"Merrimon High. Upper field. Seven-thirty."
"Who's running it?"
"New coach. A lady. Coach Pennock."
Wyn was quiet for a moment. It was the kind of quiet Tavo had learned to notice, because it did not happen very often. Wyn was not a talker, but he was not a pauser either. He usually said what he was going to say and then stopped.
"Margit Pennock," Wyn said.
"I guess. You know her?"
"She used to coach club. Delta Valley. A long time ago." He picked up his thermos and screwed the cap on it. "She's good. She'll see you."
"Everybody says that."
"I don't say it about everybody," Wyn said. "Go. You're going to be late, and then you're going to be the kid who's late, and that's worse than being the kid with old shoes."
Tavo looked down at the cleats. "You think they'll say something?"
"I think they're kids," Wyn said. "Kids say things." He got into his truck. Through the open window he said, "Plant foot. Don't think about the shoes. Think about the square."
And then he drove away, slower than he had come, the rancheras turned down so low that by the end of the block Tavo could not hear them at all.
The upper field at Merrimon High was the good field, the one the football team did not use, and in August it was the greenest thing in the county. The district watered it every night. By seven-twenty there were fifty-some boys spread across it in small, nervous clumps, juniors and seniors in last year's practice jerseys, sophomores in club shirts from four or five different clubs, freshmen in whatever they had, everybody pretending to stretch and actually watching everybody else.
Tavo came up the hill from the bike rack with his ball under his arm and his cleats still on his feet, because he had ridden over in them, which he knew was bad for the studs and did anyway because he did not have a bag to carry them in. The studs clicked on the concrete path. A couple of heads turned at the sound. He kept walking.