Little's Losers

by Robert Rayner

  Once we’ve all squeezed in, Mr. Walker begins: “No luck finding a coach for you, I’m afraid. I went to all the teachers and asked if they would coach the soccer team, just through the playoffs, and either they’re too busy or they say they don’t know enough about soccer, or they say they don’t see any point in working with a team that has such a poor record — and, I’m sorry to say, such a bad attitude.” He pauses and adds, “Is that being unfair?”

  We hang our heads. We know it’s true, about the attitude.

  “We kept losing, and then we got mad at one another because nothing would go right,” I offer. I sound pathetic.

  “I’m really sorry, guys. I tried,” Mr. Walker concludes, shepherding us out.

  We mutter, “Thanks anyway, Mr. W.”

  “Who cares about the playoffs anyway?” I say as we amble down the hallway.

  I’m trying to cheer them up, but at the same time I’m asking myself — why should we care? A few days ago we were glad the season had ended for us, and now we’re trying to find a coach so we can keep playing. It doesn’t make sense.

  “That’s what I thought — who cares about the playoffs?” Shay says, “until Mr. Walker said we were in them. Then I started to think — it would be nice to have one more chance to play half-decently, even if we lose. I feel sort of … sort of ashamed — not just because we lost all those games, but because we were mean to one another.”

  Shay is seriously upset. The kids were always on his case about him letting in so many goals, although many of them weren’t his fault, and while we were all mean to one another, he got the worst of it. And now he’s the one feeling ashamed? I feel like apologizing to Shay for all the times I let him down, and all the times the other kids insulted him. Steve’s hanging his head, knowing he was about the worst for getting on Shay. He really should apologize to Shay, but he does something even better.

  He agrees with him.

  “You’re right. I feel the same,” he says, slowly looking up at Shay. “At first I thought I never want to play soccer again, but then I thought — I’d like one more chance to show we’re not so hopeless.”

  Shay grabs his soccer ball from his locker. It’s lunchtime so we’ve still got twenty minutes of break left. We go down to the field behind the school and start kicking the ball around.

  I’m disappointed too, more for Shay and Steve than for myself. They deserve a better end to their season than being beaten 11–0 by St. Croix. They know something about soccer. They look like soccer players. Steve is tall, with gangly arms and legs. He has this mud- coloured hair that hangs down over his eyes like a horse’s, until he runs, when it flies all around. Come to think of it, he looks a bit like a horse — not his face, but because of the way he moves, his legs pounding, leaving people behind easily. Shay, without ever seeming to hurry, collects the passes we send him and smoothly returns them. He seems better at collecting and sending passes than he is in goal. We’re getting warmed up now, kicking the ball harder and further.

  “Stretch the triangle. Make space,” Shay calls.

  There he goes again, talking about space and shapes and patterns. I don’t understand, but Steve seems to.

  Miss Little, the kindergarten teacher, is on yard duty. She stops to watch us. Shay gives a little wave, and she smiles and waves back, wiggling her fingers. The year we started school there was only one kindergarten, so we were all in Miss Little’s class. Some years there are enough kids for two kindergarten classes, or for one and a combined kindergarten and grade one, but usually there’s just one. That means Miss Little has taught most of the kids in the school.

  “Getting ready for the playoffs, children?” she calls.

  Shay replies glumly, “We’re not in the playoffs because we don’t have a coach.”

  “Oh, you poor dears,” Miss Little says. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  Shay and I go over to Miss Little. Steve hangs back. I can tell by his sulky face he doesn’t like it when Miss Little calls us “children” and “poor dears.” I don’t mind. In fact, secretly, I kind of like it.

  Miss Little is tall and thin, with long blond hair, and with big, round glasses that keep slipping down her nose. In kindergarten we used to get hypnotized by them, wondering whether they’d fall right off the end of her nose. They never did. Just when we thought they were going to, she’d push them back. When she looks down at us with her big blue eyes, it’s as if we’re in kindergarten again.

  “Now, boys, tell me what’s happened,” she repeats.

  She listens carefully as we tell her about losing all our games, and about being mean to one another. We tell her about Mr. Cunningham quitting, and about none of the other teachers being able to coach us.

  “I guess I don’t blame them,” I finish. “Who’d want to coach a bunch of losers like us?”

  “When Mr. Walker asked me if I’d coach, I said I couldn’t help because I didn’t know anything about soccer. But I hate to see you poor children —”

  “We’re not children,” Steve interrupts, scowling. I didn’t think he was listening.

  Miss Little just looks at him and continues, “I hate to see you poor children unable to play. Let me see what I can do.”

  When we go in at the end of the lunch recess, Shay nudges me and points to the soccer bulletin board in the main hallway. It was empty when we went out, but now there’s a notice on it. It’s printed in perfect lettering with different coloured markers, and is decorated with little pink soccer balls all round the edges. It says, Team meeting after school today.

