Gracie Faltrain Gets it Right (Finally) (15 page)

I feel strange sitting on the bench on Saturday. Kally's taken over my old position. She warms up and it's like I'm watching another person try my life on and get comfortable in it. This is what I looked like when I started: a small girl on a field with the boys, hoping I'd kick goals.

Beth Hunter's on the ground in defence. Natalie's on as striker. Joanna is in goal. ‘We'll leave the girls on a bit longer, this morning,' Coach says. ‘Let them get the feel for the play.'

‘You think that's a good idea?' I ask.

‘I hear on the grapevine you made a few visits to the boys during the week and knocked some sense into them. I think they'll be okay. You want to handle the pre-game talk?'

‘Really?'

‘I'll sit back and watch.'

I look at every player. I eyeball Flemming a little longer so he doesn't make the mistake of believing that things are
okay between us. They're not. It's his fault I'm on the bench when I'd kill to be in the game.

‘We're playing one of the roughest teams today so be careful. They'll figure it's an easy win because Martin and I are gone and there are some new players on the field. But they don't know how good Kally is in the midfield. They don't know that nothing gets through Beth in defence. They don't know how good Natalie is as a striker. What they definitely don't suspect is how good at shooting for goal Corelli has become. I'm changing your position to striker.'

‘Really?' he asks.

‘Really. Francavilla, you're in midfield.' I run through the other positions. I tell them who's on the bench. And then I say, ‘Remember. We're all on the same team out there.'

Before they walk on, the goalie from the opposition calls out to Kally. ‘Want to save us some time and forfeit now?'

‘I'm surprised you know what forfeit means,' she answers, and slowly raises one finger. ‘Okay. I'm acting way tougher than I feel.'

‘You'll be right.' Francavilla slaps her on the back. ‘Faltrain has to kick them in the balls sometimes.'

‘You got to find their balls, first,' Singh says.

Okay. Now I'm more than a little jealous. The whistle goes. They're on. And I'm not.

‘First rule of coaching, Faltrain. Keep your eyes open.'

‘It's too painful to watch, Coach.'

‘So, do something about it.'

‘I don't know what to do.' Kally's getting hammered out there. It's rough and she hasn't got a handle on the play.
Every time she gets the ball they take it. Most of the time they take it and leave her on the grass.

Our team's helping all they can. Francavilla's helping her a little too much, if you ask me. Even Flemming passes her the ball. But she's drowning and they can't hold her up. Natalie's still standing. But let's face it: she's not getting the ball very often. Joanna, on the other hand, is getting the ball over and over in goal. She's holding her own. So is Beth. The score's 3–0 when the whistle goes for the end of the first half. It could be worse.

‘You're on, Faltrain,' Coach says as they walk over. ‘It might help to think what I'd say to them.'

‘Okay. Act like you.' That shouldn't be too hard. The first thing Francavilla says when he reaches me is, ‘I've got Kally's back in the midfield, Faltrain.' Clearly my little talk the other day scared him.

‘Then stop checking out her front. It's not a singles bar out there.' Being like Coach is easier than I thought.

I look at Kally. There isn't time for nice speeches. ‘You're scared, that's the problem. You see those guys running at you and you're panicking.'

‘Smart people panic when they see a bus about to hit them,' she says. Her legs are bruised. Her hair has seen better days.

After the game I'll show her sympathy. Right now, I'm giving it to her straight. ‘If you lose here, forget state trials. Your confidence will be shot and you'll play like crap again. Get in there, get under them, get around them, get the ball.' I throw in a bit of Martin advice at the end. Hey, it worked for me.

The whistle goes and Kally gets knocked down. Again. ‘You know,' she says, getting up. ‘I'm really sick of that.' She finds the ball. She pauses a second and then she runs, right at the biggest guy in the midfield. She's got the ball before he knows she's there. ‘Nat,' she yells, and kicks. Natalie passes to Corelli who slams it to goal. ‘Forfeit that, you losers,' Kally says. And she runs for the ball again.

