Free Double-Crossed by Lin Oliver Page A

this club should be embarrassed for being total jerks.”
    â€œI think this is a really cool club,” Brooke said. “My Uncle Biff is on the board here.”
    â€œOh, is he the one who drives that classic Mercedes?” Jillian asked.
    â€œNo, that’s Uncle Talbot. Uncle Biff is the one who’s married to Aunt Bitsy, the one with the really huge boob implants.”
    I stomped away. Those girls didn’t have a clue how it felt to be completely rejected. I didn’t want to hear one more word about whose uncle drove which classic car. I couldn’t believe that Charlie was standing there listening to them chatter on without taking a stand to defend Eddie and Oscar.
    Under the threat of being grounded and stripped of all my privileges, I did play the match. I figured my dad could make me play, but he couldn’t make me play well. Every time the ball came to me, I’d hit it right to Anna, who then powered up and slammed it down our throats.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Charlie said after we lost the first three games in a row. “You can’t keep lobbing her soft balls like that. She’s killing us.”
    â€œI don’t care,” I said.
    â€œWell I do, Sammie. All my friends are watching. You’re making me look bad.”
    That’s just fine
, I thought. Just like the people at the club had made Alicia and Oscar and Eddie look bad. I had no desire to win. All I wanted to do was leave the Sand and Surf Club and never come back again. The quickest way to do that was to lose.
    Which we did. Six–love. Six–love.
    That’s right. We never even won one game.

You Can’t Ground Me!
    Chapter 7
    â€œTo say I’m disappointed in you, Sammie, would be the understatement of the century,” my dad fumed as we drove home after the match.
    Smoke was practically coming out of his ears. He was in the middle of a long lecture that lasted all the way home and continued right on into dinner and even after. He didn’t really wind down until he fell asleep on the couch watching the nightly news. Even GoGo couldn’t get him to put a cork in it. He left no cliché unturned. I’m sure you can imagine the basic thrust of the lecture. Some of the highlights (which if you ask me, were actually lowlights) included:
    Â 
    (1) I let him and my sister down.
    (2) I was part of a team.
    (3) There is no “ I ” in team.
    (4) Winners do their best at all times.
    (5) Losing is for losers.
    Â 
    As the cherry on top of his marathon lecture, he told me I was grounded for the following week. That meant I couldn’t go to any after-school activities. This was especially devastating because the Truth Tellers were going to be rehearsing every day for the performance on Saturday night. When my mom called from Boston, which she does every Sunday night to see how the week went, I told her about my punishment, hoping she would talk Dad out of it. She was very sympathetic, and agreed that what the Sand and Surf Club did was wrong, but she said she couldn’t go against Dad’s rules. They always back each other up, my parents, which Charlie, Ryan, and I find really annoying.
    I tried calling Alicia all night, but she didn’t pick up. She doesn’t have a cell phone, so I just kept leaving messages on her family’s voice mail. I was worried that she was mad or hurt or both, and I was desperate to talk to her—to explain, to apologize, to hear that things were okay between us.
    The next morning, I left for school early and walked really fast to the bus stop at Third and Arizona, where Alicia always gets off. When the bus pulled up, she wasn’t on it. I waited for the next one, but she wasn’t on that one, either. Finally, I had to leave for school and found myself walking right in front of two of the SF2 boys, saggy Jared and the General.
    â€œHey, I hear somebody choked at her tennis match yesterday,” Jared said,