Offside!

by Diersch, Sandra

  Offside!

  Sandra Diersch

  James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers

  Toronto

  For my father,

  who knows all about being a dad.

  1

  A Few Flurries

  The ground was rock hard. Several days of frost had frozen the mud on the playing field to an icy firmness. The members of the Vancouver Burrards soccer team were doing their best to keep upright. Already their goalkeeper, Stacie Hutchins, had a nasty bruise on her elbow from an earlier fall. To make things worse, the clouds had rolled in, thick and dark, threatening the girls down below.

  “You know, the only person I ever met who actually enjoyed playing in this kind of weather was Annie. The rest of us just suffer in silence. Do I still have ten fingers?” Allison whispered to Alecia. She held out her hands, a worried frown on her face.

  “Yeah, ten of them. Tuck them under your armpits. Mom says that’s one of the warmest places on your body,” Alecia suggested. This was their first game since the Christmas lull and they were all a little out of the habit of playing in the cold. The weather had been uncharacteristically cold for Vancouver, even if it was early January.

  “It’s kind of hard to run with your hands in your armpits, don’t you think?”

  “Hey, it was just a suggestion. Do you think it will snow?” Alecia asked as the two girls made their way across the field. She glanced up at the stormy sky, frowning. That winter, Vancouver had already been struck with a snowfall that had closed schools, shut down power, and wreaked havoc on the highways and bridges. Still, Alecia loved the snow. She was always fiercely jealous when her pen pal in Ottawa sent her pictures of the huge drifts of snow that fell there.

  “It’s going to do something,” Allison muttered, taking her position. “But right now I just want to finish this game and go home and get warm.”

  The Burrards’ centre and captain, Laurie Chen, won the toss and started the second half with a quick pass to Allison on her right. Allison moved through the Spitfires’ end, controlling the ball with steely determination. The Burrards were down by a goal at the start of the second half. Since the season began five months ago, they had lost only two games — one against their longtime rivals, the Rocketeers, and one in the tournament in November, where they had placed second. Laurie had given them a stern pep talk during halftime.

  “Remember the deal we made before Christmas?” she asked them. “We’re having our best season ever and we’re going to go out with the league’s best win/loss ratio ever. That means we can’t lose more than two games the rest of the season. We’re only down by one. Let’s focus and take this! Let’s mow ’em down!”

  Laurie’s words ran through Alecia’s head as she caught a pass and ran down the field, avoiding two Spitfire defenders. Her quick glance around the field found Rianne open and Alecia passed the ball just as she was tackled by a Spitfire forward. Rianne fell hard passing the ball to Allison and got up slowly, rubbing her thigh, her face a grimace. But in another second she was cheering as Allison sent the ball flying past the goalkeeper and into the net. The score was tied.

  “Way to go, team!” their coach, Jeremy, called from the sidelines. “Keep it up! Play hard, keep up the pressure!”

  Laurie got the ball to Allison, who passed to Alecia, but Alecia’s return pass was intercepted and the play turned over. The Spitfire forward outworked the Burrard defence and moved dangerously close to Stacie. Allison charged her but missed the ball, and the Spitfire turned and got away from her. The girl passed to the Spitfire centre, who was challenged by Laurie. Laurie came up with the ball, but only briefly, before it was stolen by another Spitfire forward.

  The Burrards couldn’t seem to get the ball out of their own end and Alecia was getting frustrated. Had these girls been fed vitamins during halftime or something? she wondered, struggling to keep up as the ball passed from player to player, always dangerously close to Stacie. Allison finally managed to get possession and moved back up the field toward the centre line, but Alecia, in her eagerness to receive Allison’s pass, went in offside. The whistle blew and play returned to the Burrards’ end for a throw in.

  “Keep it together, Burrards!” Laurie called, looking around at the group. “Still got lots of time to win this thing.”

