Chapter 5: Colorado Springs

Somebody in the Colorado Springs crowd had brought a mop.

He held it over the rail behind the home goal and waved it at me during the warm-up.

By kickoff there were six of them.

"They're very organized," Robin said from the fourth official's table. "You have to respect the logistics."

"I don't have to respect anything."

"Respect the mops, Meg."

Cody was on my near-side line.

He came past me at the center circle and didn't look at the crowd once.

"Offside line's mine," he said. "Everything else is yours. Ignore the cleaning supplies."

"You rehearsed that."

"In the truck. Junie helped."

The network had two cameras on me, not the ball.

One stayed on my face the whole first half.

I gave a soft free kick in minute twelve and the mops went up like flags.

I waved play on in minute thirty and the home captain called me a word that rhymed with my job description.

I showed him yellow.

At halftime it was nil-nil.

Robin handed me a water and a banana.

"Your hair looks great on camera," she said. "They keep zooming in. I think the director's in love with you."

"The director wants me to cry."

"Then don't."

Minute seventy.

The visiting number 6 went through the back of the home striker on the halfway line.

It was a bad tackle.

I was already reaching for my pocket when the striker got up and shoved him.

Then everybody was in.

Twenty men in a knot of elbows and shirts on the center circle.

The home bench emptied.

The visiting keeper sprinted eighty yards to join in.

The crowd was on its feet.

I ran straight into the middle of it.

I didn't blow the whistle.

I put my body between the two men who'd started it and I held up one hand flat.

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