Benchwarmers Page 2

  “Thank you all for participating,” Coach J continued. “Coach C and I will have some hard decisions to make tonight.”

  As they turned to walk off the field, Andi noticed Jeff Michaels walking a half step behind her.

  “Andi?” he said.

  She turned and gave him a smile. He was shorter than she was, like most of the boys, but seemed nice in the classes they were both in. And, she had noticed the couple of times they had interacted, shy.

  “Hey, Jeff,” she said.

  He pulled up next to her. He smiled—shyly. “I just wanted to say, because I don’t know if I’ll be around after today, that most of us not named Ron Arlow and maybe a couple of his dopey friends know you belong on this team. You’re a terrific player.”

  Andi knew she deserved to be on the team—by a lot—but it was nice to hear it directly from one of the boys.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think you should be on the team, too.”

  She wasn’t completely sure if that was true. She hadn’t really noticed how well he had played. He wasn’t glaringly bad—or glaringly good. Now, though, she hoped he’d be on the team.

  “I hope you’re right,” Jeff answered.

  They had arrived at the entrance to the gym. Andi needed to go right, Jeff left.

  “See you at practice Monday,” she said, giving him a smile.

  “That would be great,” he said, blushing just a little.

  They exchanged numbers before parting, and Andi turned toward the locker room feeling good. She had proven herself to a lot of the boys. She hoped that Coach J had noticed.

  3

  Jeff had trouble sleeping that night. He honestly thought he’d played well enough during the three days of soccer tryouts to make the team—but he wasn’t one of the coaches.

  He knew he’d played better each day. He’d been a little bit intimidated the first afternoon, especially by some of the guys who clearly had real soccer-playing experience. But he’d gradually figured out that only a handful—one of them Andi Carillo—were clearly better than he was.

  He was good at anticipating where the ball was going—much the same way he was good at it on a basketball court—and the drills the coaches had the players do at the start of each practice were helpful to him because he’d never done any in the past.

  By the time the players scrimmaged for the final time on the third day, he felt a lot more confident with the ball on his foot and realized he had enough speed to stay with most of the others when he was defending.

  He lay in bed, trying to run through the list of players he knew were better than he was, but his mind would wander and he’d have to go back and start over again. He finally drifted off to sleep convinced he was no worse than the tenth or eleventh best player on the team. Even if he was off by a couple, that should mean he’d be on the list in the morning.

  When he got off the bus in front of the school the next day, he put on his favorite Philadelphia Eagles cap—the one commemorating their Super Bowl LII championship—and started walking through the halls to get to the gym at the back of the school. He was hoping not to run into a teacher who would demand he take off the cap indoors or, worse, someone who had already seen the list and would yell, “Hey, Michaels, you got cut.”

  Getting cut would be bad enough; hearing the news from someone else would be even worse.

  He was relieved when he arrived at the bulletin board outside the gym office and found no one there. His bus was always one of the last to arrive at school—the closer a student lived to school, the later he or she was picked up—and that apparently meant that most kids had already checked the list.

  The list was alphabetical. He started from the top: Mark Adkins … Ron Arlow … Mike Craig … Danny Diskin … Max Friedman … Stevie Gillum … Allan Isidro … Taylor Jackson … Ethan Lewis … Jeff Michaels …

  He’d made it! He breathed a deep sigh of relief, then looked down and realized his hands were shaking.

  Then a thought occurred to him. He went back to the top of the list and started again, and read all the way to the bottom—Teddy O’Connell … Zack Roth … Terry Trang … Reed Whitlow … Bobby Woodward—wondering if for some reason Coach J had decided to list Andi underneath all the boys to make some kind of point. He hadn’t. Jeff counted: fifteen names, none of them Carillo. That was impossible. In making his mental list the night before he’d had her as high as second—behind, sadly, Arlow—and no lower than fifth. She was definitely better than he was and, in fact, better than most of the boys whose names he was now looking at on the bulletin board.

  He wondered what might have happened.

  “Hey, Jeff!”

  He turned and saw Andi walking up behind him. He could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t know yet. She was smiling, clearly expecting good news.

  “Did you make it?” she asked.

  “Um … yeah, I did,” he said. “Lucky, I guess.”

  Something in his tone must have warned her. The smile disappeared. She stepped around him and looked at the list. After a moment she put a finger on the printout and ran it down from top to bottom. Jeff could see anger in her eyes.

  “It must be a mistake,” Jeff said. “There’s no way you didn’t—”

  He never finished the sentence because Andi had turned and was racing down the hallway. The bell was ringing, meaning kids had to be in their first-period classroom in five minutes or be marked late.

  His joy at making the team suddenly felt hollow. He hoped it had just been a mistake.

  * * *

  As she ran down the hallway, Andi felt badly about leaving Jeff standing there with his mouth hanging open. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t been on the list.

  Like him, she wondered if maybe it was just a mistake—an oversight. Her gut told her that wasn’t it. She wasn’t sure what to do next. Go straight to Mr. Block’s office? Call her parents?

