Lily Out of Bounds Page 3

  “Getting hurt isn’t cheating, Lily. It’s a totally expected part of soccer. Just remember, when you get hurt, even a little, roll on the ground and act like your leg is about to fall off. That way you’ll get the free kick or the penalty kick. Everyone does it. You guys need to wake up. If you want to play soccer like the pros, you better do what the pros do. That’s how you win.”

  Lily and Olivia shared a look. Coach Chris had never told them to do anything like that. Lily shifted to massage the other side of her back as she thought. The Bombers lived by the Soccer Sisters Code, the rules they had made up themselves one day when practice was rained out. Falling down and rolling around was definitely not on the list.

  But still, Colby seemed so sure of herself. And she knew what she was talking about with SOPs and ODPs.

  Lily didn’t know what to think. She traced the outline of the tattoo on her arm. VICTORY.

  Lily was opening her mouth to tell Colby about the Code when she heard loud footsteps approaching. She looked past the bushes and saw the beam of a strong flashlight bobbing on the path to the hot tub.

  “Someone’s coming!” Lily said.

  “Kill the jets,” Colby whispered to Olivia. Olivia jumped out of the Jacuzzi and hit the red button. The hot tub went silent, which only made the footsteps seem louder.

  “Hey!” they heard a deep voice yell. “Hot tub closed at ten.”

  It was hotel security. A tall man with a substantial belly and a serious scowl was approaching. Olivia stood dripping on the patio, eye black smudged across her face.

  This was not good.

  “What are you doing over there?” he yelled. “This is private property. Don’t move.”

  Olivia’s newfound confidence seemed to fly out the window. She looked at Lily. Then at Colby. Lily and Colby’s eyes met and they yelled as loudly as they could.

  “RUUUUUUUUUUUUN!”

  Chapter 4.

  Olivia took off like a cat with a snake tied to its tail. Lily saw her make a drippy beeline for the rear lobby door. You couldn’t miss the squish-squash of her wet clothes and the slap of her feet as she scurried down the path. Lily followed Colby’s lead and slunk back into the water as the security guard trudged past.

  “Hang on there!” He puffed after Olivia, seeming not to see the other two girls in the hot tub.

  “Let’s go the other way,” Colby said.

  Lily and Colby slipped out of the hot tub and ran up the path towards the parking lot, the way the guard had approached. They both peered over their shoulders to see if he was following.

  “Oh man,” Lily said, “I hope Olivia made it inside.”

  “No kidding,” Colby said. “She’d turn us in in a second.”

  Lily slowed to a quick, pensive walk. The parking lot was on their left and the hotel was on the right. Everything seemed calm. Now all she could hear was the tiny pitter-patter of water drops trailing from their shorts and hair.

  It was eerie.

  “How are we going to get back in?” Lily asked.

  “I say we go around the front and wait for everything to calm down. We can sneak back into the lobby and up the stairs,” Colby answered.

  The girls moved past a group of fragrant hedges encircling a light post. As they emerged from the shadows, Colby’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, lookey what we have here.”

  It was a golf cart, but a super-duper version. There were doors on the side, windshield wipers, headlights, and even an iPod holder. “Security” was stenciled in bright orange letters across the front.

  “Ever drive one of these?” Colby asked.

  “I’ve never even seen one like this,” Lily said, running her hand along the fiberglass fender.

  “Get in,” Colby said, holding one of the doors open.

  “Are you nuts?” Lily asked, backing away.

  Colby smiled and didn’t answer. She climbed into the driver’s seat and began fiddling with the buttons on the snazzy dash.

  Lily leaned in, looked around, and said, “Colby, you’re getting everything all wet. Let’s go.”

  Suddenly, the radio came to life, startling Lily, “Canvassing rear parking lot. Over.”

  Lily looked at the back of the hotel. And all the cars.

  “Uh, Colby …” she said.

  “Check out these seats!” Colby said.

  “Colby, I think this is the rear…”

  “I think this is leather!”

  “… parking lot!” Lily was frantic. She heard footsteps again. “Colby, let’s go!”

