Chapter 18
Hades
The small office inside the stadium has a window that looks out onto the players' parking lot.
From here I can watch the cars pulling in.
Iris's motorcycle. Zoe and Tessa's minivan is right next to it, Wesley's car seat visible through the window.
Mireya's car, three spots down, still with the Aura Valley sticker on the rear windshield.
I close my eyes and breathe in.
I open the bottom left drawer of the desk. The sheet of paper is folded in four, exactly as I left it six months ago. I'd slipped it under a season planning notebook so I wouldn't have to see it every time I opened the drawer. I've spent six months knowing it's there and avoiding it anyway.
Today I take it out and unfold it carefully, pressing the creases flat with my thumb.
Wesley's green field. Twelve or thirteen stick figures, all bright colors, crowded together on the left side. Iris with an enormous yellow ponytail that reaches almost to the ground. Mireya painted blue.
And on the right side of the page, separated from the group by a huge white space, a single stick figure. Painted black.
Me.
“It's 'cause you're always alone,” he told me that day, with the complete honesty only small children have.
Six months of not wanting to look at it.
But the woman in that drawing isn't me anymore.
She was, for a long time. Maybe that's why they gave me the nickname Hades. Always with the whiteboard under my arm, always separated from the group by a blank space I'd built myself.
Wesley saw it at three years old.
Today I don't want to be that solitary figure anymore.
**
The locker room feels different during the playoffs. Same players, same colors on the jerseys, but different. You can feel it in the small things.
Mireya is sitting by her locker, already in her jersey.
She has a strip of tape on her right wrist over the braided bracelet.
Black leather cord, two beads: one green, one blue.
Zoe slips a piece of paper into her right sock when she thinks nobody's watching.
People don't notice when they watch on TV, but a lot of players carry something for luck in the big games.
“You know they're going to set up very defensively and hit us on the counter. We need to stay focused,” I remind them.
“Iris, you're not going to get a clean pass in ninety minutes, so accept it now and don't get frustrated.
If they score first, we don't panic. We keep working.
There's a lot of game left, and goals come when they come, but you have to keep going after them.”
“Oh man, Coach, today's press conference will be rough,” Iris mutters under her breath.
“The press conference is my problem. Your job is to win the game. They'll ask questions. I already know that, but it's not your concern,” I add, trying to get their heads back on the match.
“Got it, Coach. So let's go win it so the press conference is a championship one,” she says, standing up and clapping several times to get the others moving.
**
The first goal we concede comes in the thirty-eighth minute.
Honestly, we hold out a long time given how poorly we're playing.
They're sitting deep and turning every ball they win into a counter that catches us with our shape too high.
They come with pace, our backline too far forward, Bennett can't close the space fast enough, and the ball slips in at Castillo's near post.
Zero to one.
The twenty-five thousand people in the stadium go quiet for a stretch, despite Iris waving her arms desperately trying to get them going again.
The opposing team doesn't spend long celebrating.
They go right back to it — the same system, compact, with constant fouls in midfield that wear down Zoe and Jade.
They even make a couple of defensive substitutions.
I lift three fingers toward the box. It's not the ideal moment, but I need it.
Iris pulls the team together in the center circle during the few seconds it takes to set up the restart. I can't hear what she says, but when the ball starts rolling again, they fight harder.
Minute 45+2. Corner from the right. Mireya whips it in short to the near post. Iris gets up free and heads it cleanly. Goal.
One to one.
Iris sprints to the sideline and kisses the crest in front of the north stand. Mireya holds up the bracelet toward the TV camera.
Halftime whistle.
I barely say anything in the locker room today. They know what they need to do. We're the better team, we have possession, we're running the game. We just need to stay sharp on their counters and set pieces.
Tessa passes close to me to check Castillo's ankle and brushes my shoulder as she goes. It's not an accident, it's just Tessa giving me something without needing to say a word.
