Offside!

by Diersch, Sandra

  Lexi ran after them. “Aren’t you going to stay to watch the second half?” she asked.

  “It hasn’t been all that exciting so far, Alexandra,” her father told her. “You girls need to get some offence going, create opportunity. We’ll stay a couple more minutes. But it’s wet and Scott is getting bored.”

  “Scott likes to watch me play, don’t you?” Lexi asked, bending down to the little boy. He grinned at her, his face round and shiny beneath his rain hat.

  “He has to have his nap, Alexandra,” Brenda said shortly, taking Scott’s hand. “We can’t stay too much longer.”

  The referee blew his whistle to start the second half and the girls slowly made their way back onto the field. Alecia headed for her position on the field too, making her way through the mess of chewed-up grass and mud. Although it had stopped raining, it was too late as far as the field was concerned. She glanced over at Lexi as the girl took up her position. She caught Alecia’s eye and glared at her. Alecia looked away. Alecia didn’t care how unpleasant her stepmother was, Lexi didn’t need to treat her teammates the way she did. It would be easier to like her if she’d just be a little nicer sometimes.

  The second half began hard and fast. Both teams seemed determined to score that first goal. Early on, Alecia received a pass from Laurie and dribbled up the middle, keeping two opposing forwards from the ball. It was tricky, keeping her feet moving, controlling the ball, and trying not to slip on the slick playing surface. Shielding the ball from the Spitfires’ centre, who was kicking at it between Alecia’s legs, she glanced up for someone to pass to and caught sight of Lexi, waiting just to her left. Alecia held up her hand, then kicked wildly in Lexi’s direction. Lexi caught the pass, lost it, regained it, and shot at the net. The ball headed straight for the goalkeeper’s outstretched arms, but bounced just in front of her, spraying mud into her face. The goalkeeper sputtered, trying to keep her eye on the ball, but she couldn’t see it and it rolled slowly until it sat, finally, in a puddle just over the line.

  “Way to go!” everyone screamed, forgetting that they disliked Lexi as they tackled her. Lexi tolerated it for a few seconds then broke away, scanning the sidelines eagerly. Alecia, standing just beside her, guessed she was looking for her father, but he wasn’t there. There was no one on the sidelines except Jeremy and the Burrards who weren’t on the field. Lexi’s shoulders slumped and she kicked at a piece of sod, sending it flying.

  Suddenly, Alecia felt sorry for her. If Lexi’s family had stayed just a few minutes longer they would have seen her goal. Alecia knew how much it meant to her when her own mom saw her do well on the field. She cleared her throat and approached Lexi cautiously.

  “That was a great goal, Lexi,” she said. The girl looked up and stared at Alecia for a second without answering. Then she shrugged slightly and kicked at the ground again.

  “Thanks.”

  “Too bad your dad missed it,” Alecia went on.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Huh? Why don’t you just mind your own business?” Lexi cried, one hand clenching into a fist. Alecia took a step back, frightened that Lexi would hit her. Thankfully, the whistle blew and the ball was thrown into play again.

  Laurie passed to Lexi, who bolted upfield like she’d been shot out of a gun. She passed cross-field to Allison, who dribbled forward a few feet before the ball was stolen from her and play returned the other way. Lexi got in tight with the Spitfire centre and the two girls fought hard for the ball. It was finally kicked free and three players were right there, ready to pounce on it. Alecia took an elbow in her right side, which winded her slightly, but she kept with it and managed to come up with the ball. She ran with it, then dropped it behind her for Laurie. The Burrards’ captain took over and gained the centre line with no one near her. But the whistle blew and the referee pointed at Lexi, indicating that she was offside.

  Lexi blew up. “I was not!” she screamed at the ref. “I was not offside!” she replied, following the man, who ignored her.

