Kevin the Star Striker Read online

  Danny watched them run past his window from his living room in the house across the street. But unlike Julian and Josh, he wasn’t smiling. He was concentrating as he stood dangerously perched on the back of a chair, which was dangerously perched on four unsteady towers of books. From there he hoped to snag his soccer ball from the top of the living room shelves without destroying his mother’s expensive china.

  Danny took a deep breath. He could just reach the ball with the tips of his fingers. Carefully, very carefully, he lifted the ball. He had it! Suddenly the chair started tipping. Danny lost his balance.

  “Nooo!” he shouted, as two china plates slowly started rolling towards the edge of the top shelf. He let go of the ball and tried to regain his balance by performing a belly dance on the arm of the chair, and was about to jump off when the chair settled back down just as the plates fell and Danny caught them before they shattered on the marble floor.

  Danny breathed a sigh of relief and wiped away the sweat with his arm. That’s when his soccer ball teetered at the precipice, then rolled off the shelf and plummeted down, directly into the arms of his mother, who appeared out of nowhere, directly underneath him. Her stern look demanded an explanation.

  “Phew!” he said, relieved. “That was close.”

  All he had left was an irresistible smile and with that smile, his best ideas. He stood there with that big old smile and offered her the plates. “Want to trade?” His mother just stared. Uncomfortable, he cleared his throat. Then he made one last ditch effort to save his own neck.

  “Well, you know, I just thought, I …” he stammered.

  “Get out!” His mother had finally lost her patience.

  “Right this instant!”

  Danny grinned with relief.

  “Oh man! I knew it. You are too cool. Did you know that, Mom?” With these words, he jumped off the chair, placed the plates in his mother’s hands, planted a kiss on her cheek, and stormed to the front door. That’s when the phone rang. Danny automatically picked it up: “What’s up? I’m in a hurry.”

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  “Hello? Who is this?” Danny yelled, and when he recognized the breathing on the phone he became even more impatient.

  “Alex, dude, knock it off!” Danny sighed. “I thought you’d be on the soccer field by now.”

  But Alex, who was at the other end of the line, watching his mother clean the house at fancy One Woodlawn Avenue, still didn’t utter a word.

  All Danny could hear was the vacuum.

  “Oh man! You’re grounded! I totally forgot. And you can’t leave the house, am I right?”

  Alex nodded but didn’t say a word.

  Danny rolled his eyes, waiting impatiently “Alex, loser, I don’t have time for this!”

  But Alex remained silent, growing more and more desperate.

  “Okay hold on,” Danny said thinking fast. “Can you get to the bathroom?”

  Silence. But Danny was on a roll.

  “The bathroom window is directly above your garage. And next to the garage is that old apple tree. You know the one. Your dad wanted to chop it down but didn’t have the heart? Are you listening? Do I have to draw you a map?”

  Alex hung up. Message received. He dashed into the bathroom.

  “About time!” Danny said and hung up.

  Then he realized his mom had been watching him the whole time. Their eyes met. She was still holding the plates and the ball, looking at him with disapproval. He shrugged innocently.

  “For gosh sakes, Mom, if he can’t come up with it on his own, what am I supposed to do?” Then he flashed his best grin. “I guess I’ll see you tonight, then!” He was the last to run out into the street and towards disaster.

  Trapped!

  All of us gathered one block away from the soccer field: Danny, Julian and Josh, Alex, Tyler, and me. We were laughing about being grounded and banned from soccer, and nobody was thinking about the consequences of our escape. That could wait until the evening. Until then, everything would be great. We felt fantastic as we stormed down the street. But when we took that last corner before the soccer field, we crashed into something that came towards us at full speed.

  Danny hit the ground instantly. The rest of us pulled the brakes in time. All of us stared at the red-haired boy with the Coke-Bottle glasses and curlers in his hair.

  “Oh my God, it’s Roger!” Julian said.

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  “Uh, Roger, you know the soccer field is the other way,” laughed Josh, the youngest among us.

