Chapter 31: This Misery Of Uncertainty

My conversation with Eric cemented my determination. I knew it was useless to try to contact Kayla before school let out for the summer, so I gritted my teeth, backed off from harassing my team, and concentrated on my own soccer skills. I fell back into a routine that had helped me every time in the past. I went out solo, just me and the ball, working and running and sweating.

One afternoon, I stopped by the practice field at school and watched Mr. Neville working with the varsity girls. I had on a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and I sat in the bleachers with my soccer ball between my feet. There were a few other guys watching, probably boyfriends of some of the girls, but I stayed a little apart from them. I didn't want to draw any attention to myself. I just wanted to breathe in the ambiance of the competitive game again and watch my old high school coach practice his art.

I should have known I couldn't stay anonymous. I saw Coach Simonsen, the assistant coach, glance up in my direction. Shortly after, I saw Ashley Horvath look my way, followed by a few other girls. Obviously, I was becoming a distraction, so I got up, picked up my soccer ball, and headed down the bleachers. It was time for me to leave.

I didn't get very far, though. Just as I got to the waist-high chain link fence that separated the bleachers from the field, Coach Neville waved to me.

"Sean!" he called, gesturing for my attention. "Come here!"

I waved back and shook my head. I didn't want to interrupt his session. He would have none of it, though.

"Mr. Porter! If you please!" He began walking toward me, looking insistent. I nodded reluctantly and vaulted myself over the fence to the track so I could meet him halfway.

"Sean! It's great to see you," he said enthusiastically as he held out his hand for me to shake.

"It's good to see you, too, Coach," I said. "How's the girl's team this year?" I knew the boy's team had had another very successful year, winning the conference again. They had lost in the semifinals of the state tournament, though, falling short on their try at a three-peat. Jorge and Weasel both made the All-State Team selection, however, giving Jorge in particular a huge boost in his college scouting reports. He had accepted a scholarship to Texas A & M for the fall, allowing him to move back to his favorite part of the country.

"They're doing well," he said as he steered me toward the field. "We miss having Tessa in the net, though."

"I'm sure you do," I said. "She was a bulldog in there." Tessa was in Europe until the first of July, and then she was joining us as an instructor. She was also on a scholarship, at Kansas State, but she was backup her freshman year to their senior keeper. I was confident she would win the starting position her sophomore season.

He walked me up to stand with him in front of his team. "We have a surprise visitor," he said. "Sean, I believe you know most of these players, right?"

In truth, I knew about half of them. The sophomores and the couple of freshmen on the team were new to me, just as I was no more than a school legend to them. I said hello to Ashley, the sister of my former mentor, Skip Horvath, and several girls looked at her a little jealously.

One shy girl, standing off to the side, looked familiar. She was watching me avidly, like the other younger members of the team. I turned to her.

"I know you," I said. "Don't I?"

She blushed and lowered her eyes. "Yes," she said quietly, a shy smile just visible as she looked down.

"Of course you do," said Coach Neville. "She's..."

"I'm Tracy," the girl said.

I peered at her. "Tracy? Tracy Evanson?" I couldn't believe the change in her since the last time I had seen her.

"Yes," she confirmed. She looked up at me, obviously pleased at my attention.

"Wow," I said. Tracy turned a bright red, and some of the other girls laughed. "You've certainly changed for the better," I told her.

"Thank you," she said. "A lot of it was your doing, you know."

"Me?" That caught me by surprise. "How did I help you to change?"

She laughed, and I could immediately see she enjoyed laughing. She seemed like a happy young girl, with hardly a care in the world, a far cry from the direction she had been following. She and Tara Jacks had been on a dangerously promiscuous path at one time. Tara was paying the price for her reckless behavior, but it looked like Tracy had learned her lesson before it was too late.

"Well, at the time I didn't think of it as doing me a favor," she admitted. "But when you told my brother Mike about..." She glanced around nervously, as if she didn't want her teammates to know about her troubled past. School is such a small community, though, I didn't think news about Tracy would be much of a surprise to any of the other girls.

"It was Mikey who was the catalyst, then. Not me."

"Nice try," she said. "Mike was the instrument of change, you could say. But it was you who put it all in motion."

I glanced around at the other people standing around, listening with fascination. "Uh ... maybe we can talk about this some other time," I said.

"Sure," she said with a smile. "But thank you, just the same."

"Okay," said Coach Neville, clapping his hands to get everybody's attention. "Let's wrap it up for this afternoon. Two laps, and then to the showers."

Groans, just like I remembered them from my high school playing days, followed Coach's pronouncement. Nobody liked running laps. Before he could shoo them off around the track, though, Ashley spoke up.

"Coach? How about a last scrimmage instead? With Sean playing?"

"No, no," I started, but I was drowned out by a female chorus of pleading.

"Yeah!"

"Let's do it!"

"Please, Coach?"

Coach Neville held up his hands in resignation. "All right, all right," he said. "Everybody on the field for a fifteen minute game." He looked sharply at me. "That's okay, isn't it, Mr. Porter?"

I couldn't help but laugh. "Sure," I said.

"Take the right defensive spot," he said. "And you are limited to using only your left foot to pass."

"No problem," I said. I grabbed a red practice jersey and pulled it on as I trotted out onto the field. I was as proficient with my left foot as I was with my right foot, a skill I had worked hard on over the past couple of years. Coach didn't see the results so much while I played for him, but our flowing assignments at Florida gave me more opportunities to use those skills. I was looking forward to surprising him. I was coming to realize that the best coaches, people such as Martin Neville and Pickett Cropper, were seldom caught by surprise, and I knew this was a rare opportunity for me to do just that.

As I trotted out onto the practice field, Tracy was running beside me. I glanced at her and burst out in a wide grin, just for the joy of it. God, I love playing this game, I said to myself.

That afternoon's activities kept me in a good mood for days. The girls and I had a great time playing, and I kept my promise and only used my left foot. I could tell Coach was chagrined, however, when he saw me working the ball. I even borrowed a page from Frenchy's book of tricks and juggled the ball from my head to my knee to my shoulder to my chest and back to my knee again, all while I was tracking upfield. Sure, I was showing off for the high school girls, but it was still fun. I was just glad Frenchy was nowhere to be seen, because he would have been tempted to deliver his own Sloaning on me.

After the scrimmage, after Coach had ushered the girls back to the locker room, I sat on the bleachers with Coach Neville and Coach Simonsen and told them about some of the changes the Gators were working on during the off-season.