Gracie Faltrain Takes Control (2 page)

Score as many goals as you want for Alyce, Gracie. She'll still be a loser. She's best friends with you.
Annabelle Orion

I just wish the score wasn't so far in the other team's favour. Annabelle Orion and her mates are at least ten goals up. And Alyce is still in the change room.

It's a cruel twist of fate for Alyce that we have sport every Monday, period one. Ever tried to convince a parent that you're sick on the first day of the week? It takes dedication. It takes a good liar. And it takes about half the weekend, because you have to start lying by at least lunchtime on Sunday. Alyce has to turn up to school. She has to play sport. And what do both those things add up to for a nerd like her? Humiliation, to the power of about a thousand.

This term we're playing basketball. Alyce is even more crap at that than any other sport. Martin and I tried to give her a few lessons yesterday. ‘Come on,' I said, dragging her off the couch and throwing her book to Martin. ‘Don't give her that. No matter how hard she begs.'

‘You just need a few tips,' I told her on the way to the court. ‘And then it won't be so bad for you tomorrow.'

‘Gracie, I don't care about basketball. I don't care about sport.'

‘Look me in the eye and tell me that being picked last every single time doesn't bother you.'

‘Being picked last every single time doesn't bother me, Gracie.'

‘You're lying. I can see your eyes twitching.' I tossed her the ball. ‘Now run towards the ring, and try to shoot.' It's a good idea to watch Alyce run through half-closed eyes. That way you're ready to block out the sight of blood.

There was blood, yesterday – just not hers. She threw the ball at the ring and almost broke Martin's nose. And he was standing behind her. At the other end of the court. ‘I would have thought that shot was scientifically impossible,' he said, trying to make her feel better.

‘Not really,' she answered. ‘If you multiply the angle of the court by the distance and add me into the equation, it's kind of an algebraic certainty.'

‘Don't worry, Alyce,' I say today. ‘I'll make sure I'm picked as a captain. You can be on my team.' I stretch my hand up as high as it will go.

I should have known better. The rules of the universe clearly state: when you're desperate to be picked for something, forget it. The only time you can guarantee to be chosen at school is when you'd rather be hung out of a plane and dropped without a parachute.

‘Andrew, you can be one captain and . . .' Mrs Tunnisi stops and looks around. ‘Annabelle, you can be the other.' Great. Flemming will pick according to skill and Annabelle will pick according to dress sense. Either way, Alyce is stuffed.

Flemming chooses me first. It's painful to watch the crowd of kids sheltering Alyce slowly picked off till she's left without
cover. If she could move quickly to a team, it wouldn't be so bad, but the rules are she has to wait until her name is called. And Annabelle Orion knows the rules.

Another thing I learnt last year: it's wrong to leave a person on the edges looking in. If Annabelle has a scratch of kindness on her, she'll call Alyce's name out quickly, make the end clean. Anything else is cruel.

But Annabelle Orion is cruel. I bet she plucked the wings off flies as a child. She waits five full seconds. I count.

I catch Annabelle's eye and mouth at her. ‘Say her name. Say it.' She looks straight back at me and sighs, a sign to everyone that Alyce is worth nothing. ‘Do I have to pick her?' she asks.

I want to hit her so bad. But I don't yell or look angry. I make myself as calm as sleep. Because there's something much, much better than getting mad. And that's getting Annabelle.

‘Don't worry, Alyce,' I say while we wait for the game to start. ‘She'll pay.'

‘Gracie, it doesn't matter. It's not important.'

‘Yes it is,' I answer. ‘You're important.'

I'm not great at basketball. But I'm good. On the soccer field the ball belongs to me. Bought and paid for. On the court it's mine on loan and I'm a little behind in the payments. But I have speed. I have determination. And today I have what Annabelle Orion doesn't. I have the ball.

I shadow her the whole game. Every time someone passes I'm there first. I'm playing my own form of extreme sports – Extreme Orion Humiliation.

