Tom is wigged out, as Katya pulls the Nucleus van into the Southwind High School parking lot, to find a crowd of nearly a hundred people scattered throughout the bleachers. He hadn’t counted on this. Must be Dempsey got the word out, he thinks.
As he steps into the muggy, slate gray afternoon, wisps of dirty-cotton clouds drifting overhead, he spots Pamela Routly and a photographer chatting with Preston off to the side of the Boosters’ bench. A referee in full uniform alternately stretches and checks his watch a few yards away from them. Approaching the field, Tom sees a group of about a dozen people sitting with a SOUTHWIND ATHLETIC BOOSTERS banner across their laps. The boosters don’t boo Tom as he walks to his team’s bench, but they get quiet in a way that makes him nervous.
He sees his mother in the bleachers, sitting alone. Catching his eye, she waves.
Katya says something to Yuri in Russian.
He responds in a low voice.
“This brings back memories for us,” Katya says.
“For me too,” Tom says, glancing at his mother again. She’s still watching him, as if the game has already begun and he’s carrying the ball down the field. He can almost see his father sitting next to her.
Tom helps Yuri lift Mr. Gaz out of the van, and Katya begins pushing his wheelchair toward the field. Walking a few steps ahead and watching Preston and the others stretching and warming up, Tom notices something wrong. He counts his teammates’ heads just to be sure: Jimmy is missing.
Dropping back alongside Mr. Gaz’s wheelchair, Tom sneaks a peek at the old man’s watch: 12:40. “Damn,” he mutters to himself.
“What’s the problem?” Katya says.
“Jimmy.”
“The smoking guy,” Yuri says.
“Right.”
“He should play in goal,” Yuri adds. “He has good hands. No fear, but very weak lungs.”
“Problem is,” Tom says, “he’s not here.”
As Tom tosses his backpack onto the ground, Preston jogs over from his interview. He cracks a smile, noticing two new players tossing their gear into the Boosters’ camp. “I had a feeling you were holding out on us, Katya,” he says. “Like a sneaky Russian spy.”
“You watch too many videos,” she says, pushing Mr. Gaz’s wheelchair toward the sideline.
“I’m her brother,” Yuri says, extending a hand to Preston. “Also a spy. I’m your center midfielder.”
“Welcome to the team,” Preston says, shaking Yuri’s hand. Preston turns toward the other Boosters, who are spread out in front of the goal, passing the ball to one another, juggling, stretching. “That means we have even more subs now, right?”
“Not exactly,” Tom says. “We’re playing full sides—and full field.”
Preston is silent for a few seconds. “Come again?”
Tom almost blurts out his bet with Dempsey, but he holds back. “Yeah,” he says. “Since it’s our last game, Dempsey and I decided to take it to the next level.”
“Did he, by any chance, offer to lend you a player or two? Because by my count, we’re down a man.”
“I realize that.” Tom scans the perimeter of the athletic field, as if expecting Jimmy to leap like a deer from the trees. “We have to find him. Do you know where he’s staying?”
“I doubt he’s staying anywhere,” Preston mutters. “Homeschooled, my butt—”
“The park,” Tom says. “Maybe he’s there.”
Katya returns and begins digging gear out of her bag. She’s wearing sky blue shorts, lime green soccer socks, and a lime green jersey with fading Russian characters in white.
“Katya,” Tom says. “We need to drive to the park—quickly.”
Looking up, Katya shakes her head and groans that special, exasperated groan that Tom knows women reserve for the stupid mistakes of men. “Quickly,” she says, plunging her hand inside her gear bag and retrieving the van keys.
“Kveekly,” Tom repeats to himself as they begin jogging toward the van.
Pulling into the Audette Park lot, Tom spots Jimmy sitting on a picnic table, smoking and looking onto the empty field. He turns toward the van, blows smoke, then turns back to the park. It seems to Tom as if Jimmy has been waiting for him, except that he’s not dressed for soccer. He’s wearing his cargo pants, black boots, and a stretched-out gray T-shirt.
Tom and Katya get out of the van and jog over to him.
Jimmy drags on his cigarette and leans back, elbows resting on the picnic table.
“Jimmy,” Tom says as he and Katya reach him, “what’s the deal?”
Jimmy says nothing.
Tom walks around to face him. “Kickoff’s in, like, fifteen minutes, dude—”
“Then you better hurry back,” Jimmy says, staring past Tom and flicking his cigarette right at him, as if he’s not even there.
Tom jumps out of the way. “What’s the problem, Jimmy? We’ve got one more game. Just one more.” Jimmy snorts and looks at Tom. “Just one more,” he repeats. “Do you really believe that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you really think this is the last game?”
“Well, probably. I mean, for our team anyway. The regular season is starting next week—”
“I’m not talking about any season. I’m just talking about games.”
“Games—”
“Right. These games that everyone gets so amped up about. Games to see who’s better. Games to prove whose school is better, whose kid is better—”
“But this isn’t about any of that, Jimmy. That’s the whole point. We aren’t on the school team—”
“No, but now it’s become just like that.” Jimmy gets up and walks to the edge of the picnic area, where he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and jogs another one out.
“I don’t get it,” Tom says. “I thought you liked playing with us. I mean, no one made you do it.”
“That’s right,” Jimmy says flatly. “And no one’s going to make me play today either.”
Tom looks at Katya, whose eyes are shooting sapphire lasers at Jimmy. “You could’ve told me,” Tom says.
With the toe of his boot, Jimmy digs a piece of broken glass out of the dirt, bends over, and picks it up. “What difference would it’ve made?” he says, tossing the glass into the nearest trash barrel, ten feet away.
“Dude, we’re playing the Warriors full field.”
At this, Jimmy turns to Tom, but he shrugs his shoulders a couple of seconds later and looks away. “I guess you’re going to get some exercise, then.” He lights his cigarette. “Anyway, you picked up some new players the other night.”
“Are you bugging that we have Southwind guys on the team?”
Jimmy shakes his head and takes a drag. “Makes no fricking difference to me, guy. It just seems like, with that newspaper article and everything, this is turning into just another game—like you said. Just another game where a bunch of kids run around so a bunch of parents can feel superior to another bunch of parents.” He gives Tom a chin flip. “I bet there’s quite a crowd over there at Southwind, isn’t there?”
Tom nods. “But it’s not about the crowd,” he says. “And it’s not about being superior.”
