Page 42 of Summer Lessons

“Yeah, yeah, I get it—the inside of my foot. I get it.”

“No, because if you got it, you’d do it!”

Mason scowled at him. “Don’t be mean,” he said shortly. “I feel enough like an idiot as it is.” He trotted to the end of the line and jogged in place to keep warm.

Terry was a few bodies in front of him, and as Mason watched, his expression turned inward.

“Yeah—sorry ’bout that,” he said, turning around and catching Mason’s eye. “Channeling Mom for a minute—scares the shit out of me when she just pops out of my mouth like that, you know?”

Mason nodded. “Bet it’s like coughing up a gopher,” he said in total seriousness.

The three guys between him and Terry disintegrated, and Terry snickered. Skip looked up from where he was directing everybody and shook his head.

“What in the hell did you say?” he asked Mason helplessly.

“Gopher!” Cooper howled in front of him. “Oh my God!”

Mason shook his head and Terry winked, and then it was Terry’s turn. He used the side of his foot, and it was like he drew a lovely hyperbolic line from his foot, around Carpenter, and into the net—and the ball followed that curve.

Mason could only stare stupidly, impressed as hell, as Terry turned around and trotted back to the end of the line and Carpenter picked himself off the ground to dust off his knees.

A HALFan hour later, Carpenter wasn’t the only one with grass stains on his knees and ass. As Terry had predicted, they were getting creamed at five goals to one, and Mason and Richie were as exhausted as the rest of the team from cycling on and off the field to give other people a break.

There was no banter in this kind of play, just a solid, balls-out determination to keep running until you dropped and to give each play your best until you folded. But Mason’s feet were like lead, and he was developing a sore spot in his hip from all the sudden reversals on the grass field, and he had toactivelywork at turning his foot sideways to kick the damned ball like he was supposed to.

And sometimes he forgot.

Like toward the end, when the ball came rolling toward the goal in an obvious save and Mason ran to boot it across the field. He didn’t lift his foot entirely off the ground as he shifted forward to kick it, and his toe poked into a hummock of grass on the uneven field, bent back, and Mason’s momentum sent him sprawling as his ankle turned underneath him.

For a minute he lay facedown in the mud, waiting for the pain in his ankle to hit and hoping the earth would swallow him.

Then the pain in his ankle hit, and there was no room for hope.

“Time!” Skipper shouted, and Mason became aware of the muddle of feet still jostling for the ball near his head. “I saidtime-out,assholes!” Skipper yelled, as winded as the rest of them. “If you kill my fuckin’ boss I’m gonna fuckin’ destroy you, now move, goddammit, move!”

“You mean he’s really hurt?”

Mason pushed himself up on one arm and tried not to whimper. Up, up, over to his ass, and oh mama, yeah, that sucked.

“Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, really hurt.”

Terry suddenly crouched by his side. “You’re a mess,” he said grimly. “Did you mean to land face-first in a mud puddle?”

“Yes, of course, I’ve been planning it all day.” He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he wasn’t thinking about throwing up. Terry squeezed the back of his neck, and Mason took a deep breath, and then another, and the pain receded a little. Skipper crouched at his feet, probing his ankle with gentle fingers.

“It’s swelling like a motherfucker,” Skip said grimly. “Dane, you want to drive the car down here and—”

“I’ll get him,” Terry said, popping up from Mason’s side. “Here, I’ll go get my car—I’ll be right back!”

He disappeared like a magic pixie, and Dane gazed at Mason’s ankle in horror. “He’s going to take you to the hospital in his Toyota?”

“God,” Richie said, watching him grab his keys and phone from the pile by the side of the field before sprinting up the hill, “that thing’s smaller than my car. Skip, Mason can’t ride in that thing, can he?”

Skip looked at Mason with wide blue eyes. “Uh, boss? Uh, are you sure you don’t want to, you know, go with Dane?”

Mason took a few deep breaths and tried to find a balance between extreme pain grimace and blissed-out smile. “Did you see that?” he said. “He’s getting his car!”

“Oh God,” Skipper moaned, smacking his face.