Breakaway (13 page)

“Maybe,” she said.

“Jaz, let's go,” Jordie was saying, maybe not for the first time, and I realized I had a big, goofy grin on my face. “Arturo's calling.”

“I'm coming,” I said without taking my eyes off Raine.

“Jaz!” Jordie was shouting now, and without another word, I turned to walk away from her.

As I sat on the sidelines stripping off my jacket and swinging my arms to limber up I noticed Raine's maybe-but-probably-not-boyfriend, Brian, jog over to talk to her while she still stood at the fence. He leaned in to give her a hug and she turned her face to let him kiss her on the cheek. Was it my imagination or did she intentionally take the kiss on her cheek that was maybe meant for her lips? But she was smiling up at him, laughing at something he said. My face burned with heat again, this time from humiliation. Now I felt stupid, like maybe I had misread the signals. When Raine said she had come to cheer for just one person in particular, I thought she had been talking about me, flirting with me. But now I was thinking she was just covering up the fact that she was there to show support for the other guy.

I tried to keep my eyes off them, but I couldn't bring myself to turn away completely. I wanted to see if her smile was the same as it had been when she was talking to me.

Then I decided to forget it because the W & L team was lining up on the field and I had never been more determined to win a game in my life. I hoped Arturo wasn't going to pull some bullshit and yank me out of the game early.

“This is gonna suck,” Mario muttered to me as we sat on the bench watching the W & L team and waiting for the ref to call us onto the field.

“We got this,” I said with confidence I didn't really feel.

As soon as the whistle blew to start play I had two defenders on me like stink on shit. I was used to being a target. After all, I had a reputation for playing rough, drawing fouls, and getting thrown out of games. But the way they were playing didn't make any sense. Even when the ball was nowhere near me I still had two guys on me, getting in my space like they were trying to draw me into a fight. Maybe they thought I could get myself thrown out of the game early for unnecessary contact and we'd have to play the rest of the game a man down.

At first it was just an annoyance, the players crowding me, practically begging me to push them out of the way, or passing the ball tightly between two or three players trying to run me in circles. Eli caught on quickly to their game and fell back from his forward position to create a distraction. They were so busy with their defenders up near me, they weren't paying close attention to their goal and what our forwards were doing.

Finally I did manage to get my foot on the ball. The pass I sent to Eli was a sloppy one, the ball skidding along instead of rolling true, but he trapped the ball easily and changed direction in the same movement. As I watched Eli take the ball and run with it I forgot to pay attention to the W & L players who were still around me. My head was turned at an angle when one of them drove an elbow up into my eye. I went down like a brick, the pain so intense for a minute that I thought the hit might have blinded me. The refs didn't see the dirty play since their focus had been on the player with the ball.

I was on my knees with one hand on the ground to hold myself steady, the other holding my eye, when the ref finally saw what was going on and stopped play to come and see if I was okay. Jordie was standing over me and shouting curses at the W & L players near me, telling them to back off. I was still in too much pain to open my eyes, so it was just a confusion of voices around me.

“Can you get up?” the ref was asking me.

“What the hell does it look like?” Jordie asked hotly. “That guy just gave him a full elbow to the eye.”

It was Chick who helped me to stand. “Blood?” I asked because if I was bleeding, I had no choice but to leave the game.

“No,” Chick said, his gaze shifting from one of my eyes to the other, “but bloodshot. Can you see?”

“Out of my other eye. Sort of,” I amended as my uninjured eye was watering so much, everything was an indistinct blur.

“You should sit,” Jordie said.

“You want to call in a sub?” the ref was asking Arturo as he walked over to take a look at me.

Arturo didn't answer right away as he took a moment to assess my injury. “You okay?” Arturo asked me.

“Fine,” I said.

“He can play,” Arturo said with a wave at the ref as he turned and walked off the field.

There were only a few minutes to play until halftime and the W & L defenders backed off a little now that the ref was watching more closely.

