Feb 18, 2013 7 min read

? Chapter FOUR

The story So Far: S.O.R’s special soccer team loses their first game, 32-0, but must prepare for their second game.

Next morning when I walked into my classroom, on the board it read:

32-0!

“Who wrote that?” I wanted to know.

Ms. Appleton, my homeroom teacher, looked at the numbers as if she hadn’t noticed them before. “I have no idea. Does it mean something?”

“Sort of,” I admitted, going right to my desk.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“I’d rather not.”

The rest of the class came in. Every time one of my teammates showed up – four in my room, Saltz, Porter, Lifsom and Hays – they looked up, saw the board, then lowered their eyes.

Class came to order.

“Ms. Appleton, what’s that mean?” asked one of the girls, the gifted, talented and excessively beautiful Lucy Neblet.

“I have no idea. Edward seems to know, but he’s not telling. Or will you?”

I hadn’t enjoyed losing the day before. But except for learning what I’d known already, that sports were not my thing, I hadn’t wasted a lot of grief. Yet when Lucy Neblet asked her question, all of a sudden I felt bad. Like I had done something wrong.

I looked at Saltz, who sat next to me. He ignored me.

“Edward?” persisted Ms. Appleton.

I said, “Our special soccer team – first game – we lost by that score,”

“Thirty-two to nothing?” hooted Hamilton, who was all-universe at everything.

From somewhere in the back of the room came a giggle. Laughs. A grand old time – except for the five of us who were on the team. I felt lower than a mole hole.

“I’m sure you’ll do better next time,” said Ms. Appleton.

“They couldn’t do worse!” bellowed Hamilton.

The bell clanged and we started history, my favorite subject. It was then that we got to pick our project partner’s name out of a hat. Who should I get but Lucy Neblet. Rather, she got me, because she pulled out my name. Naturally, I didn’t want to show that it was amazingly fantastic with me, but I was sky high. I couldn’t have cared less about soccer.

Then, in the lunchroom, a couple of people came up to me – Saltz and I were talking about Lucy – and these guys asked me if it was true about the game.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, like Don’t bother me. But it meant word was getting around. Sure enough, from then on, all during lunch, I had this feeling that people were looking over at me and giggling. More than once I’m sure I heard “thirty-two-zip.”

I tried to ignore it.

Then this big eighth grader came up to me. “Hey, superstar, this is for you.” He handed me a note. I expected the worst until I saw it was a message. I was to see Mr. Lester.

Mr. Lester was in his classroom, alone. I glanced at his desk. Usually it was loaded with history books. The American Civil War was his thing. It was neat to hear him talk about it. This time all I saw were soccer books. That upset me. He was taking things seriously. Sure enough, took on a solemn expression. “I hope you weren’t too troubled about yesterday,” he said.

“No way,” I said. “Why should I be?” But I sensed that I was being pushed that way.

“We took quite a licking.”

“Somebody has to lose,” I said. “The Confederates lost.”

“Listen, Ed,” he said. “I’ve been studying. We can make adjustments. But that’s not what I wanted to see you about. It’s recommended here -now, where was it …” He began to leaf through one of the soccer books. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. What we need – it says – we should have a captain. You would make an admirable one.” He held out his hand to congratulate me. “You are our captain.”

“Me?”

“You’re our best player. You can set an example.”

“Me. The best?”

“I saw you block a shot.”

I felt like saying that (1) it had been an accident and (2) I didn’t even remember doing it. Instead, I went out of the room feeling positively sick.

Me. Best player. Captain . . . Good grief. The thought of a slow jog through Death Valley at high noon was much more appealing.

That night, to set my mind straight, I called Lucy. We had a long talk about our project. Well, rock bands, mostly, but we began about the project.

Then I called Saltz and had a long conversation about my long conversation with Lucy.

There were still some nice places in my life.

Next day Mr. Lester called an extra practice. No one wanted to go. It meant giving up our one free period. We had no choice. As it turned out, it was really a nice day, sort of golden warm, so it wasn’t bad to be outside. Mr. Lester led us to a place where no one could watch us.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “we have to think about this game more seriously.”

Saltz shot up his hand.

“Yes, Saltz?”

“Why do we have to take it seriously?”

Mr. Lester blinked. “Because … we do. There’s nothing wrong with losing. It’s just that we shouldn’t lose by so much.”

“Isn’t a mile as good as a miss?” asked Hays.

Mr. Lester grew quiet. We waited for an answer. “It’s a question of attitude,” he began. “During the American revolutionary war, Americans lost lots of battles, but they didn’t give up.”

“Could you give us an example?” I asked, taking my job as a team captain to heart for the first time.

Mr. Lester perked up. “Well, yes, many of them. Consider the Battle of Bunker Hill …” He told us how the Americans got their fort set up at night. How the British came by boat. How they stormed up the hill and what our side did. “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!” It was nifty the way he told it. When he was done, he said, “So you see, even though the Americans retreated, it was, in a way, a great victory.”

“Anything like that happen during the Civil War?” I wanted to know.

“Actually, the Battle of Gettysburg was one in which no one truly won either, but because of that …” He was off again, maybe even better than the first time around.

We stayed put, happy to let him talk while the sun grew warm. By the time General Lee retreated, the hour was almost gone.

He suddenly looked at his watch. “My goodness,” he said. “We’ve used up most of our time.”

“What about the Spanish-American War?” asked Root quickly.

Mr. Lester blinked. I felt for him. I could see he really wanted to tell us. Instead, with a sigh, he said, “Why don’t you run around the field a couple of times.”

That was okay. We pulled ourselves up and began to trot around at an easy, lazy pace. We did it twice and then came back to where Mr. Lester was waiting for us.

“Now what?” asked Barish.

“World War Two,” offered Dorman.

Mr. Lester, however, checked his watch. Even as he did, we could hear the bell for class.

We sprang up and ran back to school. It was computer lab time and no one wanted to miss that. As we went, I looked back over my shoulder. There was Mr. Lester standing under the tree, a bag of soccer balls on the ground. I almost felt sorry for him.

I’ll say one thing though; it was the most interesting practice we had all season.

• NEXT WEEK: Second game: New heights, new lows