Archenemy Read online

  “Here?” I asked.

  “Yes, please,” she said, licking her lips.

  “Eva—time to go!”

  It was her dad’s voice.

  Eva rolled over, grabbed the phone on her side table, and checked the time. “Yikes.” She turned her head and yelled, “Coming!”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Church,” Eva sighed.

  “You go to church on Thursday?”

  Addie nodded. “And Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  It had never occurred to me that the church was even open on weekdays. For the last couple years, my family hadn’t even gone on Sundays.

  “Wanna come?” Eva asked.

  “Think I’d rather pass the soccer ball with Belle,” I said.

  Eva bent her knees and got up like she was doing a sit-up. “No fair,” she said. “You’ll be playing soccer while I’m yawning in a pew.” She picked up the stack of studs. “Will you at least do me a favor?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Before you leave, will you finish putting these pictures up? Otherwise, I’ll have to ask my dad to help, which would be totally weird.”

  “As weird as me being here alone in your house?”

  “Why is that weird? Mi casa es su casa.” She held out the pile of pictures.

  “How am I supposed to lock up when I leave?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We leave our house unlocked all the time. Mom and Dad say a community is a neighborhood that keeps its doors open.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stopped arguing and took the pictures.

  “Eva!”

  This time it was her mother’s voice.

  “I said I’m coming!” Eva hollered. She brushed past me, and I got another whiff of her. When she got to the door, she turned back toward me. “Thanks, Addie,” she said and closed the door behind her. A few seconds later, the door opened again. “Feel free to take a picture home with you. Any soccer stud your heart desires.”

  She waved her hand across the room, said, “See ya,” and closed the door again.

  I scanned the wall and the stack of pictures in my hands—but I didn’t take a soccer stud. I took a soccer babe. It was an action shot. The model was just about to kick the ball. She had on a sports bra but no jersey. I didn’t find the picture on the walls or in the stack. I hadn’t even noticed it until the breeze from the open window sent the picture fluttering through the air. Where had it come from? The top of a dresser? Under her bed?

  In any case, I figured she wouldn’t miss it much, so I folded it neatly and stuffed it into my soccer bag.

  O

  ur fifth game of the season comes three days after my whiffed pass to Eva against Cardinal Creek. I spend each day in between trying to convince myself she didn’t intentionally sabotage me.

  Yes, she’s been mean to me ever since last fall.

  Yes, she wants me off the team.

  Yes, she said, “Whoop!” when she wasn’t actually open.

  Until now, she’s never tried to sabotage me during a game. Because doing that is as bad for her as it is for me. Worse, it’s bad for the team.

  So maybe, I think, she just got the code wrong. Maybe she mixed up “Whoop!” and “Hey-o!”

  Right.

  At least, she finally spoke to me during a game.

  And she kept talking to me during the next couple practices too. Then again, Coach made her. He kept shouting things like, “I can’t hear you, Riley!” and “Speak up, Williams!” I think the only reason he isn’t going to bench us is because Fraser still managed to beat Cardinal Creek.

  Whatever his reasons, I know Eva well enough to know she’ll do just about anything to stay on the field. So will I.

  . . .

  In any case, the only thing worse than Eva not talking to me might be Eva talking too much.

  We’re playing Ironwood today. Over the roar of their fans, I can hear Eva yelling at me again for no reason. She’s spent the whole game barking orders and reminders at me. She tells me to watch the ball and to pay attention even though I’m already doing both of those things. A couple times, as I’m about to clear the ball by booting it up the field, she shouts, “I’m not open, Addie,” as if I need to be reminded not to pass the ball to a guarded player. Another time, she simply tells me to “Pass it!” just as I’m doing exactly that. Toward the end of the game, an Ironwood player tries to lob the ball into the penalty area. I camp under the pass, ready to spring into the air with my superhero calves and head the ball safely away from our end of the field. Just as I’m about to launch, Eva says, “Get it, Addie!”

  Her comments might seem harmless, but they’re super annoying. Especially the way she says them—like I need to be reminded how to play soccer. Like soccer isn’t my life and isn’t as natural to me as breathing or blinking. They’re the kind of comments neither of us would have dreamed of making during the summer.

  Back then, we talked in code. Back then, we trusted each other completely.

  T

  rust must have had something to do with why I found myself in front of New Hope Church on a Wednesday night in July. Eva and I had been juggling the ball in her yard when she said she knew a place with more room. It turned out she was talking about the church lawn.

  We tied Belle and Skittles by their leashes to a tree and practiced yelling, “Whoop!” and passing to each other. After a few minutes, people in nice clothes began shuffling up the sidewalk. Two of those people were her parents. “There you are, Eva,” her mom said. “I hope you brought a change of clothes.”

  “Yes, mother,” Eva said, clearly annoyed.

  “Well,” her dad said, “you better go use the restroom to change. The service starts in a few minutes.”

  Once again, I’d forgotten all about church on weekdays.

  “Okay, dad,” Eva said.

  I watched her parents pass the tall pillars at the front of the church. When I turned back to Eva, I saw her pulling a summer dress out of her soccer bag.

  “You knew church was about to start, didn’t you?” I asked.

