a little crazy.”
“Says the girl with the blue hair,” Ali says sweetly.
“Hey. Crazy isn’t bad,” Phoebe says. “I think we need a little crazy right now.”
Grace smiles. “Okay. Well. What if we kidnapped the Oak Knolls bulldog?”
Mel winces. “You mean steal their actual dog? No. We can’t do that. Absolutely not.”
Phoebe jumps to her feet. “Wait. Oh my God, wait. We would be legends.”
Mel is still shaking her head. “We could get in serious trouble.”
“Not like kidnap in a bad way. More like just borrow him for a while. Long enough to take a few pictures,” Phoebe says, growing more and more animated by the second. “How badass would that make us look? I mean, Coach would probably flip his shit.”
Mel stands up. “Phoebe! Stop!”
But Phoebe is crawling on her knees across the circle over to Grace. “How would we do it?”
Grace says, “Didn’t one of the girls say that the Oak Knolls coach keeps the bulldog outside?”
Mel throws her hands up and, to no one in particular, laments, “I can’t believe we’re actually talking about this!”
Mel’s timing is off, Kearson realizes, like it had been when they last played together. And like then, a second’s hesitation makes all the difference. Because the other girls are no longer just talking about this. They are sprinting toward their cars. They are already gone.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
1:09 A.M.
COACH: Update?
COACH: Update?
LUCI: Hi! Sorry!
LUCI: Everything went great!
LUCI: I said exactly what you wanted and the girls were super into it!!!
COACH:
COACH: Did Mel talk shit about me?
COACH: She was so pissed when she realized I never gave her the jerseys.
LUCI: Mel definitely seemed surprised. But not mad at all.
LUCI: She was ready to get to work and make things right by you.
COACH: What about the other girls? Have you overheard anything negative?
LUCI: Nope! Nothing at all.
COACH: Great. I’m pleasantly surprised.
COACH: Like I said, we’ve had some trouble on that front.
COACH: So what’s the plan? What are you girls going to do to impress me?
COACH:
LUCI:
LUCI: It has something to do with the Wildcats fight song.
LUCI: We’re going to act out the verses as a team.
COACH:
COACH: Things are worse than I thought.
LUCI:
LUCI: I think it’s going to turn out cool! Everyone seems really excited anyway. A bunch of girls are pitching ideas for Wildcat-y things we can do.
COACH: Like who?
LUCI: Grace
COACH:
COACH: If you girls show up at the field tomorrow looking like a bunch of blue-haired weirdos, I’ll quit on the spot.
LUCI: My mom would KILL me if I dyed my hair blue.
COACH: I would too.
COACH:
LUCI: I’d better go. We’re at a gas station. I said I had to pee so I could text you!
COACH:
COACH:
COACH: Keep up the good work, Luci.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
1:11 A.M.
ALI
They descended upon the desolate gas station like a tornado touching down. Their cars barely screeched to a stop in front of the fuel pumps before doors were flung open and girls spilled out. While the drivers gassed up, the rest either sprinted inside to pee or danced to the weird oldies song piped in from speakers somewhere over their heads, half of them in pj’s, half in normal clothes, an electrified mix of headlights and fluorescent making them appear to glow.
Ali is just holstering the gas nozzle when Mel shouts that she’s found it, the home address for the head coach of Oak Knolls. None of the girls have their phones with them, they’ll all follow Mel. The girls quickly climb back inside their rides, click their seat belts. Engines start.
As she drives away, Ali sees the night cashier in her side mirror. He’s behind the store window, rubbing his bald head and laughing.
Oak Knolls is maybe fifteen minutes from West Essex, straight north on the highway, two exits past the mall. Ali doesn’t love driving on the highway. Merging traffic scares the crap out of her. But at this time of night, the roads are theirs. Over and over, the six cars change lanes and shift positions, pulling alongside each other to beep and scream and wave, then dropping back and crossing three lanes without bothering to signal. Each ride is so overstuffed with girls that their long hair spills out of the open windows.
Ali plays her music louder than it’s ever been. Her brother James got her hooked on hip-hop and the bass ripples through her, mini sonic booms. Between that and the rush of the wind at sixty-five miles per hour, Ali feels like she’s in a deprivation tank. She couldn’t hold on to a thought if she wanted to. Which