Losers Take All

by David Klass

  Our defense got mad after Chloe limped off the field, and we held Lynton for a while. But they scored their third goal on a penalty kick after Zirco used both hands to stop a shot. Then, just before halftime, their short striker sensationally nutmegged Rob and kicked a screamer into the right corner for their fourth goal. He celebrated with a front flip and a victory yell: “Perfect season!”

  The ref blew his whistle for halftime and we walked over to our bench.

  “Sorry about that last one,” Rob said. “That little guy made me look like a chump.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

  “I don’t like it that my dad saw it,” Rob muttered. “And I didn’t appreciate the gymnastics routine.”

  “What does it matter?” Dylan asked. “We all suck. This was much more fun when we were trying to lose. They’re pounding us.”

  “That’s because we’re trying to be something we’re not,” Shimsky said. “What you’ve forgotten is that it’s okay to suck. We used to take pride in being pounded. What happened to feeling the thrill of defeat and the agony of victory?”

  “I feel more pain than pride right now,” Chloe told him, holding an ice pack to her bruised cheek.

  “One of their players called me lard-ass,” Pierre reported. “I’m not sure exactly what that is, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

  Frank walked by, shaking his head. “Out of my way, lard-ass.” He clearly wasn’t happy about the way things were going, either. He said to me in a low voice, “Sorry about the college scout. Maybe you’ll get in on your grades.”

  I glanced over at Sam Magee. I was surprised to see that he and Jan were both still sitting there, given how little I had done. Every time I’d touched the ball, I’d been mugged. It wasn’t just that Lynton was covering me tightly—they were being rough, knocking me off the ball any way they could. When I tried to pass, it was like being on a raft with sharks circling and nobody around to help.

  I walked over to Coach Percy, who was standing with his hands in the pockets of his tweed coat. “Not much to be done, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Probably not,” I agreed, “but here’s a suggestion. Let me play striker and bump Rob up to attacking midfield.”

  “He’s the only thing holding our defense together,” Coach Percy noted.

  “Every time I touch the ball I’ve got three of them on me,” I said. “I need an option. We’re going to lose anyway.”

  Coach Percy thought it over for a moment and then gathered us in for his final pep talk. “Don’t look so discouraged,” he told us. “We wanted to win today, but if we lose you all have a lot to be proud of.”

  “We suck and we’re not funny anymore,” Meg said. “What else is there?”

  “We never have to play soccer again,” Becca called out, as if that was a positive thing. Then she looked at me and said, “But, okay, let’s try to avoid total disgrace.”

  “Yes, let’s hitch up our shorts and give it a last run,” Percy encouraged. “If Lynton can score four goals in the first half, there’s no reason Fremont can’t do it in the second half.”

  “The reason could be that we blow chunks,” Dylan said. “We haven’t even had one shot on goal.”

  Coach Percy glanced at me and then announced: “I’m going to make a little offensive readjustment. Rob, move up to midfield, and help Jack with the attack. Jack, you’re a striker now. Let’s get that shot on goal. Okay, Losers, all the paths to Italy are blocked. Make your own way down the Alps. On three—‘Fremont number one!’” We all looked at him in surprise.

  “No way,” Shimsky said. “I’d rather chew broken glass.”

  The ref blew his whistle, summoning us back out.

  We put our hands in the middle, and looked around at each other. Shimsky stayed outside our team’s huddle and glared at us. “One, two, three—Fremont number one,” we shouted. It came out sounding weird, but then everything had gotten a little strange. We ran out for our last half of soccer.

  I was now playing striker up top, with Rob behind me at attacking center mid. That should have given our attack some extra punch, but we couldn’t get anything going. Meanwhile, it left our defense exposed, and ten minutes into the second half, Lynton pounced.

  Meg gave the ball away deep in our end, and Rob and I were too far up to run back and help. Their short striker picked up the loose ball and zipped between Zirco and Jenks. He probably could have scored an easy one himself, but he made a beautiful pass to their captain who was alone at the top of the box and all ready to get his hat trick. He let loose a thunderous shot at the right corner of our goal and raised his arms in victory.