  “Listen to me, darn it!” Lexi cried, grabbing at the man’s arm. “I was not offside! I know what offside looks like and I was in after the ball. You need your eyes examined!” she said, her face red. Alecia and the other Burrards stared in utter disbelief at Lexi. Laurie made her way over, slowly, obviously reluctant to get involved. She and Jeremy arrived at the same time. Lexi spun on them, her hands clenched into fists, her breathing laboured.

  “Tell this jerk I was not offside. He wasn’t paying attention!” she cried at Jeremy.

  “Take your player off the field, coach,” the ref said quietly to Jeremy.

  “No! I will not get off the field! You can’t just call stuff ’cause you feel like it! I was not offside! I will not leave the field. I didn’t do anything. You stopped a perfectly good scoring chance! Laurie would have scored!” Lexi continued, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.

  “Take your player off the field now, coach, or I will forfeit the game to the other side. And she’s out of the game.”

  “Let’s go, Lexi,” Jeremy said calmly, taking Lexi by the arm. Lexi seemed to collapse at his touch. She stopped screaming and let herself be led to the bench. The whistle blew and the girls on the field had to pull their attention back to the game. No one said anything and no one saw Lexi leave.

  The game ended in a tie with the Spitfires scoring with only three minutes left. The Burrards didn’t even care by that point. They were tired and dirty and stunned. No one had ever seen a player blow up at a referee like that before, although their old coach had done it many times.

  “What was with her?” Stacie asked. Her face was completely painted in mud, the whites of her eyes and her teeth the only colour showing. Alecia tried not to giggle, knowing she wasn’t much prettier.

  “I think she was upset because her dad missed seeing her goal. He left before she scored,” she said.

  “That’s it? My parents have missed most of my goals,” Allison said, her voice scornful. “And she was offside, no matter what she says.”

  “Lexi is always offside,” Stacie muttered and a couple of the girls laughed. “Well, she is! She’s always going where she shouldn’t, always saying things she shouldn’t. I don’t know how she figures after two weeks that she has the right to tell the rest of us how to play, or Laurie how to be captain.”

  “Well,” Laurie began, “maybe she is all those things, does those things. But she was still upset today. We all get upset sometimes. Even me.” Laurie looked around at the group, smiling. Stacie knocked against her shoulder, laughing, and the others joined in. It was hard to imagine easygoing Laurie getting upset.

  The field cleared quickly and Alecia was grateful for the warm, dry car when she finally climbed in. She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes, thinking of the nasty scene on the field. Then her thoughts wandered to the scene between Lexi and her family. What was with them? she wondered. Didn’t they like Lexi? And where was her own mother?

  “Why doesn’t Lexi live with her mom anymore?” she asked, breaking the silence of the car. Jeremy glanced at her, surprised.

  “I don’t know, Alecia,” he said, turning back to the road. “You would have to ask Lexi.”

  Alecia grunted. Ask and get yelled at? she thought. Not likely. She leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes, putting Lexi and her problems out of her mind.

  8

  Jeremy Speaks

  Alecia sat at her desk staring blankly at the page before her. She had lots of work to keep her busy but somehow she couldn’t concentrate. She’d taken a long, hot shower when she got home from the soccer game and put on her warmest, comfiest clothes, but she still felt restless and bored. Finally she tossed her pencil on the desk and wandered downstairs. Her mother and Jeremy were in the den where Jeremy was working at the computer and her mother was curled in the easy chair reading a book. She smiled as Ale
cia wandered into the room.

  “Hi sweetie, what’s up?” she asked, putting her book aside.

  “Oh, just feeling a bit restless I guess,” Alecia told her, perching on the edge of the chair. “Maybe it’s the weather.” And that game, she thought, shuddering.

  “The weather around this city has that effect on people in January, that’s for sure,” Jeremy agreed, looking up from the keyboard. “Maybe we should all go for a walk,” he suggested hopefully.

  Alecia and her mother looked at each other and laughed. “Yeah right, Jeremy,” Alecia said. “Haven’t you had enough of the outdoors for one day? I think I’m growing webbing between my toes after this morning.”