“Then what is it about?”
Tom takes a deep breath and gazes out over the field. “For me, it’s . . . personal.”
Jimmy takes a drag and pauses for a moment. “Personal in what way?”
Tom takes another deep breath and looks at Katya, trying to decide whether he should tell Jimmy why he and Dempsey are colliding again. “Put it this way,” he says. “My father would want me to beat Dempsey—or at least try my hardest.”
Jimmy holds his cigarette up, staring at the smoke trickling from the glowing tip. “My father would want to beat Dempsey himself,” he says. “Then he’d want to beat me—so he would.”
“Is that why you ran away from home?”
Jimmy pauses in mid-drag, his eyes widening, then narrowing, as if he’s both surprised and angry that Tom has discovered his secret. He finishes his drag and flips his chin at Tom again. “Who told you that?”
“Preston.”
“How did he find out?”
“I don’t know, but he knows. We all know, actually. We’ve sort of known for a while.”
At this, Jimmy looks away, as though toward the soccer field where Preston and the others are waiting. “You all knew,” he says, “but you didn’t say anything?”
“What were we supposed to say? That you couldn’t play without a note from your parents?”
Jimmy makes that snort under his breath again. “That would’ve been difficult.”
“For me, impossible,” Katya says.
Jimmy turns to her, finally seeming to notice that her jersey, shorts, and socks all match. He turns to Tom. “Is she playing?”
Tom nods. “Her brother too.”
“The freak in the sweatshirt?” Jimmy says.
“Yeah, and he’s supposedly a star. But let’s be honest,” Tom adds, “is there a kid on our team who isn’t a freak?”
Jimmy snorts out a quick laugh but almost immediately stares at the ground with a scowl. “I don’t have any gear,” he mutters.
“What happened to it?”
Jimmy drops his cigarette and grinds it out with his boot. “Left it somewhere.”
“Your friends find it?”
Jimmy pauses, his expression darkening. “They’re not my friends.”
“Then why do you hang with them?”
Jimmy looks toward the parking lot, his eyes taking on a faraway look. “You wouldn’t understand.” He sighs. “Running away’s a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. You think you’re getting away from certain kinds of people, but, then, there they are again.”
“Well, gear’s not a huge problem,” Tom says, trying to sound upbeat. “You’re playing net anyway.”
Jimmy cracks a faint smile. “I haven’t played net since I was a kid.”
“Let’s just hope you remember something,” Tom says.
“I bet I remember a lot.” Jimmy chuckles. “I remember there wasn’t much running involved.”
“We should run now,” Katya says, jingling the van keys. “And quickly.”
“Kveekly.”
Tom can see the Boosters and the Warriors standing in their field positions as Katya wheels into the Southwind lot. The instant she touches the breaks, Jimmy whips open the side door, letting in the unmistakable trill of a referee’s whistle. He and Tom fly out of the van and sprint toward the field, Katya trailing a few steps behind.
At the field, Jimmy runs immediately into the goalie box, his eyes fixed on the action developing along the left side of the field. Stopping, he begins rolling up his pant legs.
Preston gets the ball at the left-wing midfield and, immediately surrounded by Southwind players, dishes a panicked pass back to Magnus.
“Kick it out!” Tom shouts as he and Katya reach the pitch.
Magnus boots the ball over the sideline, across the running track, and onto the adjacent field hockey field.
By the time the Warriors pick it up, throw it in, and begin their downfield advance, Tom and Katya are running onto the field and into position. “Replace Alex on the wing,” Tom shouts to her. “Alex! Drop back—”
“No! I’ll play in the center,” Katya answers, following with a string of Russian words for Yuri.
Center? Tom says to himself, nearly stopping in his tracks. But I’m the center striker.
“Tom, play in front of me,” Yuri calls to him, back-pedaling quickly as Southwind strings together passes across the middle of the field. “I’m your defensive center midfielder. You play offensive center midfield.”
“Who’s my man?” Tom shouts, but Yuri dashes across the field, intercepting a pass between two Warriors.
He dribbles the ball ahead a few yards, then, just as two Warriors converge on him, heels the ball to Tom without so much as a glance back.
Tom traps the ball and looks downfield.
“Look for Katya!” Yuri commands.
The second he says this, Tom catches, out of the corner of his eye, Katya’s blond head breaking from the center of the field to the right side. Turning, he spots a wide-open parcel of turf twenty yards ahead of her.
“Man on!” Preston shouts from Tom’s left.
Tom pulls the ball toward himself with the bottom of his right foot, shields it with the left side of his body, and drags the ball around, clockwise, in a complete circle.
The Southwind player, following the ball, gets caught in Tom’s revolving door and ends up behind Tom’s back when Tom is facing downfield again.
The move gives Tom just enough time to push the ball forward a yard and drive it into the vacant patch of grass ahead of Katya.
Arriving at the plot simultaneously with the ball, Katya executes a flawless trap, settles the ball, dribbles a few yards, and crosses it to the opposite side of the field.
“Stay wide!” Preston shouts a split second before Tom was about to yell the exact same thing.
Alex, on his run down the left side of the field, has drifted in toward the center, and Katya’s pass flies over his head.
A whistle. Out of bounds.
As the Warriors move around, getting open for their throw-in, Tom looks for an unmarked player. “Who’s my man in this formation?” he calls to Yuri, who’s jogging toward the Southwind center midfielder, Greg Plutakis, a stocky but fast kid with a dark shadow of beard.
“You don’t play defense!” Yuri answers. “Carry the ball or pass to the strikers!”
“What?”
“Special European formation,” Yuri shouts before the ball sails into play, landing at Greg Plutakis’s feet. Yuri is immediately on him, forcing Plutakis to dish off to the stopper back, who, pressured by Katya, dishes back to the sweeper, Kyle Erdmann. With a three-step running start, Kyle kicks the ball on a roll, sending it way downfield, over the center circle and into the Boosters’ end. Magnus makes a chest trap and settles the ball, turning it back to Brad Goatee at sweeper.
Goatee carries the ball out to the right sideline, where, despite being all alone, he trips, stumbles, and regains his footing—but only after letting the ball trickle out of bounds. The crowd reacts with disappointment, except for the Southwind Boosters.
Tom looks up at the row of them. A few shake their heads at him.
