New LA Life: Chapter 6

A few other guys from the other teams joined C.J., Alan, Jose, Manny and me for lunch and as we walked out of the park I started to get a sense of these four friends. C.J. had a strong, quiet confidence and would talk to anyone. He'd brought a skateboard and rolled alongside us. He was closest to Manny while Alan and Jose seemed like best friends. I tried to pick up on the inside jokes the four of them tossed around constantly. We were almost out of the parking lot, walking toward a mini-mall with a Jamba Juice, Subway and a Chinese restaurant when and I noticed a three girls sitting at the bus stop watching us.

"Alan! Jose! Where you guys going for lunch?" Yelled a girl with a blonde pony-tail. She waved but the boys ignored her.

"Amber Johnston," C.J. said with a scowl.

"Don't even say the name, that..." Alan stopped himself.

"Uh, you’re the cat who played with that shit last spring," Manny said, shaking his head.

"Shut up, man. We all make mistakes."

"And at least you got some play," Jose piped in as we reached the intersection and waited for the light to change. "So, Erika, where you going? Perry with the homies? Manhattan with the fags?"

I tried to think of the name of the school Auntie Laine mentioned at dinner but neither of those sounded familiar. "Um, I think I'm going where C.J. goes."

"Yeah, my mom is helping her aunt get her into Emerson."

"Well, I guess that's somewheres in the middle," Jose said, "It's a little bit hood, a little bit Hollywood."

"Where do you go?"

"Alan's a Manhattan Beach snob and so am I, unfortunately. Manny's at Emerson too. I was actually trying to see if Mom would transfer me to Emerson but she says it's too far."

The light turned and we strolled slowly across the intersection for lunch. C.J. said he'd get me and gave me a smile that for the first time ever made me feel what it must be to have an older brother looking out for me.

On the way back to the park Amber Johnston and her two friends walked toward me. They wore make-up and street clothes and I felt ugly in my soccer gear. I was still pulling on my sweaty shin guards and a fresh pair of socks on while the boys were played keep away a few yards away.

"Hey," Amber said standing above me so that she was blocking the sun. When I looked up she had her hand stretched out to me.

"Hi," I said remembering what Alan had stopped himself from saying about her as I shook her limp palm.

"I hear you just moved here from Argon."

I smiled, still looking down. "You mean Oregon. It's Oregon."

"Oh, yeah, well, whatever."

One of her friends, a tall girl with brown hair cut into a short bob and a super-dark tan piped in next. "I see you already trying your game with all our guys."

I had to squint because Amber stepped to the side. "I'm not trying my game on anyone. I just moved and I'm just playing soccer." I thought back to Portland, to the complicated web of boyfriends and crushes that shaded every relationship. I was walking into this situation completely blind.

"Okay, well, just be careful." This was Amber again. "Because those boys are a bunch of players. They think going out is just like soccer, a game, and they will pass you from one to the next just like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "Just warning you."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said and moved my focus back to my cleats. I thought they'd all gone away until I heard another voice chime in.

"Mentirosas," the voice said and when I looked up, it was Marisela. "Don't listen to that mess, girl," Mari said loudly enough so the three girls who were walking away could still hear her. "They just jealous you went to lunch with the cute boys." She reached her hand out to help me to my feet. "I know everyone thinks I'll hate you because I'm used to being the chica suprema out here. But I figure if we can both keep up with the boys we ought to stick together."

"Hey, thanks," I said as the whistle blew and we trotted back to practice.

"Entonces," she said, "I can see you have something sad in your heart. You don't need no more enemies."

I smiled, glad that Marisela was on my side. I had a good feeling about her but worried that she'd find out the truth: that I was the mentirosa, and I was my own worst enemy.

New LA Life: Chapter 5 continued

At the break I joined up with CJ and his three buddies again and tried to remember the new names: C.J., short for Curtis, tall, short hair, dark-skin. Alan, the cutest of the three with a Hapa baby-face like Uncle Kev, brown hair and eyes that were almost green. Jose, a spiky-haired Latino jokester, and Manny, the shortest one, was serious and sweet.

