Brett McCarthy by Maria Padian Page B

Security, Bomb-Sniffing Dogs, and Search and Rescue Helicopters. When a junior high kid disappears, adults go into panic over-drive. Apparently they combed the building, interrogated kids, called my parents, and finally put out an all-points bulletin with the police for a missing eighth-grade girl.
    I was, of course, at the Gnome Home, unaware of the havoc I had caused. Watching soaps and eating the leftover chocolate-raspberry-chip brownies Nonna and I had baked a few days earlier.
    Just as the closing music and credits rolled, signaling the end to that afternoon’s episode of
The Young and the Restless,
Dad arrived. He pushed the kitchen door open with such force that it banged against the wall and made me jump. If that hadn’t been enough to give me a heart attack, the look on his face sure was. A foreboding combination of rage and panic.
    “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” he demanded.
    “Eating cookies and watching TV,” I replied instantly. True, but smartmouth, nonetheless.
    “Home. Now!” he boomed. My dad never booms. “You have some serious explaining to do!”
    The Spanish Inquisitor, looking somewhat less furious and a whole lot more scared, waited in the kitchen.
    “Are you aware,” she said in a choked voice, “that half the Mescataqua police force is out looking for you?”
    “I’ll call the school and tell them we found her,” said Dad. He disappeared into his study and closed the door. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and braced myself for the Lecture of a Lifetime. When I turned to face my mother, I got just the opposite.
    Her face crumpled. She put her hands over her eyes, and tears slid between her fingers. She sobbed without making a sound. Until you’ve made your own mother cry, you just don’t know misery.
    In Michael’s and Dante’s defining circles of Hell, I had officially slipped from the Seventh Circle, the Violent, to the Ninth Circle: Traitors to Family. I would pencil it into his Fifth Period notebook myself.
    Dad spent a long time on the phone in his study before rejoining us in the kitchen. He wasn’t booming anymore and he seemed a whole lot scarier.
    He had the following Big Bad News: I was suspended again (a full week this time). I was grounded (not that I had anywhere to go). Most importantly, Mr. Hare had decided to bar me from playing soccer for the last few weeks of the season. Not even practices.
    “Wait a minute! Can he do that?” I said, feelings of extreme guilt pushed aside by panic. “I mean, he can keep me from games while I’m suspended, but the rest of the season?”
    “He just did,” Dad said quietly.
    “No way!” I exclaimed. “Kids do worse things than cut school and they still play. He’s wrong.”
    Dad cleared his throat. “Mr. Hare has my full support on this decision,” he said. “I think this might be a good way to get your attention.”
    “Dad…please. You have my attention, okay? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left school. Mom”—I turned to her—“I’m so sorry. I know…this is the last thing you need right now. We’re
all
upset. But please, don’t make things worse for me. I need this.”
    Dad frowned. “You need soccer?”
    How could he possibly understand? He never played sports in school, never played on a team. He’d been one of those Gifted and Talented sorts himself. Mom had been an art geek. They had no clue what it felt like to stand at the corner of an emerald-green field, wind up, and boot a ball in a perfect crossing arc. Hear the roars and cheers from the crowd. I searched for language my college-English-professor dad could understand.
    “It’s not just a game, Dad. It…
defines
me.”
    His face resembled a mask. His spoke quietly, without a trace of emotion.
    “Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” he said.

ig•no•min•i•ous
    Mr. Beady took me that evening to see Nonna. It was her last night in the hospital, and she was anxious to go home. Well, more like
demanding
to