She wondered, period.

“If you didn’t report me because I’m your daughter,” Josie said, “then you’re not really being fair, are you?”

“I’d be acting like a parent, not a judge.” Her mother reached across the table and put her hand on Josie’s, which felt weird-her mother wasn’t one of these touchy-feely types. “Josie, you can come to me, you know. If you need to talk, I’m there to listen. You’re not going to get into legal trouble, no matter what you tell me-not if it’s about you, not even if it’s about your friends.”

To be perfectly honest, Josie didn’t have many of those. There was Peter, who she’d known forever-although Peter no longer came to her house and vice versa, they still hung out together in school, and he was the last person in the world Josie could ever imagine doing anything illegal. She knew that one of the reasons other girls excluded Josie was because she always stuck up for Peter, but she told herself that it didn’t matter. She didn’t really want to be surrounded by people who only cared about what happened on One Life to Live and who saved their babysitting money to go to The Limited; they seemed so fake sometimes that Josie thought if she poked one of them with a sharp pencil they’d burst like a balloon.

So what if she and Peter weren’t popular? She was always telling Peter it didn’t matter; she might as well start to believe it herself.

Josie pulled her hand away from her mother and pretended to be fascinated by her cream of asparagus soup. There was something about asparagus that she and Peter found hilarious. They’d done an experiment, once, to see how much you had to eat before your pee smelled weird, and it was less than two bites, swear to God.

“Stop using your Judge Voice,” Josie said.

“My what?”

“Your Judge Voice. It’s the one you use when you answer the phone. Or when you’re out in public. Like now.”

Her mother frowned. “That’s crazy. It’s the same voice I-”

The waiter glided over, as if he were skating across the dining room. “I don’t mean to interrupt…is everything to your liking, Your Honor?”

Without missing a beat, her mother turned her face up to the waiter. “It’s gorgeous,” she said, and she smiled until he walked away. Then she turned to Josie. “It’s the same voice I always use.”

Josie looked at her, and then at the waiter’s back. “Maybe it is,” she said.

The other kid on the soccer team who would rather have been anywhere else was named Derek Markowitz. He’d introduced himself to Peter when they were sitting on the bench during a game against North Haverhill. “Who forced you to play?” Derek had asked, and Peter had told him his mother. “Mine too,” Derek admitted. “She’s a nutritionist and she’s nuts about fitness.”

At dinner, Peter would tell his parents that practice was going fine. He made up stories based on plays he’d seen other kids execute-athletic feats that he himself could never have done. He did this so that he could see his mother glance at Joey and say things like, “Guess there’s more than one athlete in this family.” When they came to cheer him on during games, and Peter never left the bench, he said it was because Coach played his favorites; and in a way, that was true.

Like Peter, Derek was just about the worst soccer player on the planet. He was so fair that his veins looked like a road map underneath his skin, and he had such pale hair that you had to search hard to find his eyebrows. Now, when they were at games, they sat next to each other on the bench. Peter liked him because he smuggled Snickers bars into practice and ate them when Coach wasn’t looking, and because he knew how to tell a good joke: Why did the ref stop the leper hockey game? There was a face-off in the corner. What’s more fun than stapling Drew Girard to a wall? Ripping him off. It got to the point where Peter actually was looking forward to soccer practice, just to hear what Derek had to say-although then Peter began to worry again if he liked Derek just because he was Derek, or because Peter was gay; and then he’d sit a little farther away, or tell himself that no matter what, he wouldn’t look Derek in the eye for the whole practice, so that he didn’t get the wrong idea.

They were sitting on the bench one Friday afternoon, watching everyone else play Rivendell. Sterling was expected to be able to kick their collective ass with their eyes closed (not that that was reason enough for the coach to put Peter or Derek in to actually play during a real league game). The score was climbing to something humiliating in the last minute of the final quarter-Sterling 24, Rivendell 2-and Derek was telling Peter another joke.

“A pirate walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder, a peg leg, and a steering wheel on his pants,” Derek said. “The bartender says, ‘Hey, you’ve got a steering wheel on your pants.’ And the pirate goes, ‘Arrrgh, I know. It’s driving me nuts.’”

“Good game,” the coach said, congratulating each of the players with a handshake. “Good game. Good game.”

“You coming?” Derek asked, standing up.

“I’ll meet you in there,” Peter said, and as he leaned down to retie his cleats he saw a pair of lady’s shoes stop in front of him-a pair he recognized, because he was always tripping over them in the mudroom.

“Hi, baby,” his mother said, smiling down.

Peter choked. What middle school kid had Mommy come to pick him up right at the field, as if he were leaving nursery school and needed a hand crossing the street?

“Just give me a second, Peter,” his mother said.

He glanced up long enough to see that the team had not gone into the locker room, as usual, but hung around to watch this latest humiliation. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, his mother marched up to the coach. “Coach Yarbrowski,” she said. “Could I have a word?”

Kill me now, Peter thought.

“I’m Peter’s mother. And I’m wondering why you don’t play my son during the games.”

“It’s a matter of teamwork, Mrs. Houghton, and I’m just giving Peter the chance to come up to speed with some of the other-”

“It’s halfway through the season, and my son has just as much right to play on this soccer team as any of the other boys.”

“Mom,” Peter interrupted, wishing that there were earthquakes in New Hampshire, that a ravine would open under her feet and swallow her mid-sentence. “Stop.”

“It’s all right, Peter. I’m taking care of it.”

The coach pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll put Peter in on Monday’s game, Mrs. Houghton, but it isn’t going to be pretty.”

“It doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to be fun.” She turned around and smiled, clueless, at Peter. “Right?”

Peter could barely hear her. Shame was a shot that rang in his ears, broken only by the buzz of his teammates. His mother squatted down in front of him. He had never really understood what it meant to love someone and hate them at the same time, but now he was starting to get it. “Once he sees you on that field, you’ll be playing first string.” She patted his knee. “I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”

The other players laughed as he pushed past them. “Mama’s boy,” they said. “Does she fight all your battles, homo?”

In the locker room, he sat down and pulled off his cleats. He had a hole in the toe of one sock, and he stared at it as if he were truly amazed by that fact, instead of because he was trying so hard not to cry.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt someone sit down beside him. “Peter,” Derek said. “You okay?”

Peter tried to say yes, but just couldn’t get the lie through his throat.

“What’s the difference between this team and a porcupine?” Derek asked.

Peter shook his head.

“A porcupine has pricks on the outside.” Derek grinned. “See you Monday.”

Courtney Ignatio was a spaghetti-strap girl. That’s what Josie called that posse, for lack of a better term-the girls who wore belly-baring tanks and who, during the student-run recitals, made up dances to the songs “Booty-licious” and “Lady Marmalade.” Courtney had been the first seventh grader to get a cell phone. It was pink, and sometimes it even rang in class, but teachers never got angry at her.