  Then a strange thing happened. Suddenly a large body got horizontal in a hurry, as Frank threw himself sideways. I can’t say it was a graceful dive—it was more like an old tree toppling. But when Frank stretched out his long arms they seemed to cover the whole goal’s mouth. The shot was a bullet headed for the right upper corner, but at the very last second Frank’s big hand swatted it a few inches over the crossbar.

  The Lynton captain lowered his arms and looked puzzled, as if something had just happened that defied the known laws of physics.

  Frank lay on the ground for a second, dazed. Then he got to his knees and pumped both fists in the air. Our team gathered around him, congratulating our goalie on his first hard save of the entire season.

  It’s strange in soccer how one save from a goalie can turn a game. If Lynton had scored their fifth goal, I’m sure we would have cracked apart and been humiliated by ten goals. But Frank’s diving save got us going. Zirco headed out Lynton’s corner kick, and Dylan passed it to me at midfield. Instantly my shadow was on me, and two other Lynton midfielders came running over to help him. I looked desperately for an outlet, and saw Rob ten feet away.

  I got off a quick pass to him. For a moment I flashed to Diego on the Warren club’s field, shouting at me that when I made a good pass I shouldn’t stand still admiring it but that that was the exact moment to make my move. So I took off toward their goal, and because I’d just made a pass and had been standing still the three Lynton players who were marking me were caught ball-watching. Rob was enough of a natural athlete to understand what I was trying. He gave me a nice lead pass back, and suddenly—for the first time that day—I found daylight.

  I’ve seen soccer plays on TV when a striker outruns his entire offense and has no one to pass to. He either has to hold the ball up or take it all the way in solo—one man setting off to war alone. When I sprinted onto that lead pass from Rob I was several steps ahead of our other forwards. I didn’t make a conscious decision to go in the rest of the way alone—I just found myself flying toward their goal.

  A whole gang of Lynton players appeared in front of me—four or even five of them. There was no time for me to plan anything, no way around them. I just wove right into them like a skier attacking a mogul field—slalom left, swerve right, cut left again—and they all seemed slow, terribly slow. I glimpsed desperate and frustrated faces, heard grunts and curses, and saw feet that kicked out at me too late, and then I was through them and on the other side.

  There’s nothing like a breakaway run—despite the gray clouds all I saw was daylight, pure golden open daylight, as I locked in on their last two defenders. Their stopper raced up to challenge me, but he was too eager. I waited for his legs to slide open like a gate and then I nutmegged him—touching the ball between his ankles—and burst past.

  Their sweeper was the last man back, and he was smart. He knew I was too fast for him, so he tried to buy some time by mirroring me—staying between me and their goal till more help arrived. Every time I moved, he moved, not to try to steal the ball but just to keep me blocked. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed their tall captain sprinting over to help. I only had two seconds.

  I faked left and then powered hard right and got a step on their sweeper. I took a second step and he tried to run with me, but with every stride I gained an inch of separation.
I took one final touch, teeing the ball up for my right foot.

  Their goalie stayed on his line, protecting his near corner. I told myself “far corner,” but just as my right leg started to swing forward their goalie read my mind and dove sideways across the goal. He managed to cover the long corner, and I think he might have saved my shot. But before he dove I saw his weight shift and I winged my shot at the near corner, so that he launched himself away from the ball. It flew into the unprotected near corner for our first Fremont score.

  I started to pump a fist and then the Lynton captain smashed into me. He didn’t hit me as hard as Barlow had at Founders’ Park—I never blacked out or lost any teeth. But his elbow went into my chest, and suddenly I was lying on my back and I couldn’t breathe. I gasped and panicked as the team surrounded me—it’s scary not to be able to breathe. The ref hurried over, with Percy behind him. “You just got the wind knocked out of you,” the ref told me. “Easy does it. You’ll be okay.” Then he turned and flashed a yellow card at the Lynton captain.

  Becca knelt next to me, her hand on my shoulder. “Short breaths, just like you always tell me,” she whispered. “Relax. You’ll feel better in a second.”

