by Rich Wallace
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Chapter 1 - The Pizza Division
Chapter 2 - Leeches
Chapter 3 - Toasted
Chapter 4 - Three on Three
Chapter 5 - Opening Day
Chapter 6 - The Count
Chapter 7 - Below minimum
Chapter 8 - Showdown
Chapter 9 - Half Sprite, Half Orange
Chapter 10 - Corner Kicks
Chapter 11 - The Playoffs
Chapter 12 - Pineapple Soda
Chapter 13 - Overtime?
Teaser chapter
TAKING CONTROL OF THE GAME...
The Grotto players had come close to scoring, but they’d also made a key mistake. Every blue shirt except the goalie and one defender was on this end of the field. Calvin booted the ball toward Angel near the sideline, then went full speed up the field. Angel had lots of room and dribbled past Coach Diaz, across the center line, and well into the Grotto side. He passed to Zero, who passed to Orlando, who passed over to Calvin at the top of the penalty area.
It was just Calvin and the goalie now, and Calvin was up to the task. He dribbled straight into the goal box, made a quick feint to his left, then drove the ball hard into the net. Little Italy had the lead.
“Defense now!” Calvin shouted as he ran back into position.
Little Italy tightened its zone, hustled for every loose ball, and held its ground. When the final whistle blew, Calvin dropped to his knees and raised his fists.
“You’re the man!” shouted Zero, putting his hands on Calvin’s shoulders and squeezing.
Calvin was exhausted but thrilled. He yanked off his T-shirt and wiped his face and shoulders, then walked proudly off the field.
For Ryan and Heather
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First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005
Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2005
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ALSO BY RICH WALLACE
Restless: A Ghost’s Story
Losing Is Not an Option
Playing Without the Ball
Shots on Goal
Wrestling Sturbridge
Winning Season Series
The Roar of the Crowd
Technical Foul
Fast Company
Double Fake
Emergency Quarterback
Southpaw
Dunk Under Pressure
Takedown
1
The Pizza Division
Calvin Tait stepped outside, walked across the short front lawn, and immediately started sweating. Another brutal day, he thought. Must be ninety already.
Gazing down the hill and way across the Hudson River, he could see the New York City skyline, shining in the sun but dimmed by the early summer haze. He made his way up the walk of the neighboring house and rapped on the door.
Zero answered within seconds, yanking the door open. “Yo,” he said.
Calvin pushed past Zero into the house. “You got the air on?”
“Nah. My dad said not to.”
“Not until it breaks a hundred, huh?”
“Something like that,” Zero said. “Anyway, we’re going out, right?”
“Yeah. We need to get downtown and check out the rosters. Practice starts tonight, man. I can’t wait.”
“I just gotta get some socks. Come on.”
Calvin followed Zero up the stairs, winding past an overflowing laundry basket, a stack of news magazines, Zero’s black leather sneakers, and a fat orange cat that lifted its tail and mewed.
Zero yanked open a drawer in his small wooden dresser and grabbed an armload of socks. “Need to find a matching pair,” he said, dumping the socks onto the bed.
“They’re all white,” Calvin said. “They’re bleached whiter than you are.”
“Yeah, but they’re different.” Zero picked up three of the socks. “This one’s got a yellow stripe along the top edge. This other one’s got thin little ribs. This one has thicker ribs and a gray heel.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Just give me a second.” Zero kept pawing through the pile of socks until he found a pair.
Calvin rolled his eyes. “You could try sorting them out before you dump ’em in the drawer.”
Zero frowned but gave it some thought. “That sounds a little compulsive, don’t you think?”
They went downstairs and Calvin took a seat at the dining-room table. Zero put on his socks, then went back up the stairs to get his sneakers. Calvin reached across and examined the large plastic chicken that sat in the place of honor at the center of the table.
“Don’t mess with that,” Zero said, running down the stairs.
“Just looking.”
“That thing’s fifty years old, at least. My great-grandmother brought it over when she immigrated from Brooklyn.”
“It’s an imitation chicken,” Calvin said.
“It’s an heirloom, dude.”
“It’s plastic.”
“Yeah. It’ll last forever.”
Calvin stared at the chicken. Parts of the brown plastic were painted, so the head was red, the tail feathers were black, and the feet were yellow. Some of the paint was peeling away.
“It’s old. I don’t doubt that,” Calvin said.
“It’s valuable,” Zero said. “Believe me.”
Zero finished tying his shoes. “So what are we doing again?” he asked.
