Archenemy (4 page)

The stuff with church didn't end there, either. Mom wrote a letter to the editor of
Fraser Daily
, our local newspaper. It said the Pastor Meyer should either quit being hateful or quit his job. She suggested she might be able to sue him—which was a bluff, she told me later—and things just got uglier from there.

I'm really grateful for what she did for a couple of reasons. It was her way of telling me I had no reason to feel ashamed. And it ended up being a chance for lots of other people to tell me the same thing—including my dad, although I already knew he was proud of me. My teammates too, who called a team meeting to tell me that they would always have my back.

Still, the whole thing was
really
public—too public. I'm not like my mom. I don't need to fix things all the time. The only place where I
do
like to take a stand is on the soccer field. And the only issue I like to stand against is the other team scoring on the Copperheads. By the time Eva arrived last spring, the controversy had pretty much vanished, and my life was finally just about soccer again. Which is how I want to keep it.

“How you doing, Addie?” my dad asks from the doorway. His voice is so calm and quiet that I'm hardly startled at all. If Mom had said my name, my soccer ball probably would have went flying into a lampshade or out my window and into the street. Instead, I bump it into the air one more time with my knee and catch it.

“Hey, Dad.”

He's standing in the doorframe, sipping from a mug of hot chocolate. This is as far as he's going to come, I know, unless I invite him into my room. He's really good about not invading my privacy. Belle hops off the bed, crosses my room, and presses her body against Dad's leg. She loves the guy.

“I saw you at the game tonight …” he says. I can tell he's really concerned. Not because of the tone of his voice but because of his calves. I can see them bulging underneath his wind pants as he rocks from toe to heel. This is a sure sign he's tense. We laugh about his “tell” all the time. He says it's a good thing cards are played at a table. Otherwise, he'd never get away with bluffing. He must not want me to know he's concerned, though, because he stops rocking and crouches down to pet Belle. “Anything you want to talk about?”

Unlike my mom, who usually works really long hours, my dad's a manager at Sportsville, a local equipment shop, and his hours are pretty flexible. When I look up to the bleachers during my games, I can usually spot him sitting somewhere near the middle, watching closely. He's not a soccer expert, but he
is
a great athlete, so I know he can tell whenever something isn't right on the field. I also know he'll never push me into talking about anything if I don't want to.

He takes another sip of hot chocolate, which is his favorite drink, even though it's almost always really hot in North Carolina and hot chocolate seems like just about the worst beverage choice in the world. I asked him about it once, and he said it reminded him of sitting in the lodge after ski jumping—which strikes me now as really sad.

“Why'd you give up ski jumping?” I ask.

The question might seem out of the blue, but it's not. I've been asking him this exact question for years, and each time he gives me the same answer: “Because I fell in love with your mother. There's nothing wrong with having two loves, Addie—but sometimes you have to choose one over the other.”

Usually that answer is enough for me, but today I want to know more. “So Mom made you move to North Carolina?”

“She didn't make me, but I knew that's what she wanted.”

Fraser is my mom's hometown, but it's never made much sense to me that she wanted to return after college. It's not like she has tons of friends or even family here. When she's fighting against yet another injustice, it can even feel like everybody here is her enemy.

“Why'd she want to come back here?”

“You'll have to ask your mother that,” Dad says. “But it's always suited me just fine.”

Unlike my mother, who has dark brown skin, Dad's skin is pasty, freckled, and burns in a matter of minutes. Still, somehow he seems to fit in better than she does.

“Don't you ever regret giving up something you loved so much?” I ask.

“Sure. But not for very long. I may have loved ski jumping, but I love your mom more. You're not too bad either,” he says, smiling.

I smile too. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

“If you need to talk about anything, just let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dad pats Belle on the top of the head and steps back into the hall.

A few moments later, a crumpled object flies through the open window and lands at my feet. I pick it up and unfold it. It's a magazine picture—the same picture I took from Eva's room last summer. In pink ink, Eva has drawn a speech bubble next to the soccer babe's mouth.

“Quit staring at me, perv!” the soccer babe says to me.

I

returned the picture of the soccer babe to Eva around the end of July.

Actually, I wasn't the one who returned it. Skittles did.

She and Belle were in Eva's room with the two of us—a situation that was still pretty recent. A couple weeks earlier, Eva had brought her dog into the house for the first time while I was there too, just when I was about to leave. It was a test, Eva explained. If Skittles didn't try to bite me, then she no longer considered me a stranger. Eva assured me she had a good grip on her dog's collar, but I still hustled for the door. I liked my ankles how they were—without any dog teeth attached to them. Luckily, Skittles didn't lunge for me or act distressed in any way. “You come here so often,” Eva said, “she probably thinks you're family. Either that or she's intimidated by your calf muscles.”

Anyway, the four of us—two people, two canines—were in Eva's room when Skittles stuck her nose into the unzipped side pocket of my soccer bag.

“Skittles!” Eva yelled.

The beagle took her snout from my bag and backed away, opening and closing her jaw.

