The Underdogs by Sara Hammel Page B

happening here. Celia led us into the glass office behind the desk and slid the door shut.
    My mom cut to the chase. “Evie, kid, let’s take a little field trip tomorrow, okay? I’ll take you shopping at Macy’s. Say, lunchtime?”
    Evie was as confused as I was. “What for?”
    â€œHoney,” Mom said with as much subtlety and gentleness as she was capable of, “it’s time you started wearing a bra.”
    Celia broke in. “You know, I was your age when I got my first bra. It’s kind of fun…”
    Evie crossed her arms and hugged herself. A slow wave of burgundy crawled up her face. They were right, though. My friend was growing into a woman before our eyes, and she needed some support— stat .
    I could see Evie thinking. The girl wasn’t stupid. She’d read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret a bunch of times. She said, “Um, Beth … I don’t have any mon—”
    â€œI’m paying, don’t you worry,” Mom said, waving her hand as if to shoo away a fly.
    She winked and went back to her stool to monitor the comings and goings of the club. Celia waited a sec with Evie. “You know what? Don’t worry about tonight,” Celia told her conspiratorially. “There are lots of good movies coming out this summer. I’ll make sure you get to come with us next time.”
    Evie smiled. “Thanks, Celia.”
    We looked up as Lucky bounced over to the desk, clearly unshowered. His blond hair was sticking out from under the bandanna, but at least he’d had the decency to change into jeans—and the same purple tie-dyed shirt he’d had on at the pool party. He dangled the van keys in front of my mom and Evie.
    â€œLet’s move it out, people!”
    Evie, arms still crossed over her chest, said, “Dad, you told me we were going to see Jump Town .”
    Lucky put on a sympathetic face, as if he had no control over anything, and wasn’t it awful his daughter would be left out yet again. “Hey, the gang wanted to see Die .” Lucky shrugged. “What was I gonna do? I’m outnumbered.”
    Although it shouldn’t have, Lucky’s cluelessness shocked us yet again, and Evie’s mouth was agape, while Mom had steam coming out of her ears. He seemed to pick up on this and added, “Another time, okay?”
    Evie shrugged. “I don’t mind seeing Die, Die, Die .”
    â€œMmm … Sorry, honey, you know what your mom said. Absolutely no R-rated movies or it’s my butt in a vise.”
    â€œYeah, well, she said a lot of things.” Evie frowned. “You’ve ignored most of it.”
    Lucky looked at her sharply. “What was that?”
    â€œNothing…” Evie gave in and accepted her fate for the night. She watched them file out the front door, and then she turned to walk back to the smelly storage room to sulk, and I went with her.

 
    After
    Something was afoot. Evie and I were following Ashlock again, and he’d slipped into the men’s locker room. He had to be cutting through to get to the pool. We hotfooted it to the women’s locker room, zipping through to the other side. Yep. The pool.
    Luckily, our pal Harmony was on duty this evening so we could easily have a legitimate reason to be out there. It was that quiet time of day; the sun was on its way down.
    We saw then exactly what Ashlock was up to. He was standing over Joe Marbury, who was in the steaming hot tub, which was sunken into the ground off to the left of the lifeguard’s perch. We slipped in next to Harmony on the bench. He greeted us with a distracted hello because he was busy guarding the pool like a hawk.
    Evie elbowed Harmony and pointed toward Ashlock. Harmony mouthed Wow to us, and quickly turned his iPod off. We all sat there like robots, not moving, not making a sound, staring at the pool and trying to pretend like we couldn’t care less