The Beast (2 page)

“Sure, Coach,” but nodding yes sends another wave of wooziness crashing over me. I have to press my palms into the ground behind me to stay sitting up.

“There's no way you're finishing the game, Alyssa,” Vicki says. She's talking to me, but her eyes are on Coach, and she looks pretty mad. “You had a concussion. We're going to get you to the hospital, okay?”

I know better than to nod my head again.

“Can your parents drive you?”

I know better than to shake my head too.

“Your dad?”

I just say “no,” because it's easier than saying he died when I was two.

“Mom?”

“At work,” I say.

“Well, I'm sure we can find someone who—”

“I'll do it,” a voice offers.

I turn my head slowly to see that Ruth Middleton, one of our backup players, is standing next to me.

“I was thinking someone from the stands, Ruth,” Vicki says. “You're in the middle of a game.”

“I don't mind,” she says. Under her breath, she adds, “Don't have anything else to do.”

“Coach?” Vicki says. “Can you spare Ruth for the last few minutes of the game?”

“Absolutely,” he says a little too quickly. “I mean, whatever's best for Alyssa we should do, right?”

“Then it's settled,” Vicki says. “Before you go, Alyssa, do you have any questions?”

Just one. “When will I get to play again?”

Vicki crouches next to me, puts my arm over her shoulder, and helps me stand up. “That's for the doctor to decide,” she replies.

D
r. Lopez is explaining my condition when a nurse pokes her head into the room and tells me I have a visitor. By the giddy way she says it, I know who's about to step into the room. Rick Morris can turn even middle-aged women into teenage admirers—especially when he's wearing a formfitting Under Armour shirt.

“Hey, babe,” he says. “My club game ended early, so I stopped by your game. Everyone told me I'd find you here.”

“Here I am,” I say.

“Saw Ruth in the lobby and told her I'd give you a ride home.”

“Thanks.”

“So this
is
the right room?” the nurse says, her eyes glued to my boyfriend's pecs. She probably expected to find a magazine model posing on the hospital bed. Instead of a beauty, she found a beast.

“Yep,” I tell the nurse, “you've come to the right place.” I turn to Dr. Lopez and ask, “Anything else?”

“No, I suppose not.” Then she adds, “Just be careful, Alyssa. Concussions are very, very serious. Don't even think about stepping onto the soccer field until all your symptoms are gone. I want to see you again in a week, okay?”

“You're the boss,” I tell her.

“Follow me, Nurse Bennett,” she says on her way out. “We have other patients to check on.”

Rick and I stand there looking at each other. A part of me wants to point out that he looks out of place in his workout shirt. This is a hospital, not a sports commercial. But most of me just likes the view. And really, a torso like his deserves to be shown to the world as much as possible. Putting a regular shirt on him is like putting clothes on a famous old naked statue. It just looks wrong.

I'm thinking how fun it is to gaze at him from afar when I realize just how
far
afar is. He's still standing all the way across the room, a good fifteen feet away from me, which isn't like him at all. Usually, he can't wait to wrap his arms around me after a game.

“A concussion, huh?” he says. “At the game, they just said you got knocked out.”

“I think
knocked out
and
concussion
mean the same thing, Rick.”

“Really? Concussion sounds way worse.”

“You know you can't catch a concussion, right?” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not contagious.”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “Why would you even say that?”

“Oh, no reason.” Of course, there
is
a reason. Rick's terrified he's going to get injured before he officially signs one of his Division I scholarship offers next spring.

When we first started hanging out last season, he found me sitting in my favorite tree by the soccer field and asked if he could join me. By then, I'd already spent so much time alone in that tree that I'd begun to think of it as mine. But then again, this was
the
Rick Morris, so I was happy to share with him.

Except now he won't go near the tree. Not even to touch it. I think he's worried the bark will give him a splinter that will get so infected he'll never play goalie again.

“Anyway,” I tell him, “the doctor says I'll probably be able to play in a couple of weeks.”

“In time for the playoffs?”

I smile. Great minds think alike. Or at least soccer players think alike. “That was the first question I asked the doctor. She thought I'd be back by then, but only if I'm feeling up for it.”

“Why wouldn't you? Do you feel sick right now?”

“Just a little headache,” I tell him, which is a lie. My head feels like an itty-bitty person is inside of it, trying to pound his way out with an itty-bitty sledgehammer. Everything still seems too bright. But the doctor told me these were totally normal symptoms. They'll probably go away in the next couple days—no reason to worry Rick about it. “Really, I'm sure I'll be fine in a day or two.”

It's his turn to smile. He saunters over to the bed. “Good. I like you better on the soccer field than in the hospital.”

