Maverick Mania (2 page)

Dad pointed to his left eye. “She turned around quick and punched me hard.”

That was about the only part of the story I liked.

“All that movement scared Larry, and he burrowed deeper into the dark safety under her jacket. I tried to get hold of him, but she thought I was grabbing at her again. So she punched me again. Larry took advantage of the confusion to wrap himself around her waist. She stood up and screamed and knocked me over. That's when she realized I wasn't touching her. In a panic, she plowed forward through the people below her. The next thing I knew, she was on the soccer field.”

“Oh, my,” Mom said.

“‘Oh, my?'” I echoed. “She disrupted the game for ten minutes. Running around, she nearly knocked out five players. When she saw the snake's head as it looped up
her back and over her shoulder, she fainted. And all you can say is ‘oh, my'?”

Dad nodded and added, “Not to mention how badly it scared Larry. He threw up all over her. Poor snake.”

Mom nodded calmly, as though none of this was a big deal. Compared to other times, maybe it wasn't. Dad's classroom zoo used to include tarantulas. They escaped—two days before a PTA meeting in the school. They were found...in a teacher's purse...during the PTA meeting...as the teacher reached inside for peppermints.

Mom turned to me. “Matt, you haven't told me how the game went. Did you win?”

“Tied,” I said. “No score. Even after overtime.”

“That's a bigger surprise than hearing about Larry deciding to explore some stranger's tracksuit,” she said. “Caleb didn't get even one goal?”

“Caleb wasn't there,” I said. Our leading scorer had missed the entire game.

“Is he sick?” she asked in concern. She knew as well as I did that only a broken
leg would keep Caleb Riggins away; he would just as soon stop breathing as miss a soccer game.

“That's the weird thing,” I said. “Coach called his house and didn't get an answer, not even voice mail. I sure hope Caleb shows up for tomorrow's game. If we don't win these early games, we may not make the tournament finals.”

“Coach didn't even get voice mail?” Mom asked. A familiar crazy gleam showed in her eyes. I called it her Sherlock Holmes gleam. Like the one she wore when we followed a car from a gas station here all the way to Las Vegas, about three hours away. Mom was convinced the girl in the backseat kept waving at us because she had been kidnapped. That might not have been so bad, expect Leontine and I were in the car too, and we needed to get to school.

“The coach called the Rigginses' house and didn't even get voice mail?” she repeated. “Maybe this is something I should look into. You know his mother
never leaves the house. Plus, Caleb's the league's leading scorer, and you guys were expected to sweep your games. This is a big tournament. Maybe somebody on one of the other teams kidnapped him and his family.”

I groaned. “Come on, Mom. Caleb just missed one game. Please don't start anything, all right?”

“But Matt—”

“No, Mom. Please. N-O. No.” I let out a deep breath. “I mean, didn't Dad and Larry do enough damage already?

“Besides,” I added, “there's no reason to worry. This is Lake Havasu City. Nothing ever happens here. I'm sure Caleb will be at tomorrow morning's game.”

I was, of course, very wrong. About Lake Havasu City. And about Caleb.

Saturday morning, I stood behind the sideline at midfield, holding the ball over my head with both hands. This was a crucial throw-in. We were down by one goal, with only twenty minutes left in the game.

While losing the game would not knock us out of the tournament, it wouldn't help our chances. The top eight high school teams in the southwest states—including California and Texas—were here for the round-robin tournament. After every team
had played every other team once, the top two would face off in the finals. The winning team would go on to a national tournament, to be televised on ESPN.

I scanned the field. Our team wore blue jerseys. Theirs wore red. No matter how hard I looked, though, I would not see Caleb Riggins. He had missed this game too.

I looked for an open blue jersey. It wasn't easy. Red clogged the middle, taking away a direct attack. Red players danced around, covering our blue.

I faked a throw, then saw Steve Martindale break loose on the other side of the field.

