Last Man Out (7 page)

A
FTER
THE
GAME
WAS
OVE
R
everybody stayed away from Tommy for a while, probably realizing there was nothing they could say to make him feel better. They'd all seen what had happened. They all knew the last flag had stolen their final chance to win the game.

Finally Greck came over and asked if Tommy wanted to hang out later. Tommy said he couldn't, using Emily's soccer game as his out. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he still planned on going to watch his sister play. He felt he owed her that, and knew how much his mom wanted him there.

Once Greck broke the ice, Nick came over, too, looking like he felt bad for Tommy, but trying his best to hide it.

“Hey,” Nick said, “it's never just one play that loses a game.”

“I hear people say that all the time,” Tommy said. “But there's plenty of times when one play loses—or wins—a game.”

“I had chances to make plays all day,” Nick said.

“Yeah, but if I hadn't committed one more dumb penalty,” Tommy said, “you would have gotten the ball back with plenty of time left. I blew it.”

“It was just one game.”

“One game that might end up costing us a chance at the championship.”

“Lot of season left,” Nick said. “Start thinking about next Saturday.”

“Might as well,” Tommy said. “Anything's better than thinking about
this
Saturday.”

Tommy knew Nick was just trying to make him feel better. But in the moment, Tommy didn't want to feel better. He knew what he'd done and knew the loss was on him. Most of all, he knew he had to wear it.

Coach John Fisher motioned Tommy over now. Tommy was waiting for a lecture, but didn't get one.

“I don't think it was a late hit, for what it's worth,” Coach Fisher said. “You hit the quarterback on his follow-through, and that shouldn't be a penalty, at least not to my mind, when it's called correctly.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn't your mistake,” Coach said. “Do you know what your mistake was?”

Tommy shook his head.

“I know you,” Coach said. “I know how good you are at picking up snap counts. You started and then you stopped on that play. You didn't trust yourself, and that's why you were a step slow.”

“You're right,” Tommy said.

“When I call for a blitz, I want you to blitz,” Coach said. “The player I want you to be, the player you are, doesn't hesitate. You
know how unhappy I was earlier when you blitzed on your own. But you want to know something? I'd rather have you do that. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?”

“Yes, sir,” Tommy said.

“I love your talent and your heart, son. But if you don't trust both, you're not at the top of your game.”

“Okay,” Tommy said, in such a soft voice he was surprised Coach even heard him, wondering how you could do so many things wrong on the same stinking play.

He headed for the parking lot. His mom was up ahead of him, walking with Mike Fallon's dad. He didn't even remember he was still wearing his helmet until he bumped it getting into the car. He took it off and tossed it on the backseat.

“Want to talk about it?” his mom said.

“No, thank you. Done enough talking.”

“Got it,” she said.

It was another car ride in silence driving away from a football field. Tommy was getting used to them.

When they got home he went straight to his room, knowing he at least had plenty of alone time before they'd have to leave for Em's soccer game. In the past, when his dad had gone to Tommy's game, they'd start discussing it play by play as soon as they got home.

But today, Tommy didn't need anybody else to analyze what had gone wrong. He couldn't know for sure what would have happened if he hadn't committed those penalties and hadn't blitzed when Coach wanted him back in coverage. Maybe the Bears would've won instead or maybe it would've ended with the
same result. Coach always talked about what he called “the fallacy of the predetermined outcome,” telling his players that you could never know for sure if the game would have unfolded the same way or differently if a play or two had gone the other way.

Still, it was easy for Tommy to look back, from the quiet of his own room, and think the Bears should have won today.

He got out of his uniform, and took a longer shower than usual, making the water as hot as he could stand. But not as hot as he was, still fuming from the loss.

It was about an hour later when his mom came into his room and told him it was time for them to take Emily to her game.

“I know I told you I'd go,” he said, “but do you think Em will even notice I'm there? She barely notices when I'm in the house.”

“Whether she says it or not, she wants you there, Tommy. And I want you there. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

She leaned against the door frame. There was a sad look on her face. It was a look she'd worn a lot lately.

“We just have to help her any way we can right now,” his mom said. “She's not as strong as you are.”

“I'm not as strong as you think I am,” he said.

“She's hurting so much, Tommy.”

He wanted to remind her they were all hurting, but decided no good would come of it. He walked down the stairs behind his mom. His sister was waiting for them near the front door. He hoped that her game would finish better than his had.

“You ready to do this, Em?” he said, trying to fake her out with enthusiasm.

“Not really,” she said, not even looking at him, just heading for the car.

The day just kept getting better and better. He'd messed up his game royally. Now his sister was acting as if she didn't even want to play hers.

Sometimes he wondered if anybody in this house would ever be happy again.

E
MILY
G
ALLAGHER
DIDN
'
T
JUST
wear number ten because so many of the greatest pros who'd played her position, center midfielder—or a center middie, as even Tommy knew they were called—had worn number ten.

She wore it because Carli Lloyd, the star player on the U.S. women's soccer team that won the 2015 World Cup, the one who'd scored three goals in the final against Japan, wore ten.

Em had a poster of Carli Lloyd up on the wall in her room and a huge replica of the
Sports Illustrated
cover with Carli on it. She'd kept a scrapbook with stories she'd found on the Internet written about her favorite player, and pictures that she liked, the pages of the book nearly full by the time the women's team had won that final game against Japan, jumping out to a 4–0 lead.

Before Em had pretty much stopped talking, before she'd become so sad, she used to talk all the time about how she was going to grow up to be Carli Lloyd and not just play in the World Cup, but the Olympics, too.