I know he doesn't mean to be insensitive when he says that. I like myself better on the soccer field too.

“Two weeks, huh?” he says.

“Assuming Coach doesn't replace me with another goalie,” I say.

I
'm not really worried about being replaced by another goalie. When I said it at the hospital, I meant it as a joke. After all, our backup goalie, Erin Hamley, isn't called Meat just because of her last name. It's not because she's a little on the hefty side, either. No, she's called Meat because when she's in goal, that's what she is—
dead meat
.

Coach Berg put her in several times this season when we had big leads. Every time, she gave up goals so quickly he had to put me back in. It was our opponents who started calling her Meat—not loud enough for fans to hear but loud enough for Erin to hear. One time, Coach didn't take her out because she let in a goal. He took her out because she suddenly was crying. Between the sobs, she told us what they'd been calling her—which is when we started calling her Meat too. Not to her face and not often! But sometimes it just slips out.

It started slipping out a lot, I discovered, after the last soccer game. When I got home from the hospital, my phone was loaded with texts from my teammates. They all said pretty much the same thing.

meat gave up 3 goals in 4 minutes

meat = 3 goals for the other team

Youll never guess how many goals Meat let in…

I know I shouldn't admit this, but part of me
liked
getting these messages. The nickname is really mean, but this was a desperate situation. My teammates were telling me that they need me.

I stayed home from school today—doctor's orders—but decided to show up at practice to tell everyone the news. Of course, I'd already told Coach Berg I was going to miss the next couple weeks. Unlike my teammates, he didn't call me just once after the game. I must've gotten six different messages from him. “What did the doctor say?” he wanted to know. “Call me back,” he pleaded. When I did, he didn't take the news well. He was so upset that he stopped talking altogether. The only noise coming from his end of the phone was the sound of him rubbing his buzzed head.

I tried to reassure him: “I should be back for playoffs, though.” When he still didn't respond, I said, “Okay, Coach, I'll see you soon. Okay?” After a few more awkward silent moments, I hung up.

Again, I know it's wrong of me to think this way, but Coach's misery made me feel kinda good. He needs me, just like my teammates do, which is the biggest reason I'm on my way to practice. I can picture the scene in my head: I arrive and all the players cheer. I announce that I'll be out for two weeks and they sob even louder than Erin Hamley.

Poor Erin
, I think as I park in the athletic lot and walk to the soccer field.
There she'll be, letting shot after shot go between her legs while her teammates try to keep their voices down as they call her Meat.
I'd been so excited to be cheered for that it's only now I wonder whether I'm even supposed to be driving. The headache's still there, and so is the slight dizziness. Part of me wants to go back home and lie down, but that would mean more driving.
Besides
, I tell myself,
maybe I can give Erin some pointers on playing goalie.

Sure, I can't teach her to be leaner or quicker. But maybe I can help her learn the basics—just to make the weeks until I return as painless as possible.

One problem: when I get to the soccer field, Erin isn't standing in front of the net. The girl who
is
patrolling the goalie box isn't short or hefty or slow. She's taller, leaner, and maybe even quicker than I am.

She's Becca Miller, our up-and-coming star forward. Or at least she
was
a forward.

The rest of the team is blasting shots at her, and she's stopping almost every one of them. One second, she's on the balls of her feet with her knees bent. The next second, she's diving to her left, her long body fully extended.

“When did you learn to play goal like this, Becca?” someone yells.

“Unbelievable, Miller—can you fly too?” adds someone else.

As I stand on the sideline, waiting for someone to notice me, I can't help thinking that Becca looks an awful lot like an up-and-coming star goalie.

“D
uncan!”

For once, I'm glad to hear Coach Berg shout my name. It's better than listening to my teammates praise the girl who's playing
my
position.

Unfortunately, once Coach has made his way across the field to me, his voice sounds almost exactly like everybody else's. “Are you seeing this, Duncan?”

“I'm not sure. What's going…”

“What's going on is Becca's playing goalie.”

“I can
see
that, Coach. What I'm wondering is why?”

“Why? Just take a look, Duncan. Now that you're out, I thought it might be worth switching things up a bit, so I asked Becca to give goalie a try. The girl's an absolute natural. Still rough around the edges—she doesn't know the ins and outs of goalkeeping yet—but she's got great athleticism and instincts.”

Last night, Coach was so upset he couldn't talk. Now he's having trouble slowing his words to a normal human rate.

“Look at her out there, Duncan,” he says, gesturing toward the field.

I had turned away from Becca to talk with Coach, but now I follow his hand back to the goal box. I hear another shout: “Watch out!”