At halftime I sat on the bench, catching my breath, ignoring the crowd and the W & L players. Chick got me an ice pack from Arturo's kit, and the cold plastic was a welcome relief to the heat of my injury. The heartbeat of pain behind my eye just reminded me to stay angry so I would go into the second half as determined to win as I had been in the first half.

Arturo came over to talk to me, his gaze on the middle distance as we spoke so no one would know we were having a serious conversation. “I don't know what you said or did, but these guys clearly have an interest in taking you out.”

“It's nothing,” I said.

“Well, you seem to be a good distraction so I'm going to keep you in,” he said. “You got a problem with that?”

“No.”

“Don't give the ref a reason to toss you. If anyone gets tossed I want it to be one of theirs.”

I just nodded at that and he strolled away to have a quiet conversation with Eli.

The second half was worse. I was completely neutralized by the two midfielders, who wouldn't leave me alone, and if I did get my foot on the ball my defenders would do their best to trip me. They kept me running as I tried to control the middle of the field, but they were just running me down.

I was catching my breath at midfield when there was a scuffle at the sideline and Eli emerged with the ball. He was on a breakaway, headed downfield with only one W & L defender and the goalkeeper between him and the goal. He was way out in front and no one was going to be able to catch him. I was running the block and the goal was all but a done deal. Eli was going at the W & L goalkeeper full speed and with a few quick fakes he was able to put the ball away. I was completely focused on the action at the goal and had almost forgotten about the defender just behind me. About a second after Eli scored the goal, I took a late hit from out of nowhere and was down for the count. I didn't know what hit me.

Later my teammates would tell me that one defender was so intent on neutralizing me that he didn't even pull up once the goal had gone in. He was coming at me full speed downfield and didn't try to keep from mowing me down. At the same time, one of the players I had been blocking decided to go through me instead of around me in a last-ditch effort to stop Eli. I got caught in between the two of them and got knocked into next week.

The next thing I knew, Arturo, the medic, and Mario were all looking down at me and I was staring up at the clouds drifting overhead in the late afternoon sky.

“Jason.” Arturo was saying my name over the ringing in my ears.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm here.

“Hey, lie still,” Arturo said. “You got knocked out so they going to take you off the field in a stretcher.”

“No freaking way,” I groaned. “I can get up.” I rolled into a sitting position and when I did my head began to spin. For a minute I thought I might throw up.

“Seriously, Jason,” Arturo said, sounding a little angry now, but I could tell he was worried. “You need to lie still. You could have a concussion.”

Mario took a knee, then put a hand on my shoulder and leaned me back against his bent leg.
“¿Est
á
s bien?”
he asked.

I nodded and then again thought I might puke so I closed my eyes until things stopped spinning.

“You want to stand up?” Mario asked.

“He needs to see a doctor,” Arturo said. “He was unconscious for a few seconds at least.”

Mario and Arturo spoke in Spanish for a minute. They spoke too quickly for me to catch all of it. Mostly them debating the fact that I was so stubborn it was less work to let me try to walk off and then collapse if I needed to rather than get me to see a doctor.

Then Arturo turned his anger on the ref, asked him why he was even on the field if he wasn't going to call fouls on the players who had been harassing me the whole game. By this time Arturo was completely worked up and he was dropping curses in Spanish and waving his arms around. Since I had been inside the penalty box when I was knocked out the ref had to give us a penalty shot on the goal, which Mario had to take for me since I was in no condition to walk, much less score a goal.

After a few minutes I was able to walk off the field unassisted, though pride was the only thing carrying me. As I limped to the sideline I saw Brian watching me, the smile playing at the corners of his mouth enough to tell me that the elbow I had taken to the eye and the bruised brain I was sporting were both thanks to him, even if he hadn't gotten his hands dirty. He didn't care that his team would be down two goals once Mario took my penalty shot, since Mario had never missed a penalty in his life. All Brian cared about was knocking me out of the game because he had seen me talking to Raine.

