Page 4 of Spectacular Things

A Stalk of Celery

Whistles blow, flags fly. Down the bench, players gasp.

In the stands, children mimic adults by holding their crossed fingers in the air and whispering, Getupgetupgetup .

There are seven minutes left—still plenty of time and infinite possibilities for the Dutch to neutralize the scoreboard.

The coaches yell at the refs while players catch their breath and silently will Sloane to find her feet like she usually does.

From the nosebleed seats fans yell at Sloane to shake it off, and from the sideline Cricket feels a rush of shame-laced excitement as she thinks to herself: This isit.

The ball rolls toward the end line and then out of bounds. No one chases it down. Instead, the referee closest to Sloane approaches her and visibly dry heaves at the sight of her leg.

Medics rush the field.

Teague, the U.S. head coach, joins the team doctor at Sloane’s side and takes a knee.

The ten starting U.S. field players encircle their felled goalkeeper, and through their legs, Cricket glimpses Sloane writhing on her back, begging and crying up to the sky, “ Please no, please no, please no .” But Cricket knows from experience that such prayers arrive too late and almost always go unanswered, so she looks away and waits.

The Jumbotron replays what happened in slow motion.

Cricket gulps down image after image with everyone else in the stadium.

The Dutch corner kick. The lofted ball. The fight inside the box.

Sloane’s bright red goalkeeper gloves appearing over the fray, flying like two angry stop signs above every matted ponytail and slick forehead—all except for Mila Visschers, tenacious darling of the Netherlands, who is known for her offensive acuity and vertical leap.

Footage from multiple angles documents what happens between the goalposts, but even as Cricket watches gravity yank Sloane and Mila down into a mashed-up heap of bones and muscle, the physics of the collision seem impossible.

It’s a cartoonish brutality designed for video games.

Under Mila’s boot, Sloane’s leg bends backward.

Frame by frame, her quadricep folds in like rubber.

It’s an optical illusion, a sadist’s magic trick.

Emma, the third-string keeper, takes a step closer to Cricket and squeezes her forearm to convey what they both know is about to happen. It’s Cricket’s turn. Here’s her parking spot.

The fraught buzz of the stadium escalates to an aggravated hornet’s nest when Sloane tries to sit up.

She screams and the crowd reacts in kind.

Two more medics sprint onto the field, carrying a stretcher, but Sloane’s agony-soaked wails serve as its own diagnosis.

She is the best goalkeeper in the world, a woman known for her intimidating bark, her unrelenting bite, her fearless physicality—it’s what makes her so good and how the United States got this far.

On camera, in tailored blazers and with scripted notes, network correspondents discuss how one moment can sabotage a team’s chances.

In the postgame wrap-up, the talking heads will poeticize the barbarity of that moment between Sloane and Mila.

They will echo what one U.S. defender told NBC Sports—that Sloane’s femur breaking sounded like “a stalk of celery snapping in half.” But what the sportscasters keep to themselves—and off the air—is the same thing Sloane’s teammates repeat in the inner sanctum of the locker room: You can’t forget a scream like that.

But that’s later, and right now, all eyes are on Teague, the U.S.

National Team’s head coach, marching back to the sideline with a general’s consternation, as if her career depends on the next seven minutes, which it does.

Anders, the goalkeeping coach, calls Cricket’s name from down the bench and keeps his back to the pitch as medics load Sloane onto the stretcher.

“She’s done,” Anders tells Cricket, his electric blue chewing gum running figure eights in his mouth. “You’re up.”

Ignoring her vibrating hands, Cricket puts on her lucky gloves.

No time to warm up. No time for anything except this.

Seven minutes plus stoppage time. On the Jumbotron, a sudden streak of fluorescence catches her attention before Cricket realizes that’s her on the screen, in her long-sleeve goalkeeper jersey, looking like a terrified human highlighter.

She tries to neutralize her face as she visualizes what comes next and hums the first song on her gameday playlist to calm her nerves, “Get Low, Fly High.”

Medics wheel Sloane off the field to a standing ovation that makes the entire stadium quake.

U.S. and Dutch fans alike cheer for Sloane, but also for the game itself: Regardless of players’ battles on the field and each country’s struggles off it, soccer endures.

The game is a show, so of course it must go on, even as an understudy takes center stage with an Olympic gold medal on the line.

This is not just the last seven minutes of a match, but also the next decade of Cricket’s life if she plays the way she knows she can.

This is her shot to step up and into the spotlight.

It’s the chance she’s dreamed of since she was a child; the beginning of her storied career as the starting goalkeeper on the U.S. Women’s National Team.

Everyone knows that one player’s loss means another player’s opportunity—it’s the unflinchingly cruel yet eternally hopeful nature of the game. The never-ending twists of a forever-evolving story. It’s why everybody loves an underdog.

And it’s why more than sixty thousand fans watch Cricket Lowe sub in at center field and wonder what will happen next.

She steals a glance at the Friends and Family section, squints, and gives a quick nod of recognition when she sees Mia and Oliver in her mind’s eye.

This is what they’ve always wanted. Even if they aren’t really here, Cricket knows they are watching.

Sprinting onto the field and into the goal, Cricket touches each aluminum post for grounding.

She is accustomed to the thunderous noise from the bench, but on the pitch and under the lights, the fans are so loud that the sound overwhelms her senses.