  Alecia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Concentrate, she told herself sternly. Focus on the play. She found her opponent and took up her position right beside her, jostling elbows with her as she waited for the ball to be thrown into play. It was picked up by a Spitfire, who dribbled a little ways toward the centre line then turned and passed to an advancing forward. Laurie managed to throw the girl off the ball but before Laurie could get control of it, it was picked off by another Spitfire and kicked toward the net. Marnie and Rianne stayed in close to Stacie, protecting the goal as the Spitfires tried to set up a shot. Allison and Laurie continuously managed to break up passes and get the ball away from the net only to have it brought back in. Finally the ball was forced out of bounds and the whistle blew, stopping play.

  Jeremy called a much-needed time out and the girls ran to the bench. “You’re keeping good pressure on them, but they’re still outworking you,” he said as they huddled around him, as much for warmth as to hear his words. “Think of the drills we’ve done in practice. You’ve got to fool them into thinking you’re doing one thing and then do another. Feign right and go left, then grab the ball. Don’t be outplayed by girls younger and smaller than you. Play smarter.” He looked at them all for a second, letting them take in his words, then he made a couple of line changes and sent them back out onto the field.

  The Burrards’ forward managed to come up with the ball almost immediately and quickly got it out over the centre line and out of danger. She passed to Laurie, who carried it deep into Spitfire territory. Her pass to Nancy was picked off, but Laurie quickly regained possession and sent the ball to the Burrard forward waiting near the net. She feigned right, then kicked the ball to the left of the sprawling goalkeeper, giving the Burrards the lead.

  There were still twenty minutes of play left and the Spitfires continued with their aggressive checking and drives up the middle. It seemed to the Burrards that their goal must have been a fluke because the ball barely left their own end for the rest of the game. Finally, however, the referee blew the whistle ending the game and the Burrards cheered the 3–2 victory.

  The field cleared very quickly as girls rushed to waiting cars. Alecia collapsed heavily onto the bench and let out a long, exhausted sigh. It had been a tough battle. Still, she felt she had played well, kept up her share of the work. She couldn’t wait for a hot bath and lunch.

  Suddenly she noticed two white flakes on the bench beside her, then another couple on her bag, and more on the sleeve of her coat. She grinned.

  “It’s snowing!” she cried. Huge, fat flakes fell from the sky, sticking to the frozen ground and everything else they touched.

  “Great,” a voice muttered from behind Alecia, “now I’ll have to shovel the driveway.” Alecia turned to see her friend, Connor Stevens, standing there, gazing up at the sky with a forlorn look on his face. “I swear it does this just to annoy me.”

  “Dude, you are so pathetic,” Alecia said, shaking her head. “I’ll help you shovel the driveway, when there’s enough snow to shovel!”

  “Yes,” added Laurie, joining them. “And knowing you, Connor, you’ll let your friends do all the work while you ‘supervise’ from the living room!”

  “Hey, you guys, leave poor Connor alone. He lives a hard life,” Jeremy told them, passing by with the mesh bag of practice balls. “You coming home, Leesh?” he asked.


  Alecia looked up at her stepfather and nodded. “Darn right I am. I’m freezing. I’ll see you guys tonight, right?” she asked, looking back at Laurie and Connor.

  “Definitely. What time are we meeting at the theatre?” Laurie asked.

  “I think the show starts at seven-thirty, so we should be there by seven at the latest,” Alecia told them. “Is Annie coming?”

  “No,” Connor said, shaking his head. “She has a family thing tonight that she couldn’t get out of, so it’s just the three of us. Unless you wanted to invite Monica along.”

  Alecia stuck her tongue out at Connor. “As a matter of fact, you could go ahead and invite Monica if you like, but she won’t come. I happen to know she’s got something else going on. She told me so in band class yesterday. Of course it took her half an hour to tell me,” she said, then reddened as Connor shot her a dirty look. “Sorry. You have to admit, though, I’m much better than I was.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll give you that. You’re better than you were,” Connor agreed. “Not that there still isn’t plenty of room for improvement.”