Did Kally go off in the midfield? Yes. Did Natalie kick a great goal on the whistle? Yes. Did we win? No freaking way. Was it the best game I can ever remember? It was definitely close. It's a shame I was watching from the side.

Flemming takes a long time packing his bag. He wants to talk; I hear it in the way he folds his jumper instead of stuffing it away. I hear it in the way he slowly ties his shoelaces. ‘They played good out there,' he says eventually.

I can't stand that those words are the ones that come out of his mouth first. Not, ‘I'm sorry you weren't out there playing because I'm such an idiot.' Maybe he thinks that passing to the girls a few times in the midfield makes up for what he did to me.

I don't bother with the lead-up. I don't bother explaining that it'd be a good idea for him to at least apologise. I tried that last year and he didn't change. ‘Everyone was right,' I say. ‘You're an idiot. Martin might want nothing to do with me but he wants even less to do with you. Coach told me you were trouble because you were stupid.' I've twisted the truth, but I've hit my mark.

Flemming's face ripples with anger and hurt and shame. That's the thing about fighting with your friends. It's so much more dangerous than fighting with an enemy. You can
hit them at close range and aim the shot exactly where you want it to go.

‘No one wants to hang out with you. Not Alyce. Not me. Not Martin. Not Coach. You might be on the school team but I still feel sorry for you. Because you've got nothing else.'

Flemming nods, picks up his bag and leaves. I let him go. The friendship was over long before today.

Gracie told me what she said to Andrew yesterday. I go to his trials this morning because I'm more worried than angry. I call his name and when he looks at me I don't recognise his face. ‘Watch out. You don't want to get caught talking to an idiot. Didn't Coach and Knight and Faltrain tell you?'

Something becomes clear for me, then, something frightening. All last year we thought that Andrew couldn't control his temper. He was controlling it, though: he didn't show half the anger he was feeling. It's in his face, today. He's always thought he was stupid and now he's had it confirmed by the people he trusted the most.

Water takes a long time to absorb heat before it boils, I think, as he runs onto the field. Andrew's hit 212 degrees Fahrenheit today and something bad is going to happen. I feel it. The only person who might be able to stop it is Gracie. She's too far away, though. So his luck has finally run out.

‘Your mum told me you were here,' Brett says, standing beside me. He looks across the field. ‘Man, he's going to kill someone.' I feel sick watching Andrew as he slams into boys and takes the ball.

‘Idiot,' Brett says. I want to tell him to be quiet. We learnt in Physics that the quietest sound an average eighteen-year-old boy can hear is twenty micropascals. Sometimes, though, words travel where it's not scientifically possible, because they're meant for you. I've heard people whispering about me all through high school. ‘Idiot,' Brett says again, and Andrew looks up. He sees us holding hands and loses his balance. I hear the sound of his knee tearing: scientifically possible or not.

I'm laughing as I walk off the field from state trials. Kally and I played better than ever. Dan's leaning on his car, waiting. ‘You're early,' I say, and then I stop smiling. ‘What's wrong?'

‘There's been an accident.' I know what he's about to say. Call it sixth sense. Call it common sense. Flemming's been playing too rough for too long. ‘Is he alive?' I ask.

‘He fell on the way to goal and tore his knee ligament. Coach reckons he's out for the season. Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?'

Last year I would have been there in a second. I would have run to that hospital. Everything Flemming's wished for is gone. Mum went on and on about injury at the start of the year when I was stuffing around in school. ‘You don't have an indefinite shelf life,' she said. ‘You need a career to fall back on.' I figured we'd have a shelf life long enough to get us to the World Cup and beyond that was too far to see.

‘I have to study,' I say. Dan and Kally don't argue. We get in the car. What happened to Flemming is my worst nightmare. He'll be staring out the window of his hospital room, like I'm looking out the window, now. I see grass and parks and he'll see places he can't run. But I've been following him too long.

I can't say everything's okay between us when it's not. He was willing to let me lose what I loved so that he could hold on to it. If he's sorry, if he needs a friend, he has to come to me this time.

‘What are you thinking?' Dan asks.