‘She's not letting me have the ball,' Annabelle complains to the teacher halfway through.

‘That's the point,' Mrs Tunnisi answers. ‘She doesn't have to.'

I keep it up the whole game, even though there's a stitch sewn tight across my middle. Even though I'm sweating harder than Corelli, the worst player on our soccer team, on a bad day. I want to send Annabelle a message she can't miss: mess with Alyce, and you mess with me.

About five minutes before the end of the game Annabelle decides I'm not going to win without a fight. Someone passes to her and she starts running. I'm a step behind her the whole way. If she makes it, Alyce will have lost. I grit my teeth and slam my feet at the ground. She slams hers harder. I reach out to grab the ball but she's too quick. I trip and slide along the ground, collecting stones in my skin on the way.

Annabelle shoots at the ring. Everyone stops. I catch sight of Alyce, faded in the background while everyone else is colour. I find the last scrap of energy left in my legs and I leap. I'm in time to tap the ball once. It spins round the edges, licking the lip of the hoop. It circles twice. And drops out.

‘And that,' Flemming says on the way off the court, ‘is why I don't make Faltrain mad anymore.'

Annabelle snarls at me as I walk past. I wave back at her.

‘No need to thank me,' I say to Alyce as we walk towards the change room. She gives me that funny little half smile of hers.

That's another reason my job this year won't be easy. Sometimes I wonder exactly what it would take to make Alyce Fuller really happy.

Mum used to say, ‘Marty, good soccer players can read their team-mates' minds. They can anticipate their every move.' But then my mum was never around to meet Faltrain.
Martin Knight

‘Heard about your basketball game today,' Martin says when I get to his place after school.

‘Annabelle had it coming.'

‘I reckon she did . . .'

I can hear the ‘But . . .' dangling from his lips. ‘But what, Martin? Say it.'

‘You ever think maybe stuff like that doesn't help Alyce?'

‘I humiliated Annabelle today. How's that not helping?'

‘I reckon you need to let her stand up for herself, that's all.'

‘She doesn't though. That's the thing. She lets Annabelle treat her like a loser.'

‘From what I hear, Faltrain, people thought Alyce was a loser today for another reason besides Annabelle.'

‘You mean I made her look like a loser? I helped her. Annabelle'll think twice before she lays into Alyce again.'

‘That's not the way she works and you know it. Orion gives Alyce a hard time because she knows how much you hate it.'

‘I do hate it. And you know what else I hate?'

‘I have a feeling you're about to tell me.'

‘You. And everyone else who stands back and lets Annabelle do whatever she likes to the little people.'

‘Not so long ago you were picking on the little people yourself.'

‘You think I'm like Annabelle Orion?'

‘That's not what I said.'

‘That's exactly what you said.' I turn my back on him.

‘Come on, Faltrain. I was only trying to help.'

So was I, you idiot, I think as I walk away, but does anyone thank me?

I know what Martin would have done if he'd been there today – he'd have stood back like he always does. He's been different since we came home from the Championships. I thought we'd be closer this year but we're not. He's quiet; thinking about his mum all the time, and how she left them. No one in the Knight family talks about her leaving, not Martin's little sister, Karen, not his dad. I wonder sometimes if they all agreed to lock her memory out one day, or if it happened slowly, like a door closing and clicking shut.

A few months ago he and I watched this television show about a woman who'd left her family. Martin had the remote and I kept expecting him to switch the channel, but he didn't. He sat through it, right to the end.

After it'd finished I wanted to say something to make the air breathable again. It went into my mouth and clogged my lungs like wool. Martin's the only one who can make me feel like that. I worry about Mum and Dad, and Alyce and Jane, but I don't feel what they're feeling, like I do with Martin.

‘Do you want to talk about it?' I asked.

‘Talk about what?'

What did he think I meant, who was going to win the World Cup? ‘Your mum, Martin.'

‘I told you before, there's nothing to say.'

