Out of Nowhere (11 page)

I hung back; couldn’t leave my man unguarded. Jonnie, meanwhile, burned it. He leapt over the still-fallen Henry and hurled himself straight at the advancing Whittier striker. It was a suicide attack, Jonnie insanely deciding to take a yellow—hell, a red card—for the team, and the startled Whittier player let the ball get just a little bit ahead of him.

That’s when I heard him. Not God; I never hear him. Saeed. Who could tell, the way a master chess player can read a dozen moves in advance, what Jonnie was going to do and where the ball would go next.

“Tom! I open!”

Jonnie got to the ball and booted it at a sharp angle away from the Whittier player and directly toward me. Two steps and I had it; I settled it, pivoted in the direction of his voice, and saw nothing but green space between me and Saeed. He was waiting for me at the midfield line, and I fired it at him.

I couldn’t really tell you what Saeed did next. All I know is he received the pass and then the ball soared. Soared like a kickoff in football, high, arcing overhead. It was a beautiful thing, this trajectory, but then it fell, plummeted, gathered speed as it reached earth. It headed right for the goal. It headed for the top bar … no, not quite … just under it. Just over the goalie’s head. Skirting, by inches, the top bar, until it landed in a tangle of net.

Wow. Thanks
.

I sat with him on the ride home. Well, to the extent that I sat with anyone. The guys went crazy, and when the bus driver couldn’t get us to settle down he barked at Coach to get it under control or it would be the last time he’d drive the team. Coach whistled (the guy’s got a dog-deafening two-finger whistle) and said if we wanted to arrive alive in order to brag about our 5–2 victory over Whittier (more foot stomping and cheers) we needed to sit down and shut up.

It was a little quieter then, and Saeed started rummaging around in his backpack. He pulled out this plastic bag filled with what looked like stiff orange Jell-O. He tore off a chunk, popped it in his mouth, and offered the bag to me.

“Is
xalwo
,” he said. “Is really, really good.”

I pulled off a piece and gave it a try. Sweet and orange exploded in my mouth.

“It’s like seriously intense gummy bears,” I said.
“Zal-wo.”

He nodded, looking out the window.

“I know. Really good,” he replied.

I realized I’d stopped trying to figure out what Saeed understood and what he pretended to understand. I just talked to him. Sometimes he surprised me and came up with a string of English that made you think he could speak the language. Other times he faded and I couldn’t tell if he was just not getting the words or avoiding a topic.

“So here’s a question,” I began. “Your sister. Samira. She speaks pretty good English. You … not so much.” He nodded. Plucked another chunk of
xalwo
from the bag.

“Samira in Amreeka more time than me. I will speak good, too.”

“Really. How much more time?”

He thought about this.

“I think … one year. She goes with my mother. I goes later.”

“Why’s that? Why didn’t you all come at the same time?”

He sighed. Not like he was going to fade out on me. Like maybe this required more words than he had in his arsenal.

“Okay, my family live in Somalia, right? And in Somalia there is big, big wars and fighting. Like, everyone is gets killed, and the peoples, they just … run. You just run, you know?”

No
, I didn’t say.
I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea
.

“There is men. With guns? Who kill peoples outside our house. My uncle? He get killed. My friend? He get killed. I see this. With my eyes.” He looked at me. Unblinking. Wide eyes that stared frankly into my own.

“And my mother,” he continued, “she just say run! We go … 
out window. In back of house. And we run! Fast. And all the time we run we hear guns.

“Then we walk, a long time. To … Kenya? To this camp. Dadaab. And we stay, with all these peoples, long time. Many years.”

“How many years?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I was little boy. Okay. So I got uncle in Nairobi. He say, ‘Make Saeed go to Nairobi and live with me and go to school.’ And I go. There is school in Dadaab, but it not good, you know? And Nairobi have good school. So I go there. And then UN tell my family, ‘You got to leave now.’ But I am in Nairobi! But they got to go. So … I wait. And in one year I come to Maine.”