  5

  Miss Little’s Losers

  The meeting after school is held in the old art room. It’s called the old art room because we don’t do art any more, not since the old art teacher — she was old, too, Mrs. Levesque, at least forty — not since she left and the school didn’t replace her. All the rooms are old because Brunswick Valley School is old. From the outside it looks like a prison, all brick and little windows. The school yard where we have recess looks like an exercise yard for prisoners, except for the little kids’ playground in the corner. But the inside of the school doesn’t look so much like a prison because they’ve tried to make it cheery, with all the classrooms and hallways painted bright yellow, which is nice if you like bright yellow.

  I peer in the door. There’s no one from the soccer team there; just Miss Little, sitting at the front of the room, sorting through a pile of little kids’ paintings. She looks up and sees me. “Sorry, Miss Little,” I say, “I was looking for the soccer meeting.”

  “That’s right, Toby, dear. It’s here. Come in.”

  With her head down as she looks at the paintings, her glasses have slipped right to the tip of her nose. I think — yes! This time they’re going to fall. But at the last second she pushes them back.

  I go in and take a seat. Miss Little smiles at me. I smile back.

  “Is anyone else coming?” she asks.

  “Shay said he’ll be here,” I say.

  Right on cue, Shay arrives. He says, “What’s up.”

  I say, “Yo.”

  Shay taught me to say that. I never used to know what to say when kids said, “Hey,” or, “What’s up,” so I didn’t say anything, and they thought I was being unfriendly. Then Shay told me it didn’t matter what I said back, because “hey” was just something to say. It was just a sort of greeting noise, and all I had to do was make a sort of greeting noise back.

  We practised.

  Shay said, “What’s up.”

  I said, “La-la-la.”

  Shay said to try any noise but that one, and try again. “What’s up,” he said.

  I said, “How-dee-doo.”

  Shay said that wouldn’t do either, and to just say, “Yo.”

  So now I say “Yo,” and it seems to work. I guess it’s like when adul
ts say, “How are you?” and “I’m fine.” They don’t really care how you are, and they’re probably not really fine. They’re just making a greeting noise. At the start of term, Ms. Watkins was going through the class list. When she came to my name she read out, “Toby Morton,” and sort of sighed, and said, “How are you, Toby?” Instead of saying, “As well as can be expected considering we’re back in school,” I said, “Yo, Ms. Watkins.” She seemed to like it.

  Shay stops at the door, like me, when he sees Miss Little. I wave him in as Miss Little smiles and says, “Come in, Shay, dear.”

  Shay sits across from me. We look at each other and at Miss Little. She’s gone back to looking through the kindergarten paintings. I feel as if we’re in kindergarten again. I wonder whether we should get out the paints and do a picture for Miss Little, then be sure to clean up after ourselves.

  Suddenly Shay blurts out what we’ve both been thinking. “Are you going to coach us?”

  “Yes, dear, if you’d like me to,” answers Miss Little.

  I catch Shay’s eye. We’re thinking the same thing again. We both love Miss Little. All the students do, even Steve, although he pretends not to. We all love her as our old kindergarten teacher, and we all love her as a teacher who always remembers our names, and who always remembers things about us and asks about them, and is always smiley and nice, but … soccer coach?

  You see, soccer’s quite a complicated game. There are the forwards, who are supposed to get the ball into the other side’s net. And there are the backs, the defenders, who are supposed to stop the other side scoring. And then there are the midfielders, who sort of defend when they have to and attack when they can. In our case, us being the worst team in the world, we have forwards who can’t score, backs who can’t defend, and midfielders who can’t do either.

  I’m thinking — how can we tell Miss Little she’s out of her depth, especially with the first playoff game only two days away?

  Steve is standing just outside the door. I don’t know how long he’s been there, but it’s long enough for him to hear Miss Little say she’ll coach us.

  “What do you know about soccer?” he scoffs.

  Miss Little agrees: “Nothing — but there are some important things I know that might help the team play better.”

  “Like what, Miss Little?” I ask.

  “Like — remembering some of our kindergarten rules might help.”

  We’re mystified.

  Miss Little asks, “Do you remember being in kindergarten?”

  Shay and I smile and nod. Steve shrugs.

  “Everything worked out well in kindergarten, didn’t it, dears?”

  Shay and I agree again. We loved being in Miss Little’s class. Steve did too, but he’s not going to say so.

  “Well, children — I think we can make things work out quite well on the soccer field, if we remember some of the rules we learned in kindergarten.”

  Steve snorts, “My dad expects me to play well. He won’t like me having someone for a coach who doesn’t know soccer, and he especially won’t like me having a girl for a coach.”

  Miss Little stands up and pushes her glasses back. Shay and I look at one another. We’re thinking — uh-oh. We remember that look from kindergarten. Miss Little was always nice — but you didn’t want to mess with her.

  “First, Steve, dear, I’m a woman, not a girl,” says Miss Little. “Second, you and your father can have me for a coach or no one at all, because I’m all you’re going to get. And third — don’t ever be rude to your coach again, because if you do, you’ll be off the team — starting right now unless you apologize.”

  Steve harrumphs and leaves. A few moments later, we see him hanging around just outside the door.

