Darkness Creeping (5 page)

“So go,” I tell Cody. But for once I want him to stay. Not to punish him, but because I’ve started to feel so alone out there on the field, having him there gives me a little bit of comfort. Of course I won’t tell him that. It’s the end of the first quarter. There’s no score—but there will be soon. The Red team seems to keep getting angrier, and the angrier they get, the better they play. It’s only a matter of time before they start scoring.

“I want you to go, too,” he says. “I want us both to go. Tell them you can’t stay. Call off the game. Let’s just go!”

“You know I can’t do that!”

Then he gets quiet. “There’s something . . . wrong with them. Can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t feel a thing,” I tell him, but that’s a lie. The feeling is as heavy as the clouds that have begun gathering in the sky. It was a clear day when the game began, but now there are huge cumulus clouds hanging overhead, looking as heavy as anvils. “Let’s just get through this,” I tell him. “It’s just one game.”

“Look at the grass!” he says.

“Huh?”

“Just look at it, and
then
tell me you don’t want to get out of here!”

I look at him like he’s crazy—an expression that I’ve got pretty well mastered when it comes to Cody—then I blow the whistle and call the teams back for the second quarter.

As I jog out onto the field, I can’t help but notice the grass, because now the thought of it is stuck in my head, thanks to Cody. I wish I hadn’t looked . . . because now I can see that all the yellow patches on the field are in the shape of small, seven-year-old footprints.

Six minutes into the second quarter, a Red player with hair almost as red as his shirt trips a Blue player and sends him flying five feet, at the exact moment Alastor kicks the ball into the goal. The Reds start cheering. Technically I saw the trip and the goal at the same time. Arguably the goal could count. It’s completely in my discretion whether or not to call it back—and if it were any other game, I’d warn the tripper, and give the team their goal. But this isn’t any other game. I blow my whistle.

“Tripping!” I call. “No goal!”

All the Reds instantly cry out in disbelief, throwing their hands up into the air and looking at me with their terrible eyes. Up above I hear distant thunder volleying in the clouds. On the sidelines I can see Cody shaking his head at me, silently begging me to give them their goal, but I’m not a wimp like him. I stand by my calls.

The kid with red hair storms up to me. “I didn’t trip him!” he shouts. “It was an accident!”

“No goal!” I say again.

“Troian!” the coach shouts. “Don’t talk back to the ref!”

Troian storms off, but Alastor is there to take up where he left off.

“You’re cheating,” he says. “Just like you cheated on that math test.”

My head nearly spins around at that. “What?”

Alastor shrugs. “I didn’t say nuthin.”

“You’d better watch yourself!” I tell him—and he sticks his tongue out at me. That’s all he needs to do. I reach into my pocket and pull out the yellow card and show it to him—that’s the official first warning. Next comes the red card, and he’s thrown out of the game. No one ever really uses the yellow or red cards for kids this young, but somehow I feel it’s appropriate today.

On the sidelines his coach throws up his hands. “You see what you did, Alastor? You see?”

But Alastor just smirks, like it was worth it. Like he can feel me squirming. He marches off, and as he does, I notice his feet leave yellow footprints in the grass. It’s not just him, it’s the entire Red team.

I take a deep breath that ends with a shiver, and bring the ball out to where Alastor had shot it from.

There’s no possible way that he could have known about the math test. And it was only one answer—and I did it by accident—I didn’t even mean to see Randy Goldman’s answer sheet, but I
did
see the answer to a question I couldn’t answer myself. And I
did
use that answer. It had been bugging me all week, because, like I said, I’m all about being fair, and doing the right thing. This rotten little kid could not have known. It was just coincidence. He was just grasping at straws to rattle me.

What happens next is something you never see in competitive sports—not even in little-kid soccer. The play resumes, but the Blue players don’t play. They just stand there like pegs in a pinball machine. The Reds dribble around them, one of them shoots, and scores on a goalie who doesn’t even move to stop the ball. The Reds cheer again. I expect Mr. A to get on his team’s case for just allowing the goal, but he doesn’t. With no choice, I call the goal good, and retrieve the ball to put back on the centerline.

As I do, the Blue captain—the one with the brown curls—comes up to me and says quietly, “We gave them back the goal you took away. Play fair, okay?”

“I am playing fair.”

He touches my arm gently, and gives me the Truth-Pause, like my mother does. “This time play fair for real.”

I feel all squirmy again, like I did after speaking to Alastor—but with this kid it’s different. It’s not a bad feeling. Suddenly it’s like I feel okay about the math test. Like it only happened to remind me how important it is for me not to cheat. Like it only happened to prepare me for today. Then he lets go of my arm, and the feeling goes away.

“Uri, don’t talk to the ref, just play the game,” calls Mr. A from the sidelines.

Uri
, I think. There’s something about the names of the Blue players that sticks with me, like I’ve heard them before. Uri, Mikey, Gabe, Raffi, Remi, Ari, and the kid they just call “Zap.” For the life of me, though, I can’t figure out where I’ve heard those names. As Uri runs off to the centerline, I notice that his feet don’t turn the ground yellow. If anything, his footsteps make the grass more green.