‘That I'm glad I've got a plan B.' That I'm glad I'm not Flemming. That I want to leave the part of me that was him behind. Mum was right. When someone steals the soccer ball, the game stops. You can't score goals with air.

Faltrain looks like she's lost her best friend when she walks in on Sunday. I guess that's because she has. Flemming is important to her and now she feels guilty because she can't bring herself to visit him. Seeing her miss him gets me thinking that I don't want to lose Corelli.

‘I've thought a lot about this,' I say to him when I call. ‘And I'm not the sort of person to ditch a friend because I'm embarrassed. Forget our fight. I'm cool about Francesca, okay?'

‘Okay, but . . .'

‘You don't need to say anything else. See you tomorrow for the presentation.'

The unfortunate thing about my conversation with Corelli is that I've reminded myself about the History oral that's looming up like a monster. I've been trying not to think about it all weekend. Generally speaking I don't have a fear of the public. I can handle them in toilets, elevators,
restaurants and movies. I don't mind speaking either. I make a policy to do it every day. But put those two words together and it scares me out of my mind. In the words of Faltrain, ‘I'd rather be pushed off a cliff than speak in public.'

‘When it comes to presentations there's one important thing to remember,' Kally says this morning. ‘No one's even listening to you. They're thinking about what they're going to eat for lunch and who they want to kiss.'

‘Apart from Mrs Young,' Faltrain says. ‘She listens like a . . . listening animal.'

‘Like a rabbit.' Alyce helps her out. ‘Or a dolphin.'

‘Can I hire your brain for the mid-year exams?' Faltrain asks.

‘Forget the teacher,' Kally says. ‘Nine times out of ten these things go off exactly as planned. Just follow your palm cards.'

‘I can't find my palm cards,' I say to Corelli. ‘I need my cards.'

‘Relax. Here, I've got them. I thought you were good at public speaking.'

‘Everyone thinks that because I'm laid-back and sarcastic. But I hate it. I'm so scared I completely zone out while I'm talking. I don't even remember what I read. I once gave a talk in politics on every Prime Minister since federation. I had all my dates right and I still had no recollection of it afterwards. That's why the palm cards are very important. Everything on them is carefully planned so I don't need to think.'

He snatches them off me. ‘Don't use them. You'll be fine.'

‘Are you crazy? That's like disconnecting a diver's oxygen twenty metres below the water and telling them they're okay because really, they're a mermaid. I won't be fine.' I snatch them back. ‘We're ready, Mrs Young,' I say. Let's get this over and done with.

Okay, so romance isn't dead. But maybe I am.

‘And so to end with a quote from Robespierre, “I've thought about it and I want you to be my girlfriend. I don't want to go out with Francesca anymore.”' It takes me a second to actually hear what I've said. I look at the class. ‘He told that to Marie Antoinette but she said no so they killed her.' Corelli laughs. The class takes notes.

‘Very good on the whole,' Mrs Young says. ‘No one write that last quote in the exam. There are better ones to illustrate the point.' I don't know, Mrs Young; I think that quote pretty much says it all.

Corelli and I walk to the far side of the school boundary at recess. ‘I've broken up with Fran. I should have told you about her, but we were having such a good time. I didn't want to spoil it.' He unwraps some almond biscuits and hands me one. ‘You like me for more than my cooking, right?'

For once, I'm at a loss for a snappy comeback. ‘Yes, Corelli. I like you for more than your cooking. I don't know if I'll stay, though. I might, but I haven't decided.'

‘It's okay. I want to hang out with you anyway.'

‘You're going to kiss me now, aren't you?'

‘Not if you keep looking at me like you're Cat Woman,' he says, and stands up.

‘You're not going to kiss me?'

‘The bell's about to go; that's too much pressure. And I need a mint.'

‘You've been waiting thirteen years to kiss me and there wasn't time to have a mint?'

‘I'm not rushing. You can't make me. Not all guys are ready to kiss girls in a second.'

‘Well, when do you think you'll be ready?'

‘You'll have to be patient.' I hate gender stereotypes as much as the next girl, but come on. Is he serious?