Archenemy Read Online Free PDF Page B

to her on the blanket.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really,
really
sorry.” I reached for her heaving shoulders and tried to hold her steady. But she flinched, lashing out at me with her elbow.
    â€œI don’t know what you think I was going to say,” she said, her voice weirdly loud. “But you must have misunderstood.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. Both of us knew I hadn’t misunderstood.
    â€œYou don’t need to apologize,” she said. “Just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
    â€œAre you okay?” I asked.
    â€œOf course, I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She stood up. “I’m not a … I’d
never..
.” Then, standing over me, she said, “I don’t know how anyone could be like that. I don’t know how
you
could be like that.”
    â€œYou can’t control it!” I said.
    â€œYes, I can. Maybe
you
can’t. But I can.”
    She turned around and walked away. Or she tried to. Her heels kept sinking into the turf until she reached down and yanked her shoes off. I sat on the blanket and watched her run across the field and away from everything that had just happened.

“W
    hat’s this?” Mom asks. She sounds alarmed.
    I’ve just gotten back from the Woodvine game and I’m still in my uniform, plopped down on my bed.
    â€œWhat?” I ask, sitting up.
    Unlike my dad, Mom has no problem striding right into my room. “
This
, Addie.” She holds up the crumpled picture of the soccer babe.
    â€œWhere’d you get that?” I ask.
    â€œFrom the pocket of your pants. I was doing laundry. Where did
you
get it?”
    She’s standing with her feet spread out and her knees slightly bent. It’s what Coach Berg would call an athletic position. Her feet are planted, but not so much that she couldn’t pounce on me if I tried to escape. Neither one of us is going anywhere until I answer her question.
    So I do. I tell her everything. What happened at the end of the summer; what’s been happening ever since. I’m surprised that I start to tear up—I’m not usually the crying type. I’m even more surprised that
she
starts tearing up. Mom’s a sort of professional activist. She works for the state and deals with people getting harassed (or worse) all the time.
    â€œYou’ve got to report this, Addie,” she says.
    All along, I knew she’d say that, of course. That’s why I waited so long to tell her.
How could I possibly tattle on someone
, I wondered,
who only a few months ago was my best friend?
    â€œI’ll help you if you want, but you—”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I interrupt. “I’ll do it.”
    Because after what Eva pulled at the Woodvine game, tattling suddenly seems a whole lot easier.

E
    va didn’t start harassing me right away.
    For a while, it seemed like she never wanted to be near me again. She didn’t call or come over. She definitely didn’t speak to me. We had only a couple more summer soccer games, and she skipped both of them. After all the on-field yelling and bantering we’d done, those last games were depressingly quiet. Often, when I looked around the field, I was surprised that Eva wasn’t there. It was like my brain couldn’t believe that she was gone. I’d only known her for one summer, but soccer didn’t make as much sense without her.
    When school started up, the only time we saw each other was in the hallways. Eva would duck her head and pretend she didn’t notice me.
    At the time, it was really sad. In one afternoon, I’d lost my best friend, apparently forever. But now, I’d do just about anything to go back to the way things were in the fall. Loneliness was bad, but I could handle it. If Eva had spent the rest of her life avoiding me, I could have spent the rest of mine as I had before we met.
    But then one day she stopped