In the seventy-eighth minute, their team is running on empty. By then, a game this defensive has taken its toll on your legs. In the second half we've made them cover more ground; their fullbacks aren't pushing up anymore.
In the eighty-ninth minute, Lucía cuts a pass.
Zoe receives in the center, plays it wide, Mireya controls it with her left foot and runs toward goal as their defenders scramble to organize.
She lifts her head, and for a moment I think she's going to take it on herself, the way she did in the first game.
Iris makes a diagonal run, Mireya floats a ball over the top, Iris doesn't bother to bring it down; she volleys it and the ball rifles into the top corner.
The crowd loses its mind. The players chase after Iris, who runs toward the north stand where our loudest fans are packed in, rips off her jersey, and spins it over her head.
I press my hand to my forehead. She already had a yellow card.
Red card.
Off the field.
“Oh man, Coach, I just figured they'd have something different to write about. They're not going to score now, right?”
“Iris. Out of my sight. We'll talk later,” I say, pointing toward the tunnel with one finger.
Thankfully, the final whistle comes a few minutes later without any drama.
**
Zoe lifts the trophy at nine twenty-two in the center circle, with twenty-five thousand people still celebrating in the stands.
The players sing, dance, shove each other, jump on each other's backs, take photos. I walk toward them, but I stay at the edge. This is their moment. I just smile and run my thumb quietly over the corner of Wesley's drawing in my pocket.
Later, the locker room is pure chaos. Music at full volume, jokes, videos for social media. Iris handing out champagne in plastic cups, and Carter is singing something I can't make out.
Mireya stands up when she sees me walk in and wraps her arms around me hard.
“We did it,” she whispers in my ear before kissing me.
“Oh man, give them some air, people — the rest of us are a little embarrassed over here,” I hear from behind me.
“I'm going to the press conference. Iris, you need to go to the mixed zone as MVP, so I'm only asking one thing: please get there sober,” I remind her as I head for the door.
“Coach, go get them. Don't let them push you around; just give them that killer look you have. You're genuinely terrifying,” she shouts, pointing at me with both hands.
**
Thirty-three journalists in the room. I count them because it gives me something to do other than think about the questions waiting for me.
The club's communications director, Sarah Collins, sits next to me. I've known her for eight years, and she knows we're about to have a very uncomfortable press conference despite having just won.
Five minutes of technical questions. The importance of the corner for the 1-1, the decision to keep Mireya on the right wing instead of playing her as a striker. The red card Iris picked up for taking off her shirt after already having a yellow.
Then a journalist in his mid-forties raises his hand. I half-recognize him. He's sitting in the fourth row, notebook on his right knee.
Sarah glances at me for a second, as if to say, “Here come the bad ones.”
“Coach, photos have been published suggesting a possible relationship with player Mireya Guerrero. Today she started in the biggest game of the season while Nika Wallace was on the bench. Any comment on that?”
Sarah opens her mouth to step in, but I stop her with a gesture.
I breathe in and press my hand to my pocket, to Wesley's drawing folded in four.
“Mireya Guerrero has been in the starting lineup for this team since March.
Before she joined us, she was a key player at Aura Valley, and she's called up regularly for the national team. She has eight goals and ten assists this season, two of those assists today. That is the professional information that matters here. Our private life is not.”
“But a relationship between a coach and one of her players—” another journalist presses.
I cut him off.
“We are both adults, and the club and the players' association have both agreed to a set of measures to ensure my decisions are professional. My work results speak for themselves. My private life belongs to me.”
I say it with more of an edge than is strictly necessary, especially given that right now we should be celebrating a playoff win. Fortunately, Iris has already arrived in the mixed zone, and the press knows she'll always hand them something they can run with tomorrow, so they don't push it further.
On my way out, I press my back against the hallway wall and close my eyes.
“That went reasonably well, all things considered,” Zoe says, coming up beside me.
“Yeah,” I breathe, opening my eyes. “Reasonably well.”