Falling Star (3 page)

5

Centreville

Centreville seemed to be made up of one subdivision after another. In between were strip malls offering the same stores and services — hairdressers, convenience stores, takeouts, Sears outlets, liquor stores. It was like being back in Canterbury, except it was smaller.

As Edison gazed out the window, he became aware of Linh-Mai craning her head to see past him.

She murmured, “I wonder what the Centreville kids are like? Do you suppose they take soccer seriously, like getting good grades at school?”

There was a tremor in her voice. Edison had been trained to prey on players who revealed weakness like that. They were easily intimidated — by a fierce shot aimed right at them, or a dribbling trick that left them looking stupid, or a crunching tackle. He could always get past them — at least, he could before the choking started. Now he wasn't so sure.

Linh-Mai had taken off her glasses and was chewing on one of the arms. Suddenly he felt sorry for her, for her timidity and anxiety. He hoped there was no one on the Centreville team who would set out to humiliate her the way he would if he was playing against her.

The talk in the van died away as Mr. Grease drove through the town. When he stopped for a traffic light, with Centreville Middle School visible at the end of the street ahead, Mr. Field turned and asked, “Why so quiet?”

Shay glanced around at his teammates. “We're nervous.”

Mr. Field nodded. “Nerves are good. They get the adrenalin flowing.”

Edison thought,
How many times have I heard that?
He knew it was true, but that didn't stop the churning stomach, and the dry throat, and the cold sweat that were already assailing him, and that he knew would only get worse the closer he got to kickoff.

Mr. Grease parked the van in front of the school and Mr. Field led the team to the playing field beside it. Houses stretched away in every direction, and the school, two storeys, with white aluminum siding and lots of windows, looked like just another big suburban home. Although it was Saturday afternoon, students filled the bleachers.

As Edison and his teammates trotted on to the field, Amy started, “I like Centreville's yellow shirts but their shorts are a bit
too
green. If I played for them I'd ask the coach if we could have more of an
olive
green …” She took her place in one of the goals, where she continued talking while Shay and Steve took shots at her. Edison had expected Mr. Field to direct some kind of warm-up, like his former coaches had always done, but he and Mr. Grease had the hood of the van open and were peering at the engine. Linh-Mai, Julie, and the twins were playing dodge ball. Toby joined in and Julie hit him with her first shot. When she complained, “You're too easy,” he replied, “I need a rest, anyway,” and lay down in the middle of the pitch.

Edison decided to go through his Eagles pre-game routine. He jogged slowly across the pitch. He returned, jogging backwards. He sprinted across, collected a soccer ball he found on the other side of the field, and sprinted back, keeping it close to his feet. With his old team, all the players had done this in a line, and he felt strange doing it by himself. The Eagles had always finished their routine standing in a circle with their arms around one another's shoulders and their eyes closed, while the coach talked softly about the goals they were going to score, and the tackles they were going to make, and the defeat they were going to inflict on their opponents. The coach had called it envisaging and focusing. He'd ended every warm-up by repeating the words “focus” and “envisage” over and over while the players stood in their huddle. By the time the coach finished, Edison had always been convinced he was going to play well and score — until those last few games.

He stood with his head down and his eyes fixed on the grass, envisaging the game with Centreville so he didn't see Linh-Mai and Toby cautiously approach. He started when Linh-Mai said, “Are you all right?” and Toby asked, “Are you saying your prayers?”

“I'm envisaging and focusing.”

“You're what?”

“Thinking about the game,” said Edison. “We used to do it at my old school.”

“Did it do any good?” asked Toby.

“It seemed to help.”

“Can we do it?” said Linh-Mai.

“What do we have to do?” asked Toby.

“You stand in a circle and close your eyes, and you think about tackling and scoring and winning and stuff.”

They stood in a circle with their arms around one another's shoulders and their eyes closed.

After a few seconds Toby said, “What do you think we'll have for supper?”

Linh-Mai said, “Focus!”

Shay and Julie wandered across.

“Are you having a séance?” Julie asked.

“We're focusing,” said Toby.

“And envisaging,” Linh-Mai added.

“Wanna try it?” said Toby.

Shay and Julie joined the circle.

The referee arrived on the pitch and the teams gathered around their coaches.

Mr. Field said, “Centreville doesn't get many goals, but doesn't let in many, either. We have to stop them scoring, because if they do score, they'll pack their defence and it'll be tough breaking them down. So we'll concentrate on defence, and go with only one striker. That'll be you, Steve, in the first half. You can run yourself into the ground trying to score, because Edison will take over from you after the break and do the same thing. Apart from that …” he waved his hand in the direction of the field. “… just go play. Do your best — but don't forget it's just a game.”

Edison remembered other coaches saying that. The difference with Mr. Field was that he really seemed to mean it.

The teams lined up to shake hands, Brunswick Valley in all blue, Centreville in green and yellow. Edison was beside Linh-Mai in the line. She'd tied a red strap around her head to hold her glasses in place. As she shook hands with a small red-haired girl with freckles, she confided to her in a shaky voice, “I'm some nervous.”

The girl smiled and said, “Me, too.”

Edison thought,
Loser
talk
. His coaches had always told him you couldn't afford loser talk.

But what was worse? Loser talk, or being afraid of screwing up?

Edison took his place on the bench and surveyed the Centreville lineup. Like Brunswick Valley, they seemed to be playing with only one striker, a tall gawky boy with thin legs and bony knees. Edison guessed heading the ball would be his specialty. The centre half, whose name was Lily — he'd heard her teammates calling her — was tall too, but rugged.