Call me crazy, but if my mum had left me, you can bet I'd have plenty to say. Like, why did she leave, and when did she think she'd be back, and was this some sort of midlife crisis like Dad had last year?

Martin barely talks about his mum at all, though. He says he doesn't need to. He reminds me of that movie about the cyclones, the one where the wind is spinning cows and cars in the air, and the people in the town think they're safe because all of a sudden everything's quiet.

Only they're not safe. Any idiot can see they're right in the middle of the storm. There's a huge cow coming their way and they're cooking dinner or taking the rubbish out. ‘It's the unexpected cow that'll kill you,' Jane said after we'd watched it, and she was right. A storm like that only circles for so long. And then it hits, ripping everything in its way to ribbons.

The last time Martin really spoke about his mum was on the way back from the Championships. It was nearly night and I was sleepy and he talked so low I almost couldn't hear him over the hum of the engine. ‘She loved soccer, Faltrain. She said the game reminded her of life. “People weaving in and out of each other, Marty, all looking to get the same thing, all desperate for it.” '

‘What are they desperate for?' I asked, but I fell asleep before he answered and I haven't asked him about it since. I thought on that bus ride that things would be better for Martin when he got back, but I don't think that they are. Mr Knight might be trying, but from what I can see, he's not trying hard enough.

Martin's different on the field, too. Even Coach can see it. He doesn't have the edge anymore, like he's sitting back and waiting for someone to give him the ball. ‘You're playing like a girl,' I said to him in the off-season games.

‘You'd want to watch who you're calling a girl, Faltrain,' he answered, and kept packing his stuff into his bag.

‘You know what I mean. You've lost something out there.'

‘And what's that, Faltrain?'

I didn't answer. I couldn't say he'd lost a part of himself. What good would that do unless I could tell him how to get it back? Martin's mum took a piece of him when she left all those years ago, but for a long time the hole in Martin was too small to see. For some reason this year it's getting bigger. And it doesn't look like his mum is coming back to mend it any time soon.

Coach made him switch positions with Maiden halfway through the off-season games, so now he's in goal. ‘It's an important position, Knight,' Coach said when he announced it at practice, but we all knew. So did Martin. He's played soccer most of his life; he knows it's a comedown. Right from the start Martin has been the one everybody looks up to. He gets the ball and passes it so someone can take the perfect shot. He plays underneath the team, keeping it afloat.

At least he did.

‘Goalie protects the team from attack, Faltrain,' he said to me the day Coach made the switch. ‘It's a key position.' And he bent down to tighten his laces, even though they didn't need it.

It is, but not when you're stuck there because you're playing worse than Corelli.

‘We can train together, Martin. Prove to Coach you should have your old position back,' I said on the way home that night.

‘Faltrain, I told you, I want to be in goal. Just leave it.'

That's how most of our conversations end, these days. I try to talk to him and he says, ‘Leave it, Faltrain'. But if he keeps leaving things all over the place and never bothers to pick them up, there'll be bits of him all over Melbourne. I'll only have half a boyfriend. If I'm going to have that, I want the half that passes to me in the midfield.

‘Sometimes you have to wait until a person is ready to talk, baby,' Dad said when I told him about Martin.

‘I don't want to wait. I want him to be as mad as I am that Coach stuck him in goal. Something happened after he got back from the Championships and I want to know what it is.'

‘That's like reading the last page of a book first. Would you do that?'

‘I always do that.'

Dad looked at me like I was a criminal. ‘Gracie, the last page doesn't mean anything unless you know how the character arrived there. You have to let Martin tell his story in his own time. If you don't do that, you won't understand it, anyway.'

I understand that Martin's trapped in goal, like he's trapped every day. Sometimes he's cooking dinner for his dad and Karen and me and there are lines of shadow across his face, like I'm staring at him through the bars of a cage. I want to break it open and force him out. But it's his mum who has the key.

Even when he doesn't mention her, she's there in everything he does. She's in all the things he remembers about soccer. She's in his heart, and if he doesn't talk about her, she'll get too big to fit. She'll force her way. And that's when things will get messy.

