Samantha - Play the Game - a short story for freshman English class FAHS

“Lacey, wake up!”
“Bahumbug! What time is it?”
“It’s 10:00 a.m. and mom made pancakes!”
“I’m not hungry, I’m tired, now go away Erin!”
Erin ran out of my room and slammed the door. “Finally peace and quite!” I thought to myself as I drifted back to sleep. I re-awoke at 2:00 p.m. and jumped into the shower. I stood there, in the shower, thinking back on the past year. So much had happened and so quickly: I had gone into high school, my older sister had gotten married and moved across the country to California, my brother had gone into the Marines and was in Iraq, and…I tried to block this part out, but it seemed to push itself through. Tears started to stream down my face, and the accident had happened. That horrible accident had ruined everything and everyone.
“Lacey! Get out of the shower! I need you to watch Erin, I have to go to work!”
“Okay, I’m coming mom.”

I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. I tried to clear my thoughts as I wiped the tears from my eyes and got dressed. Mom had always said after the accident that “There was a time to be upset and hurt, and a time to put those feelings away and get on with life.” Now was a time to get on with life. Suddenly Erin bolted through my bedroom door and leaped onto the bed.
“So what are you going to play with me?”
“Nothing, I have homework I have to get done, and then I have to make dinner.”
Erin sulked out the door. She walked down the hall and then sat down on the navy blue carpet and leaned against the white hallway wall. Her head was in her hands and she pretended to cry. If I didn’t know my six year old sister very well I would buy into her acting- she was actually pretty good, but not good enough to fool me. When Erin really cried you knew it – she would wail and carry on and her normal pale complexion would turn beat red.

When the accident had happened everyone cried for days, everyone except Erin. I remember one time she came into my room without knocking like she always does and saw me crying. She ran over to me and climbed into my lap and asked me why I was crying in her sweet little five year old way. Mom had told her about the accident, but she was too little to really understand. So, I had just told her I had stubbed my toe. Erin slid out of my lap, kissed my big toe, and ran out of my room like nothing had happened.

I walked out of my room over to Erin and sat down in the hallway beside her. She looked up at me, but to my surprise she didn’t say anything. We just sat there in the middle of the hallway in silence. Finally after about ten minutes she and asked me if I wanted to go outside and play soccer with her. If she had asked me to do anything other than play soccer with her I wouldn’t have done it, but something in me told me to go outside with her.

Our whole family was ardent soccer fans. We all played except my mom. My older sister Taylor had played classic soccer for 4 years and then had stopped playing when she went to college. My older brother Jason had played 2 years of classic soccer and then went into the Marines where he was a police officer, but he still plays whenever he can. Then there was Erin who plays every weekend for our local team. I had started playing soccer when I was three. I had a lot of success and was probably one of the best players in our whole family. Two weeks before the accident I made the regional Olympic Development Program (ODP) team, and was selected to try-out for the u-14 national team at the Home Depot Center in California. As soon as I got home from the regional camp my dad started training with me- we went running together, we watched games together on TV, and of course we played against each other. He was probably the coolest dad on the planet and the luckiest one too. He had a beautiful wife, four amazing children, and he was a former captain on the U.S. men’s national team. After he retired he decided to be a police officer like he had planned before he made the national team.

“Ready, Lacey?”
“Ready, Erin!”
Erin dribbled at me, did a quick cut, and shot the ball with her toe into the goal.
“Erin, remember don’t kick with your toe! Use your laces!”
“I know, I just forgot okay?”
“Okay.”
There was no point in arguing with Erin, she either won, or she ran to her room and started crying. I passed the ball back out to Erin and she started to dribble at me again.
“Honk, Honk!”
Erin stopped and looked up. A black car parked in our driveway, and a man got out.
“So did you come to your senses and decide to start playing again?”
“No, I’m just playing with Erin so she’ll leave me alone so I can do my homework.”
“You know national camp is in 6 months. If you wanted I could get you a plane ticket and a try-out.”
“No thanks, I’m not interested anymore.”
“Well if you change your mind just give me a call. The national coaches know who you are and would love for you to start playing again.”
“If I change my mind, which I won’t, I’ll give you a call.”
“Okay, great! I’ll catch you later Lacey.”
“Bye coach.”

Just as quickly as he came he left.
“Who was that Lacey?”
“That was my old coach Erin.”
“Are you going to start playing again?”
“No. Hey it’s time to go inside.”
“Nooo! I don’t want to go inside!”
“I know but I have to go make dinner and you can’t be outside by yourself.”
“Fine. Can I watch TV then when we get inside?”
“Sure, why not.”

