would you rather be scraping ice off your car windows every morning for months on end? Isn’t this better?”
“Some ice sounds pretty nice right now,” she said. “I’m going to go set up my camp chair.”
The Victorton soccer field had only one small set of rickety bleachers on the opposing team’s side, so most people who came to see the game brought camp chairs with them. Mom’s was fancy, with a canvas canopy on top, because she loved the shade.
I jogged out onto the field to meet up with the team. We had twenty girls on the Kicks roster, because Coach didn’t cut anyone who wanted to play. Then she subbed out players during the game. But it looked like there was a bunch of girls missing.
“Is everyone late?” I asked Jessi.
She shook her head. “No. Coach says there’s some stomach bug going around. Hailey, Brianna, Jade, Gabriela, Taylor, Alandra, and Olivia are all sick and can’t play.”
My eyes got wide. “All of them?”
Jessi nodded. “Yeah. That leaves us with only, like, three subs,” she said.
Hailey, Brianna, and Taylor were some of our strongest offensive players, and Jade was great on defense. But we still had plenty of strong players left.
“We should be fine,” I said.
Jessi shrugged. “Let’s see.”
“Girls, form a circle!” Coach Flores cried. “We’re going to try a new drill.”
Curious, I jogged into place. I was always excited to learn something new.
“Grace and Devin, I want you in the middle,” Coach Flores said.
I walked into the center of the circle, glancing at Grace. She avoided eye contact with me.
Coach kicked a ball to Zoe, and one to Giselle.
“Giselle, you’re going to pass the ball to Devin. Devin will pass it to Grace. Grace will pass it to someone else in the circle. While she’s doing that, Zoe will pass her ball to Devin, and then we’ll keep going,” she said.
Emma raised her hand. “Um, could you please explain that again?”
“If you’re in the circle and you have the ball, you pass to Devin,” Coach said. “Devin will always pass to Grace. And Grace will pass to anyone she wants to in the circle. And then you keep repeating.”
“Like singing a song in the round,” Frida said.
Coach grinned. “Exactly!” she said. “Let’s see you do it.”
I was a little confused too, but then I realized that all I had to do was catch each pass sent to me, and then pass to Grace. I turned to Giselle.
“Let’s go!” I called out, and Giselle passed the ball to me. It skidded to the left, and I chased after it and sent it to Grace. Then Zoe sent a pass hurtling toward me, a kick that bounced off the grass and went high, so I had to chase after that one too.
That was some drill! It was fun, but hardest for the two people in the middle of the circle. Coach must have had us do it for a full five minutes before she put Jessi and Megan in the middle. I ran to take my place in the circle, bathed in sweat.
“That was intense!” I said to Grace, who was next to me.
Grace didn’t say anything. She was obviously giving me the silent treatment. I wanted to scream. Drama and soccer just did not mix!
We finished the drill, and I splashed some water from the cooler onto my face. A few others did the same. I still hadn’t cooled off by the time the game started.
The first half of the game was totally frustrating! The Kicks would get the ball into the Eagles midfield, and then the Eagles would get the ball from us and take it into our midfield, and the ball kept going back and forth like that like a volleyball. We couldn’t get the ball into goal range, and neither could they.
I’m not sure what the Eagles’ problem was, but I think I knew what was wrong with the Kicks—the heat combined with the lack of subs. Frida’s curly hair looked like limp noodles, and although she yelled, “I am the sacred guardian of the volcano!” several times, you could hear that her heart wasn’t in it.
In the second half Coach subbed in Anjali for Frida, replaced Zoe with Anna, and put Zarine in for Emma on goal. Everyone else had to stay in. Within the first three minutes one of the Eagles got the ball past Giselle, one of our tired defenders, and then kicked it right past Zarine into the net. I noticed that the Eagles player wasn’t sweating at all, and I figured that she had spent the whole first half on the bench. Or maybe she was a lizard. I wasn’t sure, because even my pink headband was not stopping the sweat from dripping into my eyes.
I knew I had to stop focusing on being hot. Instead I had to focus on getting past the Eagles defense. There had to be a way.
And then I found one. Jessi passed the ball to me, and I stopped it with my chest. Two Eagles immediately ran up to me, so I got rid of it quickly, passing it forward to Grace. Then I ran up to meet Grace as the Eagles swarmed her.
“Grace!” I called. I was wide open.
Grace was dribbling and staring at Megan, who could not shake the Eagles player who was covering her. One of the Eagles covering Grace kicked it away from her, but because I was near, I intercepted it.
Still open, I tore down the field. When I got into goal range, I kicked the ball toward the goal, not thinking about strategy or faking out the goalie—I just wanted that ball to go in.
My heart skipped a beat as the ball struck the goalie’s fingertips, but she didn’t catch it, and it bounced into the goal right behind her.