  It actually took a minute or two for me to start breathing seminormally. I was still gasping, and my sense of panic at not being able to breathe wouldn’t go away. Coach Percy took me out of the game, and as I walked off the field the Lynton captain ran over and said, “Sorry, man. Couldn’t jam on the brakes in time. Hell of a goal.”

  I saw my parents watching me carefully as I headed for our bench. Mom looked worried but my dad gave me a thumbs-up, and Mr. Powers shook an encouraging fist. I glanced over at Jan Brent and Sam Magee, who was busy writing something on a notepad.

  The game started up again, and I stood next to Chloe. “Great goal,” she told me. “Best I ever saw.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How’s your head?”

  “The ice helps. Check it out. We’re starting to dominate.”

  It was true. Even without me on the field, the momentum was shifting. Lynton’s confidence had cracked, and the Losers were battling for loose balls and making smart passes. Ten minutes after I came out Rob passed the ball to Becca on the wing. She had always been fast and athletic, but she’d never given a damn about soccer before and I don’t think she’d ever really tried. When she got Rob’s pass she faked out a defender, and for a moment she looked completely surprised at what she’d just done. Then she dribbled the ball for twenty yards and kicked a decent cross into the middle where Rob was waiting to blast it into the net.

  Four to two. I shouted, “Way to go, Becca!” and she smiled and shrugged as if to ask: “Did I really do that?”

  I walked over to Coach Percy and said, “I feel better. Put me back in.”

  “Sorry, Jack. I can’t.”

  “Why not? We’re only two goals behind. We can come back on them.”

  “New school rule. Principal Anderson sent it around to all the coaches. When a player is taken out of a game for an injury, you can’t put him back in.”

  “That’s to protect kids from concussions,” I said. “I just had the wind knocked out of me. My head didn’t get banged at all.”

  “You were hit hard, Jack,” Percy said. “Anyway, it’s beyond my control. Mr. Anderson’s here watching the game, and it’s his rule.” He pointed to a group of teachers sitting behind our goal, and sure enough I spotted old, white-haired Mr. Anderson, leaning forward, looking excited.

  Lynton didn’t like it that the score was getting close, and they tried to put the game out of reach. Their skillful little striker lashed in a dangerous cross. This time Frank didn’t jump—he sidestepped over to catch it, and immediately hurled the ball out to Dylan. Dylan couldn’t dribble to save his life, but he knew exactly what to do with it—he fed a good pass to Rob.

  Rob was new to soccer but he was a superb natural athlete, and he had something to prove to his dad. He made a slick turn, dribbled past a Lynton midfielder, and toed the ball from more than forty yards out. In baseball terms it was a high fly ball, a cloud scraper. The Lynton goalie backed up step by step as he waited for the white ball to come down out of the gray clouds, and at the last minute he stumbled and the ball glanced off his fingers into their goal.

  Four to three. Something weird was happening at Gentry Field. The peaceful fans of Loser Nation were now all cheering for us to kick ass and score. People holding signs that read FAIL WITH FLARE and LOSING IS AWESOME! were now screaming for us to win. But it was looking doubtful that we could even tie the game, because we were still one goal down and the minutes were ticking away fast.

  Lynton wanted their undefeated season, so they gave up trying to score and packed their midfield and defense. They killed time dinking useless passes back and forth, and knocked ten- and fifteen-second chunks off the clock by kicking the ball far out of bounds. It was legal but it was cowardly. Twenty minutes shrank to ten, and then dwindled to five. We couldn’t get the ball, and the few times we did, we couldn’t penetrate the defensive wall they had built in their own half.

  I saw our players trying hard, and realized that some of them had actually gotten in better shape during the season and learned a thing or two about soccer. Pierre’s face was red and he looked like he might vomit at any moment, but he never stopped running during those final ten minutes. Zirco for all his nuttiness was pressing hard and challenging every pass. Even Meg and Becca, who made so much fun of soccer, were trying to steal the ball, but they just couldn’t.