He turned his attention to his own team. Shay stood calmly at midfield. Julie, beside him, jogged on the spot as if she couldn't wait for the game to start. Behind them, Toby leaned against one of Amy's goalposts, occasionally nodding as she talked, while Linh-Mai stood nearby chewing her fingernails. Edison wanted to run across and tell her she had to relax in order to play well. In the centre of the field, Steve stood with one foot on the ball and his arms folded. Edison could see the arrogant confidence of a striker in the way he coolly surveyed his opponents, and in his relaxed stance. Edison wished he could get back that confidence.

The referee whistled for the kickoff. Steve tapped the ball to Jillian and raced toward the Centreville goal. Jillian returned the ball, which Steve collected just in front of Lily. She moved to tackle him but he turned and backed into her, keeping the ball close to his feet. She loomed over him, her arms almost around him and her knees bumping against the backs of his legs, unbalancing him. Edison saw Steve's eyes roving, looking for support. The twins were on the wings, too far away to pass to. Brandon was running to help, but the tall centre forward, towering above him, was hard on his heels. Suddenly Steve was flat on his back and the ball spun away toward Brandon, who managed to poke it on to Jessica before the centre forward crashed into him, tumbling him to the ground. Jessica took the ball past one defender and centred it, but no one was there to take advantage of the cross. The Centreville goalkeeper caught the ball and rolled it out to Lily, who sent it over Shay and Julie for the home striker to receive on his head. The striker kept the ball in the air by repeatedly heading it, all the time moving toward the Brunswick Valley goal. It was some trick. As he neared the goal, with Toby moving cautiously to bar his way, and Steve racing at him from behind, he headed a weak shot, which Amy caught easily.

Edison wondered whether his teammates realized how dangerous the tall striker's heading skill made him. If he kept control of the ball as he headed it and moved toward the goal, there wasn't much Linh-Mai and Toby, his markers, could do about it. They couldn't tackle, because the ball was on his head, not at his feet. All they could do was stand in his way, but then they'd risk committing a foul, which could mean he would get a penalty kick. On the other hand, if they didn't bar his way, the centre forward had a clear path to goal.

As the first half wore on, Edison began to understand how Centreville had enjoyed such a successful season. Mr. Field's assessment had been right. Their attack wasn't much, consisting of lobbing the ball to the tall striker whenever he got near Amy's goal, but their defence was solid. If Brunswick Valley advanced beyond the halfway line, at least two home defenders immediately surrounded whoever had the ball, stifling movement and making it almost impossible to pass. On the rare occasions when Steve managed to get away from Lily and find some space, there was the lanky striker, helping his defence and hanging over him like an overfriendly giraffe.

Edison realized it wasn't just Centreville's suffocating defence that was stifling every Brunswick Valley attack. It was more like his teammates were stifling themselves. He thought of how they'd played in the girls-against-boys scrimmage back at the school. Although that was fooling around rather than proper soccer, they'd run with the ball, had created space for themselves with constant movement, and had harried whoever had the ball. Now the only player who seemed to be doing that was Steve, who raced from one end of the pitch to the other, helping his defence one minute, attacking the Centreville goal the next. His method of attack was simple. He kicked the ball ahead and ran after it, relying on speed to get to it ahead of his opponents, or strength to hustle them off it if they got there first.

Late in the first half, Steve passed to Shay from near his own goal. Shay kept possession while Steve ran past him into an attacking position. With two Centreville defenders closing in, Shay passed between them to Steve, who found himself with only Lily between himself and the goalkeeper. He moved right, then left, then right again, as he approached her. Lily moved with him, but stumbled at the third change of direction.

Edison thought,
She's
tiring
.

Steve prodded the ball farther to the right to take it wide of Lily, but she stumbled into his path, knocking him over. By the time the referee awarded a free kick, the Centreville players were standing in a line between Steve and the goal, and the ball bounced harmlessly off them.

At halftime Steve pleaded with Mr. Field, “Let me stay on. Lily's getting tired and I can get past her now.”

“You've done a great job wearing her down, but you're tiring too,” said Mr. Field. “We'll stick with our plan of putting Edison on for the second half.”

Steve flung himself on the bench, grumbling, “I would have scored.”

When the teams lined up for the second half, Lily fixed her eyes on Edison. He tried to stare back, but she outlasted him and he looked away. Her thick legs and broad shoulders suggested he would come off second-best if they went for the ball at the same time, but he thought he had the speed to get past her. He read her expression as she stared — the pouty curl of her lip, the narrowed eyes — understanding it was meant to intimidate him. Normally it wouldn't have bothered him, because being good didn't just make him a star. It made him a target, as well. But with his nerves already on edge with the worry that he would choke again, he could feel Lily's taunting stare unsettling him more and more.

His first clash with her came ten minutes later when Brunswick Valley broke out of defence for the first time since the break. Edison was in midfield when Linh-Mai passed to him. As he trapped the ball, Lily rushed at him. He rolled it back onto his foot and flipped it over her head before running past her, skipping over her wildly flailing leg. Before he could collect the ball and continue upfield, she turned and tripped him. Under the guise of helping him up, she pinched his arm, muttering, “Think you're smart, don't you?”

Shay took a throw-in to Edison, who knew Lily was close behind. Edison trapped Shay's throw and backed into Lily, shielding the ball as she poked her shoe at it. He waited until her foot was stretching for the ball again, then rolled it backward through her legs, spinning around her at the same time. He collected the ball behind her as two more defenders closed in on him. Without looking up, he fired the ball over them at the Centreville goal. It was a long shot — so far out that no one would expect him to shoot from there, let alone score — but Edison knew those shots unsettled the goalkeeper and defence, making them nervous whenever he had the ball. And nervous defenders made mistakes. The keeper watched without moving as the ball seemed as if it would fly high across the goalmouth until, at the last second, it curled toward the net and hit the post.