As the Warrior strikers and midfielders begin flooding the Boosters’ defensive end for the throw-in, Tom watches his teammates dropping back, picking up unmarked players. Spotting a Warrior middie beginning a run deeper into the Boosters’ end, Tom starts to call Preston to drop back farther.
Before he can get a word out, though, Preston turns, sprints ten yards ahead of the player, then begins a side-shuffling jog to contain him.
Good, conservative defense, Tom thinks.
“Alex, slide over!” Preston shouts.
Tom watches Alex pick up the player Preston had been marking a few moments before.
Then, with a few quick directions from Yuri, the entire Boosters team shifts to match up with the Warriors’ offensive push. Tom eyes Kyle and the right-wing fullback, who both hang way back, out of danger. They’re the only unmarked Warriors, and Tom is the only Booster without someone to contain, meaning, he realizes, that with the Boosters’ one-player advantage on defense, he can wander into open space to receive a pass if his team gets the ball. It seems to him that the Boosters received some coaching while he and Katya were getting Jimmy, and Yuri’s strategy is beginning to make sense.
The throw-in reaches a Warrior midfielder, who knocks the ball to the center midfielder—Yuri’s man. Yuri shadows the kid to the right of the field, forcing him to dish off to the right-wing fullback, who sprints up from the Warrior defense.
Tom spots Preston’s mark starting to slip in behind him again as Preston hesitates between stepping up to the fullback carrying the ball and sticking with the midfielder. “Behind you, Preston!” he shouts as Katya approaches the fullback with the ball. She’s a step too late, though, and the fullback sends a long pass over Preston’s head and into the right corner of the field, where it’s picked up by the Warrior middie Preston allowed to drift past him. “He’s offsides!” Tom shouts, noticing that the Warrior player had been standing a good five yards deeper into the Boosters end than the deepest Booster player before the fullback sent him the ball—blatantly offsides. He glares at the ref.
Jogging past, the man eyes him sternly and taps at the yellow and red penalty cards poking out of his shirt pocket.
Tom turns back to the action just as the Warrior midfielder sends a long pass in front of the Boosters’ goal.
“Mine!” Jimmy shouts, shoving his way out of the goal mouth—literally smacking one kid in the head—and punching the ball out of the air and toward the right sideline. Two Warriors hit the ground in the process, each grabbing some body part in an Academy Award-worthy display of agony.
The ref blows the whistle and jogs toward Jimmy, clenching the whistle in his teeth like a dog carrying a chew toy.
Tom walks toward them to see what the problem is and notices something strange: Goatee standing way out on the right wing, almost to the sideline—nowhere near where he should’ve been when the Warrior midfielder sent the ball across the goal mouth. Tom doesn’t know Goatee’s game at all, having never played against him as a Raven, but he can’t imagine what thought process would lead a sweeperback way out to the wing on a cross-field pass. He catches Goatee’s eye as he approaches Jimmy, Yuri, and the ref, but Goatee looks down and jogs back toward the center—a more normal field position.
“I’ll give you two choices,” the ref barks at Jimmy, sounding, to Tom, a lot more serious than scrimmage refs usually sound. “You find another pair of shoes or you don’t play. Understand?”
Jimmy squints at the man for a couple of seconds without saying anything.
“And,” the ref adds, “I can give you a yellow card for just looking at me that way.”
Tom sees Magnus rifling through the team’s gear at their bench. The Swede yanks a pair of dorky-looking Swedish sneakers out of his pack and sprints back onto the field. “Here,” he says from a few yards away.
“Better than fricking nothing,” Jimmy grumbles. He storms over to the goalpost and begins unlacing his boots.
“You watch your mouth, keeper,” the ref hisses, gesturing for a Warrior player to flip him the ball. Ball in hand, he turns his back to Jimmy and Tom and walks toward the middle of the penalty area. “That’s an equipment violation, and very reckless play, so it’s going to be a Warrior penalty kick,” he announces.
The Warrior bench cheers.
The crowd boos—loud enough to surprise Tom a little. Scanning the bleachers, he doesn’t see any Southwind Boosters cheering, just watching the game intently. Chaz the Spaz jogs in. “It’s mine,” he shouts to his teammates, some of whom roll their eyes at one another.
The ref sets the ball on the penalty spot, a mere twelve yards from the goal.
A few Warriors laugh and point at Jimmy’s filthy gray socks as he stands off to the side of the goal, putting on Magnus’s sneakers.
“Focus, Jimmy,” Tom says, trying to sound pumped.
Jimmy returns to the goal mouth, the toes of Magnus’s huge sneakers flopping in the turf like swimming fins. He plants his heels on the goal line, legs at roughly shoulder width, and rolls his pants back up above his knees. Bending at the knees slightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he raises his hands into patty-cake position.
“Keeper, you are not to move until the ball is struck,” the ref says. “Do you understand me?”
Jimmy nods and clenches his jaw.
“Kicker, on my whistle,” the man says, nodding to the Spaz. The man sticks the whistle in his mouth with his left hand and points to the ball with his right.
“Jimmy, watch his knees, commit to one side, and dive,” Tom says.
Eyes riveted on the ball, Jimmy says, simply, “Got it.”
The ref blows the whistle, and Tom feels his stomach clench.
Chaz approaches the ball and strikes it, sending it just to the right of where Jimmy’s standing.
Leaning in the opposite direction, Jimmy reaches back with his left hand.
The ball flicks across his fingertips and dribbles into the back of the net.
Silence.
Then a whistle.
Then a mixture of Warrior whoops from the bench and boos from the stands.
Tom jogs over to his teammates gathered around Jimmy. “That was pretty close,” he says. “Not much you can do.”
“Guess not,” Jimmy mutters back, kicking up a clod of dirt with Magnus’s Swedish clown sneakers.
Tom turns to Goatee, whose eyes dart—nervously, it seems—between his cleats and the Warrior bench. Seeing Tom watching him, he takes a few steps forward, as if to join the others around Jimmy. “Good try, Jimmy,” he says.
The words ring uncomfortably in Tom’s ears.
Despite Tom and Yuri’s encouragement, their teammates sulk back to the circle for the kickoff. As if now hyperaware of being down a goal, they play superconservative defense. Yuri directs players to feed Tom and Katya, but, now seemingly afraid to even hold the ball in their own end, the Boosters lapse into a kick-and-chase game that Tom remembers—and not fondly—from his earliest days as a player. The Boosters essentially boot the ball away every time they get it, then set up for another offensive attack. While their defense is solid, Tom notes, he also knows what happens to teams that don’t actively try to score. They don’t score.
