A/N: Damn--I'm almost halfway done with this. Wow. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, especially LYCAN! At the Disco (hope you know I'm never going to let that rest), notyourbiz, and Coriander Spice. R&R

“Why is it so freaking cold?” I asked Ellie, jumping up and down and rubbing my arms. It was our last field hockey game of the season, and—even though after the ball-tripping incident I had promised myself I was burning it—the fuzzy hat was back on my head.

“Because it’s almost November,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I was wondering I bought that penguin costume to wear tomorrow,” I said sarcastically.

“Gray! Hays! You two are wings. Figure out which side you want to be,” Coach Ryder barked over her playbook.

“Right!” I yelled at the same time Ellie yelled “Left!”

“So it’s settled then?” Coach Ryder asked. We nodded. “Good. Jones! You’re center back.” She turned away from us and continued barking out positions.

“Hey, look, the other team's here,” Ellie said.

I rolled my eyes. “Really? I wondered why they were wearing different uniforms than us.” Ellie shrugged and took a bite of her pre-game candy bar.

“You’re being awfully sarcastic today,” she said with her mouth full. I pushed her mouth closed and waited for her to chew and swallow before talking.

“Sorry. I hate cold weather, and I still feel crappy from being sick,” I said. “Why hasn’t the game started yet?”

“Because we still have five minutes,” she pointed out.

“Five minutes which you will use to eat candy and get all sugared up for the game.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “And then I will have energy.”

“And then tonight at my house you’ll crash and we won’t be able to bake cookies,” I said. Her face turned ashen and she put down the candy. Cookie dough came slightly above candy on her list of favorite sugar sources.

Coach Ryder shouted, “On the field, Hays! Take off the sweatshirt, Gray, and get out there!” We ran onto the field, sticks in hand and mouth guards covering our teeth. I was standing opposite a small girl from Kelly who was probably the best player on the team. The tiny ones are always the dangerous ones.

The official came onto the field. “Blue goalie ready?” The Kelly goalie raised her stick. “White goalie ready?” Madison waved to the ref. “Start the ball!”

One of the Kelly forwards passed the ball back to the center-mid and everyone charged. Jill, who was one of the best players on our team, stole the ball and dribbled up the side of the field that Kelly was supposed to be defending. The ball went back and forth between the sides a couple times, but nobody scored. Jill took the ball and ran up their side again. I followed her, slightly ahead, and was standing right next to the goal cage. The backs were on her, and she yelled my name through her mouth guard. Without thinking, I took the pass and knocked it towards the goal cage, where it sailed past the goalie and hit the back of the cage.

“Lily! You scored!” Ellie screamed from the other side of the field.

“Nice job,” Jill said as we ran back up to the center line. I didn’t respond—I was busy having one of those oh-my-freaking-God-I-seriously-just-scored-a-goal-against-Thomas-Kelly-and-they’re-the-toughest-school-and-our-main-rivals-and-I’m-freaking-out moments that I doubt anybody else has experienced, because the only people who have scored goals against them are Jill, our center-mid Nina, and the other inner Bess. Everyone else has just sort of hung back, maybe assisted.

As the girls on the other team were getting ready with the ball, I heard cheering. Cole and Lucas were on the sidelines of the game, cheering my name. Had they seen me score? Did they think I was good? Because that was sheer luck, not a display of my nonexistent field hockey skills.

“Lily! Get your head out of your ass and chase after the freaking ball!” Ellie yelled at me. I realized I was still at the fifty, but the rest of the forwards were at the twenty-five, ready to accept the ball from the backs and bring it over to Kelly’s side. I did something as close to a sprint as I could manage and met the rest of the forwards at the line, where they were watching our backs frantically try to knock the ball towards the sides or back to us.

After a couple minutes, the backs finally managed to pass the ball up to Bess and she crossed the fifty without taking her stick off of it. She knocked it forwards, where Ellie took it and tried to get it into the goal. The goalie kicked it away, and Ellie came after it with her stick. The goal trapped it in her feet with her stick, and the whistle blew.

“Obstruction,” the ref shouted. “Stroke for white.”

I had no idea what was happening, but Jill took the ball and pushed it into the goal. It hit the back with a satisfying thunk, and everyone cheered. The ball had just been reset for a third time when the halftime whistle blew.

We gathered around Coach Ryder. “Great job, Gray,” she said. I tried not to grin stupidly. “Same to you, Meister. Go take a break, all of you.”

I walked across the field to Cole and Lucas, Ellie next to me. “How did you guys find out that we had a field hockey game today?” I asked as we came up.

“Don’t you ever say ‘hello?’” Cole joked.

“No. ’Hello’ is for squares,” I said.

“Then I’m proud to be a square. Manners are important.”

