9TH MELAYU ARCHIPELAGO CUP QUARTERFINALS
ISLAND OF THE LOST - 1
Rylee Ross (67' penalty)
PULANG - 0
No goalscorers
The organization known as the Cote de Facilier Barons football team was a mess, and everyone knew it. The fans knew it, the staff knew it, and even the owner knew it. It wasn’t every day that Cassius Ripley came over from his seaside mansion southeast of La Cote to pay a visit to the club that he owned, but after five games where the Barons had been able to get only one point out of a possible fifteen, he had no choice but to show up. The argument between him and Alaric Henderson could be heard all the way out to the training ground itself. Alaric said that he had the tactics but not the players, but Cassius all but told him that he had to make do with his current roster, and that any deficiencies had to be filled by either free agents or the youth academy. Cassius then ended their “discussion” by telling Alaric that he had only the rest of the season left to turn things around now or else he was going to get the sack.
I didn’t envy Alaric or his position at all. He already had a difficult job steering this club back up the table with the full squad, and now after the incident between Velma Shipley and Helga Williams, he had practically lost one half of his defense and one half of his actually decent strike force. Thus it was no surprise at all that we lost the next two games against Ratcliffe Town A.F.C. and the Port Maleficent Magic. The first draw that the team got this season was, surprisingly enough, against the Ursulopolis Eels. You know, just the team that finished runners-up behind the Jafar City Cobras last season! And to be frank, I don’t even know what the real surprise is, the fact that we managed to draw against the Eels or that our makeshift defense was able to keep the Eels from finding the back of the net. The draw was enough to give us our first point of the season though, and that was actually good enough to lift us off of the foot of the table. Then again, that was only because Dinamo Rasputinsk had had a worse start to the season than we did. I mean, damn. It would sure suck to be a Dinamo fan right now, but then again, they probably don’t have the internal strife that’s currently plaguing this Barons team right now.
Team morale was a mess, for lack of a better word. I mean, for all of her political and personal beliefs, Bree Buckingham was pretty much the rock upon which the entire Barons defense was anchored, and after she walked out on the team alongside Helga Williams, our defense has just never been the same. Everyone knew that, but nobody wanted to admit it. And nobody wanted to be the first one to approach someone who was a known racist, or at least someone who was friends with a known racist. And there was no way that Velma Shipley was going to agree to bring back anyone who had walked out on the team. “We may not have points and wins without them but at least we still have our principles!” Velma had said when someone tried to bring it up. “Let them rot wherever they are! They know that they’re on the wrong side of history. That’s why they don’t want to show their faces here anymore!”
Betty Henderson also didn’t show up for training with the rest of the academy players for a whole month. I mean, after Helga dropped that bombshell that she had seen Betty at the protest, I was pretty sure that Betty had caught more than just an earful from her father. I did think I understood where Alaric was coming from, though. Betty should have known better than to go to that protest after she had seen the Death’s Heads coming into town while we were picking up Salam Gholamreza. Ever since the Death’s Heads started disrupting the PJF’s protests for the National Unionists, attending one such protest was just asking to get hurt. And speaking of Salam and opposing views, I did also feel like I understood where he was coming from with regards to what he had said to Velma. You didn’t need to have power or privilege to hate someone; if you hated someone then you just hate them. All that power and privilege changes is what you could do to someone you hate. But try telling Velma that. Someone did, and she shouted at him to get out of her face and accused him of being a racist bigot.
But after we lost another game once again, this time a 6-2 loss against Cape Hook, everyone knew that this current state of affairs couldn’t keep going on forever. We needed to shore up our defense and improve our attack, but the players who could do that for us were not going to come back on their own, and at the same time, none of us wanted to be the one to reach out and ask them to come back. Not if we didn’t want to be called racists too. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t be the one to do it, and I’m not even a player for the team anymore. I’m just an assistant coach for the youth team. But someone had to make the first step. And that someone would turn out to be Elena Arreola.
We were packing up our things from the locker room after that big defeat to Cape Hook when I felt a tap of my shoulder. “Hey, Helen,” Elena said. “Can we talk?”
“Sure,” I nodded. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Not here,” Elena said. “Can we talk at your place?”
“Okay,” I replied, not sure where this conversation was headed. “You wanna come down with me?”
“Actually, I was thinking that we would meet later tonight. Eight o’clock sound good?”
