horrible disease.”
“Don’t make too much of one bad moment.”
“You don’t know Coach Davis. Beating Prescott-Mather is a big deal for her.”
“Tell me about Ann,” Peggy asked, obviously trying to get Madison’s mind off her misery. “Are you sure she’s the person you saw?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was Ann, but she was far enough away so I couldn’t make out her features for sure.”
“And you lost her in the woods?”
“Yes. Whoever I saw must have been a student because the trail I followed ended at the school buildings.”
“Can you think of a reason Ann would transfer to Prescott-Mather without telling you?”
“No, I can’t think of any reason she’d switch schools. If she transferred, we couldn’t play together. We vowed to be teammates forever and she’d know how disappointed I’d be.” Madison felt her face scrunch up. “Besides, why wouldn’t she
“Oh, honey.”
Madison didn’t want to cry in front of Peggy. Taking a deep breath, she straightened up.
“Why don’t you put your mind to finding out if the girl you saw was really Ann?” Peggy suggested. “If she was and you find her, you’ll get the answers to all your questions.”
Madison perked up. “You’re right. That’s what I’ll do.”
An idea occurred to Madison and made her think about something else she wanted to discuss with Peggy. It was something embarrassing, but Peggy was the only woman she knew to whom she could open up about stuff that was personal.
“Peggy, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Sure, anything,” Peggy said.
Just thinking about what she was going to ask Peggy made Madison blush and look at the floor. It was times like these when Madison especially missed having a mother.
“How do you know if someone is your boyfriend instead of just a friend?”
“You’re good at math, aren’t you?” Peggy asked.
Madison nodded, a little confused by the question since it didn’t appear to have anything to do with what she’d asked.
“In math, there are sure answers,” Peggy said. “Four is always the answer to what is two plus two. Well, there’s no formula when it comes to a boyfriend. It’s something you feel. When you’re around a boy or girl who is just your friend, you feel happy. When there’s romance in the air, your heart soars and you feel giddy. And the two of you tend to act silly, but you don’t care.” Peggy smiled. “Is that any help?”
Madison’s brow furrowed. She was definitely happy when Jake was around and she missed him when he wasn’t, but she wasn’t the type of person who acted silly or felt giddy. She was more the serious type. She decided that she was still uncertain about whether Jake was her boyfriend.
D D D
Twenty minutes later, Hamilton knocked on Madison’s office door. It was late, so they ate dinner at a small Thai restaurant near the office. During the walk to the restaurant, Madison thought about the game at Prescott- Mather and memories of her humiliating experience came flooding back. She was depressed by the time they sat down and ordered.
When the food came, Madison picked at it. Hamilton made small talk, but Madison responded with grunts. For once, her dad seemed to notice that something was amiss. Hamilton Kincaid was Oregon’s best cross-examiner, and he finally pried her sad tale out of her.
When she finished, Hamilton started to laugh. Madison fumed, furious that her father wasn’t taking her tragic situation seriously. At times like this Madison really missed having a mom. A mother would never laugh at something so awful.
“It’s not funny, Dad!”
“Yes, it is. I can imagine how you looked flying through the air and landing on your nose. You just can’t see the humor because you’re too close to what happened. But let me tell you something. If I had a penny for every time I made a fool of myself when I was a young lawyer, I’d be a rich man. And I still make a fool of myself every once in a while. I just don’t broadcast that fact.
“I can promise you that worse things than what happened to you today are going to happen. Screwing up is part of life. It’s how you deal with the screwups that define you. You can either crawl in a hole and say, ‘Woe is me,’ or you can laugh at yourself, dust yourself off, learn from your mistakes, and forge on. This is a big deal for you now, but I’ll bet most of the girls have already forgotten what you did because they’re thinking about what they failed to do to win that game.”
“You don’t know some of the girls. They’re really mean, and they’ll never let me forget.”
“Those girls are losers, Maddy. People who have to make fun of other people to feel good usually don’t feel that good about themselves. You can put this behind you if you see the humor in what happened and learn from your mistake.”
Hamilton’s words didn’t cheer up Madison at first, but the more she thought about what he’d said, the more sense it made. She remembered when she’d scored the goal against her own team in the championship game last summer. She almost never thought about that now, and what she’d done then was far worse than what had happened at Prescott-Mather. In fact, she took great satisfaction from the way she’d blocked out the wrong-way goal and sucked it up to help win the game. For the first time since the scrimmage, Madison smiled.
Chapter 16
Madison Survives
Jake was waiting for Madison at the front door when she got to school the next morning.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“So you heard?” she asked sheepishly.
“About your soccer debut? Yeah. A few of the girls were gabbing about it.”
Jake handed her a drawing that showed Madison flying through the air with a goofy expression on her face. She couldn’t help laughing.
“I must have looked pretty stupid, but I’m over it,” she said. She wanted to appear confident to Jake even if it was only partly true. “And you’ll understand why when I tell you why I tripped over that ball.”
Madison told Jake about the girl she’d seen in the woods.
“Do you think she was really Ann?” Jake asked when Madison was through.
“I think it’s possible. And I’ve thought of something I can do to find out if I’m right or wrong.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to take the bus out to Prescott-Mather and show a picture of Ann around. If she’s a student, someone will recognize her.”
Going to soccer practice was one of the hardest things Madison had ever done. When Marci spotted Madison in front of her locker, she sneered.
“I’m surprised you showed up today,” she said.
Madison had expected Marci to harass her, and she’d decided how she would deal with her tormentor. Instead of looking embarrassed, Madison looked Marci in the eye and smiled.
“I sure made an ass out of myself, Marci. And I especially feel bad because your pass to me was so perfect.
