Chapter 1

"Only wimps wear bicycle helmets," Bailey jeered.

"Let’s see who’s a wimp!" Mardi hollered, steering hard to her right onto the rocky gravel. Without turning around to see whether the three boys were still behind her, she stood on her bike, stepping down on her pedals while pulling up as hard as she could on her handlebars. We’ll see who gets to practice first, she thought.

Mardi squeezed the scraped black grips, bracing herself for the first jump. Suddenly, both wheels were off the ground, and she was in the air. She was flying!

Crash! The soft gravel below gave way as her tires skidded to the left while her bike leaned right. Mardi tried to pull the bike upright, but she was too far over. She held on as her bike skidded on its side to a stop. Lying still on the ground, her ankle in pain, she felt the sting spread all the way up the side of her right leg.

Another damn raspberry, she cursed silently. She glanced down and noticed a few trickles of blood, then relaxed when she saw it wasn’t worse. Mardi picked up her bike, hopped on, and in seconds was flying again.

She crouched low in her seat while the bike moved faster and faster downhill. The ground began to harden as she steered onto smooth rock. Gripped by excitement and fear, Mardi felt totally pumped. She spotted the slanted rock, and headed straight for it. As she hit the lip, she yanked up on her handlebars. Again, she was in the air, with ten feet of nothing below. And then she was on a flat rock surface once more, her bike fully in her control. Relief surged through her as she steered between two giant oaks, and turned onto the bike path again.

Mardi sprinted the last hundred yards, pulling off at the soccer field. She let her bike fall to the grass as she whipped off her helmet. Her long brown pony tail bounced up and down as she ran to her team by the far goal.

"Just in time," Coach Bilello said, glancing at his watch. Mardi noticed his eyes move to her bloody leg, but he said nothing. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her bleeding. He often said that he’d be worried about her if she came off the field at the end of a game and she wasn’t either bloody or muddy.

Jeannie smiled at Mardi. There were four girls on the team, but Jeannie and Mardi were the only ones who were serious about playing. Jennifer and Hatsy wouldn’t be caught dead with a drop of blood or mud on them. Jennifer played just because her father was the coach of the team. Coach Bilello was a quietly intense man, and seemed to wish that his daughter would be more like Mardi. That thought secretly pleased Mardi.

"Okay, guys," their coach began, "we’re going to try a new drill. Please watch and listen."

Just then, Bailey, Arthur and Gary pulled up on their bikes.

"Gentleman," Coach Bilello said, raising his voice just a little. He carefully enunciated each syllable as if ‘gen-tle-men’ were three separate words. It didn’t bother Mardi that Coach Bilello acted as if all the kids on the team were boys. Mardi hated coaches who made a big deal about any girls on a team. At least Coach Bilello treated everyone the same. "I’d like it if you would please remove your bicycles from the playing field. And I would appreciate promptness in the future. Show me that you are serious about this team."

Mardi raised her nose dismissively at the boys as they picked up their bikes and walked them to the side of the field.

"Come on, let’s go!" the coach commanded.

The three boys dropped their bikes and raced back to join the team.

"Wimps," Mardi whispered.

Arthur eyed Mardi with a mixture of resentment and admiration. Mardi thought of Arthur as a ‘half friend.’ He was the only one of the climbing school kids who played soccer too. She and Arthur seemed like friends at the climbing gym, but Arthur acted differently when he was with his soccer buddies, Bailey and Gary. Arthur wasn’t as bad as those other guys, but he pretty much went along with them when they acted like losers.

"We missed a few heading opportunities in our first game," Coach Bilello said, "and I think that it was because a lot of you guys were afraid to leave your feet. Sometimes that ball is just where you want it to be, but sometimes it isn’t."

The coach paused for a moment, and then continued. "Last game, Gary, you had a chance to put one away, and you chose to put your stomach on it."

"A big enough target," Brandon snickered.

Most of the players laughed quietly. Gary was the fattest kid on the team.

"Hey, enough!" Coach Bilello commanded without raising his voice. "Anyway, you’ve all done the same thing before."

"Not Mardi," Jeannie whispered to Gary.

"It’s natural," the tall, soft spoken coach continued. "But you get a lot more punch on the ball if you can get your head down and pop it. So we’re going to practice diving headers today."

"Yes!" Mardi whispered.

"I’m glad to see someone so enthusiastic!" Mr. Bilello exclaimed. "Okay, Mardi. Let’s see what you can do. Jamie, hop in the net. I’ll throw it from the side. Mardi, start out at the eighteen. All right?"

The team cleared out of the protected area as Mardi backed up to a point just outside the eighteen yard marker. From the goal line, Jamie nodded to Mr. Bilello, indicating that he was ready, and Mardi tipped her head as well. The first ball arced high in the air, en route to a spot about halfway between Mardi and Jamie. Mardi sprinted towards the spinning black and white ball as it dropped. She dove face first, putting her head to it just as it was about a foot off the ground. The ball skittered towards the far side of the goal, not close to being on net. Mardi slid on the soft, wet turf.

"Sorry, Mardi. Bad throw. No one could have gotten that, but that was a great effort."

