Darkness Creeping: Twenty Twisted Tales

  I quickly shower, dress in my ref uniform, then go into Cody’s room and roust him out of bed. I do this by grabbing his mattress, and flipping it, with him still on it. I’ve gotten very good at it. Sometimes I can launch him halfway across the room.

  “Daniellllllllle,” he whines.

  “Shut up and get dressed, I’ve got a game to ref.”

  He complains like the world is coming to an end, but he gets his clothes on. He knows he can’t worm his way out of it.

  We leave on our bikes for Arroyo Vista Park, where today’s game will be played. I’m feeling a bit less cranky now. I’m actually beginning to look forward to it. I don’t mind reffing, really. There’s a certain satisfaction to being the ultimate authority, and knowing that you can handle the responsibility. I’m good at it. I’m decisive and observant. I make the right calls, and people respect this, even when the call is against them.

  As for the kids, I don’t mind them. They’re not a problem—they’re just playing the game. It’s the parents who sometimes get nuts. They think that just because I’m fourteen, they can intimidate me into making calls favoring their team. Well, I don’t intimidate easily.

  Today, however, when I arrive at the field, there are no parents on the sidelines. Not a one. I check my watch: 6:50. Both teams are already here, practicing on their respective half of the field, but their parents aren’t watching.

  “That’s weird,” says Cody.

  “Not really,” I tell him. “A game this early? The parents all probably dropped their kids off and went back to bed. I don’t blame them. I’d do the same if I could,” and I throw him an accusing gaze, to remind him whose fault it is that we’re here at this unholy hour of the morning.

  I stride out onto the field to check it for safety issues—soak spots, sprinkler heads, and dangerous divots. The field is okay, except for the fact that toward one goal, the grass is turning yellow. True, it’s the fall, but around here grass stays green year-round. Next I introduce myself to the coaches. I recognize one of them. His name is Mr. Apfeldt. He was my second-grade teacher. I haven’t seen him for years. He’s a pretty well-liked teacher—never too hard on kids. Everyone always said the hardest thing about him was spelling his last name. I hear they even named the new elementary school gym after him.

  “Hi, Mr. A,” I say.

  “Danielle Walker!” he says, with a grin, recognizing me immediately. “Look at you!”

  I get right to business, not caring to hear all the small talk about how I’ve grown, and blossomed into a young woman, and all that garbage. I call over the other coach. He’s a guy with an impressive beer belly, if such a thing can be called impressive. He has a towel around his neck that he uses to blot his forehead. He’s sweating even though the morning is chilly.

  I pull out the official scorecard. “I’ll need to know your team names,” I say.

  The two men look at each other. “Uh . . . Our team doesn’t exactly have a name,” says Mr. A.

  “Neither does ours,” says the other coach.

  This isn’t unusual. Typically, the coaches have the kids pick their own team name, and sometimes it takes a while to get everyone to agree. True, it’s a bit late in the season to still be undecided on team names, but hey—that’s not my problem. I look at the two teams. The sweaty coach’s team has red uniforms, and Mr. Apfeldt’s team is in blue. “All right, then,” I tell them, and scribble on my scorecard. “The Reds and the Blues.”

  “Fair enough,” says Mr. A.

  “Fair is my middle name,” I say. Actually it’s Claire, but that’s close enough. I notice that there’s something funny about Mr. A. Something about the expression on his face. He’s preoccupied. It’s like the look my dad gets when some deal at work is about to go bad. It’s the look my mom gets when Cody starts to cough. Come to think of it, the other coach has a similar look about him. I shrug it off. Adults’ minds are always stuck in places we kids probably don’t want to know about.

  “Who’s the home team?” I ask. Usually the home team gets to call the coin toss.

  “Neither,” says Mr. A.

  Now I’m getting annoyed. “You mean this is neither team’s home field? Neither one of you played here on other weeks?”

  “Actually,” says Mr. A, “this is the first game for both teams.”

  Great. I get stuck with late entries to the league who don’t even know who’s supposed to be the home team. I expected better from Mr. A.

  I hadn’t taken a good look at the players until now. Right away I can sense there’s something strange about them. There’s something about their expressions that doesn’t sit right with me. See, seven-year-olds—they tend to have this vague unfocused look about them. They’re easily distracted and always involved in mildly annoying activities, like kicking up dirt clods with their cleats, or running in circles when they’re supposed to be standing still. These kids aren’t doing those things. They’re all focused on me, waiting for the game to start. There’s this intensity to them that I can almost feel. It makes me uncomfortable. I look to the sidelines. Still no parents. No one’s there but Cody, who is, like I said, kicking up dirt clods, like a normal seven-year-old.

  “What about assistant refs?” I ask the coaches. “I usually ask parents to act as linesmen.”

