Kick

  I glanced over at Sergeant Brown and Abuela. Sergeant Brown looked confused, but Abuela appeared to be explaining the game to him. She didn’t seem to mind speaking English to him.

  The momentum was shifting. We got possession of the ball again and I saw Ty driving forward. I motioned for him to pass me the ball. I saw the defender coming and shouted, “Man on!” but it was too late.

  Their number 18 slid, feetfirst with his cleats up, into the backs of Ty’s calves. He let out a sharp cry and collapsed to the ground in pain, then sat up, clutching his leg.

  The kid spat on him. Ty got up and threw his fist right onto the kid’s head. Number 18 fell down, bounced up, and punched him. Just as number 18 was about to land another punch on Ty’s bruised face, I tackled him. While both of us struggled on the ground punching each other, several players from our team and theirs started a scuffle. Someone grabbed my legs and dragged me off number 18 while the ref was shouting.

  It was Cal. I wrestled free from him. Number 18 was cursing at me. I landed a solid punch, right on his jaw. The force knocked him to the ground. The ref immediately ran between us. He started to yell at me, but I tuned him out. Both refs cornered me and gave Ty, number 18, and me all yellow cards. Then the ref took a red card from his pocket and raised it over my head. Sergeant Brown had his arms crossed and was shaking his head. He did not look happy.

  Number 18 was still on the ground, writhing in pain. His coach ran over in a rage and shouted at me, “That kid should be suspended from this league!”

  Coach Hill yelled, “Kevin, Ty, I don’t care how much pain you’re in, get off the field now!”

  My bruised face hurt a bit. The pain would probably go away soon, a lot sooner than the trouble I had caused would.

  “Kevin, you could have just cost us the game, because of your selfishness and lack of control. Now we have to play down with ten men.”

  “I’m glad you’re concerned with Ty’s calf, Coach,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What did you say?” he asked as he turned to me and raised his eyebrows.

  “I said I’m mad with this half’s approach.”

  The red card took me out of the game and the next scheduled game as well. Even if we did end up winning this game, I would have to sit out the second round of the State Cup.

  “This is why you’re in trouble all the time! They could suspend you from the league!” Coach screamed. By helping my teammates, I had really let them down.

  Even with ten players, our team dominated the second half, scoring twice. The other team knew the game was over with five minutes left in the second half. They played like it, too. At the end of the game, two kids on East Ridge were crying. Some didn’t even shake hands with us. Number 18 gave me the coldest look I’d ever seen. He was rubbing his jaw.

  “What happened back there?” Cal asked. “You looked crazy mad. Your veins were popping out and stuff, and when I saw you with that look you get when you’re really mad, I knew you had lost it.”

  “I gotta protect my teammate, Cal.”

  “You can’t play next game, right?”

  “I know, but that kid got what was coming to him,” I said.

  “Hey, if soccer doesn’t work out, you’d be a good boxer.”

  I gave Cal a playful shove.

  “You’re a beast, man. You nailed that sucker,” Nick said, giving me a high five as he passed by.

  The ref asked my coach for my card. I would only get it back after the next round.

  I heard the ref say, “Kids like number thirteen should be banned from playing soccer.”

  I had chosen number 13 because I wanted to show everyone that I didn’t believe in bad luck, but now I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Coach gathered us around him for a postgame talk. “You played much better in the second half, but if you play like that the next game, you guys will lose. You shouldn’t be happy with your performance. They let you win. And we can’t have players losing their heads. That’s unacceptable behavior.” He looked right at me and then at the team. “You shouldn’t be rewarding Kevin for his behavior by saying it’s cool. You should be discouraging it.”

  Sergeant Brown looked betrayed. I felt like I had let him down. And now I had an even bigger problem. I wondered if he was going to call Judge Kelly and recommend that he send me back to juvie.

  Chapter 07

  Soccer was hard to follow. The teams were going down the field at a slow pace for a while, then everything would speed up, maybe there would be a try for a goal, and then the whole thing would go the other way. Somehow Kevin was always in the middle of most of the plays and all the confrontations.

  After the game, I took Kevin and his grandmother home. When we reached the house, I told him to see his grandmother to the door and come back to the car.

  Kevin returned and got in. “We going someplace?” he asked.

  “No, I just wanted to tell you a story,” I said. “About four years ago, I was working over on Evergreen Avenue. You know where they were going to build that park?”

  “It’s got that little pool for kids?” Kevin asked.

  “Right. Anyway, there was an abandoned building across from the park and we were told that some crackheads were using it to sleep in. I went in and didn’t see anything on the first floor. I called up the stairs to see if anyone was in the building. No answer.

  “My partner went to the rear of the building and I headed up the stairs. I didn’t expect any trouble. I looked around on the second floor and it looked empty. I was looking for trash, empty food containers, things like that. I thought I saw something in a corner and put my flashlight on it, and all of a sudden, I heard a gunshot. I turned and saw this jerk with a pistol in his hand. He fired again and I drew my weapon. He tried to shoot again, but his gun jammed and he threw it at me.