I had scored! The game was tied at 1–1, and that was how the game ended—in a tie, because there were no tiebreakers during regular season play, only in the play-offs.
The Kicks and the Eagles lined up and slapped hands, but neither team did it with much energy. Besides being hot, we all knew that a tie game was not much better than losing. You didn’t get the agony of defeat, but you didn’t get the thrill of victory, either. And a tie would hurt the Kicks’ place in the standings.
Coach Flores was her usual cheerful self as we gathered together before she dismissed the team.
“Conditions were tough today, girls, and you all played your best,” she said. “You should be proud of that. I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”
“Who wants to try out the new ice cream place in Kentville?” Anna called out.
“That sounds good to me!” Emma said. “Can we all meet there?”
As Emma was talking, I saw the eighth-grade girls walking away without answering.
“Looks like it will be a seventh-grade thing,” I said.
Mom and Dad dropped me off at Get the Scoop, the new ice cream shop in downtown Kentville. Actually, they had intended to drop me off, but Maisie kept whining, “Why can’t I get ice cream too?” So they came in with us, but thankfully they took their orders to go and left me with my Kicks friends. The seven of us sat together—me, Jessi, Emma, Zoe, Frida, Anna, and Sarah. I couldn’t help noticing that Emma and Zoe weren’t sitting next to each other like they usually did.
“So, what’s up with the eighth graders?” Frida wanted to know as we dug into our ice cream.
“Grace is mad at me,” I admitted, and then I had to fill the others in on how I had helped the Roses. “I don’t know what to do. I like Sasha, and I’d like to hang out with her again, but I don’t want to be disloyal to the Kicks.”
“I don’t think you’re being disloyal,” Emma said. “You’re just trying to help them.”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It is a little weird, but I know you’re loyal to the Kicks, Devin.”
I sighed. “That’s what Jessi said.” Jessi nodded in agreement.
“I think they’re right,” Frida said. “You’re always talking about being focused, Devin. You should focus on the Kicks.”
“Do whatever you want,” Anna chimed in.
“Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “Don’t worry about Grace. She’ll get over it.”
I dipped my spoon into my cup of banana ice cream, no closer to an answer than I had been the day before. Then Emma changed the subject.
“I have to get home soon, because tonight is the big night!” she announced.
“What big night?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Seriously, Devin? I’ve been talking about it all week. It’s the Brady McCoy concert!”
I was sure that Emma had been talking about it all week, and I was equally sure that I had tuned her out.
“Mom got two tickets months ago, one for me and one for Zoe,” Emma continued. “I could barely sleep last night, I was so excited! And I still need to decide which T-shirt I’m wearing, my Mall Mania T-shirt or the one from his first concert tour.”
Zoe didn’t say anything as she ate her mint chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate sprinkles.
“Anyway, I’m leaning toward the Mall Mania shirt because it’s sparkly,” Emma said, and then she started telling Zoe how she had looked up images of the stage design online for the concert, and she described it in detail. “It starts off with a cityscape of Los Angeles, and lots of lights, and then later in the show the whole stage looks like a snow mountain peak because Brady loves to ski. . . .”
Zoe didn’t say another word the whole rest of the time.
My dad picked up both me and Jessi so that we could bring her home, and I finally got a chance to talk to Jessi about it.
“What do you think is up between Emma and Zoe?” I asked. “It’s like they’re not fighting, but they’re not talking to each other either. It’s pretty obvious that Zoe doesn’t want to go to that concert. Why doesn’t she just say so?”
“I know. It’s weird,” Jessi agreed. “But I’m not sure how to help them.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I just hope they can work it out.”
“I bet they will,” Jessi said.
My phone beeped with another text from Sasha.
U there?
I went with my gut. Yeah, what’s up?
Helping Sasha felt right. Freezing out Sasha didn’t. If Grace and the other eighth graders had a problem with that, I would deal with it.
We beat the Panthers today! 
Sasha texted me.
“The Roses beat the Panthers today!” I told Jessi, the shock evident in my voice.
The Pinewood Panthers were one of the best teams in our division. They had beaten the Kicks once last fall. It was hard to believe that the Roses had turned things around so quickly, but I guess they had. And maybe the heat and the stomach bug going around had hurt the Panthers, too.
Jessi’s eyes grew wide. “Wow. Seriously? That’s hard to believe.”
“That’s what Sasha just texted,” I said.
Congrats! I replied.
We’re coming for you! Sasha texted back, and I knew she was teasing. But I also knew that Grace would not have taken it that way.
Good luck! I replied, and that was the end of our chat.
I sighed with relief. Sasha hadn’t asked me for any more help, so my problem with the eighth graders was solved for now.