  “Well, Steve, dear? Are you staying?” Miss Little calls to him.

  “I suppose.”

  “Come in, then. And what do we have to say after we’ve been rude?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. Now, children, let’s get down to business.”

  She sits. I feel as though we should gather in a little group at her feet so she can read us a story, but we sit at the tables. Miss Little asks where the rest of the team is.

  “They didn’t want to come,” says Steve. “They’re still mad at finishing bottom of the league and losing so badly against St. Croix. And when rumour went around that it was you calling the team meeting — someone saw you putting the notice up — they said they wouldn’t come because … because … ”

  “You can tell me, Steve, dear. It won’t count as being rude.”

  “ … because they said you were nice but you didn’t know soccer.”

  “Can you — any of you — persuade any of them to come back?”

  “I think I can persuade the twins,” I say. “They didn’t come just because they thought no one else was coming. Then there’s Silas and Jason and Nicholas — but I don’t think they’ll come back.”

  “They’ll come if I tell them,” Steve puts in. “Leave them to me.”

  “That makes — let me see — eight,” says Miss Little. “How many do we need for a soccer team?”

  Shay and I glance at one another. Steve snorts but turns it into a cough.

  “Eleven, Miss Little,” I say.

  Miss Little looks up at the ceiling. She’s doing her teacher routine of pretending to be deep in thought. “We have eight players, and we need eleven, so — how many more players do we need?”

  “Three, Miss Little,” Shay and I chorus, like she wants us to. If it was just me there, I would have answered seriously, but because there are three of us, we pretend we’re goofing around talking like this.

  Steve rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything.

  “We need three more,” Miss Little repeats. “Shay, can you get anyone? Who else was on the team? Wasn’t Julie playing? Could you ask her?”

  Shay turns red and gulps: “I guess.”

  Julie is in grade eight, a grade above us, and Shay thinks she’s a goddess. He’s scared to talk to her.

  “That would make nine,” I say. “But the others — they won’t come back. There’s no point in asking.”

  Steve and Shay nod agreement.

  “Well — we’ll start with nine,” says Miss Little. “Make sure you get after everyone we talked about, and make sure they — and you — remember there’ll be a practice tomorrow after school, and then there’s the game on Thursday.” She holds her hands under her chin and claps them three times and says, “I know this is going to be fun and exciting for all of us. Now — off you go, children.”

  Shay and I look at each other and grin at how Miss Little talks to us. It’s okay as long as no one else hears. Steve rolls his eyes again, but doesn’t dare say anything.

  We’re heading for the door when Miss Little calls out, “One more thing before you go, children. Who was captain?”

  “Randy — and he says he’s never going to play for the school again after that last game. There’s no point in asking,” says Steve.

  “Very well,” says Miss Little, coming over to us. “Steve, dear, I want you to be captain. That’s a lot of responsibility, but I think you can handle it. How about it?”

  Steve nods. “Okay, I guess.”

  “You don’t sound too sure, dear,” says Miss Little. “Are you worried about something?”

  Steve looks at his feet.

  I say for him, “He’s worried about what his dad will say about you being our coach — right, Steve?”

  Steve nods.

  “We’ll deal with that when we have to — if we have to,” says Miss Little, and pats Steve on the head.

  Steve cringes. “Jeez, Miss Little. I’m not one of your kindergarten kids, you know.”

  Miss Little smiles at us and says,
“You’ll all always be my kindergarten children. Off you go now. Early to bed tonight and tomorrow, remember, so that you’re ready for the game.”

  “Do you suppose we’ll be ready?” I ask nervously as we walk away.

  “Ready to lose,” says Steve morosely.

  I think for a moment and say, “We’re losers now. Everyone keeps calling us that. So the worst that can happen is — we won’t just be losers. We’ll be Miss Little’s Losers.”

  6

  THE NEW BRUNSWICK VALLEY SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM

  I can’t believe this. It’s Wednesday after school and we’re in Miss Little’s kindergarten classroom. I feel as though we’re all in kindergarten again.

  Miss Little sent a message around earlier telling us to meet in her classroom before practice. While we waited for everyone to arrive, she gave us permission to play with the kindergarten stuff as long as we cleaned up after ourselves. No wonder we always find excuses to visit her classroom. It has these tiny chairs and weirdly shaped tables that fit together — they’re hexagonal, Shay says — and you bang your knees on them as you walk around if you’re not careful. There are three easels in the classroom with trays holding pots of bright red, yellow, and blue paint, as well as big, thick brushes, and the reading corner has a rug to sprawl on. There’s hardly any wall without something stuck on it — kids’ paintings, poems, letters of the alphabet. The shelves lining one wall are crammed full of games and puzzles and building blocks and Plasticine and scraps of material and coloured pattern blocks and string. The opposite wall has a line of pegs where the kindergarten kids hang their little bookbags. Beside the reading corner rug, Miss Little has a flip chart where she’s written the kindergarten news of the day. I read it and discover that Cody has a new cat, Elizabeth has a new baby brother, Katie fell off her bicycle, and Isaac threw up last night.