She can’t see straight or hear herself think or get her legs to stop shaking.

The adrenaline surging through her nervous system makes her bones twitch and her eyes stretch.

This is the experience she has chased with dogged tenacity since she was a kid—to be so anxious and simultaneously so empowered, holding the fate of the match in her lucky lime-green gloves.

This is where she belongs, Cricket tells herself.

This is where she is meant to be, where she has dreamt of standing since she first learned to run.

“Tonight is Cricket Lowe’s first-ever international appearance!

” a commentator announces. The stadium sucks in its breath, flabbergasted.

A dirty secret unleashed, the weakness of inexperience.

The Dutch players look at one another like sharks catching the distinct scent of fresh blood.

Nevertheless, Cricket’s muscles remember what to do here.

She continues to jump in place, trying to warm up her legs in record time.

“And that’s compared to Sloane Jackson’s sixty-four caps!”

Cricket absorbs the collective shock that rumbles like a groundswell, like this announcement has just cost the United States the game.

“Let’s give Cricket a round of applause!

” the commentator directs. The stadium obediently erupts with noise, filling the air with Cricket’s name—tinged with pity, doubt, and fear—as the referee draws her whistle to her mouth.

The game commences.

Seven minutes to win it all or lose everything.

This is entertainment. This is sport. This is tribalism in its purest form.

This is so much bigger than just Cricket, and yet the commentators keep repeating her name.

All the cheering and jeering and chanting from the stands funnel into Cricket’s eardrum and course through her bloodstream.

There is an undercurrent of us versus them buzzing through the stadium that distracts her until Cricket sees Mila Visschers accept the ball in the midfield and head to goal.

With the ball at her feet, Mila loses her defender and charges Cricket with ankle-snapping speed and one clear intention.

The Dutch star looks up at the goal, and so Cricket looks at Mila’s boots, her hips, the ball, and here it comes. Nothing exists except this shot, which is going toward the lower left corner of the net. It might be wide but it’s going to be tight.

Cricket doesn’t think before she dives. She can’t afford the time. Instead, she chases her instincts, even as she questions whether she can get there. The world slows down until the milliseconds stand still and Cricket hangs suspended in the air. The ball rotates in place.

She’s not going to get there.

She’s not going to get there but she’s got to tryto—

Yes!

There it is at her fingertips.

Cricket absorbs the force of a twenty-eight-inch ball traveling seventy miles per hour and knocks it away from the goal, then scrambles to throw her body on top of it like the ball is a grenade and she’s a war hero in the making.

She covers the ball before anyone else can get a foot on it, and the stadium bursts into astonished and then joyous applause, but all Cricket can hear is her own voice as she finds her feet and shouts at her defensive line, “Get out!”

Cricket hurls the ball so it lands on a platter for one of her midfielders, who passes it to Speedy up top. On a team of Olympians, how fast must one be to earn the nickname Speedy? She is a rocket ship strapped to a comet racing the speed of light in hot pink cleats.

Speedy takes the space and makes herself a threat by baiting the Dutch defenders, each one a Subzero refrigerator swathed in orange.

She draws the defenders out, only to pass the ball to Gogo.

They aren’t looking to score so much as keep possession until—there it is.

The referee’s whistle. Two short beeps followed by one long exhale.

It’s over.

It’s all over.

Relief blooms in every atom of Cricket’s being.

At the other end of the field, her teammates run toward one another and form a swarm before running toward the defenders, who join the mass and head toward their own goal, their own keeper. They pull Cricket into the heart of the huddle, just before the entire squad collapses on the grass.

It is euphoric madness in the middle of the heap.

Cricket is covered in her teammates’ sweat, with someone else’s hair in her mouth and tears on her cheeks as they scream into one another’s faces, camera crews hovering above them, failing to capture the heights of their highs as the four starting defenders make snow angels in the confetti with their eyes closed but all their teeth showing.

In the goal net, two rookies embrace with full-body shakes as their lifelong dream becomes their 3D reality.

With their boom mics hovering, several camera crews surround the team captain as she gets down on her knees and kisses the grass, then runs over to squeeze Cricket.

“You did it!” Gogo yells, lifting Cricket off her feet.

They are Olympians, Gold Medal champions of the world.

Everyone is claughing—that beautiful mix of tears and joy, crying and laughing and asking one another if this moment is really real.

By the time Cricket gets to the locker room, most details of the night will already be fuzzy, but now Speedy is cartwheeling through the confetti, and Taylor’s kid is crashing the field, holding her arms out so her mom will pick her up, and Cricket aches to see her own.

She once again squints at the Friends and Family section until she sees her.

Cricket runs to the stands. She blows kisses back to the five-year-old girls and mouths “Thank you” to their parents and claps with her hands over her head because this was a group effort.

They won because of the support from the fans.

They won because they played for one another.

They won because they are winners, and because long before today, Cricket earned her place between the goalposts on the best soccer team in the world.

Soon enough, the team will get it together and warm down responsibly.

Soon enough, they’ll load onto a bus and exit the stadium.

But until then, the cameras roll and twenty-two hearts beat together in a singular revelry, a collective sigh, a jubilant cry that can never be conveyed, only experienced, and it is this: They have just won it all.