Careful, I told myself. Under pressure, it is too easy to make a mistake. I needed to keep both feet on the ground as I threw the ball. It might be routine in practice, but in a tournament, there is no such thing as routine.

Steve stopped, dashed forward, faked a move to the left, then spun back.

I was expecting that. Steve's my closest friend on the team. He's tall and skinny and
has red hair that hangs over his eyes, so he wears a headband when he plays.

I threw, anticipating where Steve was headed. He didn't have to break stride as the ball reached him.

I didn't just stand and watch, though. I sprinted for an open space just behind him. I knew the ball was coming back to me on a give-and-go.

It did.

I trapped it with my right foot.

I knew I had about a second before a red forward was on me.

I pretended to mishandle the ball to give him confidence. It worked. He over-committed, hoping to strip me of the ball for a clear shot at our net.

I could try my next move only because I knew Steve was ready to back me up and cut the red player off if I lost the ball.

I didn't.

I flipped the ball past the red forward and caught up with it two steps later. Now, briefly, there were ten of us against nine of them.

I kept dribbling ahead. Two reds peeled off to intercept me.

That was all I needed.

Two of my teammates were streaking for open positions upfield.

Time for a killer pass.

I knew I could catch the other team by surprise. All game I had been hitting first-touch push passes—dumping the ball off immediately with short safe passes. Not once had I shown the ability to bomb the ball.

I kept my head down, trying to fool them into believing I hadn't seen those two blue jerseys cut past their midfielders.

With a quick flick of my right foot, I served up a forty-yard cross-field pass with some left-to-right spin.

Part of making a pass like this work is knowing your teammates. A lightning-fast player will want the ball to land beyond the defenders, so he can zip past them, reach the ball first and move in to score. A big strong player might want the ball right at his feet. A tall player might want it in the
air, so he can knock it down with his chest or head.

As the ball made a banana curve through the air, high above the defenders, I knew I had laid it in perfectly.

Johnnie Rivers, coming in from the right, was a small player, tremendously quick, and he liked getting his passes ahead of him. At this moment, he had the advantage of a full sprint. The ball bounced into an open area just over their sweeper's shoulder. He tried to turn and stay with Johnnie but didn't have a chance.

Because the red defender had been between Johnnie and the goalie as I passed, Johnnie was onside when he reached the ball.

And there were only twenty steps between him and the goalie and the net.

Johnnie, still in full sprint, pushed the ball ahead slightly. He leaned into his kick and beat the goalie clean. And...hit the goalpost on the left side. The ball bounced harmlessly out of play.

Our hometown crowd groaned.

A clear breakaway. Goalie out of position. And no goal. Caleb Riggins would never have missed a chance like that.

It turned out to be the best shot we had at tying the game.

After that, nothing even came close.

We played out the final minutes, pressing hard. And they still beat us, 3–2.

We badly needed Caleb Riggins's genius scoring touch. But where was he? Why had he missed two games? Why wasn't anyone answering the phone at his house?

Coach had tried calling before and after the game. With no luck. So, with a four-hour break before our next game, I decided to go to Caleb's house myself. That would have been okay...except for the dogs.

Steve agreed to go with me. He borrowed his mom's minivan (it's better than walking), and we took off right after the game.

He drove us up McCulloch Boulevard, which winds up through the city, across and back down again. The street was named for McCulloch—as in chain saws—an industrialist who once flew over the lake and thought it might be a good place to test outboard motors. He set up a mobile home park for
the workers and later decided that it was a good place to live. He bought sixteen thousand acres of desert land on the slopes of the Mojave Mountains overlooking the lake and built a city in the desert. Lake Havasu City grew from zero people to thirty thousand in hardly any time.

What most people might know about Lake Havasu City is that the London Bridge was moved here from England. The London Bridge was taken apart brick by brick on one side of the ocean and put back together here in Lake Havasu City, where it spans a river channel.

“I can't believe Caleb missed two games,” Steve said as he concentrated on the road.

