The second day of tryouts was small-sided, four versus four on short fields with tiny goals and no keepers, and it was the kind of soccer Tavo was worst at, close and crowded and fast, with no room to set a ball and swing. He lost the ball more than he wanted to. He also scored twice, both times off one touch from close range, and once he played Pim Yanez in with a pass through two defenders' legs that made Pim laugh out loud as he finished it. Coach Pennock walked the sidelines with the clipboard. She did not look at him any more than she looked at anyone else. If anything, he thought, she looked at him a little less.
He had decided the night before, lying awake on the pullout couch in Rosalba's front room with his toe throbbing under a bag of frozen peas, that he would not say anything to Torin. It was not his business. It was not his family. He had cleats that had once been somebody else's, and that somebody had chosen to give them to him, and that was all.
He had also decided he would ask Wyn about it in the morning. And then he had gone to Corrado Park at ten to six that morning and stood at the chalk mark and hit the square for twenty-five minutes, and Wyn's truck had not come.
It had never not come. Not on a weekday. Not in three years, except for the week Wyn had the flu and the two days in December when the tule fog was so thick that Tavo could not see the wall from the chalk mark, and even then Wyn had sent a text, which was something he almost never did: fog. no. go home. At six-thirty Tavo had sent a text of his own, you coming? and had gotten nothing back. At six-fifty he had ridden to the high school feeling as though he had left the stove on.
Torin Brackett was in his small-sided group by the third rotation. There was no avoiding it. They played against each other for eight minutes, and Torin was very good, better close up than he had looked in the line the day before, a tight, patient dribbler who never seemed hurried, who shielded the ball with his body and turned on a dime and always, always looked up before he passed. He did not foul Tavo. He did not say anything to him. He did not look at his feet. When Tavo nutmegged a sophomore on Torin's team and scored, Torin said, flatly, to the sophomore, "Close him down, you gave him the whole lane," which was coach-talk, team-talk, the most neutral possible thing to say.
At the end of the session, when they were picking up pinnies, Tavo found himself next to Torin at the pile, and Torin said, without looking at him, very quietly: "Did he tell you?"
Tavo straightened up with a pinny in his hand.
"Did who tell me what?"
Torin looked at him then. Up close, in the hard noon light, he looked very young, younger than sixteen, and very tired. There were faint gray marks under his eyes. His jaw was clenched.
"Don't," Torin said. "Okay? Don't do that. I saw you with her yesterday. On the bench. I saw her holding the shoe." He breathed out hard through his nose. "Did he tell you who I am?"
"He didn't tell me anything," Tavo said. "She did. Yesterday. I didn't know until she told me."
Torin stared at him.
"Three years," Torin said. "Tuli says he heard you tell Pim you've been going to Corrado with some guy for three years."