  “That right?” Roger asked testily. He lost his temper and pushed Danny’s hand away when he tried to help him up.

  “What’s up, man?” Danny asked, rubbing his own bump.

  “Nada,” Roger hissed. “We’re too late. The soccer field is taken.”

  “No way!” Julian said.

  “There you go again,” I said to Roger, “Mr. Negativity.”

  “It’s true.” Roger stood in front of us, wringing his hands, eyes distorted by his Coke-bottle glasses, looking more like a cartoon character than a boy. “The soccer field is taken. Really! Today, for the next two weeks, probably forever.”

  Roger paused. He really seemed to expect us to keel over in shock. But we only looked at each other in disbelief. Roger got even angrier.

  “Dang it, guys! Ask Diego if you don’t believe me. He is stuck on the soccer field, too scared to move.”

  Now that was serious. Diego was not the kind of guy who’d joke around. Sometimes I even wondered if he would recognize a joke if it bit him on the butt. But that didn’t matter now. Someone had taken our soccer field. And that was definitely no joke.

  We immediately started running toward the field. Roger didn’t budge. “No! Wait! Hold on! STOOOPP!” he yelled desperately. It sounded like we were running into a trap, but no one listened, we just kept on running. We ran down the street and right through the gate in the wooden fence that surrounds the soccer field. We ran past Larry’s stand, where Larry was hopping off his scooter, getting ready to open up for the season. And we ran towards Diego, who sat smack in the middle of the field at the center mark, wheezing in fear.

  Diego didn’t say a word. He was desperately fighting back his asthma. Probably a grass allergy, I thought, because there was nothing else around that could have done this to him. The soccer field was empty. It was completely empty, except for us and Roger, who had finally appeared at the gate, flailing his arms wildly.

  “Guys! Come back while you still have a chance!” he shouted.

  We looked at each other. We didn’t get it. It just didn’t make any sense. I was just about ready for the next round of insults when something moved all around us.

  At first I thought, cockroaches. Giant cockroaches. But even Asian cockroaches aren’t that big. No, they were boys. Just like us. Only bigger. And stronger. And fatter. And they came running at us. Roger was just ahead of them and hid among us, scared to death. And he had every right to be. These guys surrounding us were grim, scary, fearless and cool. Viciously cool. We caught our breath and our hearts skipped a beat when, just as Roger had warned, Mickey the bulldozer appeared.

  Never Give Up!

  Mickey the bulldozer was the Darth Vader of our world. And when Mickey appeared at the gate of our soccer field, that’s who was glaring at us from the t-shirt that barely covered Mickey’s fat belly. Yet unlike Darth Vader, the bulldozer did not wear a science-fiction mask.

  Mickey’s face was real. If you could call it a face. His tiny beady eyes sat like black coals between beefy cheeks, and his breath rattled like an elephant seal just coming up for air.

  Mickey the bulldozer was the coolest and the toughest guy at our school and in our neighborhood, and he was afraid of nothing and nobody. There was a simple reason for this. Mickey didn’t travel alone. Like the way garbage attracts flies, Mickey attracts other jerks, and they approached us now from all sides.

  The bulldozer waited at
the gate like the commander of his troops, never moving an inch. Oozing confidence, he waited until his soldiers had moved into position.

  They surrounded us, leering at us. Humungous Henry, who was even fatter than Mickey. Hard to imagine, right? Octopus, the tallest of them all, had arms that reached almost all the way to the ground. I saw Juggernaut Jim, Mow-down, and Rick the grim reaper, who wore a bicycle chain around his neck and on his bare chest like a bandolier. And then there was Kong, the monumental creature from the prairies of Mongolia.

  I heard that guy was strong enough to rip high voltage lines apart with his bare hands. But none of those jerks were as strong or as mean as Mickey. And he was coming right at us.

  He stomped across the wet field; his every step turned the muddy water to steam. The ground shook. So did his flabby paunch. But underneath all that fat were iron muscles and a black heart. We automatically backed up and wanted to run, but Grim Reaper and Kong formed a brick wall behind us.

