Chapter 3
The rest of Fiona’s first day at the new middle school went by in a blur. She met her teachers and her classmates. She walked around the school, sometimes lost, looking at a map of the school the principal had given her in the morning.
“I never needed a map at my old school,” Fiona muttered as she tried to find her way around after school. “The locker room has to be around here somewhere!”
A girl bumped into her. “Watch it,” the girl said.
Fiona looked up and saw two girls glaring at her. “Sorry,” Fiona said. “I’m a little lost.”
“Look, Jess, she has a map,” one of the girls said.
“I know, Paula,” said Jess. “She’s not used to big buildings. They live in barns where she’s from.”
Paula laughed. Then the two girls walked away.
“That was rude,” Fiona muttered as she walked on.
Finally, she found the locker room. She was a few minutes late already, so she quickly changed and ran out to the field for the hockey tryouts.
Coach Kelly stood in the middle of the field. The team sat in a circle around her.
Before joining the circle, Fiona looked up and down the field. The first thing she noticed was that it was bigger than a hockey rink. It looked more like a soccer field.
There was a center line, and a line on each defensive side, just like in hockey. But the crease — the half circle surrounding each goal — was much, much bigger.
Fiona looked at the circle of girls sitting around the coach. She was happy to see Selma and Aliyah. But then she spotted Jess and Paula, the two girls who had been rude to her in the hall.
“Anything we can do for you?” the coach asked, looking up at Fiona.
“Oh, I’m Fiona Roth,” Fiona said. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re the new girl,” Coach Kelly said. “That’s okay. Take a seat.” Fiona smiled and sat down next to Selma.
“Oh, great,” Jess said. “Farmer Fiona wants to be on the team.” Paula cracked up laughing.
“That’s enough, Jess,” Coach Kelly said. Then she turned to Fiona. “Fiona, Selma tells me you played ice hockey back home.”
“That’s right,” Fiona said. “I played forward.”
“Well, you’ll pick this up quick enough, I should think,” the coach said. “Just remember: there’s no checking in field hockey. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, okay?”
Fiona nodded. “Okay, Coach,” she said. “No checking. Got it.”
The coach got the girls into two teams for a scrimmage. Fiona was glad when Coach Kelly put her on a team with Selma and Aliyah. She was worried she’d end up with Jess and Paula, who obviously didn’t want her around.
The practice game went pretty well at first. Soon, though, play stopped for a penalty call.
“I need a forward from each team,” the coach said. She picked up the ball.
Fiona knew from ice hockey that the face-off would come next. That would get the game going again.
“I’ll do the face-off, Coach,” Fiona called out. She ran over to the coach.
Right away, Jess and Paula started laughing.
“The ‘face-off’?” Paula said in a mocking tone. “Coach, seriously! She doesn’t even know how to play.”
“Okay, Paula,” the coach said. “Keep it to yourself.”
Then the coach turned to Fiona. “In field hockey, we start play again with a ‘bully,’” Coach Kelly explained. “It’s a little different from a face-off in ice hockey.”
Fiona blushed deeply and stood back. “Oh,” she said timidly.
“Just watch for a while, and you’ll see what I mean,” the coach added.
Selma walked over to the coach to do the bully for their team. Paula did the bully for the other team.
The coach placed the ball on the ground between them. Suddenly, the two girls slapped the ends of their sticks together three times. It made a loud clapping sound.
Then Selma slapped the ball backward to Aliyah, and the game was back on.
“This is not hockey,” Fiona muttered to herself.
With a sigh, she tried to keep up with the action. But it was like trying to watch television in a different language. She felt completely lost.