Madison perked up. “You’re right. That’s what I’ll do.”
An idea occurred to Madison and made her think about something else she wanted to discuss with Peggy. It was something embarrassing, but Peggy was the only woman she knew to whom she could open up about stuff that was personal.
“Peggy, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Sure, anything,” Peggy said.
Just thinking about what she was going to ask Peggy made Madison blush and look at the floor. It was times like these when Madison especially missed having a mother.
“How do you know if someone is your boyfriend instead of just a friend?”
“You’re good at math, aren’t you?” Peggy asked.
Madison nodded, a little confused by the question since it didn’t appear to have anything to do with what she’d asked.
“In math, there are sure answers,” Peggy said. “Four is always the answer to what is two plus two. Well, there’s no formula when it comes to a boyfriend. It’s something you feel. When you’re around a boy or girl who is just your friend, you feel happy. When there’s romance in the air, your heart soars and you feel giddy. And the two of you tend to act silly, but you don’t care.” Peggy smiled. “Is that any help?”
Madison’s brow furrowed. She was definitely happy when Jake was around and she missed him when he wasn’t, but she wasn’t the type of person who acted silly or felt giddy. She was more the serious type. She decided that she was still uncertain about whether Jake was her boyfriend.
D D D
Twenty minutes later, Hamilton knocked on Madison’s office door. It was late, so they ate dinner at a small Thai restaurant near the office. During the walk to the restaurant, Madison thought about the game at Prescott-Mather and memories of her humiliating experience came flooding back. She was depressed by the time they sat down and ordered.
When the food came, Madison picked at it. Hamilton made small talk, but Madison responded with grunts. For once, her dad seemed to notice that something was amiss. Hamilton Kincaid was Oregon’s best cross-examiner, and he finally pried her sad tale out of her.
When she finished, Hamilton started to laugh. Madison fumed, furious that her father wasn’t taking her tragic situation seriously. At times like this Madison really missed having a mom. A mother would never laugh at something so awful.
“It’s not funny, Dad!”
“Yes, it is. I can imagine how you looked flying through the air and landing on your nose. You just can’t see the humor because you’re too close to what happened. But let me tell you something. If I had a penny for every time I made a fool of myself when I was a young lawyer, I’d be a rich man. And I still make a fool of myself every once in a while. I just don’t broadcast that fact.
“I can promise you that worse things than what happened to you today are going to happen. Screwing up is part of life. It’s how you deal with the screwups that define you. You can either crawl in a hole and say, ‘Woe is me,’ or you can laugh at yourself, dust yourself off, learn from your mistakes, and forge on. This is a big deal for you now, but I’ll bet most of the girls have already forgotten what you did because they’re thinking about what they failed to do to win that game.”
“You don’t know some of the girls. They’re really mean, and they’ll never let me forget.”
“Those girls are losers, Maddy. People who have to make fun of other people to feel good usually don’t feel that good about themselves. You can put this behind you if you see the humor in what happened and learn from your mistake.”
Hamilton’s words didn’t cheer up Madison at first, but the more she thought about what he’d said, the more sense it made. She remembered when she’d scored the goal against her own team in the championship game last summer. She almost never thought about that now, and what she’d done then was far worse than what had happened at Prescott-Mather. In fact, she took great satisfaction from the way she’d blocked out the wrong-way goal and sucked it up to help win the game. For the first time since the scrimmage, Madison smiled.
Chapter 16
Madison Survives
Jake was waiting for Madison at the front door when she got to school the next morning.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“So you heard?” she asked sheepishly.
“About your soccer debut? Yeah. A few of the girls were gabbing about it.”
Jake handed her a drawing that showed Madison flying through the air with a goofy expression on her face. She couldn’t help laughing.
“I must have looked pretty stupid, but I’m over it,” she said. She wanted to appear confident to Jake even if it was only partly true. “And you’ll understand why when I tell you why I tripped over that ball.”
Madison told Jake about the girl she’d seen in the woods.
“Do you think she was really Ann?” Jake asked when Madison was through.
“I think it’s possible. And I’ve thought of something I can do to find out if I’m right or wrong.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to take the bus out to Prescott-Mather and show a picture of Ann around. If she’s a student, someone will recognize her.”
Going to soccer practice was one of the hardest things Madison had ever done. When Marci spotted Madison in front of her locker, she sneered.
“I’m surprised you showed up today,” she said.
Madison had expected Marci to harass her, and she’d decided how she would deal with her tormentor. Instead of looking embarrassed, Madison looked Marci in the eye and smiled.
“I sure made an ass out of myself, Marci. And I especially feel bad because your pass to me was so perfect. Thanks for showing enough confidence in me to make it. That meant a lot to me.”
Marci hadn’t been prepared to be praised by her rival, and she was speechless for a second.
“Well, pay more attention the next time” was the best she could do. Then she turned away and led her buddies to the practice field.
Madison had anticipated a comment or two from Coach Davis, but the coach simply went over problems she saw with everyone’s play and didn’t single out Madison. Then it was practice as usual. By the time practice ended, Madison was starting to think that she might survive her horrible mistake after all.
Chapter 17
Found!
The next day, Madison developed a really bad cold just before Hamilton left for work. Hamilton was too distracted to examine his daughter carefully, and as he walked out the door, he told her to drink plenty of tea with honey and stay in bed. She felt guilty about tricking her father, but she thought it was necessary if she was going to solve the mystery of her best friend’s disappearance. Shortly after Hamilton left, Madison dressed and rushed to the stop where she could catch the bus to Prescott-Mather. Safely stowed in her backpack was a picture of Ann posing with Madison at a soccer game.
The bus stopped at the gate to the prep school forty-five minutes after she’d boarded it. Several of the riders were students at the school, and Madison mixed with them as they walked down the lane that led from the gate to the campus. Fishing Ann’s picture out of her backpack, she showed it to some of the kids, but no one recognized Ann.
Students were streaming into class when Madison arrived at a quadrangle made up of a large, open grassy space surrounded by school buildings. She was approaching another girl when she saw a mop of frizzy blond hair out of the corner of her eye. Madison turned around and found herself staring at Ann Beck.