Sidelines, page 9
Carmen holds her breath as Alex sends the ball down the wing towards Katerina. She boots the ball down the line and strains after it.
Viktor thrusts a hand in the air and sprints through, yelling: ‘Cross! Cross!’
Katerina should pass, Carmen knows it. But now they will see how good she is.
Viktor shouts again, but Katerina ignores him and takes a shot. The ball flies harmlessly wide.
Viktor marches up to her, man bun jerking. ‘You should have passed. I’m the striker.’
Katerina turns away.
It’s a while before she gets another opportunity. Braedon keeps the ball away from her, deliberately directing play down the other side. Katerina shouts at him, but he smiles and turns his back on her. Carmen’s chest burns.
Then Noah takes a header and bounces the ball forward to Alex, who sends a through ball to Katerina. This time she’s in a better position, not too far from the goal. She chases the ball down, dribbles a few strides, then takes aim.
Carmen lifts her foot in the air. The sound of boot meeting ball is a solid kind of music. The ball is in the net before it leaves Katerina’s foot.
Carmen shoots her arms up, heat jetting through her. It’s a good omen. The very first goal of the season. She wishes Ilya was here to see it, but he’s at the Minotaurs grounds, watching Kosta’s game and tending the barbecue.
Katerina walks back to the centre with a long stride, head held high, smile as wide as the sky. Carmen remembers that feeling. Like walking on clouds. It’s why you play football.
But after that, it’s as if someone has flicked Katerina’s off-switch. The boys eat up the pitch with fast strides, but she looks flat-footed and floundering. She stops running, hangs behind her defender where the team can’t get the ball to her. She’s a study of absence. A spent firecracker. Carmen wants to set a bomb under her.
‘Come on, Katerina,’ Dominik shouts. ‘Back into attack mode.’
Katerina scowls, and Carmen senses trouble. Waiting for a throw-in, Katerina shoves the defender with her shoulder, and when he tells her to get lost, she shouts at him to fuck off. The referee reprimands her for swearing and pays a free kick against her.
‘Hey, girlie,’ a Stallions parent shouts. ‘Play the ball, not the man.’
When play resumes, Katerina shoves the boy again and he flops onto the grass. The ref pays another free kick and gives Katerina a warning. Carmen wills her to find control, but Katerina won’t leave the defender alone. She stomps on his feet, kicks his shins, tugs his jersey, stumbles into him. When he goes down again, the ref pulls her aside. Calm down, Katerina, Carmen breathes, please calm down.
Katerina stands with hands on hips, arguing with the ref, all the wrong body language. If Ilya was here, he’d be furious with her. He’s strict about respect for referees, especially at junior level when most of the refs are kids themselves, learning for the future. He hates the way coaches and parents have a go. If adults don’t teach respect, who will? Frankie used to ref but gave up because he was sick of all the abuse.
But Katerina isn’t thinking about any of that today. She snipes at the ref and he reaches for his pocket, draws out a yellow card, holds it up. ‘What?’ she shrieks. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
Carmen has to swallow the hot shout in her throat. Katerina was a bit rough, but those Stallions play rough too. It must have been the arguing that did it. She should have known better.
‘Katerina! Cut the backchat!’ Dominik calls.
He beckons to her. Is he taking her off? It’s too soon! Not even half-time.
Katerina glowers and turns away. Dominik shouts at her again. ‘Katerina. Come here.’
Audrey is waiting to go on, holding out her bib to Katerina who refuses to take it. She stumps from the field and throws herself on the bench, folds her arms across her chest. Audrey stands in front of her, trying to hand the bib over.
‘I don’t want the fucking bib,’ Katerina snarls.
Audrey drops the bib on Katerina’s new boots, then runs onto the field while Katerina remains on the bench, hunched and miserable.
Carmen’s chest aches, but what can she do? Katerina will be off for the rest of the game.
Two more weeks pass, and Katerina doesn’t improve. Carmen doesn’t understand it. Saturday games become a pattern. Katerina never finds her rhythm, fades early, then Dominik puts her on the bench. At home, she’s grumpy and she yawns all the time, and is more interested in her phone than practising football. She doesn’t even seem worn out after games. On Saturday afternoons, she goes out walking to stretch her legs. If she had exerted herself properly on the field, she should be too exhausted to move.
