had posted; inside she was screaming. Driving her teammates through Oak Knolls, Ali’s about to have a panic attack.
Ali suspected that Coach had been talking about her in his speech tonight. He watched that very first crack appear. Now she’s barely holding it together. And tomorrow, when Darlene comes at her again, she’s going to fall apart.
The road comes back into focus. Ali pulls a U-turn in the center of the street, doubles back, and makes the turn.
“I bet that’s the house,” Kearson says.
Ali drives past a generic little box with gray vinyl siding and a waist-high white picket fence. There’s a field hockey sticker on the bumper of the car parked in the driveway. Two red field hockey sticks, turned upside-down, their hooks making a heart shape.
The other five cars are parked around the corner and halfway down the next street, next to a small playground. The girls are already outside and conferring with one another. She barely puts her Jeep in park before the girls riding with her bail out the doors and hurry over. Ali moves more slowly, a pace befitting the drag on her team she believes herself to be.
She is the last to reach the team huddle. Same as on the field, when during a time out, the girls circle up and feverishly plan their next attack. Sometimes her teammates will have already reached in, their stack of hands bouncing like a trampoline, and screamed, Let’s go Wildcats!, and their charge back onto the field spins Ali like a top.
Similarly, Ali expects to find that a strategy to grab the bulldog has formed without her. But no. They’re all hesitating.
“So … how should we do this?” Phoebe says.
Mel shrugs. “I mean, we want it to be a team effort, but we can’t all go up to the house and take the dog. We’d get caught for sure.”
For a moment, no one else says anything to the team. But plenty of girls whisper to one another.
“Do you think we could get, like, arrested for this?”
“Probably. I think it counts as theft even if we’re only planning to borrow the dog for a little while.”
“At the very least, we’re all getting suspended if we get caught. Maybe three days, but probably five.”
“Definitely five. Principal Meyer suspended Alan Wallows for five days, even though all he did was get caught using fake money in the cafeteria vending machine.”
It’s not that any of her teammates want to back down. It’s that, now they’re here and no longer just spitballing, it’s a lot harder to step up. It’s not surprising. They are all good girls, who do well in school, don’t drink or do drugs, never get detention. The idea that one of them is going to volunteer to do this potentially illegal and season-ending stunt seems more and more unlikely with each passing second. Oak Knolls is their rival, sure, but only because that’s the team who bested them.
Except that’s not the way Ali feels. For her it couldn’t be personal.
“I’ll do it,” Ali says.
“Wait,” Mel says. “Seriously?”
It’s not clear if Mel’s relieved or not that Ali has stepped up. But Ali’s made up her mind. She bends over, reties her sneakers with double knots, and tucks away the slack so there’s no risk of tripping.
The thing is, Ali has always, always felt a part of this team. These girls, some of whom she has known for years, they’ve traveled together, played together, hung out together. She knows their parents, knows who they’ve made out with, knows how their sweat smells, knows who bites their nails, who snores, who is in remedial classes, who takes medication.
But Darlene Maguire robbed her of that feeling.
“Yup. The rest of you can be my lookouts. Or just wait here. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“I’ll go with you, Ali,” Grace says.
“Grace, I can do it on my own.”
“I know that,” Grace says. “But you don’t have to. I’ve got your back, remember?”
Ali rubs a hand through Grace’s blue hair. “Team first, always.”
The energy picks back up immediately. Girls bouncing on their toes. Clutching each other.
“Here, Hamburger loves these,” Phoebe says, passing Ali a granola bar. “It’s our secret. I give him one every night. My mom has him on some stupid diet. Anyway, you can use it to lure the bulldog over.”
Mel warns them, “Don’t do anything unless it’s totally, totally safe. If it’s not, we’ll just come up with another idea.”
The girls cluster up in a tight circle, put their hands in, and do