I start the game again, and follow Uri’s recommendation. I play the fairest that I possibly can. Even though the Red team scores two more goals. Even though the clouds have gotten so dark up above, it looks as if night is starting to fall at 7:30 in the morning.

Three to zero at halftime. For all their teamwork, the Blues can’t punch a single hole in the Red defense. As the kids hurry off to their coaches for midgame snacks and water, I silently swear that this is the last game I’m ever going to ref.

Cody sits alone on the sidelines, halfway down the field from the Blue team. “Still feel like leaving?”

He nods. “I feel like it,” he says. “But I don’t want to anymore.”

This is odd for him. Usually when he wants something he nags until he gets it. I expected him to spend halftime begging me to leave. “Why not, the game’s too exciting?”

“The game’s too important,” he says. “There’s gotta be a spectator.”

“Important, how?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Don’t know.”

I want to deny what he’s saying, but I can’t. Something’s going on here that is beyond the workings of a soccer game— and although Cody says he needs to be a spectator, I sense there are already spectators—tons of them, watching from places we can’t see. The thought makes me feel even colder, so I change the subject. “C’mere,” I say to him. “I want to introduce you to somebody.” I haul him over to Mr. A.

“Mr. A, this is my brother, Cody. Cody, this is Mr. Apfeldt. I had him for second grade.”

Cody stares at him like a deer in the headlights of a semi. Cody’s always been uncomfortable with teachers. Mr. A smiles, and holds out his hand to shake.

“Hi, Cody. I think I was supposed to have you in my class this year. But I guess that didn’t work out.”

Cody looks at Mr. A’s hand. I nudge him, and he shakes it.

“Nice to meet you, sir.”

Mr. A goes off to his team, and Cody looks at his hand—the one that shook Mr. A’s—like it might be radioactive or something.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he says. “So that’s Mr. Apfeldt?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that?”

“Just wanted to make sure I heard you right.”

I’m about to go onto the field and start the second half when Cody stops me.

“Danielle, there’s something you oughta know.”

“What?”

“They named the gym after Mr. Apfeldt.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Then Cody takes a deep breath, looks around to make sure no one else is close enough to hear, and says, “They named it after him because he died over the summer.”

I open my mouth to say something back to him, but find I have nothing to say.

“It was a car accident,” Cody says. “I had a substitute the first week of school until they found a new teacher.”

I want to tell him that he must have gotten it wrong. He always gets stories wrong. This time, though, I think he’s telling the truth. I can’t look him in the face. Instead I look up at the sky. Now I can see lightning sparking deep within those mountainous clouds. “Maybe . . . ” I say, “maybe it’ll rain. Maybe I’ll have to call the game, and this can all be over.”

Cody shakes his head. “The storm won’t start until the game ends.”

I know he’s right about that, too. I put my arm around him and give him a kiss on the cheek. I don’t think I’ve kissed him since he was a baby.

With the wind blowing, and the electric smell of ozone in the air, I stride out and blow my whistle calling the teams back onto the field.

I ref my heart out that third quarter. I try to pretend it’s just any old game. The Blues score. The Reds are winning three to one.

“Way to go!” screams Mr. Apfeldt to his team. “Way to go!”

I have to hold back my cheers, but Cody doesn’t—he shouts from the sidelines, like a one-man cheering squad. The team give one another high fives, but they’re quiet about it. They know they’re not home yet. It will take two more goals to tie, three to win.

With the wind roaring as if there’s a tornado on the next street, it’s hard to hear my whistle when I end the third quarter. As the teams take their breaks, I go over to Mr. A. I stand there for a moment, as he talks to the team, giving out new positions. Then, when he’s done, I have to say something. I have to know.

“What’s going on here, Mr. A?” I ask. “How can you be here . . . and who are these kids?”

He thinks about his answer for a long time. “I’m here because I’m here,” he says. “And as for the teams, they’re not kids. Or maybe they’ve always been kids, I don’t know. All I know is that once in a very, very long while they have a contest. A battle. And who wins and who loses . . . well . . . that decides ...”

“Decides what?”

“Decides . . . everything.”

I look to the two teams out on the field waiting for me to start the final quarter. I’ve always sensed there were opposing forces in the world. Light and darkness, order and chaos, good and evil—call them what you want, but it doesn’t change the fact of it. How and why these beings chose this battle-ground I don’t know, but I can no longer deny the truth. The fate of the world is about to be decided by a suburban peewee soccer game. And I am the judge.

“What happens if the Red team wins?” I ask Mr. Apfeldt.

He’s not too comfortable with the question. “I’m not exactly sure,” he says. “They’ve never won before. But maybe it’s best if we don’t think too much about it now.”

Easy for him to say; he’s already dead.

I return to the field to do the job I was given. The job I was chosen for. I blow the whistle that may just begin the end of the world.

Red gets possession. Troian takes it downfield, but it’s stolen by his teammate Loki, who then gets it stolen by another teammate, Seth—and finally as it gets close to the goal, Alastor takes it away, and drives toward the goal. Mikey defends expertly, and takes it, passing it to Gabe, who passes it to the twins, Remi and Raffi, who take it down toward the Red goal. But now the Red defensive players are arguing. Those Reds just can’t get along, and that could be their undoing. They’re so involved in battling one another that Remi dribbles the ball right past them and scores.