Carmen worries constantly. In bed one night, she talks to Ilya about it—they always discuss everything. ‘I feed her good food,’ she says. ‘Plenty of meat for protein.’
‘Maybe it’s her hormones,’ he says.
‘Do you think she should go on the pill?’
He shrugs. ‘Might be a good idea. You always said it evened you out a bit.’
The medical practice where Carmen works as a receptionist is on the third floor of a multi-level building. It’s tidy, but dull, which is what you want in a waiting room—it’s not meant to be fun. That’s why you have a magazine rack in the corner and a box of indestructible toys to keep small children occupied. Nobody likes screaming kids in the waiting room, yet there are times when the world seems full of them, and the din rings in your head and you can’t block it out, no matter what you do.
Today is one of those days when an endless stream of trouble keeps walking in. Angry drop-ins who shout loudly when Carmen can’t find an appointment because the schedule is already full. The undisciplined children of permissive parents who think their offspring rule the world and that everyone should dote on them. A spaced-out aggressive drug addict who can’t find his Medicare card and refuses to pay.
Between taking payments and booking appointments, and answering the phone that hardly stops ringing, Carmen searches on the internet. She types in: Low energy in teenage girls. The screen blinks a few times then chronic fatigue pops up. She reads the symptoms, but it doesn’t sound like Katerina. What about anaemia? Now that Katerina has her period, maybe she needs more iron.
‘What are you looking at?’ asks Pat, the other receptionist, returning from her morning tea break. She peers over Carmen’s shoulder, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke on her breath.
Carmen offers her a mint. ‘I’m looking up tiredness in teenagers,’ she says. ‘My daughter seems very worn out lately.’
‘How old is she?’ Pat asks—she’s the resident expert on teens, having shepherded three girls through adolescence.
‘Nearly fourteen.’
‘They’re all tired at that age,’ Pat says. ‘They don’t sleep enough. On their phones all night.’
It’s true that Katerina is always on her phone. Maybe Carmen needs some new rules about phones in bedrooms.
She decides to talk to Katerina that evening. Ilya is out at the club watching an EPL replay with some mates, Frankie is at football training, and Kosta is in his room on his computer. In the lounge room, Katerina is lying on the couch with Zorro, scrolling on her phone. Carmen sits opposite in an armchair. ‘How are you liking it in this team so far?’ she asks. ‘Are you enjoying it?’
Katerina barely looks up. ‘It’s okay. I like Viktor, but some of the other boys are wankers. Especially Braedon.’
Carmen has noticed Braedon hassling Katerina at training, standing over her, niggling her during drills. The hot look on Katerina’s face whenever she speaks to him. ‘What does he do to you?’ she asks.
‘He says shit to me all the time.’
‘Like what?’
‘Just crap about girls. Don’t worry, I can handle it.’
‘Is everything else okay? School? Friends?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘I don’t know. You just seem tired lately.’
‘I’m not sleeping well.’ Katerina continues to stare at her phone.
Perhaps Pat is right. Carmen can’t believe she didn’t think of it. ‘How about you leave your phone in the kitchen tonight so you can get a proper sleep?’ she suggests.
This hits a nerve. Katerina glares at her, chin jutting. ‘No way. It’s my phone.’
‘You need a break. All you do is scroll, scroll, scroll. Don’t you have any homework?’
‘Nope.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘No. You don’t leave your phone in the kitchen!’ Katerina hides her phone behind her back.
Carmen doesn’t like that defiant look. ‘Give it here or I’ll have to confiscate it.’
‘No.’
Now Carmen has a point to prove, so she recruits Kosta, who lifts Zorro off the couch and wrestles Katerina to the floor, trying to steal her phone away. The tussle starts in the lounge room and ends up in the kitchen, Katerina clinging tightly to her phone and striving to keep it out of Kosta’s reach. Eventually, she loses her grip and the phone flies from her hand, hitting the bench with a crack.
Kosta grabs it and glances sheepishly at Carmen. The screen is smashed.