I know because until I fixed things with Dad last year, I felt the same way. I thought about him all the time, how much I
missed him. Everything good I did I imagined he was there watching. And everything bad that happened I wondered what he would say to make it better.

Things aren't perfect now that Dad's back. Sometimes he and Mum fight for days and days. And then sometimes they don't talk to each other at all. They think I don't notice how they stop speaking when I walk into the room, but I do. I see their arms folded across their chests and not around each other.

Last year, when Dad was away, he did something to change the weather in our house. Mum can be told a million times it isn't going to rain, but she always carries her umbrella. On those days when they fight I feel it in my bones; a winter ache, like wind slicing across me on the soccer field.

‘Gracie, baby,' Dad said one time when it was really bad, ‘we're fighting for the other person, not with them.'

‘You're not leaving again, then?'

‘I will never leave you. You're the only spot on the map worth visiting. It's hard for you to understand, I know, but your mum and I are arguing because we're scared. She's afraid I'll leave and I'm afraid she'll never trust me to stay.'

‘So tell her that.'

‘Hearing something and believing it are two different things. Your mother will trust me again, but she has to find her own way.'

‘And what if that never happens?' I asked.

‘It will.'

Dad's a big believer in fate. According to him, the two of them were destined to be together because Mum hit him in the nuts with a tennis ball.

‘Your dad has confused fate with tragedy, Faltrain,' Jane says.

‘I hit him in the balls on purpose,' Mum says.

‘Whether she hit him there on purpose or not,' Alyce says, ‘their love could still be predetermined.'

I'm on Mum's side. Fate needs a little help sometimes, and if she was the one to get things started, then Dad has every right to get in there and give it some help to keep it rolling. I figure it's time he started lobbing some balls in her direction, you know, hit her with some good times, remind her about their beginning, when they first started dating.

If he does that, then Mum might start to trust him again like I do. Having dad back makes me feel warm and safe, like being inside on a night when the windows are full of frost.

I want Martin to feel that way, too.

‘Faltrain,' he said when I explained it to him, ‘my parents are different. Mum doesn't love Dad anymore.'

‘I wasn't saying they should get back together. I meant that if your mum's not here she can't fix things with you.'

‘She stopped loving me as well,' he said, and I could tell he believed it.

‘How can that be?' It was like saying there wouldn't be a sun when we woke up in the morning. He pushed his hands further into his pockets and shrugged. ‘It just is,' he said. And after that he walked a little faster.

It doesn't make me feel better, getting angry at him tonight. Apart from winning at soccer, there are only two other real buzzes I get, ones that make my blood hot like I've kicked a goal. Martin's smile. Martin's kiss.

‘Well, Faltrain,' as Jane would say, ‘there's no way you're scoring a goal tonight.'

‘Mum,' I ask when I get home, ‘would a mother ever stop loving her kid?'

‘Is this a question about you?'

‘No. Martin, mainly.'

‘I can't answer for his mum, love. Only she can do that.'

‘Well you, then. Could you ever stop loving me?'

‘Never, Gracie Faltrain. I will love you until I'm dead and buried. And then I'll love you from the grave.'

‘How could Martin's mum leave him then?'

‘Maybe she knew that if she stayed, she'd lose herself, and then there'd be nothing to give to Martin anyway.'

‘But that could never happen to you, right?'

‘That would never happen. Without you I am lost.'

‘And Dad?'

She hesitates for just a second, but I see it in her eyes. ‘He's lost without us, too.'

Dad and I are already toasty, but I guess Mum's taking a little longer to heat up. She'll trust him eventually, though. It's like when your feet are ice and you can't sleep. But then you wake up in the middle of the night and they're warm.

Mum and Dad are lost without each other, just like Martin is lost without his mum. I want to find a way to fix things for people this year. I want clear skies and sun and soccer. I want another winning season. For everyone.