  “I told him to hit the ground, but he took off running toward the back of the building. I thought he might be going for another gun, but I saw him head toward the window. I got to the window and saw him climbing down the fire escape. I was pretty sure I recognized him. We picked him up two days later. You got all that?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Kevin answered.

  “I could have shot the guy when his gun jammed and he was still pulling the trigger. I could have shot him when he started to run. I could have shot him as he climbed down the fire escape. But even though I would have been justified in using my weapon, I didn’t, for two reasons. One, I had more to lose than he did if the shooting was judged to be not justified. The second reason, and the most important, was that I held myself to a higher standard than that sucker. You get my drift?”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

  “You hit a kid on the field today because he wasn’t playing the way you thought he should have been,” I said. “He set the standard and you sunk to it. Or was I seeing wrong out there?”

  “You were watching—you weren’t on the field!”

  “And the refs, were they just watching, too? And was everybody out there wrong but you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Kevin, don’t tell me you’re sorry,” I said. “Sorry is about forgetting to pick up the milk. Sorry is dropping a glass or making a mistake on a math test. Punching somebody on a soccer field, getting suspended from the game, is not sorry. It’s called stupid.”

  “I guess I’m stupid, then.”

  “Was I wrong about you?” I asked him. “Maybe you’re not a good kid who needs a break. Maybe you’re a young man who thinks he can do whatever he wants as long as he thinks it’s right.”

  “Look, I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to do the right thing on the field and off. When you’re sitting on one of the benches watching the game and you have time to . . . to . . . ”

  “To think about what should happen?”

  “Yeah. If that ref had been watching all along, that wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Life doesn’t work that way and you’re not going to be able to change that,” I s
aid.

  “Whatever—the next time I’ll just let them push us around and win the game easy,” Kevin said. His voice had lowered. His head drooped.

  “The thing to remember, Kevin, is that there won’t always be a next time.”

  I motioned toward his house and watched Kevin start up his driveway.

  On the way home I wondered again if we all had been wrong about Kevin. He acted too quickly on the field and had to be pulled away from the fight. Off the field, talking to him, he didn’t seem like a hothead, but the punch he threw at the kid who fouled his teammate looked hard and deliberate.

  I got home and told Carolyn what had happened.

  “Are you telling me that you never got into a fight at his age?” she asked.

  “I got into fights when I couldn’t avoid them,” I said. “But this kid has an exaggerated sense of right and wrong. This team they were playing outsized them and they were going to use their muscle to win. Nothing wrong with that as long as they kept within the rules. Kevin’s coach was yelling at his team to use their speed. But when this one player got a little dirty, Kevin went right after him. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “Maybe it was because of all the tension he’s under.”

  “Why do women always have to make excuses for children?” I asked. “If he was wrong he was wrong. Period.”

  “Now who’s being belligerent?”

  “If you say so,” I answered.

  I wasn’t going to let Carolyn draw me into an argument. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t budge off her position and we both knew it, so there was no use in even continuing the conversation.

  “Did you at least leave him on good terms?” she went on.

  “Carolyn, I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

  “Was your father as stubborn as you are?”

  I picked up the remote and clicked on the news. I saw there was a traffic tie-up on Route 4 near Teaneck. They had an officer explaining how some college kids had rigged a motor to a couch and tried to drive it along the highway.

  “It broke down a quarter of a mile before they got to Fairleigh Dickinson,” he explained. “That’s apparently where they were headed.”

  “You have an excuse for those idiots?” I asked Carolyn.

  “No, your honor!” she answered.

  We sat around for an hour watching television, and she was clearly being stubborn by not speaking to me. I was thinking of going up to bed when the doorbell rang. Carolyn answered it and came back quickly.

  “There’s a contrite young man to see you,” she said.

  I got up and went to the door. Kevin was sitting on the top step.

  “How did you get over here?”

  “Bike,” he said, pointing to my front lawn. “Twelve and a half minutes.”

  I looked and saw his bicycle on its side. “What’s up?”

  “I know you were mad at me for fighting today,” he said. “And I guess I was pretty mad, too. But I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Christy called when I got home. She said the transmission on the car wasn’t working and her father thinks I messed it up. I don’t think I did, but he was saying that he hoped I got five to ten years.”

  “You won’t get that long as a juvenile,” I said. “Not with a clean record.”

  “I thought maybe . . . you know, if you talked to him, you could convince him that I’m not that bad a guy,” Kevin said. “Christy thinks he’s mad at her, too.”

  “Maybe when your team is playing again and you can’t play, we’ll go over to his house and talk to him,” I said.

  He looked down at his hands. “Sergeant Brown, it’ll kill my mom if I have to go to jail,” he said.

  “Did you ever talk to him yourself?” I asked. “Tell him you’re sorry?”

  “He won’t listen.”

  I sat down next to Kevin.

  “Did he ever hit the girl?”

  “Christy? I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t know if you want to tell me?” I asked.

  “I don’t think he hits her,” Kevin said.

  “I’ll have to check with my commanding officer about speaking with him again,” I said. “It can’t look as if I’m putting any pressure on a citizen not to press charges if he wants to do it.”

  “Okay. I’m just pretty worried,” he said. “And I don’t really know anyone else to turn to. I don’t think the lawyer is going to impress him.”

