Page 2 of Eye on the Ball

She hugged me back and then waved to Brenda, pushing the spectacular blue hair that matched her eyes away from her face. “Hey, Tess. Hey, Brenda. Good to see you, too. France was fine, but I spent most of my time in Spain on this trip. I have a killer sangria recipe for my next potluck.”

“Yum. So, what’s up? Looking for a cool Dead End Pawn T-shirt?” The shirts were my sister Shelley’s idea, and, to my complete surprise, they sold like hotcakes. “The blue one would look great with your peaches-and-cream complexion.”

Sapphire grinned at me but shook her head. “Thanks, but not this time. I’m here to cover the story of the Dead End and Riverton captains facing off before the big game.”

As if on cue, we heard the roar of turbo-charged truck engines racing into the parking lot.

“I guess the Riverton crew is here,” I said dryly. “The Truckmans always drive such subdued vehicles.”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “Remember three years ago, when they found a camo-painted limo and drove the entire team to the game in it?”

“I don’t think they ‘found’ it. I think they painted one of Truckman’s Limo fleet to look like that,” I said. “Apparently it’s now the most-requested car for proms.”

Aunt Ruby had told me that. She’d always been a fount of all knowledge and gossip, and she knew even more these days now that she was Dead End’s mayor.

“Maybe—”

But we didn’t get to hear the rest of Sapphire’s sentence, because the door flew open.

The Truckmans had arrived.

Ace led the way, as usual, with his two cousins, Mutt and Probie, following. All three of them had pale, almost colorless hair and eyebrows and deeply tanned skin. Ace had a large, square head that perfectly matched his over-muscled, bulky body, and the other two were nearly as big. Ace wore a buzz cut and an air of entitlement that hadn’t changed since I’d first met him in high school when his team would play ours in various sports. Win or lose, Ace could always be counted on to be an astonishingly poor sport.

Now that he was nearly thirty, you’d think he’d have grown out of that.

You’d be wrong.

“Hey, it’s the losers from Team Loser at the Loser Shop,” Ace sneered. Behind him, the cousins snorted with laughter.

“I see your vocabulary hasn’t expanded since high school,” I fired back, knowing it was a mistake to let him annoy me.

But he insulted myshop.

Nobody insults my shop.

Mutt frowned behind his cousin’s back and waved at me. “Hey, Tess.”

“Hey, Mutt.” I smiled at him. He’d had a crush on me when we were kids and had always been nice to me since then when we ran into each other.

“Listen, we’re here to set the practice schedule, flip the coin, etc.,” Brenda said through clenched teeth. “Let’s get on with it.”

Ace, who’d been about to say something to me, turned to face Brenda and gave her one of those rude head-to-toe and back-up-again leers he specialized in. “Hey, Brenda.I wondered if you’d have the guts to show your face.”

Brenda’s face turned so red I thought her ears would catch fire, and I wondered what that was all about.

“Yeah,Brenda,” Probie, one of the cousins, said, and Ace turned around and thumped him on the head.

“What did I tell you about talking?”

“Sorry, Ace,” Probie muttered.

I rolled my eyes, and Probie glared at me.

“You laughing at us?”

“Definitely not. Now, shall we get on to the coin toss?”

“We don’t trustyouto toss a coin, Red,” Ace said.

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