Playing With the Boys
Read Playing With the Boys Online
Authors: Liz Tigelaar
Table of Contents
Playing with the Boys
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
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Copyright 2008 © PrettyTOUGH Sports, LLC
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tigelaar, Liz.
Playing with the boys : a pretty tough novel / by Liz Tigelaar.
p. cm.
Summary: When fifteen-year-old Lucy and her father move to Malibu, California, for a
fresh start, Lucy tries out for the varsity football team and feels strong and in control for the
first time since her mother’s death—as long as her overprotective father does not find out.
eISBN : 978-1-436-26868-4
[1. Football—Fiction. 2. Sex role—Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Single-
parent families—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7.
Schools—Fiction. 8. Malibu (Calif.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.T4525Pla 2008
[Fic]—dc22
2007024121
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This book is dedicated to the Prettiest and Toughest woman I know - my mom, Mary.
one
Lucy Malone had always felt that she was just one letter short of “lucky,” and in her fifteen years on this planet, her theory had definitely been proven true. It wasn’t just that she often found herself inexplicably trapped in bathrooms, had broken both arms (the left one twice), or had more freckles than she knew what to do with. It was more than that.
Lucy vividly remembered sitting in the hard wooden pew at their church just over a year ago, listening to friends and family members recount funny stories about her mom while Lucy sat there, desperately wishing she’d just had that missing
K
. Then maybe things would have turned out differently. She really could have been Lucky instead of Lucy.
And now, a year later, she was on a plane next to her father, Greg, flying over the Rockies or the Grand Canyon or somewhere the pilot had mentioned, only she hadn’t heard, because Guster was blasting on her iPod, and once again, she felt totally unlucky.
Today was the day she’d been dreading for months; the day she was moving from Toledo, Ohio, to Los Angeles, California. Well, Malibu to be exact.
All she knew about Malibu was that it was on the Pacific Ocean and everyone who lived there had blond hair and blue eyes and a great tan. Lucy looked down at her own milky white skin. She was beyond pale; she was
frighteningly
pale. One look at her skin could seriously blind someone. Maybe if she had a few more freckles they would morph into one giant one, which could fool people into thinking she was tan. She stopped herself. Had it really come to this?
Wishing
for
more
freckles? Maybe the altitude
had
gone to her head. They were, after all, at thirty-five thousand feet.
She shook her long, strawberry-blond hair in front of her face, something she did when she felt nervous. Her choppy bangs covered her green eyes as she fiddled with the earbuds on her iPod.
She pressed the silver button to recline her seat and stared out the small window at the fluffy, white clouds. She sighed and couldn’t help but think of her friends back home. Most of them probably weren’t even awake yet, sleeping in after staying up practically all night at her going-away party. And that had been after a long, preseason practice session with her soccer team. They’d invited her to practice one last time before leaving.Then this morning, she’d gotten up super-early, to finish packing her whole life into suitcases.
She loved (and by “loved” she meant “hated”) how parents (in her case, “parent,” since now it was just her and her dad) used the phrase “family decision” when talking about things like whether to get a dog, whether to go on vacation, or ... whether to move across the country. By the time her dad sat down to talk to her about it, the decision had clearly already been made. So much for the “family decision.”
She remembered the moment so clearly. It had been April 14th. She’d just walked in the door from her best friend Annie’s fifteenth birthday party, which had involved ditching their mini-golf plan to hang out with some cute sophomores, Tyler and Jason, at the pizza place across the street. She’d had two pieces of sausage-and-onion pizza, then instantly wished she hadn’t. Unless Annie had a pack of Listerine strips, Lucy’s chances of making out—which she’d only done two point five times (the point five was a loooong story)—had just plummeted from “potentially” to “no way in hell.” Luckily, Tyler hadn’t held it against her, texting her on the way home. She’d burst in the door, quickly hunting through her bag for the phone and pecking out a response. But before she could hit send on her reply, her dad had had her cornered.
“We need to talk,” he’d said, in a tone that let her know this wasn’t going to be a good conversation.
Panicked, Lucy had quickly scanned through the night’s events, confident she hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t had any alcohol, she hadn’t so much as come in the vicinity of a cigarette, and she’d even come home ten minutes before her curfew, thanks to Annie’s dad hitting all green lights . . . but her dad had looked as though he had something important on his mind.
“We’re moving to California,” he had stated quickly, as if saying the words faster would make them sting less.
“What?” she’d gasped, looking up from her text. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. “What’d you say?”
“We’re moving,” he’d replied firmly. “To California.”
Lucy had felt her knees buckle under her. She’d leaned against the wall for support as her dad explained.
“The firm’s expanding, and they want someone to open a new West Coast office,” he told her. Her dad was an architect who designed large planned communities, which often meant that all the houses were big, expensive, and looked exactly the same. “And besides that, I just . . . with everything that’s happened . . . being here . . . it’s hard. Everywhere I look, it just . . .” He trailed off.
Lucy knew what he meant. Everything reminded him of her mom. From the markings on the wall behind the pantry, where Lucy’s mom measured Lucy’s height and wrote down the date, to the yellow paint in the kitchen that her mom had been so excited about, to the flowers that she and her mom had planted in the yard two summers ago that were starting to bloom again . . . you couldn’t be in their house without feeling that overwhelming sense that someone was missing. But was it really going to be better somewhere else? Lucy wondered. Somewhere they’d be even farther away from her mom’s memory?
“But Dad,” Lucy argued, “what about Aunt Kate and Aunt Mary?” Those were her mom’s sisters, who lived less than two hours away.
“They understand that this is something I need to do,” he answered simply. “It’s a great opportunity, Lucy. We’d be even closer to my parents.” Her dad’s family lived in Arizona. “We could spend more time with them.”
What
? Lucy wanted to scream.
Your mom is crazy and your dad is crazier! You moved to the Midwest to get away from them!
But she knew better than to argue and didn’t want to make him feel worse. Instead she just stood in the doorway, floored. How could it be possible that the day before, the biggest stress in her life had been who to include in her Top 8 on her MySpace page, and now she had to give up her entire life and move across the country and start over? She already felt as though she’d had to do that once after losing her mom. She certainly didn’t want to do it again.
“Please bring your seat backs to their full upright position.” The stewardess’s chirpy voice resonated throughout the plane. Lucy was snapped out of her thoughts and back to reality.
Seat back? Upright? Landing?
This was it. This was really happening. She had a one-way ticket to California with no return in sight. Unless the pilot miraculously turned this plane around, there was no going back. Goodbye,Toledo. Nice knowing you. What did they say in L.A.?
Don’t call us, we’ll call you
.
Her dad turned to her. His hair looked grayer than she’d remembered it. The last year had aged him significantly.