Eva grabbed her tail, reeled her in, and pried open Skittles's jaw. She pulled out a ball of crinkly paper. “What's this?” she asked, unfolding the picture.

I took a look at the picture and remembered. “It's just—earlier this summer you told me to take a picture, and—”

Eva interrupted me. “Where did you find this?”

“In here. It was—”

“You shouldn't have taken it,” she interrupted. She sounded really mad.

“Sorry. I just—”

“You were supposed to take one of
those
,” she said, pointing to her ceiling of studs.

“I … I didn't want to.”

Eva's mouth was open, but she didn't say anything for what felt like a long time.

“Look, Eva,” I continued, “maybe I should have told you earlier—it's really not a big deal—but I'm not into what's in those pictures. Because—because I like what's in
this
picture … you know?” I nodded my head at the soccer babe.

When she didn't reply, I thought maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I thought about Pastor Meyer and how Eva said she agreed with the stuff he said. I thought that maybe we weren't close friends after all, not really, even if Eva kept saying we were. If we were truly friends, I'd be able to tell her this, wouldn't I?

All the sudden it was my turn to be mad. I wondered if this was how Mom felt when fighting for one of her social causes.

I focused my fury on Eva, ready to plead my case. That's when I realized her cheeks were no longer red. Instead, she was crying. And smiling.

I didn't know what to think.

“Me too,” she finally said. She wiped away a tear and smudged her eyeliner.

“Yeah?”

She nodded her head and rubbed her eyes some more. “I just wasn't sure if anyone else around here would get it,” she said.

We smiled at each other for a while, and then she went to her bedside table and pulled open the drawer. When she spun back around, she had four pieces of tape dangling from her fingers. “Hold this,” she said and handed me the picture.

She put the tape on the back corners of the picture and then pointed me to one of the few remaining bare spots on the ceiling.

W

hen the balled-up soccer babe landed in my room, I went to the window in time to see Eva sprinting away in a sundress and thought maybe enough was enough. Maybe it was finally time to talk to Coach or my parents to turn her in. Maybe I had no choice. She'd been harassing me for months, and I wasn't sure I could take it any longer.

But for some reason, I couldn't—not when I thought about her running away in that dress. There was something so pathetic about it, so desperate. It reminded me of late August, which was the last time I saw her running away. She was trying to hurt me that evening, I knew, because I had hurt her back then.

 . . .

Our sixth game of the season is away at Woodvine. We play them twice a year, and they're a way better team at home. Some teams are like that—as if you're getting two different teams depending on where you play them.

Woodvine's stadium is actually really cool. It's set into a hillside and feels like you're playing inside a bowl. It also feels like Woodvine's fans are sitting way closer than fans at our stadium. All their chants are way louder. Way meaner too.

Woodvine's athletic director must have lost the memo about student conduct because the fans are ruthless today. Boos rain down on us during the entire game. So do insults—many of them pretty creative. When Dayton Frey fails to control a pass and turns it over to Woodvine, the fans chant, “club foot!” and keep chanting it anytime Dayton touches the ball. When Coach subs out Elise Heisel, one of our weaker players, the fans chant, “Forced retirement!”

I feel sorry for Elise, but the truth is that this is really fun. Nothing fires me up more than opposing fans. Besides, it's hard to dwell on Eva's constant comments when I can hardly hear them—and when the Woodvine fans' comments are way more brutal.

With only a few minutes left against Woodvine, I'm pretty sure that not turning Eva in was the right decision. I can handle her antics as long as I get to play in games like this.

Especially when she plays this well. We're winning 1–0, and we have Eva to thank for the lead. She's been racing around all over the place.

We're in the closing minutes when Woodvine invades our side of the field for the last time. The ball is to my right and glued to a Woodvine forward's foot.

“Mark her, Faith!” yells Alyssa, our goalie, and Faith Patel moves in to do just that. Except before she gets there, she stumbles, and all of a sudden, there's no one between the Woodvine forward and the goal box. She pushes the ball ahead of her, and Alyssa has to make a decision to back up or come out of the goal in a hurry. As always, Alyssa's decisive—she bursts out of the goal and pounces on the forward. She's too late though. The forward has just enough time to chip the ball over her outstretched hands.

I watch the shot floating toward the goal, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm too far away. In less than a second, Woodvine will be celebrating a game-winning goal.

But then, out of nowhere, Eva swoops in and heads the ball out of harm's way.

It's a great play—but Woodvine has a corner kick coming up.

So, it's my time to make a great play of my own. I take my station in the corner of the goalie box and think,
C'mon, Woodvine. Kick the ball nice and high.

Which is exactly what happens.

I watch the ball arc through the air as I get ready to launch off my feet. That's when I feel someone's hand tugging at my jersey. This is nothing new—opponents try to keep me grounded by grabbing my jersey all the time. Without taking my eyes off the airborne ball, I make my hand into a fist and hack away at the player's arm. Usually, doing this is enough to get free of someone's grasp.