“Without even telling anyone,” I added. “Soccer is his whole life. And he knows how much we need him.”

“No kidding,” Steve said. “The Riverside Mudcats were useless this morning. We should have kicked them so bad...”

“Tournament's not over yet,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Steve answered. “But it will be soon if we don't get Caleb back.”

We stopped in front of the house. Number fifty-five on Desert Quail Drive sat at the end of the road. Like most of the houses around, it was built in a southwest adobe style and painted white to reflect the heat. And like most of the surrounding houses, the front yard wasn't grass, but gravel, dotted with desert bushes and a tall cactus. In the summer, Lake Havasu City bakes at more than one hundred degrees. Grass takes too much water.

It was a big house. A pontoon boat on a trailer filled one side of the driveway. The boat was big—a flat deck on two cigar-shaped pontoons, with a little cabin on the front to provide shade and a large outboard at the back. It even had a rubber dinghy on the back part of the deck.

Caleb's mom's car, a black Volvo, was parked beside the pontoon boat. His dad's truck, a black Blazer, was behind the Volvo.

This was a family with money. Caleb's dad ran a couple of businesses. He did not shave his head and wear Scottish kilts.

“Check the mailbox,” I told Steve as we got out of the minivan. At eleven o'clock, the morning was already getting hot, and because I was still in my soccer uniform, the sun felt good on my bare legs.

“Mailbox?” Steve asked.

“If they've been away for a couple of days, there should be plenty of mail in it.”

“None,” he said a second later.

“Strange,” I said. “And both the cars are here. I wonder why no one's answered the phone.”

We walked up the driveway.

No one answered the front door, either.

“They've got to be here,” I said. “Unless someone picked them up.”

“What if they're outside around back?” Steve asked, pushing his long hair from his eyes.

“Worth a try,” I said.

We walked around the house. And stopped in our tracks when two large
German shepherds began to bark at us from a kennel. It took us a second to realize they were locked behind the wire fence.

Steve dramatically placed his hand over his heart. “Thought I was dead.”

“Me too,” I answered. The lawn chairs were empty. The swimming pool was covered. “Safe to say there's no one back here. Unless of course, they're hiding inside and don't want to answer.”

The dogs kept barking.

“All right, all right,” I told them. “We're going.”

We started back toward the front of the house.

“Guys!”

Startled by the voice, we turned back.

“Caleb?” I answered, looking around.

“Right above you.”

We looked up and saw Caleb at his bedroom window.

“What's the matter?” I asked. “Coach has been trying like crazy to get you on the phone. We need you big time.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “It's a different game without you on the field.”

“Win last night?” Caleb asked. He had opened his window and was leaning out, wearing our team tracksuit. Caleb was medium height with blond hair. There was a gap between his front teeth, and his eyebrows always seemed arched, like he was asking a question.

“No,” Steve said. “Tied. And we lost this morning. The only good thing about the games was when a snake attacked this woman and she ran onto the field.”

“What!”

“Long story, Caleb,” I said. “Not worth listening to.” I gave him a puzzled frown. “What's up? Why'd you miss the games? Are you going to be there this afternoon?”

Caleb's face twisted with anger and grief. “I'm grounded.”

“Get real,” Steve said. “You? Goody two-shoes? Grounded?”

I elbowed Steve. On the way back, he and I would have to have a talk about this thing called tact.

“I was supposed to get all As,” Caleb said. “But I got a B-plus in science and that was it. They told me no more soccer.”

“But Caleb,” I said. “Don't your parents know how important this tournament is?”

He shrugged. Looking closer, I wondered if he had been crying. “They won't let me out of the house.”

“Like, as if you're in prison,” Steve said. “That's not right.”

A slight click reached our ears.

Caleb's jaw dropped. He pointed at the kennels.

The latch of the kennel door had somehow opened.

“Guys!” Caleb shouted. “The dogs!”

But Steve and I were already running. The dogs had pushed the gate open.