  She grinned guiltily and then pulled the dress over her head. “Thought it might be less boring if I went with a friend.”

  “I’m not really a churchgoer,” I said.

  “Oh, c’mon.” She was still wearing her shirt and shorts under her dress. “It’ll be fun. Trust me.”

  There was that word again. Trust.

  Of course, I didn’t trust her—not about this. I hadn’t been to New Hope in years, but the last time I was there, it definitely wasn’t fun.

  And yet, there I was anyway—sitting with Eva in the balcony of the church, my legs sticking to the pew, and hoping no one would recognize me. It wasn’t just sweat that made me uncomfortable or that I was still wearing athletic clothes. It was the memory of my mother storming out of this church and dragging me with her. It was the sound of Pastor Meyer’s voice, then and now.

  That’s when I heard a sound I wasn’t expecting.

  Giggling.

  Eva’s giggling.

  She had her makeup compact open. I looked back at the pastor and saw him squinting. That’s when I realized what she was doing. The last sunlight of the day was shining through the stained glass windows, and Eva was using the mirror in her compact to redirect it toward the altar.

  Into Pastor Meyer’s face.

  The pastor squinted and blocked the light with a forearm as the congregation turned their heads and followed the beam of light to the back of the church. Eva’s parents were sitting several rows up. They were the first ones to locate the light’s source. Maybe Eva had pulled this stunt before. They swiped their hands across their throats, the universal sign for Cut it out!

  By the time Eva closed the compact, the whole congregation was glaring at her—and I didn’t blame them. But that doesn’t mean I joined them. I giggled with Eva.

  Eva had been right. Church re
ally could be fun.

  Except it was weird. Afterward, Eva was no longer in a laughing mood. Maybe her parents had scolded her. Or maybe it was because of something I said.

  “You went to church so much,” I said to her over the phone. “I was worried you were like super religious.”

  There was a pause.

  “I am super religious,” Eva said. “Why would you say I’m not?”

  “I just thought —you know, because of the prank you pulled—”

  “Just because the pastor is boring doesn’t mean I don’t believe what he says.”

  Like I said—it was weird. At church, she’d been laughing. But she had turned deadly serious.

  I changed the subject. “We still playing soccer tomorrow?”

  “Whoop!” Eva said.

  A

  couple hours after the Ironwood game, I’m in my bedroom, juggling my soccer ball. I should be happy. We won the game, and this time I didn’t have any major screwups.

  Eva may have been annoying, but annoying is better than nasty. I’ll take what I can get.

  Yeah—happy. That’s what I should be. So why aren’t I?

  As I’m thinking all this, I try to keep the ball in the air with my feet and thighs. My eyes are fixed on the ball as it drops onto the laces of my left cleat. Belle is on my bed, her eyes moving up and down with the ball too.

  Mom took me out to eat after the game and asked why I don’t hang out with Eva anymore. I lied and told her that I’d been too busy studying to worry about my social life. She was impressed. Somehow or other, she blames last year’s suspension on my grades. No matter how many times I remind her that I was suspended for cutting class, not failing it, she still blames my classroom performance. It’s weird because I’m not that bad of a student. I mean, I’m not pulling As out of my pockets, but I get a lot of Bs and Cs.

  I felt bad lying to my mom about why I don’t hang out with Eva anymore, but I didn’t have a choice. If I had listed all the things Eva’s been doing to me, Mom would’ve made a huge deal about it. So would my teammates, come to think of it. If Mom did know the whole situation, she’d try to convince me to tell Coach and anyone else who could help. She’d have told me to take a stand against injustice. Mom’s a social activist. So for her, there’s no issue that isn’t worth fighting for.

  That’s what she was doing three years ago when she left the church: fighting on my behalf. The pastor at New Hope said that two girls liking each other that way was a sin—the word he used was abomination. Mom dragged me out of the church pew and never brought me back. For a while, we experimented with a few other churches in neighboring towns. Some were more welcoming, but eventually, we just stopped going altogether.

  The stuff with church didn’t end there, either. Mom wrote a letter to the editor of Fraser Daily, our local newspaper. It said the Pastor Meyer should either quit being hateful or quit his job. She suggested she might be able to sue him—which was a bluff, she told me later—and things just got uglier from there.

  I’m really grateful for what she did for a couple of reasons. It was her way of telling me I had no reason to feel ashamed. And it ended up being a chance for lots of other people to tell me the same thing—including my dad, although I already knew he was proud of me. My teammates too, who called a team meeting to tell me that they would always have my back.

  Still, the whole thing was really public—too public. I’m not like my mom. I don’t need to fix things all the time. The only place where I do like to take a stand is on the soccer field. And the only issue I like to stand against is the other team scoring on the Copperheads. By the time Eva arrived last spring, the controversy had pretty much vanished, and my life was finally just about soccer again. Which is how I want to keep it.

