And then something happened that Tavo did not understand at the time and would think about for weeks afterward. Torin Brackett stopped smiling. It was not gradual. It went out of his face all at once, as if somebody had reached in and turned it off. He stayed crouched there for a second, two seconds, looking at the stitches, and his lips parted slightly, and Tavo saw his throat move.
Then he stood up fast.
"Those are trash, man," he said, and his voice was louder than it needed to be, and harder. "Seriously. You're going to roll an ankle in those. You're going to get somebody hurt. Who even told you you could come out here in those?"
It was not funny anymore, and the guys by the corner flag could tell. Nobody laughed. Pim Yanez looked at Torin with his eyebrows up. Tuli Folau had stopped taping his fingers.
"Nobody told me," Tavo said. "It's a tryout. It's open."
"It's open," Torin said, "for people who are going to make it."
"That's not what open means."
Somebody snorted. Torin's face went a dull red. He looked like he was going to say something else, and Tavo braced for it, but before he could, a whistle went, a long one, from the center of the field.
"Bring it in," said a woman's voice. "All of you. Bring it in, now. Center circle."
Coach Margit Pennock was not tall. That was the first thing everybody noticed about her, and the second was that it did not seem to matter. She stood in the center circle in a faded navy windbreaker and black track pants with a clipboard under one arm and a whistle on a red lanyard, and she was maybe fifty, maybe a little older, with gray hair cut very short and a face that had spent a great deal of time squinting at the sun. She had a slight limp on her left side that she did not seem to think about. She waited until all fifty-some of them were in the circle, and then she waited some more, until the shuffling stopped and the last two kids at the back had stopped whispering.
"My name is Coach Pennock," she said. "I'm going to be with you this year, and if you make this team I'm going to be with you for as long as you're at this school. I've coached for twenty-six years. I coached club for nineteen and I coached college for five and I took two years off, and now I'm here. I'm telling you that so you know I've seen a lot of players. I'm not easily impressed and I'm not easily disappointed. I am very easily bored. Don't bore me."
She looked around the circle. Her eyes passed over Tavo and did not stop. They passed over Torin and did not stop either, though Tavo thought they slowed.
"We'll do three days," she said. "Today is touch, movement, and finishing. Tomorrow is small-sided. Wednesday is full field. I'll post the list on Thursday by noon on the athletics office door. You will not find it on any group chat, because I don't do group chats, and if anybody tells you they saw it early, they're lying. Questions?"
There were none.