After two weeks of intense training my dad went to work like he did any other day. At 6:00 p.m. he didn’t get home like he normally did. My mom started to get worried after he still did not return home an hour later, so she decided to call the station. They didn’t know anything. They said he had left the station on time at 5:30 like he always did. My mom decided that we should go out looking for him, so she took me and Erin in one car, and Jason and Taylor took the other car. The police also said they would send out some officers to look for him. We searched all over the neighborhood, but we couldn’t find him. After an hour of searching we all met up at home, and that’s when the phone rang. That terrible phone call changed everything. It was Mike from the police station, he was one of dad’s best friends. He talked to my mom for 10 minutes as my siblings and I sat at the kitchen table waiting. We knew something was wrong when we watched mom hang up the phone and saw the tears steaming down her face. We all got in the car and headed to the hospital, when we arrived we were informed it was to late: Dad had already died.

After the accident had happened I stopped playing. Before the accident soccer was something I enjoyed doing, it was something my dad and I had in common and something we learned to love together- it was “our” thing. Of course Dad loved everyone in our family and he loved that everyone played soccer, but none of them went as far as I did. I thought about going to national camp even after the accident happened, but it didn’t seem as great because he wasn’t at home to enjoy it with.

“I’m home!”
“Mom! How was work?”
“Good, where’s your sister Erin?”
“She’s making dinner.”
“Oh great! I’m starving.”

After dinner I volunteered to clean up while mom and Erin went into the family room to watch Blue’s Clues. Erin didn’t get much time with mom, in fact I was more of a mother to her then mom was because I spent the most time with her. Even though Erin and I were 8 years apart we had a special kind of relationship together. She, at times, could be very annoying, but most of the time we were good friends. Even though she never understood the accident and never had to deal with it like I did, she somehow seemed to understand that I needed someone to help me get through it- and that’s just what she did. She probably didn’t even realize that she did help me cope, but she did by making me play soccer with her, and making me watch soccer on TV with her. She even tried to go running with me but that ended by us running 10 yards and me giving her a piggy-back ride back to the house. Erin helped me face soccer again without really getting me to start playing. She helped fill the hole in my heart by getting me back outside with her.

I finished cleaning the kitchen and went back to my room to do my homework. I sat down at my desk and opened up my geometry book, but I didn’t do any problems. Instead, I kept thinking about the accident. After we had gotten home from the hospital mom told us what had happened: Earlier that day dad had arrested a man for murder. He took the guy back to the station, filed the paper work, and then got in his car and started home at 5:30 like he normally did. After he got out of the parking lot he headed down route 44 towards home. As he was driving down the highway his check engine light came on. He didn’t think much of the check engine light and decided that he would have it looked at tomorrow. He turned on the radio and kept on driving. A couple minutes later he noticed a black car with dark windows following close behind him. Dad didn’t think much of it, but after he got off route 44 and started on some of the back roads towards home he noticed the car was still behind him. He pulled over to let the car pass but it stopped and a man got out of the car. Dad reached for his gun, but he had accidentally left it in his office at work. He started to put the car back into Drive, but the car turned off. The man got to the window and pulled a gun. He reached to open the door but dad has locked it and was dialing 911. The man shot the door handle three times and the door unlocked. He pulled dad out of the car and told him he shouldn’t have messed with his family and then he pulled the trigger. Dad died in the hospital two minutes before we arrived. Later we found out that the man who had killed Dad was the brother of the man he had arrested earlier that day and a spark pug had blown in the car causing it to turn off.

I noticed that my geometry book was now sopping wet and I was crying. I started to think about how things were different now. My sister was probably the only one besides Erin who lived a real life after the accident. She got married and moved from our small town in North Carolina to California with her husband. My brother who was planning on going to Duke decided to go into the Marines instead and become a police officer, probably because Dad was a police officer; soon after was deployed to Iraq. With only Erin and I still at home my mom decided that a fresh start would probably be best for us all, so we moved into a large white house in a cul-de-sac in New York. Once we settled in my mom got a job and worked 6 days a week as a nurse in the local hospital, and I went to school and babysat Erin.

I got up from my desk and walked into the family room where my mom sat on the couch watching the news while Erin slept on her lap. I sat down on the couch. She smiled at me and asked me how my day was. I told her it was okay.
“Mom, I know this is kind of sudden, but I think I want to start playing again.”
“What? Really? You know Lacey, I think that’s a great idea, it’s been to long since we’ve had a real soccer player living in the house. If you don’t mind me asking, though, what brought this on?”
“Well, when Erin took me outside today to play, I guess I realized how much I miss playing, and then my old coach stopped by and he told me that national camp is six months away and how he could get me a plane ticket and a try-out.”
“Well, whatever it was I’m really glad you’ve decided to start playing again.”
“Me too. I’m going to go call coach okay? And will you tell Erin when she wakes up for me?”
“Sure.”
I got up off the couch and ran back to my room, picked up the phone, and called my coach. He was really glad I had called and he started emailing and phoning the national coaches.

After I hung up with my coach Erin bolted through the door and over to me. She jumped into my lap and we started talking about soccer. For the first time since the accident I felt happy again. Maybe stopping soccer hurt me even more than playing the game my dad and I both loved. My mom had been wrong when she had said “There was a time to be upset and hurt, and a time to put those feelings away and get on with life,” instead she should have said “You can’t stop playing the game because you’re afraid to get hurt, instead you have to face your fears and play harder.”