Over the End Line

HARCOURT
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston New York
2009

Copyright © 2009 by Alfred C. Martino

All rights reserved. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at
www.harcourt.com/contact
or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

The text of this book is set in Garth Graphic.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martino, Alfred C.
Over the end line / by Alfred C. Martino.
p. cm.
Summary: After scoring the winning goal in the county soccer championship, New Jersey high school senior Jonny finally attains the popularity enjoyed by his best friend Kyle, until a devastating event changes everything.
ISBN 978-0-15-206121-0
[1. Soccer—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Popularity—Fiction. 4. Short Hills (N.J)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M3674Ov 2009
[Fic]—dc22 2008046464

Manufactured in the United States of America
QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Daisy and Sara

It's morning.

I'm awake. I wish I wasn't.

After a night drowning in alcohol, I'm worse than hung-over—I'm still wasted. So I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling, my head quivering when my eyes are open. But when they're shut it's as if my bedroom is spinning clockwise and counterclockwise, simultaneously, like one of those amusement rides down the Shore.

My tongue is rough and bone-dry and so swollen it doesn't fit my mouth. I try to swallow. Then try again. But I can't gather any spit, so there's nothing to squeeze down my throat. My arms brace. It's like I can't breathe.
I can't breathe!

Blackness closes in...

I'm gonna pass out...

I'm gonna—

In the next moment, air suddenly fills my lungs. I gasp greedily for more until, eventually, my arms go slack. Then the rest of my body, too.

I smell something nasty. I touch my fingers to my face—it's puke—then look down. I'm still wearing my shirt from last night. It's stained. My pillow, too.

The horrid taste in my mouth vaguely reminds me of the grilled cheese I ate for dinner, and the beer and Bacardi that followed. But I'm not sure exactly what remembering means, because memories of last night seem like really bad dreams—fading in, fading out, overlapping, sometimes believable, most times not. I pull off my shirt and wipe my face, then push the pillow off my bed.

There's a knock at the door.

"Ma?"

I hear her muffled voice on the other side—at least I think I do. Something about a friend who's upset, waiting downstairs, waiting for me.

"What, Ma?"

No answer.

Maybe what I thought was my mom's voice was just the rush of heat through our house's air vents. Or the wind outside. Or maybe it was my imagination still sloshing in the backwash at the bottom of that final beer bottle I might've finished, or spilled, or tossed into the woods near South Pond.

I prop myself up.

Lousy idea.

Vomit climbs up my throat again. I fight to swallow it back down. I close my eyes, but that just makes my head swirl, so I open them again, waiting for the room to settle.

***

Time passes.

I don't know how much. It's too much effort to look at the clock on my nightstand. I feel like crap and doubt a shower is going to change that very much. I manage to sit up, then put my feet to the floor and stand.

"
Ahhh!
"

Pain rifles up my left leg. I fall to my knees and grab my ankle. It's swollen, a sickly black and blue, and hurts like hell. Is it broken? Did I tear a ligament? I try to remember when and what happened, but can't.

In the corner, something catches my eye—my home whites and a soccer ball. I scored yesterday in the county championship game, right? I scored the game-winner, didn't I? The specifics of how I received the ball and the shot I took are a bit muddled. It was so unlikely, so remarkably unexpected.

I limp over to the window, hold open the curtains, and lean my hands on the sill. It's a raw, blustery morning. No one's on our front lawn, and I don't see anyone outside the Saint-Claires' house across the street.

Then I hear something behind me.

I turn around, hold my breath, and listen.

Sounds like whimpers.

A girl's.

My eyes dart around the room. In the closet. Behind the desk and dresser. Under my bed.

But I see nothing.

The whimpers grow louder. As they do, it becomes apparent to me that something more significant than a soccer game occurred in the past twenty-four hours. On the floor, my jeans and sweatshirt are strewn about. They seem damp and smeared with dirt. A smell of pine and stale beer lingers. So does a sickening feeling. Last night begins to piece itself together.

