Friends & Belonging
The Two Left Standing
Ms. Brannan tipped the pinnies out of the crate. Flump. “Sadie. Callum.” The gym had lines for four different sports painted on the floor, so nobody in second grade had ever agreed where out was. Everybody lined up along the wall bars. And the picking began.
Sadie picked fast. A name. Then Callum, a name. Then Sadie again. Neither of them looked at the line for long. Callum took his own cousin second. Two boys went in one breath. It was the kind of fast that means just get it over with.
Dara stood with her back to the wall bars. She can do a throw-in. A really good one: long and flat, two hands, feet down, from right behind her head. She practices at her grandma’s gate. At the rest of soccer she is ordinary. And she knows it.
The line got shorter, in a way you couldn’t help counting. Nine. Six. Four. Dara didn’t look at either captain, because looking at someone while they decide is worse. Down the line, a boy whispered “me, me” to nobody at all. Then he got picked.
Then it was two. Dara and Roshan, with a big gap between them where four people had been a minute ago. Two pinnies left in the crate. One had a muddy boot print right across the front. Both of them already knew which pinnie would be last.
“Dara, then,” said Sadie. To the floor. With a shrug. Already turning back to sort out who was going in goal. It wasn’t unkind. It was just a name at the end of a list, said at exactly the same speed as all the others.
Roshan went over to Callum’s side and pulled a pinnie on. Sadie’s team was three steps away, arguing about goal. Ms. Brannan had the whistle in her hand and one eye on the clock. And Dara had about a minute.
What does Dara do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Go where the ball rarely comes
Dara pulled the pinnie on and walked past her own team, all the way to the far end by the wall bars, where the gym runs out and the ball hardly ever goes. Nobody sent her back. Nobody sent her anywhere. Sadie was still sorting out the goal.
The game bunched up in the middle and stayed there, the way it does. Out at her end, Dara could hear the radiator ticking. Somewhere outside, a truck went beep, beep, beep, reversing. It was, honestly, quite nice. Nobody shouted her name. Nobody found out anything about her at all.
Twice the ball came near her. The second time it rolled over a painted line and stopped right by her sneaker. Dara picked it up. A boy on her team jogged over, hands already out. She gave him the ball. He took the throw.
Peep! The whistle. Pinnies back in the crate, boot print and all. Dara had been in the game the whole hour. Out at that end you could hear the truck. She had liked it out there.
Say she’ll do the throw-ins
“I’ll do the throw-ins!” said Dara. She said it to Sadie’s back, with everybody still standing there and the crate still open, and it came out louder than she meant. Sadie half turned around. “Fine, go ahead,” she said, and went back to arguing about goal.
The first time the ball went out, three people pointed at her. That’s a strange thing to have happen. Dara did the long flat one, two hands, feet down. Whump. It reached the middle! Then the game just kept going, and nobody said a word about it.
Her fourth throw went straight to a boy in the other pinnies. Out of her own two hands. In front of the whole gym. “Ohhh, Dara,” somebody said. Not mean. Just the noise. Two minutes later the ball went out on the same side again. And it was still hers to take.
Afterward, at the crate, Sadie was counting pinnies for next week. “Dara: throw-ins,” she said. And she looked at her while she said it. Then she went back to counting. Then she said it to Callum too, in the same voice.
Chase everything and shout for the ball
Dara pulled the pinnie on and went straight in. She chased everything. The ball. The boy with the ball. The bit of floor the ball was about to be on. “HERE!” she shouted. Twice. The second time so loud that two people turned around.
She got the ball, and gave it away, because she kicked it before she looked. She got it back just by running, and gave it away again. Somebody made the noise people make. Her chest hurt. And every single time, she checked whether Sadie had seen.
Near the end, Callum said to his own team, not to her, “Watch her. She’s fast.” He said it the way you say something you’ll have to deal with. Nobody had asked him. Dara heard it from about twelve feet away, and kept running.
At the whistle, Dara stood with her hands on her knees, huffing and puffing. Sadie came past. “Toss me that pinnie.” Just that. About the pinnie. Dara pulled it off over her head and threw it to her. On the way out somebody asked the score. Dara had no idea. She did know one thing, though. Callum had said she was fast.