"Oh, for sures," Jose was saying. "Her and probably Mari. They're the only girls who can fuckin' hang."

I sat down next to my duffle bag and looked for my Gatorade.

"Well, E," Curtis said, sticking with the nickname, "You're auntie don't lie. Girl can play."

I tried to hide my smile and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I was still feeling good, still able to avoid thinking about why I was starting this new life here in the first place.

"So, this is how it works," Jose said sliding in next to me. "They do this little clinic on the first day of camp and then they make squads based on skills. I'm pretty sure you'll be in the top tier with us. Only one other girl ever plays with us and that's Marisela." Jose nodded in the direction of a skinny girl with her hair in a ponytail high on her head. Her hands were on her hips and she wore super long shorts that hung almost all the way to her shin guards. She was talking to this other kid who looked way older than us. His head was shaved and he wore long navy blue Dickies instead of soccer shorts. I learned the word later; he was a cholo. "That G's Ramiro," Jose continued. "They are on again, off again, all the time. Looks like right now they're on." I noticed the way Jose looked at Mari. There was a story there. Just like all of the history between friends in Portland, I had to learn a whole new scene. But as I watched Mari I wondered if maybe she could be a friend. She obviously loved soccer like I did, and I hoped we'd have other things in common.

The coach with the strong Irish accent blew a whistle calling us back to the shade and divided us into groups. They started calling names for the lowest group, placing players onto teams based on high schools in the area: Mira Costa, Avalon, Torrance and Redondo Union. I watched and waited as the younger kids in the group were placed and imagined Jem would have run circles around the kids here, that if he were here he definitely would have made the middle group which was who they called next. These all had college team names like UCLA, USC, Stanford and San Diego. The highest group, the one I knew I wanted was called next and our teams were based on the pros: Chivas, Barcelona, Arsenal and Manchester United. I ended up being called along with Alan and Mari for team Barcelona and Jose winked at me as he went to Chivas. He'd been right, after all. Marisela and I were the only two girls on the top teams.

By the time we finished a bunch of conditioning drills my legs ached. I hadn't played against boys in a while I knew I didn't just want to hang. I wanted to be one of the best. Alan and I partnered up even though I could tell the coach wanted Mari and I to practice together and through the whole session Mari and I kept our eyes on one another. She beat me in the flat out sprints but she and I were toward the front of the whole pack. In the side-to-side and back-pedaling we were pretty much neck-to-neck. Once coach threw a ball into play I noticed she seemed stronger with her left foot and although she was quick, she was also small. If I played a physical game I could always knock her off the ball.

"Nice work," Alan said as we walked back toward our bags for the lunch break.

"You too," I said with a smile, automatically feeling at ease with Alan who, with his height and strong build, would probably play striker.

"We have a mean squad, huh?"

"Yeah, well, we'll soon find out," he said taking a long sip at his water bottle. "After lunch we'll get to scrimmage."

New LA Life: Chapter 5

We didn't even play for five minutes before Mrs. Taylor called us back to the living room. Auntie Laine, Angela, Curtis and I all hopped into Mrs. Taylor's black Tahoe and she drove us to this huge park. Groups of kids were standing around in the parking lot but they looked nothing like the ones I went to soccer camp with in Portland.

Portland's soccer scene was all white boys with blonde or brown hair cropped short, or cut in slightly shaggy Abercrombie cuts. The white girls all had long straight ponytails and strong, lean legs. There was usually a smattering of Asians from Aloha, a few Indian kids from Bethany, some Latinos from Beaverton, and a handful of mixed kids like me, but in this parking lot the ratios were flipped.

Most of the kids here were Latino. There were some Asian kids, a few Black and mixed-race kids like me and C.J., and a few white kids too, but even they looked a lot harder than the kids in Oregon. What I noticed next was that it was almost all boys. Only a handful of girls stood in clusters around bags and I thought about Nat and wished she were here. Normally, I would have ditched Mom and started walking around, talking to friends I hadn't seen since school got out, or teammates I hadn't played with since basketball or spring soccer. Now I just watched, trying to figure out who went with who and waiting on C.J. to show me the ropes.

