Free Defending Taylor (Hundred Oaks #7) by Miranda Kenneally

outmaneuver Lynchburg. But they are so aggressive and so in step with one another that any play Nicole tries fails.
    “Pass the ball to Chloe!” I scream at her, but she ignores me.
    My yelling seems to inspire both Sydney and Coach Walker. “Pass the ball!” they holler.
    Chloe gives me a shrug at one point, obviously grateful for my efforts, but why won’t she yell back? Why is this team made up of wimps when it comes to Nicole? I will admit that great players can be intimidating. The better a person is at a sport, the less likely other players are to want to cross them. It must go back to the survival of the fittest or something. I mean, would anyone question LeBron to his face?
    While I’m thinking about this, Lynchburg makes another play for our goal. Two players barrel toward me, passing the ball, talking to each other, completely in sync.
    I charge at one, but she passes at the last second, and the other girl slams the ball into our goal.
    2–0.
    Hell.
    “C’mon, Alyson! You still got this,” I say, giving her a pep talk. “They’ve taken, like, a hundred shots, and you’ve stopped most of them.”
    Instead of yelling at me, this time she nods and jumps up to slap the crossbar above her head. Then she claps to get back into the zone.
    Chloe kicks off, barely tapping the ball to Nicole. Nicole immediately makes a break for it, dribbling up the middle of the field. A Lynchburg defenseman boots the ball back to our side. I’m closest, so I run to meet it. I prepare to pass it to Brittany, but then I think, why? She’ll just pass the ball to Nicole, because she’s a lemming.
    I hate lemmings.
    I take off with the ball.
    “What are you doing, Lukens?” Nicole yells.
    I ignore her and dribble past our forwards, totally leaving my position, heading for the goal. I lean back, plant my foot to aim, and boot the ball toward the upper left corner of the net. It sails in, and I jump up and down.
    “Score!”
    I turn around, expecting my teammates to surround me with celebratory hugs, but I get nothing. A few look relieved, but most are staring at Nicole, who looks insanely pissed off. Ugh.
    “Get back on D, Taylor!” she shouts.
    I run past her on the way to my position and say low enough so only she can hear, “Fine by me if you want to lose.”
    Okay, that was pretty bitchy of me, I’ll admit it. But I want to win. I want to have something positive to write on my college applications. But even more than that, I want to be part of a team. A team that shares secrets and confides in each other, trusts each other, laughs together. Hundred Oaks is not a team. Team members pass the damn ball.
    At that moment, I hear a familiar British accent. I look off the field to my right to see my old teammates passing by with cleats hanging around their shoulders. Arm in arm, Steph is laughing with Madison. They don’t even notice me…
    The ref blows his whistle, and Lynchburg kicks off.
    I tell myself to start running.

Our First Dance
    I didn’t get to talk to Madison and Steph after the game.
    By the time ours was over, their game had started, and our bus was getting ready to leave. I couldn’t believe Coach didn’t want to stick around to check out the competition we’ll face this season. He probably has plans to spend the rest of his day checking Facebook.
    The only good thing that happened is Alyson, the goalie, sat with me on the bus for a few minutes to say thanks for the good defense today. Even though she’d been kind of bitchy earlier, she seemed grateful for my efforts against Lynchburg. I told her she played awesome, saving twice as many goals as St. Andrew’s did against that team last year. When she moved to sit with the rest of the seniors in the back, I filled the silence by listening to music.
    Later that afternoon, I find Dad sitting at his desk, typing on his computer. Both of his cell phones are beeping, and the TV is blaring Fox News. A squawking voice spills out of the speakerphone on his