And somewhere near the end of the half, the Warriors do. Greg Plutakis, back in the game for the Spaz, takes a heel pass from a Warrior striker and nails a twenty-yard blast before Yuri can slide over into defensive position.
As Tom watches the ball sail on a line drive toward the right side of the net, he knows that a more experienced goalkeeper would probably be farther into the penalty area, cutting down the angle.
Jimmy takes two flop-footed steps out from the goal mouth and dives, but he’s one step short.
At halftime, the Boosters camp out next to the school building. While Katya wheels Mr. Gaz over from the sidelines, Yuri and the others pass water bottles around. Jimmy, sullen, leans against the building. “You sure no one’s got an extra pair of cleats for Jimmy?” Tom says, noting Goatee’s feet and the zipped-up pack next to him. “What about you, Brad?”
Goatee looks up at him. “No,” the sweeperback says. “Can’t help him.”
“Mind if I check and see?” Tom takes a step toward Goatee’s pack.
Preston and Magnus prop themselves up on their elbows and give Tom a strange look. “Come on,” Preston says. “Let’s not get all tweaked. These guys are good.”
“I’ll show you myself,” Goatee grumbles, unzipping the pack and dumping out its contents: a watch, a pair of sneakers, and that ratty Red Sox cap. “Happy?”
Tom keeps watching the kid. “It’d just be nice to have a goalkeeper with cleats—”
“I don’t need any fricking cleats,” Jimmy barks. “Just try to score a fricking goal once in a while.”
“I will,” Tom says, finally turning away from Goatee and eyeing the field. “Someone toss me a water bottle.”
Katya and Mr. Gaz return, and the old man delivers his chalk-talk. Yuri and Katya both translate, but there’s little new information in the old man’s comments. According to him, the Boosters are, indeed, playing better soccer than they have ever played—defensively, at least. The communication has never been more constant or clearer, Stanley and Alex have finally learned to support the player with the ball, and Magnus’s Swedish head completely rules the air.
But the offense . . . Mr. Gaz confirms Tom’s assessment that the defense is releasing the ball too hastily, in a panicked sort of way. Simply booting the ball out of the defensive third of the field accomplishes nothing more than returning possession to the Warriors, requiring the Boosters, in turn, to set up on defense all over again, preventing them from getting any offensive attack in motion.
“So, what’s the answer?” Preston says, eyes squinted as if he has just been presented with a mathematical problem.
“Terpeniye,” Mr. Gaz says.
“Patience,” Katya and Yuri translate in unison.
“He says,” Katya adds, “that the defense should take at least one moment to see where the next pass might go before clearing the ball away.”
Mr. Gaz rattles off something else.
Yuri translates: “Even if you put the ball to space, try to put it to a space closer to one of our players than one of their midfielders or fullbacks.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Preston says. “Does that make sense to you, Tom?”
Tom nods. “The trick is remembering it when you’ve actually got the ball on your foot.”
“This guy.” Yuri rests a hand on Tom’s shoulder and surveys the group. “You want to put the ball on his foot.”
Katya clears her throat and punches her brother in the shoulder.
“Or her foot,” Yuri adds.
Tom kicks off to Katya by pushing the ball ahead the one required revolution, but she surprises him by immediately turning the ball back to Yuri, who dishes off to Stanley at the left-wing fullback position. “Terpeniye—patience!” Yuri shouts as Stanley traps the ball. Stanley looks ready to boot the ball up the sideline but hesitates, dribbling back into the center a few yards and returning the ball to Yuri. Preston, seeing the striker who’d been approaching Stanley now veer toward Yuri, cuts straight across the field and calls for the diagonal pass. On the run, he traps the ball, knocks it ahead a couple yards, and releases a pass back to Blue Hair at the right-wing fullback. “Nice!” Yuri shouts. “Slow it down.”
The series of short passes puts the Southwind strikers and midfielders in motion, Tom notices, so he moves into open space and calls for the ball. Blue Hair’s pass is weak—a “hospital pass,” the kind that both its intended receiver and a defender can reach at the same time. Tom manages to get the inside of his right foot on the ball, cutting the ball hard to his left and away from the player. He then quickly changes the ball’s direction with the outside of his foot. As the kid stumbles to follow the ball, Tom feels the cleats against the back of his leg: classic Chaz the Spaz soccer.
Turning the ball downfield, he feels one more good kick at his ankles, so he passes to Paul Marcotte, all alone out at the right-wing midfield position.
“Good pressure, Chuck!” Coach Dempsey shouts from the sidelines. “Good intensity.”
Katya makes a great run up the right sideline, trading places with Alex, the other striker. The switch confuses the Warrior defenders enough for Katya to settle the ball Paul sends her from the right-wing midfield. She turns it two dribbles toward the center of the field.
Tom makes a run up the center, just ten yards or so to Katya’s left, and calls for the square pass—into the space dead even with her.
Katya draws her right leg back to send the ball to the space he’s about to enter. The Warrior defender rushing toward her slides at her feet, but she cuts the ball in a flash back out to the sideline again, giving her an open run all the way to the right corner of the Southwind end.
Tom continues his run down the center of the field, urging Alex to keep heading left. “Stay wide!” he calls.
Katya draws Kyle Erdmann out to the corner, fakes a pass back to Paul, who has dropped in for support, then cuts again to her inside, beating Kyle and giving herself room for two quick dribbles along the goal line and a quick, chest-high pass to Tom.
Two yards away from a tangle of Warrior bodies, Tom traps the ball off his chest, turns his back to the defenders, and executes his favorite move when a mark is right on his heels: he rotates his body to the right sharply, as if to begin pushing the ball to the right with his left foot, but he steps over the ball, quickly shifting his weight back in the other direction and carrying the ball to his left with the inside of his right foot.
It works. Pushing the ball to the left, he leaves two players behind him—committed to tackles in the wrong direction. He turns to strike the ball on goal, but when he glances up at the defense he finds Alex directly in his line.
“Heel!” Yuri shouts.
Without looking, Tom heels the ball back, aiming with his ears to a spot of grass he can’t see.
He’s only half-turned when he sees the ball fly in a line-drive blur of white out to the right side of the penalty area. In three lightning fast but distinct motions, Katya jumps into the air, bends her torso back, and snaps forward like a cobra striking. The ball rockets off her head and into the upper-right corner of the Warrior net.