  “How you doing, Addie?” my dad asks from the doorway. His voice is so calm and quiet that I’m hardly startled at all. If Mom had said my name, my soccer ball probably would have went flying into a lampshade or out my window and into the street. Instead, I bump it into the air one more time with my knee and catch it.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He’s standing in the doorframe, sipping from a mug of hot chocolate. This is as far as he’s going to come, I know, unless I invite him into my room. He’s really good about not invading my privacy. Belle hops off the bed, crosses my room, and presses her body against Dad’s leg. She loves the guy.

  “I saw you at the game tonight …” he says. I can tell he’s really concerned. Not because of the tone of his voice but because of his calves. I can see them bulging underneath his wind pants as he rocks from toe to heel. This is a sure sign he’s tense. We laugh about his “tell” all the time. He says it’s a good thing cards are played at a table. Otherwise, he’d never get away with bluffing. He must not want me to know he’s concerned, though, because he stops rocking and crouches down to pet Belle. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Unlike my mom, who usually works really long hours, my dad’s a manager at Sportsville, a local equipment shop, and his hours are pretty flexible. When I look up to the bleachers during my games, I can usually spot him sitting somewhere near the middle, watching closely. He’s not a soccer expert, but he is a great athlete, so I know he can tell whenever something isn’t right on the field. I also know he’ll never push me into talking about anything if I don’t want to.

  He takes another sip of hot chocolate, which is his favorite drink, even though it’s almost always really hot in North Carolina and hot chocolate seems like just about the worst beverage choice in the world. I asked him about it once, and he said it reminded him of sitting in the lodge after ski jumping—which strikes me now as really sad.

  “Why’d you give up ski jumping?” I ask.

  The question might seem out of the blue, but it’s not. I’ve been asking him this exact question for years, and each time he gives me the same answer: “Because I fell in love with your mother. There’s nothing wrong with having two loves, Addie—but sometimes you have to choose one over the other.”

  Usually that answer is enough for me, but today I want to know more. “So Mom made you move to North Carolina?”

  “She didn’t make me, but I knew that’s what she wanted.”

  Fraser is my mom’s hometown, but it’s never made much sense to me that she wanted to return after college. It’s not like she has tons of friends or even family here. When she’s fighting against yet another injustice, it can even feel like everybody here is her enemy.

  “Why’d she want to come back here?”

  “You’ll have to ask your mother that,” Dad says. “But it’s always suited me just fine.”

  Unlike my mother, who has dark brown skin, Dad’s skin is pasty, freckled, and burns in a matter of minutes. Still, somehow he seems to fit in better than she does.

  “Don’t you ever regret giving up something you loved so much?” I ask.

  “Sure. But not for very long. I may have loved ski jumping, but I love your mom more. You’re not too bad either,” he says, smiling.

  I smile too. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

  “If you need to talk about anything, just let me know, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Dad pats Belle on the top of the head and steps back into the hall.

  A few moments later, a crumpled object flies through the open window and lands at my feet. I pick it up and unfold it. It’s a magazine picture—the same picture I took from Eva’s room last summer. In pink ink, Eva has drawn a speech bubble next to the soccer babe’s mouth.

  “Quit staring at me, perv!” the soccer babe says to me.

  I

  returned the picture of the soccer babe to Eva around the end of July.

  Actually, I wasn’t the one who returned it. Skittles did.

  She and Belle were in Eva’s room with the two of us—a situation that was still pretty recent. A couple weeks earlier, Eva had brought her dog into the house for the first time while I was there too, just when I was about to leave. It was a test, Eva
explained. If Skittles didn’t try to bite me, then she no longer considered me a stranger. Eva assured me she had a good grip on her dog’s collar, but I still hustled for the door. I liked my ankles how they were—without any dog teeth attached to them. Luckily, Skittles didn’t lunge for me or act distressed in any way. “You come here so often,” Eva said, “she probably thinks you’re family. Either that or she’s intimidated by your calf muscles.”

  Anyway, the four of us—two people, two canines—were in Eva’s room when Skittles stuck her nose into the unzipped side pocket of my soccer bag.

  “Skittles!” Eva yelled.

  The beagle took her snout from my bag and backed away, opening and closing her jaw.

  Eva grabbed her tail, reeled her in, and pried open Skittles’s jaw. She pulled out a ball of crinkly paper. “What’s this?” she asked, unfolding the picture.

  I took a look at the picture and remembered. “It’s just—earlier this summer you told me to take a picture, and—”

  Eva interrupted me. “Where did you find this?”

  “In here. It was—”

  “You shouldn’t have taken it,” she interrupted. She sounded really mad.

  “Sorry. I just—”

  “You were supposed to take one of those,” she said, pointing to her ceiling of studs.

  “I … I didn’t want to.”

  Eva’s mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything for what felt like a long time.

  “Look, Eva,” I continued, “maybe I should have told you earlier—it’s really not a big deal—but I’m not into what’s in those pictures. Because—because I like what’s in this picture … you know?” I nodded my head at the soccer babe.

  When she didn’t reply, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I thought about Pastor Meyer and how Eva said she agreed with the stuff he said. I thought that maybe we weren’t close friends after all, not really, even if Eva kept saying we were. If we were truly friends, I’d be able to tell her this, wouldn’t I?

  All the sudden it was my turn to be mad. I wondered if this was how Mom felt when fighting for one of her social causes.