Gracie Faltrain Takes Control Read Free Page B

Maiden halfway through the off-season games, so now he’s in goal. ‘It’s an important position, Knight,’ Coach said when he announced it at practice, but we all knew. So did Martin. He’s played soccer most of his life; he knows it’s a comedown. Right from the start Martin has been the one everybody looks up to. He gets the ball and passes it so someone can take the perfect shot. He plays underneath the team, keeping it afloat.
    At least he did.
    â€˜Goalie protects the team from attack, Faltrain,’ he said to me the day Coach made the switch. ‘It’s a key position.’ And he bent down to tighten his laces, even though they didn’t need it.
    It is, but not when you’re stuck there because you’re playing worse than Corelli.
    â€˜We can train together, Martin. Prove to Coach you should have your old position back,’ I said on the way home that night.
    â€˜Faltrain, I told you, I want to be in goal. Just leave it.’
    That’s how most of our conversations end, these days. I try to talk to him and he says, ‘Leave it, Faltrain’. But if he keeps leaving things all over the place and never bothers to pick them up, there’ll be bits of him all over Melbourne. I’ll only have half a boyfriend. If I’m going to have that, I want the half that passes to me in the midfield.
    â€˜Sometimes you have to wait until a person is ready to talk, baby,’ Dad said when I told him about Martin.
    â€˜I don’t want to wait. I want him to be as mad as I am that Coach stuck him in goal. Something happened after he got back from the Championships and I want to know what it is.’
    â€˜That’s like reading the last page of a book first. Would you do that?’
    â€˜I always do that.’
    Dad looked at me like I was a criminal. ‘Gracie, the last page doesn’t mean anything unless you know how the character arrived there. You have to let Martin tell his story in his own time. If you don’t do that, you won’t understand it, anyway.’
    I understand that Martin’s trapped in goal, like he’s trapped every day. Sometimes he’s cooking dinner for his dad and Karen and me and there are lines of shadow across his face, like I’m staring at him through the bars of a cage. I want to break it open and force him out. But it’s his mum who has the key.
    Even when he doesn’t mention her, she’s there in everything he does. She’s in all the things he remembers about soccer. She’s in his heart, and if he doesn’t talk about her, she’ll get too big to fit. She’ll force her way. And that’s when things will get messy.
    I know because until I fixed things with Dad last year, I felt the same way. I thought about him all the time, how much Imissed him. Everything good I did I imagined he was there watching. And everything bad that happened I wondered what he would say to make it better.
    Things aren’t perfect now that Dad’s back. Sometimes he and Mum fight for days and days. And then sometimes they don’t talk to each other at all. They think I don’t notice how they stop speaking when I walk into the room, but I do. I see their arms folded across their chests and not around each other.
    Last year, when Dad was away, he did something to change the weather in our house. Mum can be told a million times it isn’t going to rain, but she always carries her umbrella. On those days when they fight I feel it in my bones; a winter ache, like wind slicing across me on the soccer field.
    â€˜Gracie, baby,’ Dad said one time when it was really bad, ‘we’re fighting for the other person, not with them.’
    â€˜You’re not leaving again, then?’
    â€˜I will never leave you. You’re the only spot on the map worth visiting. It’s hard for you to understand, I know, but your mum and I are arguing because we’re scared. She’s