  “We’re fresh out of parents today,” Mr. Apfeldt says, offering me an apologetic smile. “You’re on your own.”

  Now I finally begin to put things together. Late entries to the league. Kids without parents. I bring my voice down so the kids on the field can’t hear me. “Are these kids from like . . . an orphanage or something?”

  “Something like that,” says Mr. A. “Just do your best. I’m sure you’ll do fine without linesmen.”

  I nod to both coaches in understanding, then Mr. A says to me quietly, “A word to the wise . . . make this the best reffing job you’ve ever done.” There’s that slim, preoccupied grin again from him. I tell him that sure, I will, and that I always ref my best, which is true. Then I hurry to the other side of the field, to grab my stopwatch from Cody.

  “So, do you know any of the kids on these teams?” I ask him.

  “No.”

  “Not in any classes with them?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t recognize them from Cub Scouts or something?”

  “No.”

  “A lot of help youare.”

  “Can I go home now?”

  Now it was my turn to say “No.”

  I turn to go back to the midfield line for the coin toss, but before I do, Cody stops me. “Danielle,” he says. “Be careful, okay?”

  It’s such a weird thing for him to say, I have to laugh. “Of what?”

  “I don’t know . . . just . . .” He struggles, trying to put whatever he’s feeling into words, then lets his shoulders sag. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Nutcase,” I tell him, and hurry out to the center circle, checking to make sure all the players’ shin guards are on and shoes are tied. Then I call for the team captains for the coin toss. The Red captain is this scrawny towheaded kid, with hair so fine and blond it looks like peach fuzz on his head. His eyes are blue, but a weird shade. Like glacier ice. It’s unsettling, so I don’t look in his eyes again. He also smells funny—like maybe he had a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, and it got smeared all over his face. The Blue team captain has curly brown hair, a little too long in the back, so it falls over his neck in a goofy little mullet. I like his eyes better. They’re light brown. Sure, they’re as intense as the other kid’s eyes, but somehow softer. I like him in spite of the mullet.

  I pull my special half-dollar out of my pocket and flip it. “Call it,” I say. Forgetting that I didn’t say specifically who should call it.

  Both the Red captain and the Blue captain call “Heads.” I try to catch the coin in midair—so the toss gets voided before it can become an issue—but I miss, and the coin hits the turf. It shows heads.

  “I win the toss!” announces the Red ca
ptain.

  “No, I win it,” says the Blue.

  “I called heads!”

  “So did I.”

  “Well, I said it first!”

  “Did not!”

  “Did, too!”

  Well at least they’re finally starting to act like seven-year-olds. I glance over at the coaches, waiting on the sidelines for the game to begin. Since I like Mr. A better than the other guy, I make a decision. “Blue calls it.”

  “Why?” demands the Red captain.

  “Because I said so.” You can do things like that when you’re a ref. It’s almost like being a parent.

  “No fair!”

  Then his coach yells from the sidelines: “Alastor, just get it over with, okay?” I smirk. Fancy name for an obnoxious kid.

  He scowls at his coach, then turns to me crossing his arms. “Fine.”

  I flip the coin. The Blue captain calls heads again. It comes up tails.

  “Ha!” says the Red captain.

  “Watch it, ‘Alice.’ I call penalties for bad sportsmanship.”

  “That’s Alastor,” he snaps.

  I can’t wait until I call his first penalty.

  From the moment the game begins, I know this is no ordinary game. First of all, these kids don’t play like seven-year-olds. Usually the seven-and-under games are all about beehive ball: a whole mess of kids buzzing around with the ball in the middle, and the kids generally kicking one another more often than getting a foot on the ball.

  These kids are different. They play like pros—I’ve never seen anything like it. They have awesome kicks, they head the ball with full force, and they don’t fall down crying. They put such power behind the ball, I have to hit the ground a few times to keep from having my head taken off. I’m actually getting winded running my diagonal across the field, which never happens in these games.

  As they play, I begin to notice a definite difference in style between the two teams. The Red team is good. That is to say, each player is phenomenal—but each player is also a ball-hog. There’s no passing, everyone wants to be a star, and they fight one another for the ball. More than once I call a penalty on Red players for pushing—and usually it’s their own teammates who they push.

  As for the Blues, they’re not quite as skilled as the Reds individually. None of them are standout players, but they make up for it with expert teamwork. It’s a treat to watch the way they pass and dribble, moving the ball downfield. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The problem is, no matter how good their teamwork, there’s always some Red ball-hog who steals it away, and brings it back toward the Blue goal.

  As I watch them play, I find myself doing something that a ref is never supposed to do. I find myself rooting for one team over the other.

  “Danielle, I want to go home.”

  “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 thentell 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 didsee the answer to a question I couldn’t answer myself. And I diduse 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 oka
y 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.