“Sure, whatever you say,” I shrugged. Then I began to think: what was it that was so important that Elena wanted to speak to me about it, but she also wanted to talk about it at my place? I guess I would have to wait until eight in the evening to find out.
At seven minutes before eight, I heard a knock on the door. “It’s me,” Elena called out. I looked through the peephole in my door (I had had it installed there the day after the Cliffies had knocked on my door) to make sure that it was indeed her, and when I had confirmed it, I opened the door to let Elena in. “Make yourself at home,” I said.
“Thanks,” Elena nodded her head. “But I don’t think I’m going to stay here for very long. I just want to talk to you about something. It’s about the club, the team.”
“If it’s about the team then why couldn’t you talk about it earlier?” I asked her.
Elena took a deep breath before she finally replied. “I don’t want others to hear about this and misunderstand my intentions,” she said. “But I want to ask some of the guys who walked out on us to come back.”
“Oh, now I get it,” I nodded. “You don’t want Velma to call you racist too.”
“Yes, there’s that,” Elena nodded back. “But I also want to put this team back together because it’s what the fans deserve. We’re already a third of the way into the season, and we haven’t won a single game yet! When I agreed to join this team on loan, it was because I was told that I was going to play a big part in bringing this team back up from the foot of the table. Well, now I’m going to actually do it. This isn’t what I had in mind when I was told that, but if this works, and I do hope to God that it actually works, then this might just have been the best thing that I’ve done in my life.”
“Okay,” I said once I had processed what Elena had just said. “Now it’s your turn to not misunderstand what I’m saying. I like what you’re planning to do. I really do. Everyone knows that it has to be done. But do you really think everyone who walked out would want to come back? I mean, I think we can get Salam, Ivan, and Vanessa to come back without much of a fight, but what about Helga and Bree and Clancy? Remember, they’re the ones who started all this with that Liberation Army banner. You really think you can talk the three of them into coming back?”
“I’m not really interested in Helga,” Elena waved off. “I think we all saw how much of a scumbag she really is. But we need Bree and Clancy back. They’re two of our best defenders, literally. If we want to get off the foot of the table, we need them back in the team. Preferably, I’d love to have both of them back, but if we can talk even just one of them into coming back then I think it’ll all be worth it.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “All of this sounds good on paper. But have you ever thought what the rest of the team would say if it came out that you wanted the ones who walked out back into the team? I’m not talking about just Velma here now. I’m talking about everyone. Randall, Alaric, Bernie Atlee, the whole freaking team! Have you thought about what they’re going to think about you if you do decide to go ahead with this plan of yours?”
“You know, Helen, if I’m being honest, I don’t really care about what anyone thinks of me here anymore,” Elena shrugged. “Unless things change in Playa del Mal for better or for worse, I’m probably going to come back there after the end of this season. So let people call me names for all I care. I’ve been called a lot of names before. What’s one more name to add to that?”
“But why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why do you want to put these two groups of people who probably hate the other group’s guts back together?”
“Because what they’re doing to each other is just going to make things worse in the long run,” Elena replied. “I mean, think about it! If you isolate yourself from other people with other viewpoints and just stick to the same people with the same views and opinions as you then you end up in an echo chamber. You begin to think that everything and everyone in the world thinks the same as you, believes the same things as you. And that’s no way for anyone to live their lives, right? If I can just get everyone back together then maybe they can see that they’re all not that different from each other. Maybe everyone can finally start working together and not fight each other and think all those bad things about the others.”
“You know what? You’re right,” I sighed. “This needs to end. The team needs every hand on deck to get us out of this hole. Well, I’ll see what I can do. It probably won’t be much, but it’s what we need.”
“Thank you,” Elena said. “I’ll be in touch if I need your help with anything.” She then stood up and went out of my place. But I had barely had enough time to settle down and think about what had just happened when my phone rang. It was Betty Henderson. “Are you finally not grounded anymore?” I asked her teasingly.
“Yeah, but if Dad finds out what I’m about to do next, I’m never gonna be not grounded again,” Betty replied.
Oh, shit. “What are you planning to do this time?” I said exasperatedly.
“No time to explain! Just meet me at the stadium and I’ll tell you everything there!”
“I hope this isn’t anything like the last time you dragged me away from La Cote, Bethany.”
“It’s not! And don’t call me Bethany! How many times do I have to tell you that?”
~ Chapter Sixteen in the story of Helen Josephus
