“Go, Kicks!”
At our Saturday morning game against the Newton Tigers, the stands were packed with fans wearing blue. We always got a bigger turnout on our home field, and the temperature had returned to a reasonable 75 degrees, with blue skies overhead.
We were on the field, doing a shooting drill before the game started. I stood in line behind Zarine, waiting for my turn to shoot.
While we waited, Zarine turned and nodded toward the other end of the field, where the Tigers were warming up. They looked like tigers in their white, orange, and black uniforms.
“See that girl?” Zarine asked.
“Which one?” I replied.
I shaded my eyes with my hand to get a better look, not sure what Zarine meant. And then I spotted her.
A girl with bright red hair was zooming around the field, dribbling the ball as she went. Her ponytail bounced against her neck. She wasn’t just fast—she was fast.
“That’s Kathy Finnegan,” Zarine explained. “She just transferred to Newton from New York a few months ago. She’s so fast that they call her the Flying Finnegan.”
“Wow,” I said. “I can see that.”
“This should be an interesting game,” Zarine went on. “The Tigers beat us in the fall. And now they’ve got a secret weapon.”
“Well, not so secret,” I said. “But, yeah, it will be interesting.”
Suddenly I realized that Zarine and I were having a normal conversation—and she was an eighth grader. She didn’t seem mad at me at all. Maybe she could help me straighten out the whole thing with Grace.
“Zarine, I need to ask you something,” I began, but then Coach called out to us and I couldn’t finish.
I ran onto the field and took my position as forward along with Hailey, who smiled at me, and Grace, who didn’t even look at me. When the game started, the Tigers got control of the ball. One of the players passed it to the Flying Finnegan—and she charged down the field like a rocket.
I ran as fast as I could, but I couldn’t catch up to her. Our midfielders couldn’t catch up to her either. And she blew past our defenders to then make a shot at the goal.
Emma was on goal, and she jumped up high as the ball soared above her. She batted it away with two hands. It was a magnificent save, but I knew that Emma was going to need to make a lot more of those before the game was over.
And I was right. The Tigers’ strategy seemed to be to pass the ball to Kathy Finnegan and let her run for the goal. Emma stopped three more goals, but then one landed in the net. Coach switched out Emma for Zarine halfway through the first half, but that made total sense; any goalie going up against the Flying Finnegan was going to need a rest!
While our defense couldn’t stop the Flying Finnegan, our offense couldn’t score. Part of the problem was that Grace wouldn’t pass to me, and I knew she was doing it on purpose. There were plenty of times when she could have, and she either passed to Hailey or kept plowing through the Tigers defense, who kept taking the ball from her.
So I was relieved when the second half started and Coach replaced us with Megan and Brianna. The two of them worked well together on the field, and each of them scored pretty quickly. So with six minutes left to go, the score was Kicks 2, Tigers 1.
Sitting on the bench, I realized that one of the problems with the Flying Finnegan strategy was that while Kathy Finnegan was fast, her goal shots were what I would describe as messy. She just kicked it when she got close, without really setting up or strategizing the shot. So a few of her shots just missed, and a lot of them were kicked directly into Emma’s or Zarine’s waiting arms.
Even so, I still admired the Flying Finnegan. Because the idea that I might someday go pro had been implanted in my brain, like a seed, and I knew that if I wanted to go pro, I had to be fast too. As fast as Kathy Finnegan, if not faster.
The Flying Finnegan scored again, tying up the game 2–2. Coach Flores called Megan and Hailey out and put in me and Jessi as forwards along with Brianna.
The three of us had a lot of energy, and we stayed focused on getting to that goal. First Jessi passed the ball to me, and I passed to Brianna, but the pass got intercepted by one of the Tigers and ended up with the Flying Finnegan. This time she didn’t get to make her shot.
“Be gone, foul speed demon!” Frida cried, running up to the Flying Finnegan faster than I’d ever seen her run. She kicked the ball away from Kathy, and Zoe got it. Zoe brought the ball up to the midfield and then passed it to Brianna. Jessi and I chased after Brianna as she dribbled to the Tigers’ goal.
Two Tigers caught up to Brianna, so she passed the ball to me. When I had a clear shot, I aimed for the left corner of the goal. The goalie dove for it, but it whizzed past her. The score was Kicks 3, Tigers 2, and the game ended a minute later.