For a second, Tom doesn’t cheer, feeling more like he has just watched a soccer camp videotape than actually experienced something real. The whole sequence, minus Alex’s field position, was soccer camp-video perfect.
As the Boosters mob Katya and Yuri, Tom turns to Brad Goatee, catching the kid looking toward the Southwind bench. A few seconds later, seeing Tom watching him, Goatee pumps his fist and cheers. Kind of a lame cheer, Tom thinks.
Tom feels someone grab him around the shoulders from behind, and he turns to find Alex beaming at him. “Sorry I got in your way,” he says, drooling a little with glee.
“No problem,” Tom says. “Just keep moving to space. Play the whole field.”
Tom meets up with Katya just outside the center circle and gives her a hug as the Warriors set up for another kickoff. “Nice finish,” he says. “Like something you’d see on television.”
“I actually scored like this once on Moscow television,” Katya says, bending to pull up her socks.
“Well, see if you can do it a couple more times.”
The whistle blows, and the Warriors kick off. The Boosters lapse back briefly into their conservative defense, especially Magnus and Yuri, who direct the others to shift around, adjusting for the Warrior advances—advances that don’t blow Tom away with their strategic brilliance. Exactly the opposite. Chaz is as spastic a center middie as he has ever seen, booting the ball as impulsively as the most desperate sweeperback. He’s hardly a playmaker.
At almost the exact instant Tom makes this assessment, Dempsey subs Greg Plutakis back in for the Spaz. Chaz swears, whines, and kicks up dirt all the way back to the bench.
Tom and Yuri look at each other, silently concurring, as Plutakis takes the field, that the Boosters are indeed giving the Warriors an honest match. Tom had taken Chaz’s entry into the game as a slight: this was how seriously Dempsey was taking this contest—Chuckie-Dempsey-at-center-midfield serious. Seeing him yanked from the match tells Tom the Warriors are officially about to try their hardest.
The Boosters settle back into their game. It takes only Blue Hair’s one mindless boot of the ball out of the Boosters’ end, and a “terpeniye—patience!” reminder from Yuri, to get the fullbacks and midfielders moving the ball around among one another, pulling the Warrior defense apart, creating opportunities to send the ball up to Katya and Tom.
The Booster middies and backs play steady, solid soccer, losing the nervous energy that had unraveled them in the first half. They win tackles, they lose tackles, but they talk through it all. Most impressively, to Tom, they are patient in the way they move the ball out of their defensive end.
The true genius of the team’s field formation hits Tom about midway through the second half, when he and Katya settle into a kind of offensive rhythm: virtually each Warrior advance results in a turnover in the Boosters’ defensive third, a fullback pass to the middies, and a pass up to Katya or Tom, less often to Alex. If Tom gets the ball, he carries until the first real defender comes on, then executes a give-and-go with Katya—passing to her and running past his defender to receive a pass back from her on the other side of the man. If Katya gets the pass, Tom does the same, encouraging Alex to run into open space down in the Southwind end but taking care not to run too far and get caught behind the last defender: offsides.
Katya is a freestyle striker, Tom observes with a touch of frustration. Although he runs to support her wherever she goes, she seems intent on trying to beat defenders until it’s absolutely clear that she can’t. It’s a kind of play Tom doesn’t like—too risky, too vulnerable to quick turnovers against fullbacks who can send the ball, with one good boot, back into the Boosters’ offensive territory.
The moment the concern strikes Tom, he notices that Goatee has wandered much farther into the Southwind defensive third than a sweeperback would ordinarily venture on a throw-in. “Brad,” Tom calls, “step back. If they clear it, you’re caught too far up.”
Goatee nods and jogs back a few yards.
Tom watches him, catching the kid shoot a quick glance at the Warrior bench.
Just as Tom had predicted, Kyle Erdmann, the Warrior sweeper, picks up the throw-in and clears it past the midfield. Magnus takes the ball out of the air and heads it to Yuri, who settles the ball, looks upfield, then turns and sends a crisp rolling pass back to Goatee. “Patience,” Yuri shouts. “Midfielders, support or move to—”
In executing a simple trap, Goatee leaves his foot too high, allowing the ball to slip underneath and toward the goal.
Tom watches the sweeperback slowly turn around as two Warrior strikers descend on the ball from both sides. By the time Goatee has turned, the Warrior center striker already has the ball, leaving Goatee—no speed demon—a good step behind. The wing striker runs past the ball, setting up a give-and-go.
Yuri and Magnus sprint straight back into the penalty area, Yuri after the ball handler, Magnus to the supporting striker. As the center dishes off to his wing, Magnus is just a half step away, creating a hospital pass. The wing makes the trap but, under pressure from Magnus, passes the ball ahead to the center striker making a run for the goal—Yuri dogging him every step.
As the center striker pulls a step ahead of Yuri, Jimmy bolts out of the goal. He slides along the grass just as the striker is cocking his right leg. When the kid takes the shot, Jimmy already has his left arm over the ball. The shot goes straight into his chest, and as he rolls to cover the ball, he takes the striker’s legs out from under him. Yuri and a Warrior midfielder trip on the arms and legs sticking out from the pile.
“Aaarrrgh!” Jimmy screams, rolling away from the heap. He grabs his right foot and rocks onto his back, muttering, “Frick, frick, frick, frick . . .”
The ref blows the whistle.
“You okay, Jimmy?” Preston says, crouching beside him.
“I’ll be okay,” Jimmy snarls through his teeth, his face twisted in a grimace.
“You stub your toe?” Preston says.
“Someone stubbed it for me.”
“Do you think it’s broken?”
“Nah.” Jimmy stands and walks around in a circle, limping and hopping on one foot. “Just give me a second.”
Tom turns to the bleachers, spotting his mother standing up and looking toward him.
Catching Tom’s eye, she gestures with her hands out to her sides, as if to ask if she should come down onto the field.
Tom turns back to Jimmy, who’s walking more normally now but still grumbling, “Frick, frick, frick.” Turning back to his mother, Tom shakes his head.
She sits back down.
“We’ll give you a minute, keeper,” the ref says as Jimmy hobbles back into the goal mouth, “then we need to keep going.”
“How much time do we have left?” Tom asks the ref.
The man checks his watch. “About ten minutes.”
