"Good. Split by last name. A through L, east end with Coach Dunagan. M through Z, west end with me."
Tavo went west. So did Tuli Folau and Pim Yanez. Torin Brackett went east, and Tavo felt something in his chest unclench a little, and then felt annoyed with himself that it had needed to.
The morning went the way tryouts go. Rondos first, ten guys in a circle and two in the middle, one touch, two touch, and Tavo was fine at it, not great, because he had not played many rondos; he had mostly played the wall, and the wall always gave the ball back at the same speed. Then dribbling through cones, and he was quicker than he expected to be, because the uneven asphalt of Corrado Park had taught his feet to make small adjustments without asking him first. Then passing in pairs over thirty yards, and he was good at that, because thirty yards was not much different from eighteen yards plus a wall. Coach Pennock walked among them with the clipboard. She did not say much. She wrote things down. Once she stopped next to Tavo while he was receiving a long ball and watched him take it out of the air with the inside of his right foot and set it in front of himself in one motion, and she wrote something, and moved on, and he did not let himself think about it.
At ten-fifteen she blew the whistle and said, "Water. Two minutes. Then finishing. Both groups, east goal."
The east goal was where Torin was.
Tavo drank from the fountain by the fence and stood with his hands on his hips and his heart going harder than the morning had earned. His right big toe was throbbing. He looked down at the cleats. The left one, the one with the stitches, had a smear of green across the toe.
"Hey."
He looked up. It was Tuli Folau, holding a water bottle the size of a fire extinguisher.
"Don't worry about him," Tuli said.
"I'm not."
"Okay." Tuli drank. He looked at the cleats again, carefully, the way he had looked at them that morning. "He's having a weird summer. His dad's been on him."
"That's not my problem."
"No," Tuli agreed. "It's not." He screwed the cap back onto the bottle. "I'm just saying. It's not about the shoes."
"Then what's it about?"