"Can I have another one, coach?"

Mr. Bilello glanced at the line of players waiting for a turn, and said, "Uh, er, sure. Try again."

This time, Mardi’s coach lofted her a perfect throw. She raced in four steps and leapt from the ground. The ball was waist high when she connected and drove the ball towards the upper left corner of the goal. Jamie leaped, but couldn’t reach it. Goal!

"Nice one, Mardi!" the coach said. "Okay, who’s next?"

Chapter 2

"How was practice?" Jan asked her daughter as she handed Mardi a bowl piled high with chili on rice. Jan’s face mirrored that of her dark haired daughter, just an older and more professional-looking version.

"It was awesome!"

"Oh, so Mr. Bilello let you scrimmage, huh?" her father asked.

"Better."

"Better than scrimmaging?" Will asked. "I hate boring drills."

"Everything’s boring to you, Will," Mardi said. Her brother was seven years old, and spent most of his life whining about one thing or another. Mardi was twelve, and wished that she had an older brother, like Jeannie had. Jeannie’s brother was fourteen and in the ninth grade. While Mardi wasn’t too interested in guys, especially ones her age, some of those older boys seemed pretty cool.

"Enough!" Jan spoke with authority, passing a bowl to her husband. "Let’s not get him started."

"Yeah," Will said.

"Hey, so tell me about practice," David said to his daughter. "What sadistic drills caught your fancy?"

"Diving headers."

"What’s a diving header?" Mardi’s mother asked as she seated herself at the kitchen table.

"It’s what you do when the ball is too high for a kick and too low for a head. It’s usually about waist high and ahead of you, so you dive right at it, and pop it with your head. It’s like you’re a torpedo."

"Cool," David said, grinning. "Sounds like something I’d like to do, if I played soccer."

"You should play, Dad. Marshall Corson’s father plays in a men’s league. It’s only for old guys, over thirty, I think."

"Oh, old guys," David said mockingly. "I guess I qualify. They allow canes, I hope."

"Daaad!" Mardi whined, unable to suppress a grin.

"Daaaaaad!" David imitated back. "Now I know where your brother gets his attitude."

"David," Jan chastised, looking towards her husband and then back to Will. With his fork furiously shoveling chili to his mouth, young Will was oblivious to the conversation around him.

Tall and thin, Mardi’s father did not have the build of a jock, but his assured and graceful movements made it obvious that he was an athlete through and through.

"Soccer’s too hard a game to pick up at my age," David said seriously. "Mr. Corson was a hot shot college player, I understand."

"No, he wasn’t a hot shot. Just a regular player. And Katy Sharhoki’s father plays, and he just learned the game." Mardi paused and added, "There’s no question about that!" She giggled, thinking about how bad Katy’s father looked on the field.

"Exactly!" David said. "I have too much pride to have all of your little buddies laughing at my expense."

"Oh, you just don’t want to lose," Jan said to her husband.

"Of course not! And what’s wrong with that?"

"I wonder where you got your competitiveness, Mardi," Jan said.

David smiled proudly.

"You’re easier to live with since you cut back on your basketball and took up climbing," Jan said to David. "Now, you can make sure that the mountain always loses."

"Hey, I didn’t lose very often when I played basketball," David said.

"He always won," Will pitched in.

"Look what you’re teaching the boy, David," Jan sighed.

"Nothing wrong with a little drive."

"A little? That’ll be the day."

The whole family was silent for a moment as each person busily ate his or her dinner. Mardi enjoyed chili, but not the gaseous after-effects. That was Will’s favorite part.

"Now, tell me about those diving headers," David said to his daughter. "How many did you get? How many goals? Did you eat dirt?"

"I got about ten throws," Mardi said, her eyes sparkling. "Half of them were lousy, though. Mr. Bilello isn’t a very good thrower. Still I got four goals. The next best kid on the team just got two."

"That’s my girl."

"And I ate a lot of dirt!" Mardi said, grinning with a mouthful of food.

Her father flashed a big thumb’s up.

"So, this Sunday, you don’t have a game, right?"

"That’s right, Dad."

"I thought that we might go up to the mountains for a climb. How does that sound?"

"Rock Face Trail?" Mardi asked excitedly.

"Well...," David began, glancing towards his wife.

"Don’t make me out to be the bad guy again. You know I think that Will’s not ready for that."

"The first half of the trail is easy," David said to Jan. "You and Will could wait at the base of the cliff while Mardi and I go further up. And it will help her get ready for the regional climbing competition at the end of the summer. What do you say?"

Mardi’s mother sighed. "David, you know how I feel about splitting up. Our lives are so fragmented, between your work and your climbs, the kids’ sports, school, and everything else. We have so little time together."

"Jan, we’d be together for the whole ride up and back, and for half the hike. Think about it, okay?"

"Yeah, Mom. Please?" Mardi begged.

Jan hesitated, and then said, "Okay. I’ll think about it."

"Yeah!" Mardi cheered. ‘I’ll think about it’ almost always meant yes. Climbing Rock Face! She couldn’t wait until Sunday.

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