One night at dinner, before their father died, with all four Gallaghers in the dining room, she'd talked about the parade in
New York City for Carli Lloyd and her teammates she'd watched on TV that day.

“They said it was the first time that a women's team ever got to ride through the Canyon of Heroes,” Em said.

“I watched some of it, too,” Tommy said, “until I got bored.”

“Thomas Gallagher,” his mother said.

“I'm just sayin',” he said.

“I didn't think any of it was boring,” Em said.

“I just watched some of the highlights on the news,” his dad said. “The best part was seeing all those little girls along the parade route in their soccer uniforms. All I kept seeing was you, honey.”

Emily said, “One of the announcers said the women's team had shown that girls were allowed to dream as big as boys in sports.”

“Breaking news!” Tommy said.

“Your sister's right,” his dad said, giving Tommy a serious look.

He reached over and gave Emily a high five, before she looked at Tommy with a smug look on her face.

Tommy wouldn't have admitted to his sister, then or now, that he was actually a little jealous of the way she could play soccer. Maybe more than a little. He actually enjoyed watching her cover ground with her long, skinny legs, the way she could control the ball in the open field, even when she was at full speed, the way she seemed to be able to process everything happening in front of her the way great quarterbacks could.

Tommy had no regrets about being a defensive guy. He was
always going to be a defensive guy the way his dad had been a defensive guy. He never said this to anybody, not even to his dad when he'd still been alive, but playing defense made Tommy feel like he was saving the other guys on his team, the way his dad had saved people.

When he stepped on the field, he wasn't just protecting the lead, he was protecting his teammates, too.

It might be a weird way of looking at things. But it was Tommy's way of looking at things. He'd always thought that everything his dad had told him about why he'd loved playing defense also explained why he'd loved being a firefighter.

Oh, Tommy knew he could play offense if he wanted to, could have been a running back or even a receiver, and would have worked as hard as he could to be as good at those positions as he could possibly be. But he was just wired better to be on defense.

Maybe even grow up to be a defensive star someday.

Tommy Gallagher: game saver.

But his kid sis was a total star on offense. Oh, she could turn a play around with her own defense, turn defense into offense in the middle of the field with one slick move. But when Em handled the ball, she really was something to see.

Tommy understood a lot more than he used to about soccer, and he'd even gotten into watching the games when the U.S. women's team had made their run. Even so, you really didn't have to know much about soccer to recognize that Emily Gallagher was special. When she got going with the ball, when she got busy in front of the other team's goal, she was in her own league compared to the other girls on the field.

As much as Tommy would complain sometimes about having to watch her games, and even though he had no interest in the other girls in the game, he loved watching his sister dominate.

He just wasn't that interested today, even though she was tearing it up early for the Brighton Bolts against the Newton Revolution.

Emily had already scored two goals, the last one when she just ran away from everybody on the Newton team and beat its goalkeeper with what Tommy thought was the soccer version of a crossover dribble in basketball, faking a shot with her right foot, kicking the ball with her left. The keeper went one way and the ball went another, so Emily only had to tap it into the open net. Carli Lloyd, Tommy thought, couldn't have done it any better.

Then a few minutes before halftime the Bolts had a two-on-one breakaway just outside the penalty area. Emily easily could have scored the goal herself, earning a first-half hat trick, but with the keeper fixated on her in that moment, just like everyone watching the match, Em went for a fake again. Only this time, when she faked a shot with her right foot, the keeper leaned left, not wanting to fall for that trick twice. But as soon as the keeper went left, Em made a no-look pass back to her right, to her friend Katie Ryman, and Katie buried one in the corner. The Bolts were up 3–0.

It was like watching a play that belonged on
SportsCenter
's Top 10 highlights. The parents in the crowd went crazy and the rest of the Bolts mobbed Katie. The only person who seemed completely unimpressed by what had just happened was Emily. But she'd had the same reaction after scoring both of her goals.
None at all. No change of expression. If you'd been watching only her, you wouldn't have known Brighton had scored.

After her goals, she'd simply walked back to where the ref was about to place the ball down at midfield so they could start playing again. She started walking in that direction now, except that when she got to midfield, she made a sudden sharp turn and headed for the Bolts' bench, where her coach, Mrs. Gethers, was standing.

For a second, Tommy thought Em might just need a breather, or wanted to get one of the girls who wasn't in the game out on the field for the last two minutes of the first half. He knew his sister wasn't tired. She never got tired, at least not on a soccer field.

He saw his sister talking to Coach Gethers. Then Coach Gethers was walking with Em, away from the rest of the team, looking like they were having a serious discussion.

Tommy saw Em start shaking her head.

“Something's going on with Em,” Tommy said to his mom.

“Seems like it. What do you think it is?”

“Can't tell,” Tommy said.

“You think she's hurt? I didn't see anything unusual happen on that play,” his mom said.

Tommy didn't get a chance to respond. The next second they both saw Coach Gethers looking up into the stands, finding them with her eyes, and making a helpless gesture, arms out, palms up.

Emily sat down at the end of the bench and took off her soccer spikes. She reached into the bag next to her, took out her pink sneakers, and put them on. Now she put the spikes in the bag, put the bag over her shoulder, walked behind the bench and
through the small door in the chain-link fence that separated the bleachers from the bench area at Bates Field.

Tommy and his mom had made their way down the bleachers and were waiting for her.

Still no change of expression from Em, her face telling you nothing about what had just happened. Or was still happening.

“You okay, hon?” their mom said.

“Fine.”

“What's going on, Em?” Tommy said.

“I just quit the team,” she said. “Can we go home now, please?”