Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink by Nancy Rue Page B

straight and said, “The only thing you need to know about me is that I love soccer and I hate school. No offense.”
    “None taken,” Mr. Auggy said.
    His next mistake was making them give him all the reasons they hated school while he wrote them on the chalkboard. It took up the whole board and what was supposed to be their time for math — the one subject that didn’t make Lucy wish she was at the dentist instead. Why talk about hating school anyway? School was what it was, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
    “What would you like to change about school?” Mr. Auggy said next.
    “Lunch,” Oscar said.
    “What do you want for lunch?”
    “No chili and cheese on top of Fritos,” he said. “It’s gross.”
    “What do you want?”
    The other kids said things like chicken nuggets and pizza and burritos, except J.J., who still wasn’t participating. Lucy said she wanted sushi and calamari. Then she thought her dad wouldn’t be smiling at her right now, and she wished she hadn’t said it. It did make J.J. smile, though.
    “What else would you change?” Mr. Auggy said, even though there was no room left on the chalkboard. He picked up a clipboard.
    “I don’t like doing work,” Oscar said. He looked around as if he expected the rest of the class to congratulate him on a brilliant answer. Mr. Auggy actually wrote it down. Okay, as long as they were being ridiculous —
    “I want a sports program,” Lucy said.
    “Ah, Miss Lucy, our soccer player.”
    “Except there’s no soccer team. There’s not even any soccer balls — ”
    “And all the basketballs are old. They don’t even bounce.”
    The class stared at Emanuel. He almost never talked, especially in class.
    “What sports do you have?” Mr. Auggy said.
    “None at our school,” Oscar said. “Huh, Lucy?”
    Lucy lifted her chin. “None. They have some boys’ teams at the middle school and the high school — baseball and basketball and football, but the girls can’t even try out for those.”
    “Girls have that thing where you punch the ball over the net.” Carla Rosa frowned and looked at Lucy.
    “Volleyball,” Lucy said. “My mom was going to start a soccer league in Los Suenos.”
    “Why doesn’t she?” Mr. Auggy said.
    “She’s dead,” Carla Rosa said.
    “Shut up!” J.J. said.
    Mr. Auggy cocked his head at J.J., but Lucy shook her ponytail.
    “It’s okay. She can’t help it.”
    Mr. Auggy didn’t say anything for a minute, and J.J. slid back down in his chair.
    “My dad asked about the school having a soccer team,” Lucy said. “But they said there wasn’t enough money.”
    “I see,” Mr. Auggy said. He had stopped writing things down. It figured. Whenever somebody said there wasn’t any money, that was usually the end of whatever needed to be paid for.
    Mr. Auggy committed a few more flubs before lunch — like giving them each a clump of clay and telling them to make something, which ended in a major clay-ball battle — but as far as Lucy was concerned, his worst mistake came during recess.
    They gobbled their lunches as usual — in four bites Lucy downed the peanut butter and pickle sandwich Dad made her — and raced out to the playground, stopping only at her cubby in the main hall of the sixth-grade wing to get the soccer ball she kept there. Cubbies lined the walls on both sides and served as lockers, but no one ever took anything from anybody’s because, Lucy always figured, nobody had anything worth taking. In her case, no one else in sixth grade except her little team had any interest in soccer equipment.
    Just as Lucy was tucking the ball under her arm, a female voice behind her said, “What happened, Lucy?”
    She turned to Veronica, who stood, hang-lipped, on the other side of the hall next to Dusty.
    “What?” Lucy said.
    “Why aren’t you wearing that cute pink coat you had on yesterday?”
    Dusty nodded. “That one looks like you ran over it or something.”
    “I’m saving