  “It would clear the cobwebs out of your brains,” he said, trying again.

  “Actually,” Mrs. Parker said, closing her book and standing up, “I have a couple of errands to run and I may as well do them now.” She kissed Alecia. “I’ll leave you two alone, if that’s okay,” she said, glancing at Jeremy. They raised their eyebrows at each other in a silent sentence. Alecia glanced from one to the other. She got the feeling she was being set up, but wasn’t exactly sure how. She was pretty sure she hadn’t done anything wrong in the last couple of days. Was it something to do with soccer? she wondered. That could be it. Maybe Jeremy wanted to talk to her about Lexi. Well, she wasn’t the one being miserable and nasty all the time. That was Lexi. And if Jeremy wanted her to try and be more of a leader on the team, then she would just remind him of his promise not to expect any more from her than from the rest of the girls.

  Alecia was so wrapped up in her defensive strategies, she didn’t realize her mother was long gone and that Jeremy had shut off the computer and was standing in front of her.

  “How ’bout some lunch?” he offered, holding out his hand to her. She frowned at him, suspicious, but took the offered hand and followed him into the kitchen. She perched on a chair while Jeremy pulled out bread and jam and peanut butter. The sandwich maker he had received for Christmas made incredible toasted peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches. All her friends wanted them when they came over.

  “This okay?” Jeremy asked, holding up the jar of peanut butter.

  “Do you have to ask?” Alecia teased, grinning.

  Jeremy brought the finished sandwiches to the table along with the milk jug and two glasses, then sat beside Alecia. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the room was their chewing and swallowing. Alecia waited. She knew he wanted to talk to her about something. She just wished she could figure out what it was.

  “Alecia,” Jeremy said finally, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He pushed his plate away from him and leaned forward in his chair, looking at her with his serious face. The one he used when he was explaining math stuff, or talking about a play in soccer. “Alecia, there is something I’ve been thinking of for quite a while now. For several months, actually, and I’ve made up my mind that the best thing to do is just to talk to you about it and see what you think. How you feel.”

  “I agree,” Alecia said, popping the last of her sandwich into her mouth. “Whatever it is, the answer is definitely maybe.”

  “I’m serious, Alecia,” he said. The fact that he kept using her full name instead of her nickname, which is what he usually called her, was setting Alecia on edge. Was her mother sick?

  “Okay,” she mumbled, crossing her arms and staring at him.

  “What would you think of my adopting you legally, making you my daughter?” Jeremy asked.

  The words spun around in Alecia’s head until they became all mixed up and she wasn’t sure she had even heard him correctly. “Your daughter?” she parroted, frowning at him.

  “Yes. I want to make you my daughter. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but your mother said I should wait. Wait until we’d had a chance to live together and get to know each other as a family. I know you’ve been thinking a lot about your dad, wondering about him. And I know it is natural for teenagers to think about who they are and where they belong. I want you to belong to me. I want the three of us to be a complete family. For you to be my daughter. To share my name.”

  “But I have a name,” Alecia whispered. She felt as though a tidal wave had swept over her and was washing her out to sea.

  “You’re right, you do. And I would never try and take that away from you. You could have both names if that was what you wanted. But I feel like I am your father in the true sense of the word. I want for us to make it legal.”

  “Would you want me to call you Dad?” she asked from beneath the roaring.

  Jeremy chuckled softly and shook his head. “You could call me anything you want, as long as it was polite,” he told her gently. He reached out a hand and took Alecia’s, holding it firmly. “This is a big question and I can see I’ve completely overwhelmed you. Maybe scared you a bit. I want you to think about this for as long as you need to. Talk to your mom, talk to your friends. You could even see a counsellor if you want. You come back to me when you are ready to make a decision one way or the other. And listen, Alecia,” he said and paused, looking at her carefully, “if the answer is no, it won’t change how I feel about you, or what I think of you. Do you understand that? I mean it. This is your decision to make and I will respect your choice.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Alecia said, nodding. She pulled her hand from Jeremy’s and wandered out of the room and up the stairs.