“We need to get to the Y and check out the teams.”
They had signed up for the YMCA’s summer soccer league for eleven- and twelve-year-olds. Both of them had a lot of sports experience—football, basketball, baseball, track. Neither had played much soccer before, but the summer league was a big deal in this town. Coaches from the Hudson City Soccer Club and the St. Joseph’s parish squad watched the league closely to recruit new talent for their fall squads.
“Hope we get on the same team,” Calvin said.
“We should. My mom told them we had to be together for carpooling to practices and games.”
Calvin laughed. “Right. The next time we get a ride anywhere w
ill be the first.”
They walked downtown past blocks of tightly packed houses. At the corner of Fifth Street they turned onto the Boulevard and stopped to look in Amazing Ray’s 99-Cent Store, the windows stacked with rolls of paper towels and laundry detergent and cases of Goya pineapple drink.
The YMCA was an old brick building on the Boulevard near St. Joseph’s Church. It had no pool, but the small gymnasium got plenty of use—basketball, floor hockey, gymnastics.
“Hello, boys,” said the woman at the front desk.
“Hi,” said Calvin. “Have they posted the teams for the soccer league yet?”
“Right in the gym.”
“Thanks.”
They entered the gym and started scanning the rosters on the bulletin board.
“Check it out,” Zero said, pointing to one of the lists. “We’re in the pizza division.”
Calvin saw their names under Little Italy, the sponsoring business. There were nine or ten players listed for each team. Because the rec field was small, games in this league were played with just seven players from each team on the field.
LITTLE ITALY
Victor Alvarez
Julie Carrasco
Orlando Green
Peter Leung
Angel Medina
Mary Pineda
Zach “Zero” Rollison
Calvin Tait
Briana Torres
“Little Italy?” Calvin said. “Looks more like Little Cuba; you’re the only white kid on the team. Anyway, I heard the winner of the pizza division has won the league like four out of the past five years.” He studied the lists again.
EASTERN DIVISION
Villa Roma
Luigi’s
The Grotto
Little Italy
WESTERN DIVISION
Hudson City Florist
Bug Busters Extermination
Hector’s Garage
Bauer Electric
Each team would play the others in its division twice and the teams in the opposite division once, for a total of ten games. The first two in each division would make the playoffs.
“Do we get free pizza after the games?” Zero asked.
“Doubt it,” Calvin said. “Maybe if we win the championship.”
“Not if,” Zero said. “You mean when we win it. Think positive, man. Like me.”
They left the Y and started walking along the Boulevard. It was eleven A.M. in the middle of June. There’d be a practice session tonight at six thirty. Until then, they had nothing really to do.
2
Leeches
Getting to Hamilton Park from the Hudson City business district requires a steep downhill walk along a rutted old sidewalk. Down here by the waterfront, you cross Palisades Avenue and the park stretches out in front of you for about a hundred yards to the Hudson River and about five hundred yards along it. Directly across in Manhattan are the piers with the giant container ships.
Calvin had a twenty-ounce bottle of lemon-flavored water and had tied his white T-shirt around his waist. Streams of sweat were running from his hair down his dark brown face. He could taste it at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s get to the river,” he said to Zero. “I’m going in. I don’t care who arrests me.”
“Nobody’s gonna arrest us,” Zero said. “Just might get a skin disease from the water.”
“I got tough skin.”
They crossed the jogging/biking/Rollerblading path that circled the park and stepped onto the large, flat, grassy area in the middle. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog, and a few other people in the park were sitting on benches or sprawled out under the maple trees, hoping to catch a breeze from the water.
But what caught Calvin’s eye was a group of six teenagers on the far side of the park, energetically kicking a soccer ball in a three-on-three match and shouting in Spanish. The player with the ball was laughing as two frustrated opponents tried to steal it. He bobbed around them and kept the ball amazingly close to his feet, starting and stopping and then bursting between them and passing to a wide-open teammate.
“Cool,” Calvin said.
Zero shook his head and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Hot.”
Calvin rolled his eyes. “I mean his moves. That’s good soccer.”
The boys reached the railing above the river. The tide was low, so there was a few feet of muddy bank between the river and the retaining wall. They could easily hop over the fence and wade.
Calvin tossed his shirt and the water bottle onto the grass and said, “Let’s go.” In one fluid motion he was over the fence, down the wall, and onto the bank.
Zero quickly followed. “Don’t take your shoes off,” he said.