  Alecia casually began swatting Connor with her hand. In another second Laurie was in on the action too, and poor Connor could only defend himself feebly as the girls hit him.

  “Enough already!” he cried from beneath their fast-moving arms.

  “Take it back!” Alecia demanded, landing a particularly good hit on his head. “I’m perfect. Tell me I’m perfect.”

  “No way!” Connor cried. “That would be heresy! I’d be burned at the stake!”

  “That’s enough, girls,” Jeremy said. “Leave the poor boy alone.”

  “He asked for it.”

  “Granted,” Jeremy allowed, nodding, “the boy can be irritating and annoying. But he has had his punishment. And besides,” he said, pausing to look around him, “it’s cold out here, I’m hungry, and I’d like to watch the snow fall from inside the house.”

  “Yeah,” Laurie agreed. She had zipped up her bag and was waiting impatiently. “I’m hungry, Connor. Take me home,” she demanded.

  Connor took Laurie’s hand and headed off the field. “See you later!” he called back.

  Alecia stuffed her sweat-soaked shin pads, water bottle, and cleats into her bag then headed for the parking lot. Jeremy had the car running and it was nice and warm by the time Alecia crawled in. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. It had been a hard-fought win today.

  “Good game today, Leesh,” Jeremy told her, patting her thigh. She opened her eyes and grinned at him.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m really pleased with the way you girls have become a team. You work together very well, reading each other, reading the play. You have a good chance of going all the way this season. We just have to keep it going.”

  Alecia felt a warm glow spread through her. “We have a good coach,” she told him, throwing back the compliment. Jeremy smiled at her.

  “Hey, guess what,” he said after a while, looking over at Alecia. “I got a call the other day from a guy I worked with years ago. Apparently he heard I’m coaching the Burrards and he asked if there was any room on the team for a good player.”

  “What’d you tell him?” Alecia asked, putting a hand over her grumbling stomach. She was starving.

  “I told him we’re always looking for a good player and with Annie off the team, we have that hole in forward to fill. It’s not been a huge problem, but it would be nice to have the numbers up. Her name is Alexandra Thomas. She’s eager to play again. He’s bringing her out on Tuesday. I think she’ll be going to your school as well, in grade eight.”

  “Why didn’t she come out today and help in the game if she is so wonderful?” Alecia said, scowling all of a sudden.

  “What’s with the attitude?” Jeremy asked.

  “I don’t have an attitude. I just don’t know why you’re getting so excited about some new girl. Is she a really awesome player or something?” Alecia felt Jeremy’s stare and cleared her throat. She had been working hard at accepting change a little more graciously, but it was hard and she had to struggle now. The team was good the way it was, why wreck things with an unknown player? What if she didn’t fit in with the others? What if she wasn’t all that good and dragged them down?

  “I understand that she is quite good. Give her a chance before you turn against her,” Jeremy said, glancing pointedly at Alecia.

  “Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say,” she muttered, and let the subject drop.

  2

  Old Photos

  By the time Alecia had eaten the homemade seafood chowder and grilled cheese sandwiches her mother had prepared, and soaked in a very hot bath for a long time, the few flurries had turned into a near whiteout. Alecia grinned as she pressed her nose against the window, watching eagerly as the world outside gradually disappeared beneath a blanket of feathery white flakes.

  “It sure is covering fast,” her mother said, coming to stand beside her. She put an arm around Alecia’s waist and hugged her tightly. “I hope the roads will be okay.”

  “They won’t be, but we don’t have to go anywhere, so we’re all right,” Jeremy said from his chair by the fire. Alecia glanced at him and grinned. He wouldn’t move for the rest of the weekend if he could help it.

  “What about our movie tonight?” Alecia asked, suddenly remembering. Her grin slid a little. She did not like having to cancel plans.