  With three minutes left, I glanced at my dad. He saw me looking and raised his hands, demanding wordlessly why I wasn’t on the field. I pointed to Coach Percy, and Dad shook his head—he still didn’t get it. When he had needed to score the winning touchdown, the Logan Express hadn’t taken no for an answer. For a moment I recalled that clip of him refusing to go down, and carrying five players into the end zone.

  I walked over to Coach Percy, who was pacing up and down, glancing at his watch. Lynton had just kicked the ball far out of bounds, wasting another precious twenty seconds.

  “I’m afraid it’s not going to happen today, Jack,” he said. “There can’t be more than three minutes left.”

  “Put me in.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “We already discussed this. When you get taken out for an injury, you’re out. No exceptions.”

  “Since when do you follow school rules?” I asked him.

  He stopped glancing at his watch and focused on me. “What does that mean?”

  I kept my voice low. “I know you’re the one who put together that video of Muhldinger screaming at us on the bus.”

  Percy looked a little shocked, but he didn’t say anything back.

  “And then you posted it on the Web, even though you pretended to be clueless. That’s why I said you were such a good actor.”

  He tried to interrupt me, but I talked right over him. “Muhldinger called you an idiot and you brought him down. You broke every rule in the book doing it. In your quiet way, you’re much more of a revolutionary than Shimsky. What does one new rule matter now? Put me in.”

  “Things have changed,” Coach Percy told me. “It’s a new day here at Fremont. Principal Anderson’s been very kind to me. He’s letting me go to England early for my new job.”

  “Well, that’s great for you, but what about the rest of us?” I demanded. “You’re the coach of this team.” Our eyes locked. “I may not know a lot about Hannibal or Caesar, but I do know that you can’t only break rules when it serves your purpose.” I couldn’t stop myself—I stepped a little closer to him. “And for what it’s worth, no matter how lonely you were, you probably shouldn’t have been writing sonnets to seventeen-year-old girls. Show some character here in New Jersey before you go back to England. Put me in the damn game now.”

  I could tell that he didn’t like any of what I’d just said. His face tightened up like a hand was clenching the skin from the inside, and his sharp black eyes glittere
d like two sword points. I thought to myself that he was very smart and in his own way extremely dangerous. I couldn’t predict what his reaction might be to what I’d just said. He hesitated two or three seconds and then looked beyond me to the ref. Lynton had kicked the ball out of bounds again, and Coach Percy yelled, “Ref, sub. Meg, come out.”

  I ran onto the field and asked: “How much time left?”

  The ref checked his watch. “Less than two minutes.”

  One hundred and twenty seconds don’t last long on a soccer field when you’re losing. I felt every second tick away as we chased Lynton and they played keep-away. I was just about ready to give up when Jenks got lost on the field and blundered far out of his position. He popped up unexpectedly at midfield and his total cluelessness allowed him to steal the ball. The Lynton player he’d taken it from hurried to win it back, which would have sealed the game. Jenks was desperate to kick it upfield, but he whiffed on his first try, and that colossal miss threw the defender off. Jenks connected on his second kick, and the ball dribbled to Rob.

  “Powers,” I shouted, and started my run. He heard me, and even though there were two players on him he somehow got off a long pass into their left corner. The tall Lynton captain chased it with me, matching me step for step. He was fast and determined, and this was by far my best footrace of the season. I knew there couldn’t be more than ten seconds left, and I switched into that extra gear that my father had given me as a birthright. The Lynton captain looked like he couldn’t believe it as I started to pull away from him, and we both realized that I would get to the ball first.

  It had rolled to a stop near the corner flag, and when I reached it and turned I saw five Lynton players between me and the goal. There was no way I could dribble by them all, and any second the ref would whistle the game over.

  There was only one chance—I had to cross the ball and trust that one of my teammates would knock it in. I picked up my head and saw Rob waiting in the penalty area, and Pierre and Dylan running up. The Lynton captain tried to tackle me, but I pushed the ball to the goal line and got off a hard cross with my right foot. A split second later he knocked me off my feet, and we both went down.