  Colby didn’t budge.

  The footsteps got louder.

  “Colby, someone’s coming!”

  Lily looked over the roof of the golf cart and saw the guard running toward them from the front of the hotel. Lily turned to run, but Colby kept fiddling around by the steering wheel.

  “Step away from that vehicle!” a voice yelled. Lily grabbed Colby by the arm and tried to pull her out of the golf cart. This was getting out of hand. Lily just wanted to get out of there, grab Colby, find Olivia, and get back in bed where they belonged.

  “GET IN!” Colby yelled. Lily’s mouth hung open as she saw Colby pull the gearshift. Beep. Beep. Beep. The golf cart began to move in reverse.

  “COLBY, NO!” Lily chased the cart as it pulled away.

  “He’ll catch us on foot, Lily!” Colby shouted. “Come on!”

  Lily shook her head in disbelief, turned, and sprinted back up the path. She dove behind a row of hedges, too scared to do anything but watch.

  “Get back here!” the guard yelled. His face was contorted with anger and exertion. Colby took off like Danica Patrick on an Indy 500 straightaway. The out-of-shape guard bent over to catch his breath, and then jogged after her into the parking lot.

  He would never have caught them on foot, Lily realized.

  A few seconds later, she heard the cart approach. Colby was circling back. A second guard had joined the chase. Uh-oh, this guy is in much better shape, Lily thought. Colby sped closer, zooming past the cars in the lot. The clunky guard tried to block her. Lily saw Colby grin and hook a sharp left toward the Jacuzzi. She careened smoothly away from him and headed straight for the hotel.

  But Lily could tell she was going too fast. Colby shrieked as the golf cart clipped the curb and started to spin. Lily held her breath as Colby launched herself from the driver’s seat a second before the cart crashed into a sprinkler head. A wet rainbow of water exploded into the night sky.

  Colby took off toward the hotel and Lily followed her, desperate to get back to her room. She could hear the guards swearing loudly, but a quick look over her shoulder told her they were too busy dealing with the broken water pipe and crashed golf cart to care about them.

  Lily and Colby snuck back inside the lobby and went quietly up the stairs. On the fourth floor they found a frightened Olivia hiding in the stairwell.

  “Lily! Colby! OMG!” Olivia shrieked. “What happened out there?”

  Lily started to explain about the wild golf cart chase, but before she could get the words out, Colby started to laugh.

  A gut-busting, bent over, double-barrel guffaw.

  “Did … did… did …you see the look on that guy’s face when he was chasing me?” Colby gasped between breaths. “Man, I thought he was going to split his pants.”

  She grabbed her sides, tears streaming down her face. Her laughter was contagious. Olivia started to giggle. Despite herself, Lily started to laugh along with them, her fear releasing itself in a fit of laughter.

  “I can’t believe you took his golf cart!” Lily yelled. “That was unreal!”

  “You did what?” Olivia asked.

  “Colby took the security guard’s cart and they chased her all over the parking lot!”

  Olivia stopped laughing, slack-jawed. “Are you kidding me? Colby, are you crazy?”

  “Relax,” Colby said.

  “Relax?” Olivia said. “When they find us, we’re dead meat! We’ll be kicked off the t
eam, arrested, suspended, grounded … you name it!”

  “They’re not going to find us.”

  Lily felt her thudding helicopter heart taking off again. What if Olivia was right?

  “They’re not going to find us,” Colby repeated. “Because they aren’t going to tell anyone what happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Lily asked.

  “Well, for starters, do you think those two guards are going to admit that some girl stole their golf cart and made them look like idiots?”

  Lily wasn’t convinced. “But what if they do? You crashed the cart into a sprinkler!”

  “She what!?” Olivia lay down across three stairs and covered her eyes with her hands. “OMG, OMG, OMG.”

  Lily nodded.

  Colby didn’t blink. “There are like two hundred soccer-playing girls staying here. They could never prove it was us.”

  Olivia looked at Lily. Lily looked at Olivia. Olivia started to giggle again. “She stole a golf cart?”