  Jeremy looked up from his book and eyed her silently for several seconds. “Can’t control the weather, Leesh,” he said at last. “But why don’t we wait a few hours and see what happens? It’s barely one o’clock.” Grudgingly, Alecia allowed there was lots of time before seven. She turned back to the quickly whitening view outside the window.

  “So, did you play well today?” her mother asked. Mrs. Parker was a fair-weather fan. On days like this she preferred to lend her support mentally rather than physically. Alecia didn’t mind. She felt the same way about cold days. She would have preferred to stay home where it was warm too. Still, she loved playing soccer. And she really liked that she played on such a strong team. They hadn’t always been so strong. Last season, with Mike as their coach, they had sat in the bottom half of their league all season, winning barely half of their games. This year they were eight and two. They missed Anne, who had quit in November, but Laurie was a great captain and they were on top of their game.

  “I played pretty well. No goals, actually,” Alecia said, thinking about it. “I didn’t even get an assist, but I was pretty strong. They pushed us hard today. Before Christmas they weren’t much of a threat. But today!” She shook her head. “We don’t play them again for a while.”

  “That’s my girl. By the way,” Mrs. Parker said, moving away from Alecia. She went over to the dining room table and rummaged around in the pile of papers stacked there. “I found these when I was cleaning out a drawer this morning. I thought you might like to look at them.” She handed a stack of photographs to Alecia, who had joined her at the table. “They are of your father and you and me.”

  Alecia looked up at her mother, her eyes wide, then she moved to the sofa and began looking through the pictures. Her father had died when Alecia was four. She didn’t remember him at all, although her mother spoke of him all the time and they had some pictures around the house. Not as many since her mother and Jeremy had married the previous July, but there was a nice one of the three of them that sat on Alecia’s bedside table and another that hung in the hall upstairs. But these she had never seen before.

  “Why have I never seen these?” she asked, smiling at the faces and silly poses. There were her parents dressed up for Halloween as Tweedledee and Tweedledum from Alice in Wonderland.

  “They got stuck in with some paperwork. I only found them today because I needed an old form. That’s you and Dad on your third birthday.
You had insisted on wearing that ridiculous dress that was way too small. You screamed so loud Peter finally just put it on you. Of course it was too tight, so then you screamed to get it off. I barely had a chance to take the picture.”

  Alecia touched the face of her three-year-old self gently. She often wished that she had known her dad. Even just to have one memory that was hers, and not stolen from a picture or from her mother’s stories. She picked up another shot.

  “That’s out at Grandma Ellie’s cottage on Okanagan Lake,” Alecia said, frowning at the picture of her and her parents in a rowboat. Behind them spread the wide blueness of the lake.

  “That’s right. You had just turned four. That was the summer before Peter got sick,” Mrs. Parker said softly. She cleared her throat quickly and then laughed, remembering. “Grandma Ellie fell in the lake after she took that picture. I don’t know how she managed to do it, either. She handed the camera to Grandpa Don, telling him to make sure he put it someplace safe, not like last time, and then she took a step and was in the lake. We laughed so hard we almost capsized the boat!”

  From his chair Jeremy joined in the laughter and Alecia suddenly remembered that he was there. Then she felt guilty. Here they were remembering their old life, leaving Jeremy out completely. She looked over and caught his eye. He was watching them carefully, but didn’t seem sad, or left out. In fact, Alecia thought he looked thoughtful.

  “Did you want to see these?” she asked, holding them out. Jeremy shook his head.

  “I’ll look at them later, sweetie. You enjoy them.” Alecia flipped through the pile of photos, smiling at some, uninterested in others, until she found a photograph that made her stop. It was a black-and-white photo of her father taken at his university graduation. Alecia knew her father had graduated from Simon Fraser University. It was where her parents had met twenty years ago. She picked the print up, glancing quickly at her mother. He looked so young, staring at her with serious eyes. He seemed to be speaking to her, trying to tell her something. She glanced at her mother again, then slipped the photo onto her lap.