"Hey, did you get the pizza?" Lila said to me as soon as I stepped onto the bleacher next to her. "I'm so fucking starved that—oh!" She yanked the plate of pizza from my hand with so much force that the poor thing almost went flying off. "Oh-my-goodness-thank-you-so-fucking-much—can I marry you?"

I pouted. That was supposed to be my piece of pizza. I'd specifically bought a piece of pepperoni pizza for myself and then a piece of cheese pizza for Lila so that she could at least pretend to adhere to her diet. "But—but I—" I mumbled.

It was too late. Lila had already gone through half the slide of pizza. With a sigh, I sat down on the bleacher next to her heavily and began to nibble at my own piece.

A couple seconds later, Lila said, mouth still full and chewing, for that matter, "Do you know when the game's ending? I'm freezing my ass off here."

I clucked. "You're the one who spent the past hour sitting on these bleachers and playing on your phone. You made me fetch all your food for you." I glanced around us. There weren't too many people surrounding us, which really was a shame. Home games didn't get as much support from the school community as they should. "By the way, where's Liv?"

Lila swallowed, temporarily creating a double chin, before responding thickly, "Getting a textbook from her car."

"What a killjoy." I groaned jokingly. "What's the point of going to a game if you're just going to study? She might as well stay in the car and fuck up her brain with physics there."

"Oh, Audrey, be nice," Lila said mildly. She was watching the progression of the ball across the field toward the home end. "But I really would prefer to avoid all mention of physics until at least eleven tonight, please."

I put down my piece of pizza on my napkin and followed Lila's eyes. The little lacrosse ball was getting whacked across the field—in fact, toward the home goal or whatever it was called in lacrosse vocabulary—so quickly that I couldn't even see it in the glaring stadium lights. It was much more helpful and interesting to watch the person that everyone else was watching. I scratched my chin. At least that was who I hoped had the ball...

I felt Lila inching toward me on the bleacher and instinctively slapped her hand away from my piece of pizza. "If you wanted more pizza, you could've asked me," I said sharply.

My face was betraying me though. Shit.

From the way that Lila waved a hand at me and only kept reaching for my pizza, I could tell that she knew this perfectly well. "No, seriously," I insisted. I turned my thighs away from her and slid down the bleacher a good six feet. "Stop it!"

"But you love me!" Lila followed me on foot. Damn it, why did she always make me look so dumb? I shot her a disgruntled look, but she only persisted. "Give me my pizza, Audrey!"

"No!" I spun away from her. The only good option I had (other than swallowing the pizza in one gulp—and I had no desire to choke to death on this particular day) was to create an impregnable defense around it, so I curled up into a ball around my pizza.

"Oh my God," groaned Lila. Even though my face was tucked neatly under my arms, I could still see her standing right next to me with her hands on her hips, shifting back and forth on her feet. "It's mine, Audrey! I paid for it!"

It happened so quickly that I didn't even realize that Lila was capable of something like that. But in a split second, I found myself somehow on the ground after banging the back of my head onto the bleacher with a magnificent bang. And Lila? She was practically sitting on top of my legs, grabbing for my pizza on top of my napkin.

I must have let out a scream and flailed my legs or something because Lila shot off immediately. "Tch, it's mine," she muttered, crossing her hands over her chest. She looked around our area on the bleachers. "And now everyone is looking at us."

Pulling myself back up onto the bleacher and rubbing the back of my head, I blew a raspberry at her. "Lila, there's, like, no one here. And watch me." I took a huge bite of my pizza, all while maintaining perfect eye contact with her. I even took my time chewing.

She really deserved it. She did. The back of my head was aching now—I was sure that at the very least, I now sported a nice bruise back there. I was glad that I was wearing contacts today—my glasses would have gone flying Lila noticed immediately, jumping behind me and landing with a thump.

"Oh, shit, that actually looks painful." She hopped back on the bleacher next to me. "Sorry. Didn't mean for that to get out of hand." I gave her a flat look, and she raised her hands. "The bump's not that big. I'm sure it'll shrink after a few days..."

I really did not like how her voice trailed off, so I opened my mouth to respond to her—but before I could, Olivia sat on the other side of Lila, a bag of chips in her hand. "So I'm sure you two got into trouble while I was gone."

I pouted at her. She really shouldn't be laughing at me and my battle wounds. "For your information, Lila tried to steal my pizza and gave me this nice bruise here." I turned my head to the side and pointed at it.

When I turned back the other way to look at Olivia, her lips were twitching as she tried in vain to open her chips. "Well," she said, shaking her bag and turning it upside down, "why didn't you just eat it? While you still had it?"

Narrowing my eyes, I tilted my head. "While I still had it? What do you mean—" I looked down at my lap, where my pizza was no longer there. In fact, it was in Lila's hands, and she was in the process of tearing off the crust. "Hey!"

"I guess people really are young at heart," Olivia commented, not even bothering to hide her smile now.

I gave Lila my nastiest look before taking a couple bites of my pizza. Lila pouted. "If she gave me my rightful piece of pizza, none of this would have happened." She paused. "But I really am sorry about that bruise, 'Bree."