“Yay, Kicks!” The fans in the Kentville stands went wild, cheering for us. We lined up on the field to shake hands with the Tigers, and when Grace jogged past me, she actually smiled at me!
“We’re all going for frozen yogurt!” Grace announced when we were gathered around Coach Flores. I grinned at Jessi. Grace had said “all.” The team was back together again!
Soon we were sitting at three picnic tables outside the yogurt shop. I was digging into a cup of banana yogurt with chocolate chips, because I was starting to become obsessed with that combination. Frida was explaining how she had channeled enough speed to catch up to the Flying Finnegan.
“I had to reach down deep into my soul,” she said. “I imagined that I was a cheetah, racing across the savanna.”
“I’m sure the fact that you’ve been hitting the gym regularly has something to do with it too,” Jessi said.
Frida nodded. “It was a mind, body, and spirit experience, for sure.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” Emma said. “Fending off goals from that girl was exhausting!”
“They call her the Flying Finnegan,” I reported. “Zarine told me.”
“Well, even with the Flying Finnegan, the Tigers couldn’t beat us,” Jessi said. She held up her yogurt cup. “Cheers!”
Everyone at our table clinked yogurt cups. I glanced over at the table next to us, where Zoe was sitting with some of the other seventh graders. I caught her looking at us, and then she looked away.
I frowned, and then whispered to Jessi, “Well, we may be closer to solving the eighth-grade problem, but our Zoe-Emma problem is only getting worse.”
As I was saying this, a bunch of girls in Roses jerseys walked up to the yogurt shop. I waved at Sasha, who waved back. Then two of the girls stopped in front of the Kicks tables. They looked older, like they might be eighth graders.
“Look, it’s the Kicks,” said one of the girls, with straight, sun-streaked brown hair.
“We’ll see you in the play-offs,” said the other girl, whose black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail.
“You’ve got to win some games to get to the play-offs, Ashley,” Grace said, and then she and the girls at her table started laughing.
The girl with sun-streaked hair glared at Grace. “Oh, we’re winning, Gross—I mean, Grace,” she said, and the girl next to her giggled. “We won again today. And if you make it to the play-offs with us, we’ll win again.”
The two Roses girls walked away.
Grace got up from the table and stomped over to me. “Are you happy now, Devin?” she asked, and then she walked away from the yogurt shop and sat on a bench down the street, fuming. Megan got up and ran after her.
“I guess that eighth-grade problem is still on,” Jessi remarked.
“Yeah,” I agreed, but something was bugging me. I had a feeling that this whole thing was about more than just me helping Sasha.
I got up and approached Zarine at her table. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” I asked.
Zarine nodded. “Sure,” she said, and she followed me a few feet away, to where we could talk.
“I’m just wondering if something is up between Grace and that girl from the Roses,” I said.
“Ashley,” Zarine replied. “She’s captain, and the girl with her was Kinsley, her co-captain. Ashley and Grace got into it back in soccer camp this summer. They met, and it was like fire and ice. Or oil and water, or something like that. They just can’t get along and are supercompetitive with each other. So Grace took it personally when you started helping Ashley’s team.”
That made perfect sense. “But I didn’t go to soccer camp this summer! I had no way of knowing. Why didn’t she just tell me?”
Zarine shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s Grace, I guess.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “I hate that she’s so mad at me about this.”
“Keep winning games,” Zarine said. “And stop helping the Roses. Once Grace sees that, she’ll come around.”
“Um, sure,” I said. I understood the “winning games” part, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the “stop helping the Roses” part. That was my decision, not Grace’s, right?
Zarine sat down, and as I walked back to my table, Sasha and some Roses came out of the shop carrying their yogurts.
“Hey, Devin!” Sasha called out cheerfully.
I nodded. “Hey,” I said, smiling back at her. “See you around.”
I still wasn’t sure if I was going to keep helping the Roses with advice. But I was still going to be nice to Sasha, no matter what Grace said!
“What did Zarine say?” Jessi asked me, and as I started to explain, in a low voice, Grace and Megan came back. They sat back down at their table, and Grace motioned for the other girls to lean in. They started whispering.
“That’s weird,” Jessi remarked.
“Yeah,” I agreed, and I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I finished my banana yogurt with chocolate chips, Frida started doing her impression of a British whale (which is a lot funnier than it sounds), and the sun was shining—and for a while I could enjoy the fact that we had faced the Flying Finnegan and won!