Archenemy (5 page)

But not this time.

The hand still has my jersey in its clutches, and I don't have any more time to free myself. The ball has arrived, and I jump up as high as possible with somebody trying to pull me down.

Luckily, it's high enough. I get my forehead on the ball and redirect it away from the goal. Madison Wong, who has dropped back to help out, gets to the ball and clears it across midfield.

We've dodged a bullet. I breathe a sigh of relief as I turn to see the opponent who grabbed me.

But the player behind me isn't an opponent.

It's Eva.

T

his isn't the first time Eva's hand has been a problem.

By the end of last summer, it was an area of huge concern. Not because it was grabbing my shirt, but because it was grabbing
my
hand.

For a while, after the soccer babe picture found its way out of my bag, things seemed really cool. It was nice to have the issue out in the open. If anything, we seemed more comfortable around each other than ever. But then all of a sudden, Eva started holding my hand whenever we were alone together. And I let her—more out of surprise than anything else. I didn't know what else to do.

The hand-holding wasn't the only thing that was new. She also got in the habit of writing me lots of notes that she stuck on Skittles's collar. Each note was written on lined paper she'd torn from some notebook. Sure, she'd done the same thing on the first day we met—but these notes were different. I started to wish she'd just text me like everyone else—or stop sending the messages altogether.

Sometimes, the notes were jokey. While we sat on the edge of her bed reading
Sports Illustrated
, Eva would giggle and plop Skittles on my lap. “I think she has a note for you,” she'd say.

I'd take the note out of her collar and read things like
U R Awesome Blossom!
These notes were always signed
Love, Skittles,
so I'd give the dog a thank-you pat on its head and get back to my
Sports Illustrated
.

But then, one day in late August, I got a note that wasn't from Skittles. My parents had taken me on a weekend trip to tour some colleges in the area. As I unpacked from the trip, a balled-up piece of paper flew through my window.

In her usual pink ink and loopy letters, Eva asked herself a question:
Did you miss Addie Williams?

Below the question, she'd written her answer:
Whoop!

It all would have seemed harmless enough if I could have thanked Skittles and maybe complimented the beagle's throwing arm. But I couldn't do that because underneath the answer, it said,
Love, Eva
.

I poked my head out the window, and there Eva was, a huge smile across her face.

“Hey!” she said. “Long time no see.”

It hadn't been
that
long.

“Hey, Eva.”

“Well,” she said, “are you coming?”

“Coming where?”

She arched an eyebrow. “It's a surprise. C'mon!”

I didn't want to go with her. She was wearing a dress and heels, for one thing, and there weren't any places I wanted to be that required this sort of attire.

“I'm just wearing a T-shirt and shorts,” I told her.

“You look perfect,” she said.

So much for that excuse. “I'll go get Belle,” I said.

“Let's leave the dogs out of it, just this once, okay?”

Suddenly I really didn't want to go—not after the way she said that, with her eyes locked on mine. But I did go because I couldn't think of an excuse not to.

And it turned out I really was dressed appropriately because our destination was the Fraser High soccer field. At midfield, Eva had laid out a blanket and a picnic basket. She guided me to the blanket, her heels sinking into the turf with each step.

That's when it occurred to me that she was wearing the same shoes as the first time we met. The same dress too.

She sat down on the blanket with her legs folded under her and waited for me to do the same.

I didn't.

“Did you bring a ball?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the parking lot. She'd driven us here in her parents' minivan.

“No,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Are you sure? It's a big car. Maybe there's one in the trunk or between the seats.”

“I didn't bring you here to play soccer,” Eva said. She grabbed my hand. “Sit down, okay? I have something I want to tell you.”

I almost did sit down. Her hand and her words were so gentle, it would have been easy to give into them.

But I couldn't.

Now, looking back, I realize how much courage it took Eva to do all of this. The letter, the picnic, the words she was about to say—all of it was a risk. She'd cluttered her room with soccer studs so she could hide a soccer babe without anyone noticing. But here she was, sitting on a picnic blanket with no studs in sight. There was only me. She wanted to talk to me—and we both knew about what.

Eva had even chosen to say what she wanted to say
in public
. The more I think about it, the more amazing that is to me. Okay, no one was around, but they could have been. This wasn't her bedroom. It was a place where a couple dozen people usually performed for crowds of onlookers.

Which was, as much as anything, the reason I couldn't—I
wouldn't
—sit down.