Swallowing thickly (and reminding myself of Lila just a couple seconds earlier), I patted her shoulder. I stuffed the last bits of crust into my mouth. It took me a few moments before I could even speak. "It's all...cool." Lila's and Olivia's expressions were almost horrified as I started coughing. "I—whew, wow—think it'll—good Lord!—disappear eventually." I regained my breath. "Just as long as it's gone before senior prom."

"All right," Lila said slowly. "Well, anyway, I have no clue what's going on with the game now." She turned back to the field. "Oh shit, they didn't get scored on, did they?"

I glanced at the scoreboard, which looked exactly the same—0-0. "Apparently not so."

"Hey, I think Luc has the ball," Olivia said, her voice a little softer than usual. When I looked at her, her cheeks were the slightest bit pinker. She avoided my look, instead training her eyes even more on the lacrosse field. After a few moments, as I still stared at her ear, she said a little more loudly, "Audrey, stop it!"

I looked away from her, a smile growing on my lips. "Y'all are boring. I'm going to do something productive now." I pulled out Madame Bovary from my backpack, which had been behind me.

Lila groaned. "And you were the one complaining about people studying at games."

Holding up a finger, I raised my eyebrows. "Well, for your information, I am not studying. I'm simply trying to do something productive while supporting the lacrosse team."

"I don't see the difference," Lila said after a split second, shaking her head. "Whatever. Go on. I'm sure Luc will appreciate your support."

For whatever reason, my cheeks felt just a bit warmer at that comment. I fumbled as I opened the book. What, was I flustered? Why? I felt Lila's eyes on me as I flipped to my bookmark, moving a finger down the lines of French until I found where I had left off. I lifted my head. "What?"

Lila widened her eyes and shrugged. "I don't know. What?"

I shook her head at her and stuck my nose right back into the book. After Luc guided me—or rather did 99% of the heavy-lifting in terms of reading and interpreting—through the first chapter, I'd read exactly half a page of the second chapter. I'd stopped promptly after I stumbled on the word décurie. Then, I spent the rest of the hour that I had designated for la lecture de connerie (my probably incorrect translation of "the reading of nonsense") wondering exactly I'd chosen such a hard book to read and impress my parents with.

My parents were fully aware of my attempts to be smart, actually. They hadn't forgotten about my less-than-stellar report card, but the disappointment must have subsided a bit. In fact, they found it hilarious that I was trying to read Madame Bovary. Word for word, my mom had told me, "Oh honey, I thought that the only French you knew was baguette!"

So now, if I wasn't reading Madame Bovary to show my commitment to learning more about the subjects I was learning in school, I was reading to to prove that I could indeed understand more French than baguette.

Tch. I must have clucked out loud because Lila gave me a concerned look. I stuck my nose back in the book. I could have chosen to read The Little Prince, this tiny little book with nice illustrations and spaced-out text, and my parents would have still thought I was a French genius.

I stood up, apparently startling Olivia so much that she dropped her bag of chips. She glared at me resentfully (but not really—I thought), but I ignored her. "I'm going to go seek out someone who can actually help me with French."

As I tried to make my way down the bleachers as quietly as I could—which was impossible with bleachers since I could literally float above them and they'd somehow creak—I heard Lila call after me, "But we both know French! We could help."

Shaking my head without looking back at them, I only kept stomping my way down the bleachers. Sure, Lila grew up with Luc speaking French, but by the time she entered elementary school, she began speaking exclusively English with her parents. She'd only picked up French again at her parents' insistence in high school. Though Lila was pretty handy with understanding spoken French, she was absolutely useless with reading—not very helpful.

Olivia's attitude toward French was indifferent at best, loathing at worst. That also rendered Olivia not very helpful as well.

So instead, I wandered around the concessions stand, where more people were hanging about. Still—not that many people. It truly was a shame. Out of the people I saw there snacking on candy (or trail mix if they were trying to be healthy) or devouring pizza like I had been, there wasn't a single familiar face. I sighed. Freshmen really were taking over this school.

Someone stepped away from the concessions stand after accepting a hot dog. Oh, someone I knew! I immediately went for the person, waving Madame Bovary like it was a flag. "Lottie!"

She turned in my direction, raising an eyebrow, before beaming at me. "Audrey! Hey!"

I almost trotted over to her. "So I was wondering if you could help me out with something."

Her eyes weren't on me, but rather on the field, but she nodded. "Yeah, of course."

Lottie was, hands-down, one of the most brilliant people I'd ever met in my life. She didn't look like it—she was always distracted by something (usually musicals from over sixty years ago, if I was right)—but she was always ready to help other people out. And thank God for that because I knew for a fact that I would have failed English class without her last year.

I opened Madame Bovary and scanned it until I found the passage that sent my brain into shutdown mode. (I'd attempted to restart it several times but to no avail.) "So here. What the fuck does this mean?" When Lottie blinked at me, I tried again, underlining the entire phrase, "What does this part mean? Like, I don't understand what point Flaubert is trying to make with this overly convoluted language."