“You’re a boy, and you’re telling me ‘manners are important?’ Way to skew every stereotype I’ve had of fourteen year old boys.”

“I thought you were anti-stereotype,” he teased me. There was no way I could respond to this without saying something hypocritical or stupid or both.

“Gray! Hays! Over here!” I let out a breath.

“See you!” I said over my shoulder. I never thought I’d be happy to run away from Cole.

“You girls are on the bench to start. I need to put other people on.” She pointed at the silver bench standing by the fence. Damn. The metal was probably below freezing and we were wearing skirts and spandex that barely covered our butts, much less our legs. I swore under my breath and sat down, cringing as the cold metal met my legs. Next to me, Ellie looked like she was about to die of hypothermia.

“So fricking cold,” she said through gritted teeth, sitting on her hands in an attempt to shield her legs.

“We can make hot chocolate with the cookies if you don’t complain,” I bribed her. She shut her mouth and all I heard were her teeth chattering. I looked across the field to see Cole and Lucas cheering for our team.

“It was really nice of them to come,” Ellie said. I turned to her, surprised, and she smiled. “It’s cute how they’re cheering for our team even though you aren’t playing.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I asked. “I’m not dating Cole. He has every right to cheer for us. He could cheer for Kelly if he wanted to.”

She furrowed her brow. “And you wouldn’t mind?”

“Okay…I’d mind. But he could if he wanted to.”

“You two! Go back in. Same positions.” Coach Ryder shoved me onto the field as a seventh grader named Hannah came off and I crossed to the other end.

Like the first half, the ball kept going back and forth between the two sides, but nobody scored. Finally the ref blew the whistle and the game was over. We had won our last game, and everybody was cheering.

“Lily, why is Cole here? Did you invite him?” Bess whispered to me as Coach Ryder gruffly congratulated us.

Why does nobody ever mention Lucas? “I don’t know. He and Lucas just sort of showed up,” I told her as everyone started packing up. Everyone seemed to know who Cole was, and he seemed to like it. As Ellie and I put our sticks and mouth guards away, pulled on our sweatpants and sweatshirts, and crossed the field to Cole and Lucas, I had an idea. An idea that could possibly mortify me and cause Cole to cut off all contact with me, but it was still an idea.

“So,” I said to Cole as we started walking off the field. “I know this girl named Cora who has a crush on you.” Ellie looked at me and mouthed, “what the hell?”

“Yeah, so?” Perfect. This was exactly how it was supposed to go.

“Does that surprise you?” I asked.

“Not really,” he replied.

“Okay,” I said. “Now what if I told you that Cora isn’t real?”

He gaped at me, and Lucas laughed. “Way to be arrogant, dude,” he snickered.

“What was that for?” Cole asked.

“To show you just how popular you think you are,” I responded sweetly. Ellie looked at me with her eyes wide, and Lucas snapped his mouth shut. “And nobody likes a guy with a big head.”

“What?” he asked, obviously confused.

“Stop being so conceited,” I clarified. “You may be popular, but not everyone loves you.” I do, though, I added silently.

“You’re only in eighth grade,” he snapped at me.

“Yeah, but she speaks the truth,” Lucas said. “You gotta stop thinking you’re top dog.”

Cole looked down, defeated. “Yeah, I guess.”

“But if it makes you feel better, half the girls in Franklin are in love with you, though,” I said, smiling. He looked up, smirking. “And everyone was in a near-coma state when they saw you on the side of our field.”

He laughed. “So your point was?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought of it and decided to do a little experiment.”

He gave me a little shove. It took everything in me not to collapse in his arms. “You suck,” he said, smiling.

Lucas looked at his phone. “We’ve got to go, man. We have practice.”

“Bye, ladies,” Cole said, turning around and walking away from us with Lucas.

“What was that?” Ellie shrieked at me when they were about five yards down the street.

“Ellie, they can still hear you,” I reminded her.

“I don’t care! That was pointless!” she yelled.

“It was just for fun,” I said. “And it put him in his place. I thought you didn’t like him, anyways.”

I started walking, and she followed, whisper-shouting at me. “I don’t, but you do! And I know enough about boys to know that they don’t like being told what to do!”

“But he touched me,” I said happily.

She giggled immaturely. “That sounded wrong.”

“Shut up. It was really nice of them to come to the game, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it was. And he took that criticism pretty well,” she noted.

“What, so you don’t think he’s a bad person anymore?” I asked.

She stopped walking. “I never said that. I just don’t think he’s awful. I mean, no mean people ever come to field hockey games of people they’ve known for three weeks.”

“Give him some credit, Ellie,” I said. “He’s a nice guy.”

“I’m still not completely convinced about that.”

“You just said you thought he was better!”

“'Better.' Not the best.”