  Lily smiled. “It was pretty crazy. But kind of cool.”

  Colby stood up and offered Lily a hand. “Cool? It was awesome. Come on, Lily, live a little. And remember,” Colby flashed Lily a big smile, “it’s only a crime if you get caught.”

  Chapter 5.

  “Hustle over, LJ!” Coach Chris called from in front of the goal. Lily fumbled with her shoelaces and tried to catch up with the rest of her team. The Bombers were already divided into two groups and starting a warm-up game of keep-away in front of the goal.

  “I’m here, Coach,” Lily said as she joined the closer group. She, Olivia and Colby shared a conspiratorial smile. So far, it seemed Colby was right. No SWAT team had descended on the hotel in search of hot tub-loving soccer players. There was no APB out on a stolen golf cart. Nothing. The sprinkler was off. The hotel was quiet.

  “Not there, LJ,” Chris said. “You’re in this group.”

  “Oh,” said Lily, covering up a yawn. She moved to the second group of players. Vee was in the middle of a circle trying to win the ball from the girls on the outside. It’s a good thing Vee’s such a sound sleeper, Lily thought, watching her friend zoom tirelessly after the ball. The three Bombers had snuck back into the room, trying to stifle their giggles, dry off and slip back into bed without waking Vee or Avery’s mother in the next room over.

  Lily reacted a little too late to Avery’s pass. As she moved for the ball, Vee popped in between them and stole it.

  “You’re in the middle, LJ,” Vee said.

  Lily moved to the inside of the circle, like she’d done countless times before. Usually she could intercept a pass on the second or third try. Today the girls’ passes were really sharp.

  Or she was really slow.

  “Time out,” Lily called. Her shoelace was undone again. Lily bent down and for the first time noticed how crowded the field was. Parents, coaches and several of the other teams in the tournament were getting comfortable on the sidelines.

  There was a large red and black sign that read, THE THUNDER IS READY TO RUMBLE. There were even a hot dog stand and ice cream truck set up by the road. Lily had never been in such a large tournament before. The competitions near Brookville, a town just north of New York City, felt much smaller. This really is the big time, she thought to herself.

  “Do you need some kind of special invitation today, LJ?” a voice asked.

  She looked up to see Coach towering above her. Chris had always resembled a living beanpole to Lily. Tall, skinny, and kind of floppy.

  “My shoelaces were untied,” she explained.

  “Again?”

  “Again,” Lily answered, trying to tie faster, which only caused the laces to jumble into an impressive knot.

  Chris sighed and bent down to help. Lily was certain she heard several of his joints crack on the way down.

  “Girls, keep passing,” he said to the Bombers. To Lily, he asked, “What’s with you today, LJ? You nervous or something?”

  “No, not at all,” Lily answered. And she wasn’t. She had been so busy reliving what was by far the most thrilling night of her life that the game had barely crossed her mind.

  “Listen, the Thunder is known for their passing. They’re really excellent at controlling the ball and moving it around. So you’re gonna have to work hard and be patient to win the ball and feed it up to the offense.”

  “OK. Got it,” Lily said, bopping back into the warm-up. She won the ball after a few tries, but she was huffing and puffing by the time the referee blew his whistle to indicate the game was about to start. Lily searched out Olivia and Colby, but saw they were taking a water break on the sidelines. Lily took her place on the field and willed herself to focus.

  From kick-off, she could tell that Chris wasn’t kidding about the Thunder. They had her going in circles. The two tall midfielders, in particular, were incredible. One seemed to have Velcro on her cleats and the other just never missed. They passed the ball better than any team she’d ever faced and Lily had to work constantly to even get a foot on it. Her legs were starting to feel like they were filled with sand. Colby took a few weak shots, but they went wide. Vee hadn’t even gotten the ball.

  For Lily, soccer was normally the sharpest part of her life. Every minute of a match played out in her mind clear as crystal. Each play burned bright in her internal data bank. The sights, smells and noises of a game formed a rainbow of soccer joy and excitement in her memory.

  But today she was in a fog. ? Lily couldn’t get moving. She couldn’t anticipate where the ball was going. Time was flying, and she kept waiting for something to change.