"Come on, E," Curtis said, already providing me with a nickname. "I'll introduce you to the guys."

"So, have a good day, Erika," Auntie Laine said before I got to far away, "and I'll see you around five tonight."

"Okay," I said, pulling on the shoulder strap on my bag and ignoring how tight my chest suddenly felt. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I followed C.J. as he walked toward three boys juggling a soccer ball.

"What up, kid?" a boy with black spiky hair asked as he gave C.J. a high five.

"Not much, not much. Hey fools, this is Erika she just moved here from Portland."

Before he even finished this introduction the ball came sailing toward me. I dropped my bag instantly and let my body respond. Right knee, left knee, right knee, head, left knee and then down to my right foot where I passed the ball to C.J. who caught it in his hands.

"Whoa, she gots better handles than you, Jose," said the taller of the boys with longish brown hair and a hint of Asian in his eyes.

"Better than your punk ass too," Jose responded as he leaned down to lace up his cleats.

The short kid with a short-cropped afro held out his hand. "I'm Manny, and that fool over there is Alan. Looks like you might have better handles than all of us."

A whistle blew and kids streamed to the shade of a tree on the edge of the field.


Throughout the morning I lost myself in the familiarity of soccer drills: dribble through cones, pass, trap, pass, trap, wall pass, throw-in, penalty kick and for that first hour I forgot everything but the ball, and the grass and the summer sun shining down. I didn't even pay attention to my competition the way Nat would have wanted.

Instead I pretended that the coaches were the ones I'd played for back home; that the boys I paired up with were Nat or Paris or Andie, girls that I'd known my whole soccer life. I let myself get lost in the only truth that felt right, the stiff leather of a soccer ball, the green grass of the field and my body's automatic responses in that world.

On the soccer field I didn't have to think about Jem, still up in Portland playing with our cousins at Uncle Kev's house, or Mom and Dad's bodies buried six feet underground. I didn't have to think about Nat meeting up with Paris because she was her new best friend and the two of them would call Jason and Derrick, the guys we'd been crushing on before I left, to see if they wanted to meet at the movies.

I played as hard as I had to in order to forget.

New LA Life: Chapter 4

I woke up early the next morning and took a shower in what had been Auntie Laine's guest bathroom but now was the one Jem and I would share. At first I wasn't sure I liked the bathroom. The floor was this wood bamboo and the sink and stand-up shower were this beige stone. All of that was just fine. It was the shower doors that were all glass-enclosed and there was a big window with no covering so even though the outside wall faced the backyard and a wall of thin bamboo blocked out the view, some peeping tom could sneak into the backyard, part the bamboo and watch me bathe. That first morning I kept looking out the window, imagining what someone would see if they were watching me. I showered for those first few weeks as if I was in a shampoo commercial, lathering up and posing, closing my eyes and arching my back as I rinsed.

For some reason, I didn't feel scared, though. After the last night at our old house everyone kept expecting Jem and I to freak out, be nervous or jumpy, but I never was especially once I arrived in LA far away from anyone who knew Dad or his mistress. In Portland we always had to worry about running into someone Dad had prosecuted as a DA, but in LA no one knew my family, our history, or me.

I dried off with a thick white bath towel and wrapped it around me. When I opened the door to walk across the hall to my bedroom Auntie Lane was there.

"Morning, Honey. Find everything okay?"

"Um, yeah," I responded, my wet hair dripping down my back.

"Well, we're heading over to the Taylor's place in about half an hour. You should probably pack your soccer stuff too. Do you eat breakfast?"

"Um, sometimes," I lied again. I somehow couldn't stop myself. Mom always made us eat breakfast even if it was just a yogurt and a sports bar.

"Okay, well, there's some cereal on the counter and milk and juice in the fridge."

"Great. Thanks."

I closed the door behind me and shook my head. It wasn't a trick question or anything.

She just wanted to know about breakfast. What was my problem?