My head buzzed with questions. If I was getting this right, Saeed was out of town the day his family left for the United States, and it took them a year to reunite with him. That couldn’t be right. It was like an African nightmare version of
Home Alone
, with Saeed in the Macauley Culkin role, but instead of fighting off burglars and waiting for his parents to return, he was passing in and out of war zones and trying to cross an ocean.

“Dude. That’s unreal,” I said.

He held the bag out toward me.

“Is real,” he said.

I tore off another piece.

“Samira learn English good in Atlanta,” he said. “I don’t go there.”

“Atlanta, Georgia?” I asked.

“Yeah. That a bad place. My mother don’t like it. Samira don’t like it. But we got friend. Here. My mother call him, and he say come. Maine is … good place. So they come. And then I come.” Saeed pressed the seal of his plastic bag closed and returned the
candy to his pack. He acted like that pretty much explained it all, but I was even more confused. There were definite gaps in the narrative. Huge gaps. But before I could ask him any more, I heard Mike speaking to me.

“Hey, Bouchard!” he called from a few aisles back. “Did I just hear that tomorrow you and Plourde are painting the Maquoit rock?”

“You heard right,” I called back. There were groans the length of the bus.

“Hey, didn’t I see some of those guys at the game today?” I heard someone say.

“Yeah, they’re next!” another voice replied.

I wished. Wished those words were more than just post-victory attitude. Wished I didn’t have to be at Maquoit High School the next morning at 9:00 a.m. I couldn’t think of anything in my life that I’d ever looked forward to less. Even having my wisdom teeth pulled last summer trumped it.

“Sucks for you, Tom,” Mike said. “Good luck.” A few more “good lucks” echoed through the bus.

I noticed Saeed frowning.

“We go, right?” he asked me. I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Maquoit,” he said.

I shook my head.

“No. Just me. It’s not a game. It’s payback.”

His frown deepened.

“But we the team. We all go.” It wasn’t a question. It was an assumption.

“No,” I sighed. “We the team didn’t screw up. Just we the captain. So you’re all off the hook for this one.”

Saeed pivoted in his seat, got up on his knees, and faced Ibrahim, who sat behind us. They engaged in some rapid-fire Somali, Saeed in earnest. He was speaking emphatically to Ibrahim and nodding at him urgently, but Ibrahim just shook his head and looked pissed. Finally Saeed made a sound in the back of his throat like he was disgusted, too, then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled pretty loud. Coach-like. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him.

“Uh … hello,” he began.

“Hello,” some joker from the back replied. A few titters.

“You know, I am … new customer,” he continued, “but I think, you know … we the team. And all go tomorrow. With Tom. Right?” There was a pause. A surprised pause, actually, because everyone, including me, was thinking,
What the hell?

“We the team go to Maquoit. Yes?” he said again.

“Did he just say he’s a new customer?” I heard someone comment.

“Yes?” Saeed repeated. Loudly that time.

“Damn right!” someone shouted from the back. “We the team!” The bus erupted in laughter, followed by foot stomping and whistles. And before you know it everyone was chanting, “We the team! We the team!”

Saeed slid back into his seat and grinned at me.

“So we all go,” he said simply.

He wasn’t able to give you a straight story about where he’d come from, but this new customer? He was all right.

As it turns out, if “we the team” hadn’t shown up, I’d have been out there alone. That’s because freakin’ Donnie never appeared.

I drove to his house to collect him Saturday morning, but there were no signs of life. His mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and even though I banged on the door and called his cell, there was no answer. I figured maybe he’d gone to the high school, where everyone had planned to meet, but no. Don was either lying in a ditch somewhere or had just blown me off.

All I could think was that it had better be the former, ’cause if he wasn’t already dead, I was gonna kill him.

We were five cars in all, and as we pulled into the Maquoit High parking lot we could see a group already gathered at the rock. It wasn’t the football-stadium-sized crowd I had feared would show up, but big enough. Pretty much the whole Maquoit varsity soccer team. I recognized Alex Rhodes in the group.

We go back, Alex and I.

Four years ago, the summer between middle and high school, a soccer camp sponsored by Midcoast College. It was just a three-day
skills camp coached by players from the men’s varsity team. Basically a fund-raiser for them. But for a kid like me? Totally cool to work with college players.