  “You need to be getting home,” I said. “And call me so I know you’re home safe.”

  “Okay.” Kevin got up and straddled his bike. “Oh, yeah, I asked Christy how much they pay Dolores. I told her you were thinking of hiring a maid.”

  “Me having a maid is a funny idea,” I said. “My mother used to be a maid. Did Christy tell you how much they pay her?”

  “They don’t pay her,” Kevin said. “They pay the agency she works for.”

  “Agency?”

  “Yeah, she works for some kind of agency—Greenville Services—something like that—and Christy’s father pays the agency and they pay Dolores. You want me to try to find out how much they pay her?”

  “No! Look, Kevin, this isn’t some soccer game with kids your age.” I went over to where he was sitting and put my hands on the handlebars of his bike. “There might not be anything to this or it could be something that gets sticky in a hurry. I need you to promise me—absolutely promise me that you won’t do any snooping around without me. This could get dangerous. Can you look me in the eye and make that promise?”

  “Sure. I won’t do anything if you don’t want me to,” he said.

  I had interviewed a thousand people in my career. I could tell by their eyes when their minds went racing to what they should do or say next. Kevin’s eyes shifted quickly down to the ground and away.

  “Don’t even ask Christy anything else,” I said. “You understand that?”

  “I understand it,” he said, his fingers drumming nervously on the side of his bike.

  “Okay, you go on home now,” I said. “And call me when you get there. I’ll think about talking to Christy’s father again. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay, and thanks.”

  I watched him take off on the bike. He was in good shape and the bike sped down the street and onto the avenue in less than a minute.

  I got back and Carolyn had two pieces of cake on the table.

  “Why didn’t you invite him in for cake and milk?” she asked.

  “I don’t want him out when it gets dark,” I said.

  “Everything all right?”

  “I don’t know. His eyes didn’t look right,” I answered.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I told him I didn’t want him snooping around that alien worker case because it might be dangerous,” I said. “The eyes on a kid his age should have got wide as soon as I mentioned danger. His got narrow and were darting from side to side. He was already thinking about what he was going to do next.”

  Chapter 08

  Watching my team win their second State Cup game without me was agonizing. The score against Oakfield was 4–2 in our favor, and we were in control the whole game. I almost felt like I wanted my team to lose just to show them how much they needed me—even though I knew it wasn’t right to think that way. In my mind I kept replaying the first game and what had put me on the bench. I hated players who played dirty, who didn’t have any respect for the game. But now that I was sitting, I wished I hadn’t lost my temper. I was getting myself into too much trouble. I thought about the story Sergeant Brown had told me about how he hadn’t shot the man with the gun.

  Sergeant Brown came over twice after school to check on me. It was a little awkward, because the other kids would spot him first and point him out. Some of them called him my “keeper.” Since he didn’t know anything about soccer, I took him out on the field and tried to show him how to dribble. He was slow and really not that well coordinated, so it was a t
ough job. In the end I got stuck full of thorns from trying to retrieve Sergeant Brown’s awful passes from the bushes.

  “So how’s the case you’ve been working on?” I asked him when I came back with the ball. “The one with the workers we talked about the other day.”

  “It’s not really active. We don’t have many leads, and no one’s willing to talk to us,” he answered as he kicked the ball once again into the bushes.

  “What about Mr. McNamara? Have you tried talking to him? You have lots of things to talk to him about.”

  “One of our officers tried to talk to him about it a few years ago. He wasn’t very cooperative. When I tried talking to him about your case, I didn’t get very far. Maybe I’ll go see him again.”

  “Well, good luck. He’s pretty tough,” I said. Sergeant Brown’s pass landed the ball right at my feet. Maybe we were getting somewhere.

  Friday. Sergeant Brown was trying to help me and I needed to find a way to help him. I took a series of deep breaths as I crouched behind a thick bush on the side of Christy’s house. I thought that Dolores probably wouldn’t have enough money to buy a car, so following her home on foot would be easy. Then I could give Sergeant Brown Dolores’s address, and he could go and interview her.

  I knew Sergeant Brown might get mad over what I was doing, but how else could I help him? And I wanted to help Dolores, too. Once I explained it to him, he would understand. Maybe he would even thank me!

  Christy’s house was in a good neighborhood. The houses were neat and well-cared for. I thought they probably cost more than the house that my family lived in.

  I waited behind the bush for an hour. I was growing impatient when, around five o’clock, I saw Dolores close Christy’s front door, lock it, and walk down the steps. I pulled up the hood on my sweatshirt.

  Following Dolores was easy. I kept a good distance between us, and when she would turn a corner, I would immediately speed up until I could see her again.

  I had been thinking about what Sergeant Brown had said about people with Hispanic backgrounds being exploited, and it bothered me. I knew I wouldn’t want my grandmother being cheated in any way. Or my mom, either. What if I was back in Colombia and my mom was working here to support the family, just like Dolores? I didn’t like people playing dirty. It didn’t matter whether it was on or off the field—except this time I could do something about it. I knew why Dolores worked at Christy’s house, but even that didn’t make a difference if they weren’t paying her enough.