Because if I did, it felt like the Fraser High soccer field, my favorite place in the world, would be forever changed. It could never again be just a soccer field. And I wasn't ready to give that up. I wanted Eva to keep being my friend, but more than that, I wanted her to be my teammate. Being anything more than that was too big a risk. It had taken a couple years for the New Hope Church controversy to go away, and I didn't want to have to deal with any other non-soccer-related issues. This wasn't about shame or fear. It was about priorities.

Eva signed her name under the word
Love
. I thought I might even feel the same way. But like my dad always said, “Sometimes you have to choose one love over another.” And that's what I did. Dad chose a person over athletics, and I'm glad for my sake that was his choice. But I chose soccer over a person, and at the time, it felt like a no-brainer.

It still does.

So instead of sitting next to Eva and letting her say what she'd come here to say, I pulled my hand out of hers.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't feel the way you do. I just want to be teammates. And friends. But … not anything more.”

Eva didn't say anything for a long time. In fact, she didn't do anything at all. She'd been stunned so badly that her body was frozen stiff. When she did move, she collapsed. Her chin fell to her chest. Her shoulders sunk. Her hands dropped into her lap. She started bawling.

It was terrible to watch. After I don't know how much time, I finally sat down next to her on the blanket.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm really,
really
sorry.” I reached for her heaving shoulders and tried to hold her steady. But she flinched, lashing out at me with her elbow.

“I don't know what you think I was going to say,” she said, her voice weirdly loud. “But you must have misunderstood.”

“Okay,” I said. Both of us knew I hadn't misunderstood.

“You don't need to apologize,” she said. “Just a misunderstanding, that's all.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Of course, I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be okay?” She stood up. “I'm not a … I'd
never..
.” Then, standing over me, she said, “I don't know how anyone could be like that. I don't know how
you
could be like that.”

“You can't control it!” I said.

“Yes, I can. Maybe
you
can't. But I can.”

She turned around and walked away. Or she tried to. Her heels kept sinking into the turf until she reached down and yanked her shoes off. I sat on the blanket and watched her run across the field and away from everything that had just happened.

“W

hat's this?” Mom asks. She sounds alarmed.

I've just gotten back from the Woodvine game and I'm still in my uniform, plopped down on my bed.

“What?” I ask, sitting up.

Unlike my dad, Mom has no problem striding right into my room. “
This
, Addie.” She holds up the crumpled picture of the soccer babe.

“Where'd you get that?” I ask.

“From the pocket of your pants. I was doing laundry. Where did
you
get it?”

She's standing with her feet spread out and her knees slightly bent. It's what Coach Berg would call an athletic position. Her feet are planted, but not so much that she couldn't pounce on me if I tried to escape. Neither one of us is going anywhere until I answer her question.

So I do. I tell her everything. What happened at the end of the summer; what's been happening ever since. I'm surprised that I start to tear up—I'm not usually the crying type. I'm even more surprised that
she
starts tearing up. Mom's a sort of professional activist. She works for the state and deals with people getting harassed (or worse) all the time.

“You've got to report this, Addie,” she says.

All along, I knew she'd say that, of course. That's why I waited so long to tell her.
How could I possibly tattle on someone
, I wondered,
who only a few months ago was my best friend?

“I'll help you if you want, but you—”

“It's okay,” I interrupt. “I'll do it.”

Because after what Eva pulled at the Woodvine game, tattling suddenly seems a whole lot easier.

E

va didn't start harassing me right away.

For a while, it seemed like she never wanted to be near me again. She didn't call or come over. She definitely didn't speak to me. We had only a couple more summer soccer games, and she skipped both of them. After all the on-field yelling and bantering we'd done, those last games were depressingly quiet. Often, when I looked around the field, I was surprised that Eva wasn't there. It was like my brain couldn't believe that she was gone. I'd only known her for one summer, but soccer didn't make as much sense without her.

When school started up, the only time we saw each other was in the hallways. Eva would duck her head and pretend she didn't notice me.

At the time, it was really sad. In one afternoon, I'd lost my best friend, apparently forever. But now, I'd do just about anything to go back to the way things were in the fall. Loneliness was bad, but I could handle it. If Eva had spent the rest of her life avoiding me, I could have spent the rest of mine as I had before we met.

But then one day she stopped avoiding me and started getting in my way. She would brush against me in the hallway and then hiss, “Get away from me!” She would tell me that seats were saved at the lunch table when I tried to sit by my teammates. When the other girls gave me a seat, Eva stormed off and found a new table.