Free Please, Please, Please by Rachel Vail Page A

until our eyes were watering. Daddy came in to give me a special kiss later when I was in bed and told me he was glad I was feeling back to normal. He hadn’t kissed me in a while.
    “Great!” Ms. Cress said, going to her desk. “So you can start Tuesday.”
    I nodded. “Yeah. After the trip.”
    “I saved number five, just in case,” she said.
    “Really?”
    “Well, not too many of the girls would fit into such a small shirt, anyway,” she admitted.
    “My lucky number,” I said. “It’s all working out.”
    “Where are those forms?” Ms. Cress asked herself, riffling through the mess on her desk. “I know they’re here somewhere. I’m happy you’ll play, CJ. We can always use a player who has your, your . . .” She was searching not just for the forms, I knew, but for an adjective to describe my lousy soccer abilities in a nice way. “Here. With your enthusiasm,” she finally said, holding a packet of forms in the air triumphantly.
    “It’s OK,” I said. “I know I stink. I just, I like, I-I-I want to, like to be a part of the team.”
    “Great attitude.” She laid the forms on my desk, placed her hand on my shoulder, and bent over to show me. “This one is the schedule, this yellow is the medical form, the pink is the parental release form—try to be quicker with that one?”
    “Ha,” I sort of laughed.
    “And this blue one, oh! That’s for ordering your soccer jacket. It’s optional, and it’s forty-nine dollars, so talk it over with your parents. ’K?”
    “I’m sure they’ll say yes,” I told her. “They’re very supportive of-of-of soccer. Playing. And, jackets. They really want me to be on the team, so . . .”
    Shut up , I told myself.
    “Good to have you on the team,” she said. “Come to the gym at lunch, if you want to pick up your team jersey.”
    “I do,” I told her.

twelve
    I walked into the cafeteria, straight over to the table where all my friends were sitting, and pulled my new soccer shirt out of my bag. Everybody’s eyes opened wide. I just smiled.
    “But . . .” said Olivia.
    “You . . .” said Morgan.
    I climbed onto the bench and sat down across from Zoe, who kept blinking. I shrugged, opened my lunch bag, and looked in. “I just decided I’d rather be on the soccer team,” I said slowly, taking my time with the words I’d rehearsed in my head the whole way over from the gym.
    “Rather than what?” Olivia asked.
    “Rather than dance.”
    “You’re quitting dance?”
    “No need to alert the media,” I told her. That’s Tommy’s favorite expression. I saw Zoe smile a tiny bit, just the corners of her mouth. “Or your mother,” I added, realizing too late that Olivia would probably tell her mother as soon as she got home, and Aunt Betsy would call my mother, and I’d be caught.
    I tried to remain calm.
    Olivia blushed. “Well, what did your mother say?” she asked. “She must be devastated.”
    Olivia always says stuff like devastated when a normal person would say mad . I knew I was furious at Olivia mainly because she had the power to ruin everything for me, but still. I shrugged again. “It’s my decision.”
    “When did you realize that?” Morgan asked.
    “Yesterday,” I said.
    Morgan smiled but quickly blew her bangs out of her eyes to cover it up.
    “She’s disappointed, of course,” I added, trying to imagine the ideal scene between me and Mom. “She said she wished I felt differently, but that I have to do what’s right for me.”
    I looked at Zoe, who took a huge bite of her sandwich. She’s the only one who knew I was making this all up. I pulled out my yogurt and took a spoonful.
    “Well,” said Olivia. “Congratulations.”
    “Thanks. And I’m coming apple picking, too.”
    Morgan looked up from her lunch. Last year when those kids got caught hay-stacking, we spent lots of afternoons imagining what it would be like when we were finally in seventh grade, and who we’d want to hay-stack with,