‘You fucked my phone!’ Katerina screams at him. ‘You have to buy me a new one.’ She snatches the phone away from him and a sliver of glass slices her thumb. Blood drips onto the floor.
Carmen has to take her to hospital for stitches.
Hand wrapped in a bandage, Katerina has to miss training all week and also the Saturday game. But that doesn’t mean she can stay home. Even though it’s starting to get cold and dark in the evenings, she still has to go and stand beside Dominik and watch the others.
Carmen can’t bear seeing her hanging around, unable to do anything, not even pick up balls because it might hurt her hand. In a fit of guilt, she buys a new phone—which makes Katerina happy. But when she starts training again the next week, it’s the same lethargic, lacklustre performance. Carmen doesn’t know what to do with her. Soon Dominik might lose patience, and what then? The player list has to be finalised in two weeks.
On Saturday morning, when Carmen pulls up in the car park at the Minotaurs home grounds, a crowd of cockatoos bursts from the pine trees, shrieking and flapping. One swoops so low she sees its yellow crest and the underside of its wings through the windscreen. It banks and lands on a branch up high and gets on with the job of shredding pine cones.
Katerina disappears into the change rooms and Carmen heads to the canteen. The Under 16s have just finished and there’s a rush on food and drinks. She joins the scramble behind the counter, handing out jelly snakes, chips, bags of lollies, soft drinks and coffees. Sausages are in demand too, so she grabs an extra tray from the fridge and ferries it out to the barbecue.
Jonica is standing nearby, drinking coffee and talking to Miles. They always seem to be together. Is something going on there? Where’s Ben? Carmen wonders.
While she rips the plastic wrap off the tray and starts piling sausages onto the hotplate, she listens to their conversation.
‘Audrey’s still waiting to find out if she’s made the team,’ Jonica is saying. ‘She’s been playing every week because other kids have been sick or injured, but it’d be nice for her to have some confirmation.’
‘You mean, she’s not in?’ Miles asks.
‘Not yet.’
‘Poor kid! Is she playing today?’
‘Yes, but I’m a bit nervous about it. My nephew Tommy plays for the Bears and their coach is really awful. He screams at the refs and the kids.’
Carmen has heard about the Bears’ coach, Luka. How he gets under everyone’s skin and intimidates the refs so you can never get a fair line call. How he’s been suspended several times for verbal abuse.
‘I know,’ Miles says. ‘He’s sexist too. Last year Noah and I arrived early for a game, and there was a girls’ team on before us and Luka was shouting at them that they shouldn’t even be there, and to get out of the way so his boys could warm up.’
‘He’s appalling,’ Jonica says. ‘I’ve heard him tell a young ref that he was effing useless. No wonder they have trouble getting refs at their club. I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my kids.’
Carmen takes the empty tray back to the canteen then goes to find Dominik. He’s in the change room, scribbling in his notebook. ‘Where have you been?’ he grunts. ‘And where’s Braedon?’
‘Isn’t he here yet?’
‘No. And I’m sick of it. If he’s late again, he can sit on the bench. He hasn’t been to training all week.’
Outside, Kyle has the players doing shuttle runs between the sidelines. Usually, Dominik likes to get involved with warm-ups, but he seems distracted, staring down the field. Carmen follows his gaze to where the Bears are warming up under the direction of a short, stocky man. It must be Luka. He’s older than she expected, with slate-grey hair, and, even from here, she can hear him yelling at his players.
Beside her, Dominik tenses. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he mutters.
Carmen notices a boy among the Bears who has good skills and is quick on the ball. There’s a reckless wildness about him that she recognises. The way he moves. His confident grin. Braedon!
She turns to see if the Minotaurs have noticed him too, and they’re all staring down the field, murmuring.
‘What’s he doing with the Bears?’ Katerina exclaims.
‘Fuckwit!’ Viktor snorts. ‘He’s switched teams.’
‘Traitor!’
Braedon sees them looking, and laughs, flips the finger.
‘I’ll get him for this,’ Viktor snarls, body clenched and knotted as if he’s about to run down the field.
‘No!’ Dominik barks, nostrils flaring. ‘Wait here. I’m going to have a word with Luka.’