I sat on the bench, my forearms resting on my lap as I watched Mario line up to take the shot on goal that was rightfully mine. He stood with his hands on his hips and squinted up at the failing sun, as if determining the angle of light and the direction of the wind. In actual fact, he was giving the goalkeeper a minute to psych himself out and worry about which way the ball might fly.

Mario ran at the ball, his body leaned forward so that when his foot connected, the ball would fly hard and low into the goal. At the last second Mario reared back a little so the angle of the ball would fly higher. It was too late for the keeper to change his momentum. He was already on the ground, diving left as the ball sailed into the top right corner of the goal.

Mario didn't even celebrate. Just turned and walked away as the bleachers went quiet.

 

 

After the game, we had to ride the activities bus back to school. My teammates celebrated loudly on the bus. The pounding in my head was intense and my neck ached, so I rode with my head resting against the cool glass of the bus window. Every bump we hit was a painful reminder of my injuries. Jordie leaned over the back of my seat and gave my shoulder a shake as he whooped in excitement.

“Lay off, dumb-ass,” Mario said as he slapped Jordie's hand away. “He just got knocked out.”

“Sorry,” Jordie said, not sounding sorry at all. He was too excited by the win to be put out by Mario's insult. “Let's hit the diner. A bunch of those guys from W and L said they were going to go eat and I want to rub it in that we beat their asses at home.”

“Can't,” Mario said. “I've got plans.”

“What about you, Jaz?” Jordie asked.

“I don't have any money,” I mumbled.

“I'll buy,” Jordie said. “It will be worth every penny when those guys see you walk in the joint after they tried so hard to put you down.”

When we got to school Mario didn't even go back into the locker room to change. His ride was waiting in the parking lot, the same group of guys I had seen him with the night Jordie and I went out with Cheryl and Raine. They were all standing around an old piece-of-shit silver Corolla, rust spots on both rear quarter panels. All of them were smoking cigarettes and laughing hysterically about something. The blond guy, Travis, was wearing skinny jeans and a brown cardigan. Fucking hipster.

My head was still hurting when I emerged from the locker room. The hot spray of the shower had helped somewhat but the dull ache at the top of my spine was still there, my eye still puffy and hot to the touch. I waved off Jordie's invitation to join him at the diner and started the long walk home by myself.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I skipped practice the Monday after the W & L game because I still felt dizzy if I stood too quickly and the dull ache in my neck hadn't gone away. After school I was so tired I planned to just go home and sleep. It had been on my mind all day. I rode the bus home because I was too tired for the walk, though I couldn't remember the last time I had taken the bus home after school. The noise of the riders, the high whine of the engine, and the jostle of the vehicle over bumps in the road made my head start to pound for real.

As I trudged across the packed-earth grounds of my apartment building I heard shouting, the noise drifting out across the parking lot, but I didn't think much of it. Living in an apartment complex like ours we were all right on top of each other. I had gotten used to ignoring the drama of other people's lives—the fights, kids crying, loud parties.

But as I drew close to our door I realized the shouting was coming from my own apartment, the very living room where I slept, in fact. I ran the last fifty feet and hit the door hard, then stopped to pull the screen open. The sound of me hitting the door startled whoever was inside, and the shouting stopped abruptly.

It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness of the interior after being out in the bright sunshine of the afternoon. When my eyes had adjusted and I took in the scene of the living room, I didn't know what to say.

Mom was standing, her eyes wild with anger and grief, her hands gripping her hair at both sides of her head, as if covering her ears to protect them from the volume of her own voice. My grandmother, Mom's mom, sat on the edge of my open sofa bed. My grandfather stood with his back to the kitchen doorway, his hands clasped behind him in a rigid military posture.

“Ma?” I said, my voice a question.

My grandparents were mostly strangers to me. I had met them only a few times in my life. They disowned Mom when they found out she was pregnant with me at the end of her senior year of high school. Mom didn't speak to them for a long time and I was six the first time I ever met them.