  Mickey the bulldozer stood over Diego, still sitting at the center mark, agitated and wheezing. Mickey pushed him into the mud and kept on coming. All the rumors we’d ever heard about him were unwinding in my head. I could almost see that bulldog, dripping fangs and all, as it leaped at Mickey. That’s exactly how they say it happened three years ago. That bulldog should have been registered as a lethal weapon and when it charged Mickey at full speed, it would have ripped a normal human being limb from limb. But Mickey grabbed it by its ears and hurled it over his shoulder through the air, and when it crashed into the earth it kept running and never looked back. And Mickey just stood there smiling, holding a bulldog ear in each hand. That was when Mickey was ten and barely out of third grade. Now he was thirteen and two heads taller than any of us.

  I looked around me to see if there was anyone who could help us. In the movies this would be a perfect time for a superhero to show up and save the day. But other than us, the only person on the soccer field was Larry, and he was busy taking the barricades off his stand, quietly and calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on at all.

  I actually liked Larry. He was the best adult in the whole wide world. He never treated us like kids and he never talked down to us. In his eyes we were real men already, who could decide their own destiny. Apparently that’s what he thought at the moment as well, and today I cursed him for that.

  Frankly, I didn’t want to decide my own destiny just then. I wanted to be who I really was: a nine-year-old boy. Or invisible. That’s what you want when Mickey the bulldozer is stomping towards you, shaking the earth, towering in front of you like a skyscraper. I stared into the mask of Darth Vader on his fat belly then moved my gaze up slowly and looked into his glowing eyes.

  “Damn, we’re trapped by this moron!” Danny cursed next to me. I didn’t tell him this, but I felt a whole lot better knowing he was next to me. But Humungous Henry didn’t like it at all.

  “Did you hear that?” he screeched. “Mickey, did you hear what he called you?”

  “Shut up!” the Bulldozer commanded and snapped his fingers. “Octopus!”

  Octopus launched the ball in a heartbeat and the Bulldozer caught it and thundered it against Danny’s chest, pounding him into the ground gasping for air.

  “I have ears, Humungous!” the Bulldozer grinned and easily caught the ball that bounced back from Danny’s chest. “Octopus didn’t hear it good, want to repeat that?” he said to Danny.

  Danny just glared at him angrily, but kept quiet, and none of us could blame him for that. Then the Bulldozer took a step towards me.

  “Good! Then we understand each other. As of today, this soccer field belongs to us and only we get to play here. We’re the Unbeatables.”

  All the morons roared and Mickey just stood there looking triumphant.

  “Unbeatables, did you hear that?” he threatened. “And as of this nanosecond, all you measly midgets can get lost. You got no business here anymore.”

  The Bulldozer looked at us as if he could vaporize us with a look. Even if we wanted it, that wasn’t going to happen. We couldn’t leave. This was our soccer field and we weren’t going to give it up, no matter how many tough-talking morons showed up.

  “What’s wrong? Didn’t you understand me?” Mickey the bulldozer mocked us. “Should I ask Kong to make things crystal clear for you?”

  Kong stepped forward enthusiastically and signaled his willingness by cracking his knuckles with an inhuman bone-cracking noise.

  “No,” I said quickly, “that’s not necessary,” and the Bulldozer grinned with satisfaction.

  “What do you know! The midget knows how to talk!” Mickey laughed spitefully and the other morons chimed in.

  “Then I don’t get why you’re not telling your fellow midgets to beat it? What are you waiting for?” he hissed and threw my soccer ball against my chest.

  I stumbled but didn’t fall to the ground. The Bulldozer caught the ball again.

  “Not a chance,” I countered defiantly.

  The grin on Mickey’s face vanished.

  “What did you say? I didn’t quite get that!” he hissed and threw the ball at my chest a second time and this time I fell to the ground. Mickey caught it.

  “I said, ‘not a chance,’” I hissed. “You heard me.”