  No. She had to see the coach before she did anything else. Her heart pounding, she walked past the door to her first-period English class and went three doors down.

  Andi followed several of Coach J’s students into his classroom. The digital clock above the whiteboard said it was 8:28. The late bell would ring in two minutes.

  Mr. Johnston was sitting at his notebook computer, writing something. While the other kids headed to their seats, Andi walked over to him. He looked up, saw her, and shut the computer lid.

  “Ms. Carillo, did you take a wrong turn this morning?” he said.

  “No, Coach, sir,” she answered, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I just checked the list for the soccer team and…”

  “You’re upset you didn’t make the team.”

  That took the oversight option off Andi’s list.

  “Of course I am,” she said, her voice rising. “You know I’m one of the best players—”

  The late bell rang. Mr. Johnston stood.

  “Ms. Carillo, if you come back here at the start of lunch period, I will gladly explain to you why you aren’t on the team,” he said. “For now, I’d advise you worry about getting to your first-period class with Mrs. Cohen, I believe.”

  He turned away from her.

  “Good morning, everyone,” he said to his students.

  Andi stood frozen for a second, then turned and walked briskly down the hall to her English classroom.

  She walked in—a minute late—expecting Mrs. Cohen to say something. She didn’t. Maybe it was because Andi had a look on her face that might burn a hole in someone.

  4

  By the time the lunch bell rang, Andi had decided not to bother going back to see the coach. It was clear to her from his attitude that he felt good about cutting her, and it was unlikely—more like impossible, she figured—that anything she said was going to change his mind.

  She hadn’t wanted to involve her parents in the first place. She had known if Mr. Block ordered Coach Johnston to let her try out that he would resent it. It was now apparent that his resentment had
led to her being cut.

  Unfairly.

  Which meant she had no choice. She wasn’t going to accept his decision without a fight. So instead of heading to the cafeteria to eat, she walked to the schoolyard, which was already crowded with kids digging into their brown-bag lunches and goofing around as they enjoyed the weather. After finding a quiet spot, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and powered it on.

  She knew her mother would probably be in a meeting of some kind but was counting on her answering when she saw Andi’s number come up, since her daughter never called during the school day.

  She was right. “Andi, I’m in a meeting,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes,” Andi said firmly.

  “Can it wait five minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  It took only three minutes for her mom to call back.

  Andi told her what had happened and Coach J’s response when she had gone to see him.

  Her mother sighed. “Andi, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Dad and I will help any way we can. What do you want to do next?”

  Andi thought about it. She knew now she had been right not to go back to Coach Johnston. He wasn’t going to change his mind, and she might lose her temper and say something she shouldn’t.

  Both her parents were lawyers. She wondered if there was something to be done legally.

  “Can we take him to court?” she asked. “Make him put me on the team?”

  Her mom sighed. “What you’re talking about is getting some kind of an injunction right away,” she said. “Those are usually used to get someone to stop doing something. I think it would be tough legally for a judge to order a coach to put someone on a team.”

  Sadly, that made sense to Andi.

  “Let’s talk about it when you get home,” she said. “Dad’s coming home from Boston this afternoon, right?”

  “Plane should be landing about now.”

  That was good enough for Andi—for the moment.

  * * *

  She headed for the cafeteria, grabbed some chicken and a salad, and sat down by herself. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone at that moment. She especially didn’t want to talk to Ron Arlow, but there he was, walking in her direction and, uninvited, sitting down across from her.

  “Got cut, huh?” he said, without bothering to say hello.

  She kept her head down, as if the chicken was the most delicious meal she’d ever had.

  “I don’t know why you bothered in the first place,” Arlow said. “The only reason you were even out there was that Block forced Coach J to let you try out. There was no way he was keeping a girl on the team.”

  The comment about Coach Johnston being forced to let her try out got Andi’s attention. How did Arlow know that?

  “Who told you that?” she said hotly, picking up her head to look at the smirking Arlow.

  “Coach told my dad,” he said. “My dad wanted to know what in the world you were doing out there, and so Coach J told him. He also told him not to worry because you weren’t going to make the team.”

  Now Andi was really angry. It sounded like she’d never had a chance to make the team.

  “I was good enough to be on the team and you know it,” she said, glaring at Arlow.

  “Not the point, is it?” Arlow said. “We don’t need anyone on the team who bursts into tears the minute things get a little bit tough, do we?”

  “You see me crying, Arlow?” she said. “You were the biggest whiner out there if anyone even touched you.”

  Arlow turned a little red, letting Andi know she’d hit some kind of nerve.

  He was about to answer, finger pointed at Andi, when they heard a voice directly behind him.

  “Give it a rest, Arlow.”

  It was Jeff Michaels.

  “Why don’t you go sit at that empty table over there with all your friends?” Jeff said.

  Andi was the one smirking now. It might not have been an original line, but it was funny.

  Arlow stood up. He was taller than Andi, which meant Jeff was giving up even more height to him. Not to mention weight and muscle.