  She lay on her bed, staring at the photograph of herself and her parents, feeling the scrapbook beneath her. She supposed she should have seen it coming, this request. But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t sure what to do with it. What did she want? Didn’t she already have a dad? Wasn’t he right there in the picture, smiling at her? Wasn’t Peter Sheffield still her father? Isn’t that what she wanted?

  Alecia picked up the silver frame and studied the photo carefully. She looked like her father. Even her mother had said so. They had the same face shape, and their eyes were the same colour, a mossy shade of green. Dad’s hair had been dark brown, not blond, but it was straight like Alecia’s and her mother had told her that her laugh was very much like her dad’s.

  He had missed so much of her life in the past nine years. She was trying to give some of it back to him in her notes. She was sure he had been upset about the wedding, upset at all the games he had missed watching her play, all the school concerts and report cards. How could she hurt him yet again by letting Jeremy adopt her? Adopt her as though there were no one else with any claim to her.

  Her mother had told her once that her father would be glad to know that they had moved on with their lives. He wanted for them to be happy and Jeremy made her mother happy. Jeremy made Alecia happy. They were a family. But still, Alecia had this pull, this tie with the past that had nothing to do with Jeremy. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to let go of it. She didn’t want a new dad. She wanted the one she had lost.

  Alecia put the photo back on her bedside table and rolled over to face the wall. Her eyes stung and her throat felt tight and sore. She shoved her hands between her bent knees and squeezed her eyes shut. What Jeremy was asking her to do was too hard. She didn’t think she could do it.

  What seemed like hours later she heard the phone ring and then Jeremy’s voice calling up the stairs. It was Connor.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked when she got to the phone.

  “Not much, I guess. Just hanging out.” Alecia didn’t really feel like talking. She just wanted to hide in her room, alone.

  “Want to come over for awhile? I’ve got a new game for the Wii.”

  “I thought Laurie made you give those things up,” Alecia said, smiling despite herself. Connor knew her weakness for video games. He always beat her, always, but she was a sucker for punishment.

  “Ah, what Laurie doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right? Besides, I haven’t seen you in ages and I’
m lonely.”

  “So you want me to keep you from being bored? Is that it? I’m guessing Laurie is unable to entertain you.”

  “Are you coming over or not?” Connor demanded, ignoring Alecia’s comments.

  “Give me ten minutes,” she said and quickly hung up. Maybe spending a couple of hours with Connor would help pull her out of her strange mood.

  An hour later she was perched on the edge of her seat in Connor’s family room, controller in hand, battling fierce alien warriors. She and Connor hadn’t done this in months, she realized. She was surprised at how much she had missed it. Her bad mood had completely disappeared.

  “Ha ha! Take that, you villian!” Connor cried, his body twisting and turning as he steered his ship. “No! Watch out, Leesh, watch out!”

  Alecia threw her controller down in defeat and lay back on the pillows to watch Connor. It didn’t take long before his ship exploded into a fiery ball as well. “Where do you find these awful games?” Alecia asked, stifling a yawn. “They’re awfully bloodthirsty.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it great?” Connor said, grinning. “Dad and I play together. He’s much better at it than I am. Gillian is terrible. She always gets upset when she dies,” he said, standing suddenly. “Hey, you hungry? Want something to eat? How about a sandwich?”

  “As long as it isn’t tuna. I hate tuna,” Alecia said, following him into the kitchen.

  She sat at the counter and watched as Connor pulled stuff from the fridge. She loved the Stevens’ house. It was much bigger and newer than her own, and beautifully decorated.

  “So, how is it?” Connor asked, watching as Alecia took a first, hesitant bite. You never knew with Connor. Sometimes his creations could be a little wild.

  “It’s good. Thanks.”

  They were still eating when Connor’s dad wandered in from the garage. He had on a pair of very dirty coveralls and was wiping his hands on an even grimier rag. He smiled at the two of them.