  “Excuse me?!” Mickey’s face was bright red. He reached back to throw the ball a third time. “I don’t think you know what you are saying!” he screamed and thundered it at me.

  But this time I caught it like a goalie, jumped up instantly and shot it back at that fat tub of goo.

  “I know exactly what I’m doing!” I screamed back. “I’m going to give you two weeks, you towering tub of goo! Two weeks and not a day more. That’s how long you and your morons have to pretend that this soccer field is yours. Then we’ll be back for a challenge. And we won’t just be cracking our knuckles. We’ll be playing soccer. You think you’re unbeatable? Then prove it in two weeks. If you win, then the field is yours, as long as a soccer ball is round. But if we win, then you take your morons and go play someplace else. If we win, this soccer field is ours, once and for all, forever. Is that clear?”

  I shoved the soccer ball into Mickey’s flabby belly and it made him burp. My friends looked at me in disbelief.

  Maybe they were already writing my obituary. They had to think I was suicidal or crazy, or both. Only Danny whistled through his teeth.

  “Dude! That was … wild!”

  We were surrounded by giants: Humungous, the Grim Reaper, Octopus, and Kong, and they were waiting for the command from the Bulldozer to take us out. Their eyes locked on him and so did ours.

  The Bulldozer was stunned. The color in his face changed like a traffic light. Then he burped again, and this burp morphed into a strange uncomfortable laugh that grew louder and louder.

  “Did you hear that?” he laughed. “Did you all hear that? The midget barely reaches to my belly button, but he spits in my face.”

  Then he became really serious and looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. For the first time I started doubting my own sanity in saying what I had said. But I made sure it didn’t show. Instead I met his gaze and asked: “What’s up? Are you afraid?”

  Mickey’s eyes narrowed, if that’s even possible. All I heard was his rasping breath. Then he answered: “I don’t even know what fear is.”

  He said it in a way that at that moment I knew exactly what fear is. I tried to swallow it, but it wasn’t working. I could feel my knees buckle. Luckily, the Bulldozer began to laugh: “OK! Deal! We’ll see you in two weeks. Right here!”

  I looked from the Bulldozer to Danny and Tyler in disbelief. They couldn’t believe it either. Then we didn’t risk staying another second. We turned on our heels and ran. We ran past Larry’s stand through the gate, and we shouted and cheered as if we had already won the game.

  With Bated Breath

  The minute we were outside the soccer field we broke down laughing.

  “Unbeatables? More lik
e bunch of losers!” Roger laughed.

  “I’ll give you two weeks, you towering tub of goo!” Danny copied me, and Diego, whose asthma had miraculously disappeared, finished the sentence with enthusiasm: “That’s how long you and your morons get to pretend you own our soccer field!”

  “Dude! That was wild!” Julian laughed, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, totally wild!” Josh laughed, and Roger got right to the heart of what we were all thinking: “They’re shaking in their boots! These losers won’t know what hit them!”

  But Alex and my brother Tyler weren’t saying anything. They were staring through the wooden fence, watching the Unbeatables start their training.

  The Bulldozer ran up to the ball and then thundered it towards the goal. Inside the net, Octopus was flying, reaching for the ball with his tentacles; he had no trouble catching it at all.

  “Hey Octopus!” Roger shouted, “What kind of lame ball was that? Even I could have caught it.”

  Octopus and the Bulldozer looked over at us and didn’t say a word. Octopus just casually tossed the ball to the Bulldozer, and he kicked it. But this time he didn’t aim at the goal. He aimed at us. The ball hit the wooden fence so hard that one of the planks splintered into a thousand pieces.

  Alex the cannon, the man with the world’s strongest kick, swallowed hard with respect. The rest of us remained perfectly still. Only Roger said: “Losers!”

  But just like the rest of us, he watched them with bated breath. How were we supposed to win against these guys? Winter still sat in our bones. We hadn’t played together in months, and now we didn’t even have the field to practice on. Mickey the bulldozer and his Unbeatables, on the other hand, could practice every day. And it wasn’t just that they were four or five years older than us. There was more.