“One for each toe,” a Warrior midfielder says, drawing laughter from a couple of his teammates.
Tom glares at them but a second later notices Goatee standing off by himself, staring at the ground inside the penalty area roughly where the collision occurred. Tom walks over to him. “You need to settle down, Brad,” he says.
Goatee looks up at him with alarm, as if Tom has caught him in some illegal act. “I’m going to,” he says.
“Well, don’t waste time thinking about it. Just do it.”
Goatee narrows his eyes at him.
Tom glares back.
When Goatee starts to look away, Tom flicks a hand against his shoulder. “The game’s over here. I mean, tell me you know that much about soccer—”
“I know how to play soccer,” Goatee snaps.
“Then why do you keep looking over at the bench?”
Goatee looks down at his cleats.
“You have some deal going with Dempsey?” Tom says.
Goatee says nothing.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Goatee turns away, but Tom leans so he’s in his field of vision. “Did the guy promise you a starting spot if you help us lose? Is that it?”
“No.”
“Then what is it, Brad?”
Goatee is silent again, and as he stares at the ground, Tom scans the Warriors bench.
Tom watches Dempsey talking to two players—Greg Plutakis and the British kid. The coach rests one hand on each of his players’ shoulders as he talks. Tom recalls his conversations with Dempsey, how the man always succeeded in getting him too amped up to think clearly.
“I’ll tell you what, Brad,” Tom says, “that guy is really manipulative. I wouldn’t blame you if you got suckered into something—”
“It was Chaz,” Goatee blurts out. He looks at Tom with wide eyes, as if challenging him to deny it.
“What?”
“Yeah. Chaz told me to do it. He told me to make sure you guys lose.”
“What? Why would you do something like—”
“He said his father told him to tell me to do it.”
Tom looks over at the Southwind bench again, where Dempsey is standing, arms crossed, looking in Tom’s direction.
“He said if I made sure you guys lost, he wouldn’t cut me from the team,” Goatee adds, ending with a bitter-sounding laugh and a shake of his head.
Still watching Dempsey, Tom replays in his mind the previous night’s conversation with him at the Nucleus, how the man had been tough at first but became more reasonable, only to throw down his secret weapon—the deal about playing full field, full sides. But before that, Tom recalls, he’d spoken of his Vietnam buddies, and of honor, and of something more than just tradition for tradition’s sake. And he’d actually seemed to mean it.
Though Tom knows that in this very instant he could also be letting himself get suckered into another one of Dempsey’s traps, he at least considers the possibility that maybe there really is a reasonable man buried somewhere inside all that stubborn Warrior pride. “No,” Tom says. “I don’t think it’s the coach. He’s hardheaded, for sure, but . . .” He turns to Brad. “This kind of scam is too low even for him.”
Goatee finally looks up and glares at the Warrior bench. “You’re probably right,” he says, shaking his head. “It probably was just Chaz—”
“Of course it was. You want to know why?”
“Because I’m stupid—”
“No. Because you’re a better player than he is.”
Goatee looks at Tom but doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Chaz is pretty sneaky,” Tom adds, “but we’d play one against eleven with these guys before we’d let him on our team.”
“I’m sorry,” Brad says. “I didn’t think the scrimmage would get like this.”
“Neither did Dempsey.” Tom gestures to Greg Plutakis. “Chaz is back on the bench. The starters are all in.”
Passing Tom and Goatee, the ref blows the whistle practically in Tom’s ear. “We’re going to have a goal kick,” he shouts, tossing the ball to Brad.
Tom takes the ball from the sweeperback’s hands. “Tell me, Brad, do we have our best team out?”
Brad looks around the field, noticing his teammates taking up positions, Jimmy bouncing on the balls of his feet in the goalie box. “What are we called again? Like, what’s our team name?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Tom tosses him the ball. “Boot this thing a mile. Pretend it’s Chaz’s butt.”
Goatee puts the ball back in play at the midfield, and the Boosters pick up where they left off, moving the ball around patiently and a degree more crisply than before. They make runs to open spaces but hustle back to play conservative defense.
The Warrior strikers, maybe sensing a weakened goalie in the net, also come alive, stringing together more short passes in the Boosters’ end, firing more shots on goal, most from outside the penalty area, thanks to Yuri’s, Magnus’s, and now Goatee’s coordination of the defense.
All in all, the teams play evenly but without much serious offensive action. Even the crowd seems to quiet down a little as Tom and Katya fail to penetrate very far into the Southwind end. Growing antsy, Tom decides to abandon the short-passing give-and-go with Katya and instead carry the ball as far as he can.
A few plays later, Yuri steals the ball from Greg Plutakis and dishes off to Tom. Tom fakes a onetime pass to Katya in the center and cuts toward the right sideline, beating a Southwind midfielder easily. A few yards down the line, he cuts back toward the center. As the Southwind stopper approaches, he executes his second-favorite move, a variation on his favorite: He shifts his body to the left and sweeps his right leg to the left, as if to cut the ball hard in that direction. But he sweeps his right foot over the ball and, a split second later, knocks it to the right with the outside of his right foot. While the defender’s body is leaning in the opposite direction, Tom shifts course back toward the sideline, picking up an easy ten more yards.
A wing fullback barrels straight at him, moving at full speed. Tom uses the kid’s intensity to his advantage, slowing the ball and timing a little push of the ball right through the defender’s legs—a move he has always known as a “nutmeg,” though no one has ever been able to explain why it’s called that.
Cutting the ball toward the center again, he sees Kyle Erdmann stepping up to mark him. By now, he can also hear Greg Plutakis right on his heels. As Kyle makes his move, his head lowered like a bull charging a matador, Tom spots Katya in his peripheral vision, shuffling off to his left. Before he can even turn to her, she sprints behind Kyle and toward the empty space to his right. Tom takes a step to the left and, just before Kyle and Plutakis squeeze him from both sides, dishes the ball to the empty space.
Watching Katya meet the ball, Tom takes two more steps to the left, pulling his defenders with him. Without looking back, Katya heels the ball to the spot he’s just left. Tom digs his cleats into the ground and starts to turn. Eyeing the ball on its way to no one, he sees a blur of Yuri flash in front of him, hears the unmistakable contact of leather on leather, sees the Russian leap into his follow-through like a fox clearing bushes by the side of a road . . .
. . . the ripple of net . . .
