Helpless

Chapter 26

In just over an hour, Tom would coach his first soccer game since the Facebook scandal broke. Tom tried his best to stay focused on the upcoming match. He anticipated this game would be a brutal and physical battle of wills. But the last practice had been a disaster, and his team was in shambles.

The Riverside bus arrived thirty minutes before game time. The Riverside girls were dressed in red jerseys and spread out across their half of the field, already doing stretches. Some kicked the ball around for warm-ups. Soon after, Vern showed up, and so did the kid with the video recorder.

Tom saw Mitchell Boyd and a bunch of his friends loitering on the hilly rise on the opposite side of the field. Mitchell had never come to a Wildcats home game before. Then again, Jill had never before been dropped off at her house by Mitchell Boyd—and hours past her normal curfew. Tom wasn’t a math whiz, but he could quickly solve this equation and didn’t much like the answer.

His daughter was potentially Mitchell Boyd’s next conquest.

Tom pushed Mitchell Boyd out of his thoughts, in the same way Boyd and his horsing-around pals were shoving each other. He returned his focus to the game at hand. The team. The win. The forty-ninth straight victory of his tenure. It was a great accomplishment, but one the girls deserved all the credit for achieving. He was just a guide. A map for them to follow. They had to walk the long and difficult trail to each “W” themselves.

Tom’s Wildcats began arriving. They were dressed in their Wildcat whites and looked ready to play. Jill led a group of girls onto the field. He noticed Jill stop and wave to Mitchell. Tom didn’t detect much oomph in Jill’s greeting to Mitchell. She didn’t look happy or the least bit enthused. Tom noticed Mitchell give a slight thumbs-up salute in return.

Cool kid, thought Tom.

Tom flipped to the attendance sheet on his clipboard and checked the players in with a pencil mark next to their names. Vern’s girls… Lauren Grass… McAndrews… Adamson… Wells…

He counted them. Seven in total.

Where’s the rest of the team? Tom wondered.

He had a nagging suspicion but refused to believe it could be true. Jill came trotting over to him. Tom patted her on the shoulder. “You going to bring it to them, Jill?” Tom asked.

“Can we talk?” Jill said.

Tom’s insides went cold.

Seven players had taken the field.

“What’s going on here, Jill? Where’s the rest of the team?”

“They’re not coming,” she said. “Either they’re quitting the team or their parents won’t let them be on it anymore.”

“Why?”

“You know why. They all think the Facebook thing is true.”

“Okay. Okay,” Tom said. He was thinking. His mind started to race. But the jumble of emotions and concerns narrowed down real quick when he thought about what mattered to him most.

“Jill, honey,” he said. “You trust me on this. Right? You know it isn’t true. In your heart, you know it. Right?”

“Yeah,” she said, though it was obvious she was downtrodden. “I know it.”

Tom nodded, acknowledging to himself what he had to do next. The referees took the field. Riverside was running a commonly used shooting drill as part of their warm-ups.

“What are we going to do?” Jill asked.

Tom looked over at the glum group of Wildcats, each with a disquieted expression on her face. A referee blew a whistle to signal ten minutes until game time.

“I’ve coached a lot of matches, Jill,” Tom said. “I’ve won a bunch and lost a bunch, too. But this is the first time I’ve ever had to forfeit.”

“I’m sorry,” Jill said.

Tom put an arm around his daughter. “Not as sorry as I am, kiddo,” he replied. “Not as sorry as I am.”