  “You want to be her knight in shining shin guards, Michaels? You want to take this outside? Is that what you want?”

  Jeff put down his tray on the empty spot next to where Andi was sitting. Heads were turning in their direction at the sound of raised voices. The last thing Andi wanted was Jeff getting into a fight with Arlow on her behalf. For one thing, he would lose. For another, she didn’t want a knight in shining armor of any kind.

  “Let’s go,” Jeff said, just a tiny quaver in his voice. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Go where?” an adult voice said.

  Walter Liggett, who taught eighth-grade English and looked old enough to have taught Benjamin Franklin’s kids, was walking up to the table with a stern look on his always-stern face. Apparently he had cafeteria duty this week.

  Both boys began staring at the floor.

  “Nowhere, sir,” Jeff said.

  “Mr. Arlow?”

  “Nowhere, sir,” Arlow repeated.

  “Good,” Mr. Liggett said. “And just for the record, if I happen to hear about the two of you in a fight either during school, after school, or before school—and I will hear—you’ll both be on detention until spring break. Understood?”

  Both boys nodded.

  “Understood?” Mr. Liggett repeated in a raised voice.

  “Yes, sir,” they both said.

  Mr. Liggett turned and left. The two boys glared at each other for a moment, then Arlow picked up his tray.

  “Watch yourself at practice, Michaels,” he said. Then, looking down at Andi, he added, “No need to give you that warning, huh, Carillo?”

  He walked away.

  Andi was tempted to chase him down. Maybe he’d go outside with her.

  Bad idea, she realized. Liggett was still lingering.

  Jeff slid his tray across the table and said, “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  * * *

  The funny thing about it was that Jeff probably never would have had the guts to sit down with Andi if he hadn’t heard Arlow picking on her.

  He felt badly that she had to put up with the jerk but was, truth be told, delighted to have an excuse to sit with her.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said softly, while she picked at her food, head down, still shaking a little bit with anger.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for at all,” she said. “Thanks for trying to intervene.”

  Jeff smiled. “I was actually glad Mr. Liggett showed up. Arlow probably would have killed me.”

  Andi managed a smile. “Who’d have thought that Wally Liggett would save your life one day?” she said.

  They both laughed.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about what happened this morning,” Jeff said.

  “You mean—”

  “You being cut,” he said. “It’s obviously unfair and wrong, and I might be able to help.”

  Andi was puzzled.

  Seeing the look on her face, he pushed on. “My dad works for Comcast—I mean NBC Sports–Philadelphia; they changed the name a while back. This is the kind of story that people will talk about, especially nowadays when girls playing on boys’ teams has been going on for years. It’s ridiculous and…”

  She stopped him, putting a hand up.

  “What if you and I go talk to Coach J together?” Jeff said.

  “That’s really cool of you to offer,” she said. “But before anything else happens, I need to see what my parents think. My guess is that my dad’s first idea will be to go back to Mr. Block. He was the one who got me into tryouts in the first place.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. I’ll talk to my dad about it tonight, see if he has any ideas.”

  She knew who his dad worked for—she’d seen him often on TV and especially liked the fact that he didn’t just cover the Eagles and Phillies but als
o covered the Union and high-school football and basketball.

  She reached a fist across the table.

  “It will work out,” she said. “Thanks for wanting to help.”

  Jeff smiled, bumping her fist with his own and trying to think of something clever to say.

  Finally he settled for “You’re welcome.”

  5

  Hal Johnston wasn’t surprised when Andi Carillo didn’t show up to talk to him at lunchtime. He waited in his classroom an extra ten minutes to make sure she wasn’t coming before heading to the faculty lounge, where almost everyone on the staff ate lunch.

  He guessed that, just as she had done before, Carillo would go to Block, to complain about being cut from the team.

  He smiled at the thought. He had anticipated that move and had gone to see the principal early that morning to tell him that he had decided to cut the girl and why.

  “She’s definitely one of the best fifteen players who tried out,” he had explained. “In fact, based purely on her skills, she’d start as one of the forwards. But I have to put together the best possible team, and I think the presence of a girl will be divisive. It will be especially tough for boys not as good as she is to handle.”

  He’d thought this through. He didn’t really have anything against the kid. But he simply didn’t believe in coed sports teams. Boys should compete against boys; girls against girls.

  If that made him old-fashioned, so be it.

  Johnston figured Block probably wasn’t yet forty, which made him at least ten years younger than the coach.

  Which might have been why he wasn’t surprised when Block had furrowed his brow before answering.

  “Mr. Johnston, we’re almost two decades into the twenty-first century,” he said. “Boys playing on the same team with girls is nothing new. If she deserves to be on the team, she deserves to be on the team. Period.”

  Johnston had been expecting him to say that. “Mr. Block, when I agreed to let her try out it was on the promise, from you, that I have final say as coach as to which fifteen players would give us the best team. This gives us the best team, regardless of talent level.”