“What am I, stupid?” Calvin walked knee-deep into the water. He reached down and cupped some into his hands, soaking his skinny chest and shoulders. “Feels good,” he said.
“Things better cool off before practice tonight,” Zero said.
“Maybe a degree or two.”
“Never thought I’d be playing soccer.”
“You know what my dad wanted me to do instead?” Calvin asked. “Take golf lessons. Golf! He took me to one of those pitch-and-putt courses out by Livingston a couple of weeks ago. Par fifty-four. It took me a hundred and fifty-four.”
“Not your sport, huh?”
“Maybe later in life. Like retirement age.”
A wadded-up piece of paper hit Calvin in the shoulder and he quickly turned around. Twin black-haired girls his age were standing on the path, leaning over the railing and grinning. Jessie and Danielle Rosado. Both girls were lean and witty. Calvin knew them well.
Calvin scooped up the paper and hurled it back. “Don’t pollute, ladies,” he said.
“Heard you boys are playing soccer,” said Jessie, the twin with wild braids.
“You heard right,” said Calvin.
“What team you on?” asked Danielle, who’d had her hair straightened.
“Little Italy,” said Zero. “You playing?”
“Of course,” said Jessie. “Bauer Electric. We got second in the whole league last year and we have seven players back. This year we’re gonna win it.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Calvin.
“We’re the electric team,” said Danielle. “We’ll shock you.”
“We’ll light you up,” added Jessie, laughing.
“Oh yeah?” said Zero. “Well, we’ll... we’ll pizza you.”
“Good one, Z,” said Calvin.
The girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They started walking away. Jessie looked back and said to Calvin, “Watch out for leeches.”
“There ain’t no leeches in here,” Calvin said, but he pulled one leg from the water and looked at it. “The mercury kills ’em.”
“There’s leeches everywhere,” said Jessie. “Beware.”
Zero stepped into the water, then turned and watched the twins walk away. “There’s girls in this league?” he said to Calvin.
“Didn’t you look at the rosters? We got three girls on our own team.”
“Oh, yeah.” Zero nodded his head and a slow smile started to creep across his face. “Guess that’s not so bad,” he said.
Calvin grinned. “Not so bad,” he said, pointing toward the Rosados, who were fifty yards away by now. “Not so bad at all.”
3
Toasted
The YMCA league started with a full-league clinic, where the basics of passing, dribbling, shooting, goaltending, and defense were taught. The players broke into several groups for the drills.
Calvin was a natural athlete, quickly picking up any game he tried. But within minutes of the start of the clinic he realized that he had some work to do if he was going to excel in this league. He could handle the ball all right, but he was continually faked out by more experienced players.
Here was Jessie Rosado during a one-on-one drill, stepping left then quickly going right, guiding the ball with the outside of her foo
t as Calvin lunged in the wrong direction.
Then came Johnny Rodriguez, deftly stepping over the ball, tapping it with his heel, and leaving Calvin flat-footed as he darted toward the goal.
“Watch the ball, Calvin, not the player,” said Luis Diaz, the teenager whose rapid footwork Calvin had admired in the park that afternoon. Luis was a key player on Hudson City’s high-school team and one of the coaches in this summer league. “They can make all the dodges and jukes they want, but if you keep your eyes on the ball, they won’t fake you out. You’ll catch on. You’ve got the skills.”
Calvin nodded. This wouldn’t be easy, but he’d get it.
He did better with dribbling—his excellent speed and coordination were a big plus there. But he needed to work on that as well. “Don’t just kick it and chase it,” said coach Irvin Cornell, who’d played soccer at Essex Community College. “Touch the ball with every step when you dribble.”
Calvin found Zero after the clinic, sitting on the bottom row of the metal bleachers. “That was harder than I expected,” he said, wiping his brow with his hand. “There are some good players here.”
“Did you play goalie at all?” Zero asked. His cheeks were red from exertion.
“Nope. We didn’t get to that.”
“I was pretty good at it.”
Calvin sat down and took off his cleats. He put on his sneakers and a dry T-shirt. “Gotta get shin guards,” he said.
“I know.”
The Rosado twins had walked over. “Hey, Calvin,” said Jessie.
“What’s up?”
“I smoked you, dude.” She was smiling.
Calvin tried to look unimpressed. “Once.”
“It’s that electricity we told you about.”
Zero elbowed Calvin and raised his eyebrows.
Jessie went through the motions of the fake, leaning to her left then darting sideways to her right. “One little move and he was toast,” she said.