Walking with Kyle along the dirt path around South Pond...

Going to the
circle
...

Laughing and joking with guys on the soccer team...

Drinking...

Hanging out with people in the
crowd
...

Drinking a boatload more...

Talking to Sloan Ruehl for a while—Sloan Ruehl for God's sake—the hottest, bitchiest girl at Millburn High...

Taking a piss in the woods...

Lying face-down on the ground...

What happened after?

Did I pass out? Or fall? Or was it something else? And how the hell did I get home?

The whimpers, pained and desperate, crawl across the floor, climb up my body, and burrow inside my mind. I can't stop them. Can't quiet them. I fall back against the wall and slide down. I put my hands over my ears, but the whimpers scratch my eardrums, punishing me.

***

The bedroom is silent.

My eyes are dry and a searing headache has pierced my temples. Twice more I've booted whatever was left in my stomach into a wastebasket. I wipe my mouth. I'm dizzy. It's late morning, but my room is still dark, and all I want to do is sleep for a long, long time.

"Give-and-go, Jonny!"

Kyle and I sprinted down the soccer field at Christ Church, our cleats kicking up flecks of cut grass. He kicked the ball on a diagonal in front of me. I received the pass and knocked it back to him. Kyle ran onto the ball, pushing it far enough ahead to match his long strides; then he offered me another perfect delivery.

The morning sun was harsh as we charged through swarms of gnats and trampled away the last of the dew-slick grass. Kyle crossed the end line, put his cleat on top of the ball to bring it to a stop, then pivoted and started in the opposite direction. I also hit the chalk, turned, and ran upfield.

Kyle was a few steps ahead of me. I tried to close the gap but found myself thinking more about the ache of my thighs and calves than the touch on my passes.

Concentrate ... concentrate ...
I told myself.

And for a few more runs, from end line to end line, that worked. Eventually though, my legs started to falter.

On our final sprint, Kyle kicked the ball to the side.

"Laps," he said.

I followed him along the outside of the field. His red Manchester United jersey—honoring the great English midfielder Bobby Charlton—gleamed in the sun. Kyle never stepped on a line or cut a corner. That, he would've said, was cheating. I could rattle off the Millburn High School records he crushed, or the Suburban Conference and Essex County records he eclipsed, or the number of goals and assists he compiled to secure all-state selections as a sophomore and junior.

But those were just numbers. You had to see Kyle play with your own eyes. He was magical with a soccer ball, dribbling with the precision of a video game—never so far ahead that an opponent could steal the ball, but never so close that he might have to break stride. And like Charlton, Kyle had a cannon for a shot. Top spin, knuckleball, banana curve—it was as if his shots had eyes for the back of the net.

For Kyle, every season was soccer season. In the winter, he played in a six-on-six indoor league; in the spring, he trained with players on the Rutgers University team. After the school year ended in June, Kyle could have dominated any of the local traveling teams; instead, his father signed us up for a men's league in Hudson County. He thought it would be best. (For me, too, I guess.) It was one of two good things Mr. Saint-Claire did for me—that, and not playing the "surrogate father" crap.

So on Saturday afternoons Kyle and I drove to a hellhole of a neighborhood in Jersey City to play on a perfectly manicured field in the shadow of the New Jersey Turnpike. It was a place where they took their
fútbol
seriously. While I spent most of the time watching from the bench, Kyle took a beating playing against, and with, Cubans and Puerto Ricans just waiting to knock the white out of some rich kid from suburbia.

Our first game typified the season. Opponents kicked at Kyle's shins, made slide tackles from behind, elbowed him for loose balls, while the referees swallowed their whistles and our teammates—if you can call them that—looked on. With a few minutes left, our starting winger pulled a hamstring, so I subbed in. A pass came in my direction. The fullback covering me slipped. I faked a move inside, but pushed the ball toward the end line. Before the ball went out of bounds, I blindly lofted a cross to the goal mouth. Kyle came out of nowhere to jump between two defenders and head the ball past the goalkeeper. A split second later, he was leveled by a third defender.