. . . and an explosion of cheers from the stands—louder, it seems to Tom, than before.
Tom looks into the bleachers and finds even a few Southwind Boosters clapping their hands—politely, though, as if they’re at a piano recital, not a soccer match.
The game is tied.
After getting momentarily mobbed by his teammates, Tom and the others jog back to the center circle for the Warrior kickoff. He’s puzzled to see Chaz Dempsey coming back onto the field, though to replace a wing midfielder, not Greg Plutakis. As he crosses in front of Tom, Chaz mutters, “She’s pretty good, Tom, your little squaw.”
Tom glowers at him but can’t think of anything to say.
“No, buddy, you’re the great player, eh-ctually,” Katya says, pulling up alongside Chaz. “You have all that room for your penalty kick, but you still manage to hit the ball off our goalkeeper. Deadly accuracy, buddy.” She follows Chaz a few yards, staring him down.
Chaz, seemingly challenged to summon a comeback, just sneers at Katya, mutters “Commie,” and veers away.
“Anarchist, eh-ctually,” Katya says, winking at Tom.
The Warriors kick off and immediately reveal their plan for the remaining minutes of the game: aggressive, physical play. On their first couple of offensive pushes, Tom notices the Warrior midfielders shoving at their marks, which seems more like football pass coverage than soccer defense. Preston ends up right on his butt after one good shove from the Spaz while the ref is looking elsewhere, even though neither of them was anywhere near the ball. From down on the ground, Preston glares at the ref, who obviously missed the foul. Tom begins jogging toward his teammate to intervene in case Preston decides to address the ref—and earn the red card, and the ejection from the match, that the team simply can’t afford. To Tom’s amazement, Preston says nothing.
On defense, the physical contact is just as aggressive. During each give-and-go with Katya, Tom feels the cleats scraping his shins and ankles.
It’s worse for Katya, though. Seeing Chaz block her with his shoulder, even after she has passed the ball, makes Tom almost not want to pass to her. This, he understands, is probably part of the Southwind strategy. Kyle Erdmann is no less delicate with her, knocking her over twice without making any ball contact.
Again, the ref’s attention is elsewhere.
“Intensity!” Coach Dempsey shouts as Tom is running past the Warrior bench. A second later, he sees Alex blatantly yanked off the ball by his shirttail. As he topples onto the grass, the ref blows the whistle and awards the Boosters a free kick. Tom begins to wonder, as he jogs into position, if the word intensity is Dempsey’s secret code for “Take someone out!”
During the brief break in the action, as the ref paces a few Warriors back ten yards from the ball for the Boosters’ free kick, Tom notices the Spaz talking to Katya, following her step for step. He can’t hear what Chaz is saying, but he can guess. He starts to jog over, but Katya looks up at him and shakes her head, gestures for him to stay out of it. A moment later, the ball is back in play.
The game degrades rapidly, with Warriors pushing and shoving and tripping Boosters all over the field every time the ref isn’t looking. Spectators begin to boo the infractions, and once or twice Tom sees even a few Southwind Athletic Boosters on their feet, complaining about something the ref has missed. The whole energy of the match seems to be transforming, Tom thinks, just as the sky has grown darker. Jogging past the Warrior bench, he hears a string of racial slurs he hasn’t heard since he was a very small boy. Coach Dempsey doesn’t chime in, but he doesn’t silence his players either.
Tom catches his mother’s eye. She’s watching him, perched on the edge of her seat, hands clasped in front of her in that way she holds them when she’s anxious about something.
Gazing downfield, Tom sees Brad Goatee settle the ball out at the right wing.
Two Southwind players—a wing striker and a wing midfielder—approach Brad, one moving in for a tackle, the other running to an open space a few yards away, as if Brad might hit him with a pass there, even though he’s on the opposing team. Goatee shifts his body weight as if to pass but fakes it, rolling the ball with the bottom of his cleat, then pulling it back in the other direction. With the striker leaning in the wrong direction, Goatee cuts the ball to the sideline and, glancing up at Tom, sends him a long, perfect pass.
As if on instinct now, Tom turns the ball toward the center and hits Katya for the give-and-go. As he’s moving to collect her return pass, however, Chaz slides into her from behind, buckling her at the knees and sending her flying face-down onto the grass.
“Oh, come on, ref!” Tom shouts.
The crowd erupts in boos. Even the Southwind Athletic Boosters—almost every single one of them—stomp their feet on the bleachers in protest.
The referee blows his whistle, but as soon as the whistle falls from his mouth, he reaches into his shirt pocket and brandishes the yellow card at Tom. “You know better than to speak to the officials that way, son,” the man not so much says as declares, like a judge reading a sentence. With the crowd booing even more loudly now, the ref tucks the yellow card back into his pocket, pulls out the red, and, holding it above his head like a magician doing a card trick, walks it over to Chaz.
The crowd cheers as Chaz makes an outraged face, begins to approach the ref, and is finally called off the field by his father.
Tom jogs over to Katya, who writhes in pain, clutching her knees to her chest, Yuri already at her side.
“We have an injury, sir,” Yuri says to the ref, barely masking his disgust. “Can we have a few minutes?”
The ref looks to the sideline and shouts, “Time!”
“How much time is left?” Preston asks, passing the ref on his way to Katya’s side.
The ref looks at his watch. “Just under two minutes.” Tom turns to the stands to beckon his mother, but she’s already crossing the field at a jog. Reaching Katya, she gently straightens her knees out and begins asking her questions.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom sees the Spaz heading toward the bench. Halfway there, a teammate tosses him a water bottle. Another kid coming off the sideline gives him a low five, down at the waist. While Chaz sucks on a water bottle, Tom approaches him.
“Nice ‘intensity,’ Chuckie. Enjoy that bench ride—”
“Wahoo,” the Spaz spits.
For a split second, Tom feels like plowing the Spaz right over the bench and pummeling him into the ground, but, remembering the ref’s yellow card waving in front of his face, he walks in a little circle, restraining himself. Instead, he turns to Dempsey. “Hey, Coach,” he says, “your son turned out to be quite a warrior. Yeah, he’s real brave.”
Dempsey doesn’t say anything right away. Tiny dots of rain begin collecting on the pink dome of his head.
“You’ve got yourself a team, there, Tom,” the man finally says. “I’ll give you that.”
“You’re not giving us anything. We’re fighting for it. We’re the warriors. And we’re going to beat you in the overtime.”