  But all that changed was the score.

  The Thunder went up 1-0 off a corner kick in the first minute of the second half.

  “Come on,” Vee encouraged the team before the restart. “We’ve got this. We’re the Soccer Sisters.”

  Colby, Olivia and Lily nodded like zombies.

  Lily pushed herself harder. She surged forward and intercepted a pass in midfield. Vee was moving down the line and Lily sent a long looping pass to the corner. Colby and Lily made runs for the goal. But this time they didn’t communicate and they both ended up on the far post. Vee’s cross landed short, and there was no Bomber in place to track it.

  The ball dribbled across the face of the goal as Lily and Colby backpedaled to chase it down. The Thunder defender moved to clear the ball, but miscalculated and hit it wrong. The ball soared straight up into the air.

  The tall Thunder sweeper called out, “I got it!” and moved to clear the ball with a header. But her teammates didn’t move out of the way. She collided with another girl, leaving the ball bouncing awkwardly in the box.

  Vee, the closest Bomber, tried to take the shot, but her half-volley went spinning backwards right towards the face of the midfielder with Velcro cleats. The girl raised her hand reflexively just before the ball smacked her right in the nose.

  The field froze. The whistle blew.

  Hand-ball in the box. Automatic penalty kick.

  This was the Bombers’ big chance.

  “LJ!” Lily heard Chris call from the sideline, but she was already searching for the ball. Lily always took the penalty kicks.

  “You want me to take it?” Colby offered.

  “Nah, I got this,” Lily said, surprised that Colby had even asked. Then she remembered that Colby didn’t know that Lily was the Bombers’ Penalty Kick Queen.

  The referee cleared the stunned Thunder players from the box, and the goalie took her place in the middle of goal. The ref gathered the ball, handed it to Lily, and said, “Wait for my whistle.”

  Lily nodded. She rolled the ball in her hands, dusting off some small pieces of gravel. She knew that the goalie was watching her. She knew that she was checking her gloves, and getting ready to guess which way Lily was going to shoot. Lily knew better than to look at the goalie. Even more importantly, she knew to never, ever look at the side you were aiming for.

  Instead, Lily envisioned the shot in her
head like she had done so many times before. She would go to the lower right corner.

  She placed the ball on the penalty spot twelve yards out, careful to keep her eyes down and focused on the ball.

  Lily could see just the goalie’s feet. She noticed that the girl seemed to be standing a little bit to the right of the middle of the goal.

  Was the goalie crowding Lily’s shot? Did she know Lily always went right?

  Don’t look, Lily told herself. Just hit it, like you always do.

  But the last second Lily couldn’t help herself. She broke her own rule. Her brain was muddled and she stole a glance at the goalie.

  Their eyes met.

  Lily’s eyes darted to the right.

  Immediately, she cast her eyes back down to the ground. She saw me looking to that right corner, Lily thought. Do I have to go left now?

  No, no. I’ll go right, she told herself.

  The referee drew the whistle to his mouth and a sharp quick beep filled the expectant air.

  Lily stepped forward to take the kick, a few paces to the left of the ball. She’d hit it with her instep, straight into the lower right corner, just like she always did.

  She kept her eyes down, but in her peripheral vision she could see the goalie bouncing up and down on her line. She knows I’m going right, Lily thought.

  “Play!” she heard the referee yell.

  Lily stepped up to take the shot, moving deliberately to keep the ball low and hard. But at the last second she changed her mind, and decided to go to the left corner. The problem was, she was too far to the left of the ball. Her timing was wrong.

  Everything was wrong.

  Lily moved forward and hit the ball straight down the middle. It landed with a thud in the goalie’s gut. She’d saved it.

  Lily had missed the penalty kick.

  The relieved goalie punted the ball high and Lily moved slowly back up the field, her mental haze returning.

  The rest of the game zipped by. Before Lily knew it, the final whistle blew.

  The Thunder erupted in celebration as the Bombers walked tiredly back to the bench.

  Chris was there to welcome them each with a pat on the back.