I skipped breakfast because all of the cereal was the super healthy kind and looked gross. Auntie Laine did have a stash of sports bars though so I grabbed a couple of those and threw them in my soccer bag which was packed with everything I needed to survive this first day: long soccer socks, cleats, shinguards, two bottles of Gatorade, headphones and my iPod loaded with my thinking mix (The Shins, Seawolf, Helio Sequence) and my hyper mix (Black Eyed Peas, Missy Elliot, Beyonce). I was wearing my short soccer shorts instead of the baggy ones, and an extra t-shirt in case I wanted to change. I had a sweatshirt on over my tank top and Auntie Laine told me I probably wouldn't need it but I decided to wear it anyway.

"Okay, so the Taylor's live just a couple of blocks," Auntie Lane said as she backed out of the driveway. "Audrey, or Mrs. Taylor, hired me last year to convert their garage into an office and she has a son about your age."

We passed by houses heading south on Harvard and then turned left on Redondo. The cul-de-sac we pulled into had five houses and the Taylor's house was one of them. It was painted a bright yellow except for the garage that Auntie Laine had helped them remodel. It was painted olive green and blended in with the trees and grass so that it almost disappeared. There was a black SUV parked in the driveway and I was suddenly nervous and hoped, maybe even prayed even that I'd get along will this Taylor kid. Maybe he'd even but hot.

New LA Life: Chapter 3

That night at dinner Auntie Laine took me to this little Mexican restaurant and asked me what I wanted to do for the last few weeks of summer while she was at work. I shrugged, but I guess she'd already thought about this so she gave me some suggestions.

"Well, there's a surf camp or junior lifeguard classes at the beach. There is a beach volleyball camp or an all-day sports camp where I guess you can play a bunch of different sports."

I picked at the chips served with my burrito at The Burnt Tortilla.

"Then there is this arts and crafts center where you could hang out,"

I shook my head at the sound of that.

"And then there's a soccer camp."

I looked up. "Yeah, soccer camp." I'd just finished up camp in Portland and loved the idea of another couple weeks of soccer.

"Okay, so I'm going to take tomorrow morning off so I can introduce you to the family where you'll hang out while I'm at work. Then we'll get you signed up for soccer and I'll head off to work."

"Okay," I said and thought about how different this soccer camp would be. Every summer since second grade I'd gone to camp and known every girl and every boy, knew who the best strikers and defenders were, knew which club teams everyone played for and where they went to school. My best friend, Natalie (Nat for short) and I had played together since first grade. Her dad was a coach at University of Portland and we used to go to games together and dream of playing in the soccer final four, winning an NCAA championship together. We both still had that dream even though I now lived a thousand miles away and when I got home from dinner I called her to tell her about camp.

"That's awesome," Nat said.

"I wish you could come with me. I'm not going to know anyone. Who knows who my partner will be or if any of them will be any good." Nat and I had a high standard for soccer and I wondered if the girls here in LA would be as good as we were.

"Well, you'll get the chance to scout out the competition that will end probably end up at UCLA."

"True that, " I said and then it was quite for a second.

"So, how are things with your aunt? Is she cool?"

"Yeah, I mean it's all right. She's okay. She wants me to talk all the time and hang out and she seems a little like she isn't sure what she's doing. She's never had kids or anything so, whatever. I have to wait and see how things go. Have you seen Derrick or Jason?"

"Uh, no. Paris and I went to the mall and the movies yesterday but we didn't see anyone."

I imagined Nat and Paris going on with their lives without me and suddenly felt every single mile that separated us. "Oh well. Maybe you should call him and then they could meet you guys instead of trying to guess where they'll be."

"Oh, yeah, I guess I could do that."

I shook my head at my best friend because I knew she just liked the drama of possibility, possibly seeing her crush or possibly bumping into her enemies.

"Okay, well, I better go," I said, thinking I should see what Auntie Laine was up to before I went to bed and as I hung up the phone I knew more that just soccer camp was going to be completely different. I was leaving Portland, Oregon, the only world I'd known before far, far behind and entering something completely unknown.