Kyle got to his feet and shook it off, but I could tell he was hurting. I ran over to him. "Nice job," I said.

He spit grass from his mouth. "Thanks," he replied, and stared at the player who had nailed him. But the guy just kept smirking and the referee, as expected, didn't bother pulling out a yellow card.

By the end of the game, Kyle was bruised and bloodied, but he grabbed his equipment bag and walked, head high, knowing every one of those bastards would be talking about
his
goals when they gathered around their cement lawns and cracked front stoops later that day.

***

I made it a few more laps around the field, but after hours of dribbling, shooting, and passing, my body was finished. I bent over, sucking in deep breaths.

Kyle called out, "We're not done!"

But I waved him off.

As Kyle crossed the far end of the field, I stood in the shade of an oak tree and whisked sweat from my arms and legs with my hands, spraying a mist into the air. I gulped down some water, vaguely noticing the occasional car that passed by on Highland Avenue.

Around me, two bicycles and a half-dozen soccer balls were scattered about. Kyle insisted we ride bikes to and from our training sessions. I think it was a reminder that he wasn't too far removed from the years when he had been just one kid out of many dozens, ordinary in talent, struggling to find a place on a Pee Wee soccer field.

A car horn blared.

I turned.

A white Corvette raced along Highland. Erik Maako was behind the wheel. With freaky eyes, a permanent scowl, and a red-haired goatee, Maako looked, and acted, like a menace (especially with the girls at school). His square shoulders angled down to a thin waist that sat on top of muscular thighs. He was a force on the soccer field, physically imposing on defense, yet creative with the ball when he wanted to be. Last season, as just a sophomore, Maako anchored Millburn's "diamond" defense playing sweeper. This year he would do the same.

Maako looked at me and grinned, pretending to scratch his cheek but conspicuously giving me the finger. I wanted to tell him to drop dead, or flip him off, but his Corvette was already around the bend, and something about doing either of those things near a church didn't seem particularly pious.

Kyle turned up the sideline. "Who was that?"

"Two hints," I said. "One—he's an asshole. Two—Millburn's biggest."

"Screw Maako," Kyle said. "He better've trained hard this summer." Then Kyle raised his eyebrows. "Too bad it wasn't a few incoming sophomore girls, fresh from the junior high."

"Would've been nice," I said, just for the hell of it.

"Soon enough, Jonny, we'll have the pick of the litter."

Senior guys hooking up with sophomore girls—it was practically a rite of passage at Millburn. For the girls, it was an opportunity, early in high school, to cement a reputation for being cool and popular. For the senior guys, it was the long-awaited reward for enduring sophomore and junior year.

Kyle pumped his fist. "It's gonna be a good year..." As he continued to jog down the end line, I thought I heard him finish with, "for us."

Some time later, Kyle finally stopped. In spite of the oppressive heat, he looked no worse than if we had shot a casual game of HORSE in his driveway.

"Done?" I said, sitting against a tree.

A hint of a grin emerged on his face. "Done."

Summer was fading.

It was the time of year I dreaded most. The days were shorter and at night I could feel a hint of autumn coolness. The grass had changed its scent—it smelled sweet, like shucked corn—but it was more than that. Something stirred in my gut. Maybe it was that the first varsity soccer practice was next Tuesday. Or that the beginning of the school year was just a week after that.

I sprawled out on the couch, half sleeping, half watching television, knowing there wasn't much else to do except rest for tomorrow's training.

My mom was in the kitchen. "Hungry?" she asked.

I looked over at her. "I'm fine."

She went back to tending the potted plants on the windowsill: Boston fern, aloe, ficus, agave, solanum, and her alocasia. She tugged at yellowing leaves, tapped the soils with her fingertips, and sprayed each green canopy with mists of water. In her other hand was a glass of red wine. A half-empty bottle sat on the countertop.