This will only stir things up further, Carmen is sure of it. But what can she do? Dominik is already strutting off.
Luka strides to meet him and they face off like riled dogs. Dominik is bigger and heavier, whereas Luka is more muscular. They lean towards each other, gesticulating with their hands as they argue.
The Minotaurs watch, transfixed.
‘Keep the kids moving, Kyle,’ Carmen says.
He gives her a nod then growls at the players to get their minds on the job or get beaten. Galvanised, they speed through their warm-up like scatty rabbits.
Eventually Dominik storms back and calls everyone in. ‘Braedon’s signed up with the Bears. He’s gone for good.’
Viktor spits on the ground and an angry grumble runs through the team.
‘I understand why you’re mad,’ Dominik says. ‘I’m pissed off too. But listen to me!’ He glares at them, rolls his hand into a fist and holds it up to them. ‘Don’t get mad, get even! If we play badly, he wins, whatever way you look at it.’
He sends them out for a drill and they work with a ferocity and unity Carmen hasn’t seen in them before.
When the game begins, they go out hard and determined, all scowls and hostile body language. But Braedon is a fizzing stick of dynamite, bouncing around the field, ricocheting off his old team mates, laughing as he smashes into them. He mocks the girls, especially Katerina. He taunts Viktor.
Eventually Viktor loses it. When the ball comes his way, instead of attacking it, he charges after Braedon and pulls him down. Braedon writhes on the ground, moaning as if he’s been stabbed. The young ref falls for it; Viktor cops a yellow and Braedon earns a free kick.
Braedon smirks and belts the ball down the field, then gallops after it with that long, loose stride of his. When the Minotaurs try to stop him, he knocks them aside: Alex, then Katerina and then Audrey. He’s too rough—anyone can see it.
Dominik yells at the ref and at Luka, but nothing happens—no one reprimands him.
Fuming, Carmen searches for Ilya. He’s just arrived after Kosta’s game, and he’s further down the sideline, watching with hands in pockets and shoulders bunched. She catches his eye and he lifts his hands in the air, shakes his head in disgust.
Braedon smacks into Katerina and she goes down with a crunch, crouches for a moment and grimaces before standing up again.
Viktor grabs Braedon by the jersey and hisses at him, ‘Leave her alone.’
‘Fuck off!’ Braedon jeers. ‘This is a boys’ game. If she can’t hack it, she should leave.’
Viktor reaches for his throat, but Dominik yells at him to stop, so he turns slowly away.
Katerina should have a free kick, but the ref gives the ball to the Bears, and a kid called Tommy passes to Braedon, who dashes through the field and takes a shot on goal. The Minotaurs goalie fumbles and the ball rolls into the net. The Bears go crazy. The Minotaurs drop their heads.
After that, Braedon starts to hunt Katerina. With a leery grin, he knocks her off the ball, and she falls hard on her knees then staggers up again.
The ref calls play on.
‘Ref,’ Ilya shouts. ‘That’s a foul. It should be a Minotaurs free kick.’ He never calls out; he must be livid.
Carmen turns to Dominik. ‘Someone has to stop him.’
Dominik is already crimson from shouting. ‘Ref,’ he roars. ‘Ref! That’s not on. He’s hurting my players.’
Braedon slams into Katerina again, and she fends him off with boots and elbows.
‘Go, Katerina!’ Carmen shouts, touching her crucifix.
Now Braedon shifts onto Audrey. She’s been playing well today and that makes her a target. Carmen doesn’t want her to do better than Katerina but doesn’t want her to get hurt either. Fortunately, she’s fast and slippery and miraculously shies away from him. But he shadows her everywhere, leaning over her, bounding around her like a cat toying with prey.
Carmen sees Ben pacing the sideline like a bodyguard, shouting at the ref. ‘That kid needs to come off before someone gets injured!’ For once, she is in complete agreement with him.
At last, the ref pulls Braedon up and gives him a warning.
When play resumes, instead of staying forward in his usual position, Viktor roves among the defenders. As Braedon tries to break towards goal, Viktor tackles him and boots the ball over the back line.