Dempsey just stares, his jaw working frantically on his chewing gum. As the raindrops begin tapping a rhythm on the grass, something seems to register in his stolid gaze. His eyebrows spike once, and he holds one hand open, palm to the sky. “There’s not going to be an overtime,” he says. “Seems we’ve got a rain coming on. I don’t want the pitch all torn up for the season opener.”
“We have to play overtime,” Tom says. “We agreed to a match.”
“Absolutely. And we’re playing our match. And it’s been a good match—”
“We had a deal.”
Coach Dempsey looks over Tom’s shoulder, and the applause from the stands tells Tom that Katya is on her feet again. As he turns toward her, however, he sees Preston and Yuri helping her off the field, his mother walking two steps ahead.
“Probably just a sprain,” Tom’s mother says to him, giving his hand a squeeze as she passes. “But I’m going to bring her in for an x-ray.”
As Tom watches them carry Katya away, the ref draws alongside Tom and Coach Dempsey. “What are we doing, Coach?” he says.
Dempsey approaches Tom, his eyes squinting in the quickening drizzle. “You’re down to ten players,” he says. “You don’t stand a chance in the overtime.”
“Let’s play it and see—”
“Call the game right here, Tom,” Dempsey goes on. “A draw. And my last offer stands. Walk on next week with Southwind, walk off whenever you want.”
Tom looks to the sideline, where two Southwind Athletic Boosters are now taking Katya from Yuri and Preston, who turn back to the field. “I’m just one player on this team,” he says. “And we’re all equals. And we’re finishing the match.”
“Think about what you’re doing, kid. You play these next two minutes . . .”—Dempsey laughs to himself, as if baffled by Tom’s stupidity—“and you never, ever wear a Warriors jersey. Oh, you think you can handle that now, but wait till school starts. New kid, new school. Practically the only Mohawk. You’ll be nobody.”
Tom looks into the stands, where the spectators are all on their feet, some with makeshift newspaper umbrellas opened over their heads. He looks down toward the Boosters goal, where Magnus is jumping up and down, rocking his head from side to side, staying limber. Beyond the goal, his mother is helping Katya into the back seat of their car.
His father materializes at the corner then, hands clasped behind his back, eyes closed, a tranquil face aimed skyward as if to wash himself in the rain.
“Lighten up, Coach,” Tom says, feeling the strangest urge to laugh. “It’s just a game.”
“Don’t test me,” Dempsey says with a sneer. “Play these two minutes, and—win or lose—you get nothing.”
“Not even if we win?”
“Dream on,” Dempsey says.
“So your word is no good?”
Dempsey snorts. “I don’t make deals with hotshots.”
Tom feels someone poking him in the back. He whirls around.
Jimmy.
“I don’t know what you fricking guys are talking about,” Jimmy says, “but we’re finishing this match, even if the ref makes me wear someone’s fricking pants next. That’ll give you a chance to kiss my butt, Coach.”
“You realize I’m the athletic director of this school,” Dempsey hisses.
“Another argument for homeschooling.” Jimmy jogs back to the goal.
Tom turns to the ref. “We play,” he says, walking away.
“Armand, we’re going to play out the clock,” Dempsey adds, nodding to the ref, “but no OT.”
The ref sets the ball down more or less where he’d issued Chaz the red card.
“Nothing, Tom!” Dempsey calls to him.
Tom ignores him.
A couple of seconds later, the crowd begins chanting “Boo-sters, Boo-sters, Boo-sters . . .” The sound seems almost too loud to be coming from just one hundred or so people. There’s a faint background sound enveloping the cheers—a white noise . . . like static . . .
“It’s going to be a Boosters direct kick,” the ref shouts and blows his whistle.
The whistle shriek is practically swallowed up in the drumming of rain and a strange . . . roar.
As Tom watches Yuri knock the ball into play, he experiences the sensation that he has watched it all before, on TV somewhere, during some Raven chalk-talk, in his dreams. He hardly moves an inch, as if knowing that Alex will blow the trap but that the Warrior middie will fail to control the ball tightly enough, allowing Preston to scoop it up and dish a nice square pass to Yuri. Even when Yuri sends the ball sizzling along the glistening grass toward him, Tom not so much takes the pass as witnesses himself taking the pass, as if he’s making the play and watching from the bleachers at the same time.
The roar blocks out all sound except for his breathing—his breathing and the clicking of rain, like iron chips falling from a skyscraper hidden in the clouds. Tom moves, seemingly in slow motion, across the center of the field.
He hits Paul making a run for the right corner of the Southwind end, marveling, as he bolts up the center of the field, at the architecture of the game—the ball cutting lines, angles, arcs; the players rushing to weld connections in place before sending the ball across the structure.
Paul catches up to the ball just before it rolls over the Warrior goal line and turns it back two yards.
Tom slides into a spot just outside the penalty area and watches Paul fire a beautiful cross-field pass to Alex—camped out on the left side of the field, staying out wide for a change. Tom calls for the ball.
Alex takes the pass off his chest, settles it with his right foot, cuts the ball to his inside, quickly to his outside, then back to his inside, beating his defender and giving himself an opportunity to send a perfect, chest-high cross out to Tom at the top of the box.
Preston suddenly blocks Tom’s view of the ball as he runs directly in its arcing path.
As if focusing each eye on something different, Tom watches Preston’s move pull two Warrior defenders to the left, out of the way, leaving Tom an open, straight look at the goal, with a little more than a yard of space on each side of the Warrior goalkeeper.
Tom moves on impulse: two steps to the line at the top of the penalty area, a leap, a lean to the right, a scissors-cutting motion with his right leg as his body falls parallel, right shoulder to the ground, like a metal beam being dropped onto the field.
The ball connects with his left instep in that spot where they were destined to meet.
He tries to watch the shot but closes his eyes as his right shoulder and chest hit the ground. He rolls once, eyes still closed, a smile on his face, as if playfully resisting hands trying to tuck him into bed. The cheering explodes like thunder all around him . . .
“Kawehras—‘the thunder.’”
Or is it laughter he hears echoing deep inside his head, as if through time?
He feels as if he could sleep, the bodies falling on top of him now like the “Indian” blankets his father kept in the trunk of his car. He kept two back there, in case he and Tom ever got stuck somewhere. In case they had no choice but to wait out a storm.