Lottie blinked a couple times again. "Donc il fut décidé que le valet décurie prendrait les devants."

The way she read it made the sentence sound like a question. Much more importantly, her pronunciation was hilariously off in that she pronounced all the consonants at the end of the words and rolled all of her r's and...I narrowed my eyes at her. "Wait. You don't take French, do you?"

"Um, yeah, no," Lottie responded, playing with a lock of her hair sheepishly. "I could, um, try to guess what that means?"

This time, I was the one who blinked for several seconds. "Well," I said slowly, "I guess that could work—"

A weak cheer cut off my sentence, and Lottie and I turned toward the field. 1-0—it seemed like our team had scored at the very last minute. I myself let out a little belated cheer before turning back to Lottie, who was beaming again. "Well, go on?" I prompted her.

She turned back to the book and squinted. "I think I recognize the word...valet? Isn't that still the guy who's, like, the concierge who takes the bags and and stuff? And I think that il means he in English, right? Devant kind of looks like delante." When I raised an eyebrow at her, she continued. "Well, that means 'in front of'. And that décidé word looks like decide in English."

It took me a few seconds to process all of that. "All right," I said. "I mean, I'd figured out most of that—except for devant, thanks for that."

Lottie shrugged. "And they say that French is pretty similar to Spanish."

"True, true," I said, laughing. I was about to add onto that, but a figure in lacrosse gear interrupted me.

"Asking for help, Audrey?" It was Luc. I felt my cheeks warm once again, and I shut the book quickly, crossing my arms over my chest.

"For your information, I'm allowed to do things like that. Supportive learning environment and all of that, you know?" A glance at Lottie told me that she was watching me with a funny look. She broke out into a smile again when she caught my eyes.

Luc took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. "No need to get so defensive."

His hair was soaked with sweat and flattened, so it was obvious that he'd been wearing a helmet. Even though his face was bright red and sweaty, he looked so exhilarated that I wondered how exercise could do that to a person. When I myself exercised to that state of exhaustion, I usually felt like jumping off a cliff. I bit my lip.

"Well," cut in Lottie, breaking my stream of thought, "I'm going to head off now. Dacey's probably waiting for me. Sorry for not being that much help."

"Oh, no, you were really helpful!" I grinned at her. She was doing that thing with her eyebrows, and I felt another rush of heat to my cheeks. "See you later!"

She wouldn't stop it, though, but she finally headed off in the direction of the parking lot. I turned back to Luc, who was still looking at me with a bemused look on his face. I sighed. "What?"

"Did you really ask Lottie Ingham for help with French?" he asked. We both began to walk back to the bleachers, where Olivia and Lila were probably waiting for us. "You do know that she takes Spanish, right?"

I felt a bit peeved, so I whacked Luc on the arm with Madame Bovary. He protested loudly and gave me the stink eye, which I ignored. "Yes, of course I know. We had English together last year. But you do know that she's in AP Spanish, so she's bound to know at least something."

"Oh yeah." Luc rolled his eyes. We made our way up the bleachers, which creaked so loudly that I wondered if I really weighed that much. Of course, Luc weighed a lot more than I did, but if it was possible, every time I stepped, the bleachers creaked louder than they would have if he and the entire lacrosse team was running up here. "French and Spanish are practically the same thing. As similar as apples and oranges."

"Well, if you're done with being annoying," I said loudly as I caught sight of Lila only a couple of steps away, "I'm going to go analyze this book in peace."

Lila stood up with a grin and slapped her twin on the shoulder when we both greeted her. "Hey, good job! You're not as useless as I thought you were."

Luc gave her a flat look. "Thanks."

"Hey, your goal was amazing!" Olivia said, standing up as well. Her face lit up as she smiled, and that was when I understood why guys liked her (and not me). "Great job!"

"Thanks, O," Luc responded. This time, he sounded genuine, and I felt something flutter in my stomach. Flutter? What sort of a word was that? What sort of a person was I to say something that cliché? I was such a disappointment to myself.

Lila was watching me weirdly now. "You okay?"

"What?" Then, I realized I probably had a weird smirk or grimace on my face and quickly straightened out my expression. "Oh yeah, I'm fine."

Giving me a slightly concerned look, Luc shrugged. "All right, time to head home. You're hitching a ride with us, right?"

I let out a long breath through my nose and accepted my backpack from Lila, slinging it over my shoulder. "Stop using those words! It's called carpooling, and it's very environmentally friendly."

Luc stuck his tongue out at me and went cross-eyed, and that was when the four of us burst out in laughter and didn't stop until we almost made it to the parking lot.

→

Featuring a completely rewritten chapter as well as a face that we all know well if you've read the other book in this series!

I had a lot of fun reconnecting with these characters, especially with writing a scene that really related to my own experience with home games in high school. I've sat in on many a lacrosse game while at track practice and thought the sport was pretty cool despite having no knowledge of how it worked. What do you think of Audrey's relationship with her best friends? And Luc?

If you liked this chapter, I would love it if you voted, dropped a comment or two here and there, or added this book to your library and reading list!

Thank you so much for reading, and see you in a week or two!

Anne