Most of the campers were from away (aka not from Maine) and stayed in the dorms for the three days, but you could save seventy dollars if you didn’t sleep over. So every morning my mom drove me the thirty minutes to the college, and every evening she picked me up.

Alex Rhodes lives within spitting distance of the college fields, but he stayed overnight in the dorms, which were reportedly a pizza-candy-and-gaming party until lights-out every night.

He showed up on the first day of camp wearing the T-shirt from his club soccer team, United Maine. He carried a United Maine gym bag. In the mornings, when it was still a little cool, he’d wear a United Maine windbreaker. The camp gave us all free water bottles, but Alex always used the one he’d brought from home: a freakin’ United Maine Nalgene.

I didn’t know anyone at that camp, but Alex? He knew everybody. He knew guys from Cape Elizabeth and Yarmouth who played on the United Maine team with him. He knew guys from Bangor and Augusta who played on a different club team. He even knew some of the college players. That first day we all walked onto the field? Guys in Midcoast College T-shirts called out to him, slapped him five, and said, “Hey, Alex, great to see you out here!”

We were only fourteen years old, and already it felt like Alex was the most popular kid at a party the rest of us hadn’t even been invited to.

As our caravan of cars pulled up close to the rock, Mike Turcotte, riding shotgun with me, stated the obvious: “No sign of Plourde.”

I had been scanning the group behind Alex, just in case Donnie had miraculously gotten himself a ride and was waiting for me. No such luck.

“What are you going to do?” Mike asked. I eased the car into a space and turned off the ignition. I looked at him in mock surprise.

“What do you mean … Donnie?” I said to him. He looked confused for a moment. Then, when he realized what I meant, he shook his head.

“No. Fuckin’. Way.” It was the first time I’d ever heard Mike swear.

“Dude, I will owe you
forever
.”

“You don’t have anything I want, Tom. No way am I taking one for Donnie Plourde.”

“Mike, you don’t have to say anything. You just have to help me paint. Let them think you’re Don.”

“I don’t even look like him!”

“They don’t know what he looks like.”

“No, but they know what I look like. I’ve been playing soccer against these guys since junior high. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook.”

“Are you kiddin’ me? You friended jackasses from Maquoit?”

“Facebook friends aren’t real friends. And I know some of them from Model UN …”

Someone rapped on the window. Everyone was waiting for us to get out of the car. Mike stared at the dashboard.

“You’re asking me to take one for Donnie Plourde,” he repeated. He didn’t bother to hide the disgust in his voice. I sighed.

“I’m asking you to take one for the team. Look, all we—”

“The team didn’t screw up, Tom.
You
did. Plourde did.” He was pissed, but already shrugging off his Chamberlain jacket. If he was gonna pass as Donnie, he needed to lose the varsity gear. He had a black skullcap in his jacket pocket, and he pulled it over his head, down low over his eyes. I checked the overhead compartment where Dad usually stows his sunglasses, and sure enough, they were there. I handed them to Mike.

“I will make this up to you, man.”

“Yeah, you will,” he said under his breath as he shoved the door open. The rest of the team, all decked out in their team blue, stood outside the car. As Mike and I went round to the trunk to get the paint and brushes, I heard him mutter to the guys, “Act like I’m Plourde.” Like a game of telephone, it was whispered through the group.

We all walked to the rock. Someone whistled.

“Good morning, ladies,” we heard. Laughter.

Some low-to-the-ground, heavyset guy who was standing with them and looked about my father’s age whipped his head around in the direction of the comment.

“We’ll have none of that, gentlemen,” he said.

Yeah, right.

Alex was standing up front.

At the Midcoast camp, they divided us into little teams and named us after New England schools: Trinity, Williams, Colby, like that. Alex and I both got put on Middlebury.

We beat everyone; Middlebury ruled the camp. Our coach
recognized right off that both Alex and I owned the center striker spots, and if one of us didn’t score, the other would. It was sweet, and Alex was … amazing. Not only was he just naturally good, but he busted his butt. When we ran laps, he led. When two players chased the ball, he always fought just that little bit harder and won possession every time. He had more desire than I had ever seen in anyone.

And he decided he liked me.